The Role of Religions in Ecological Crisis

The Role of Religions in Ecological Crisis

Joseph Kao

  No one can escape from the ecology crisis, because there is only one earth in which we live. In other words, each man and community live in this planet should take his own responsibility to keep our earth green, health and sustainable.

  Religions also should take his own responsibilities in modern society, but what is the most important role of religions in ecological crisis, we should take it in concern, and that is the purpose of this paper. Before we start to talk about it, we will take some assumptions between religion and ecology.

  First, religion and ecology are interrelated, and any discussions from scholars or communities must include attention to the ways religious and spiritual traditions relate their beliefs and practices to environmental issues and priorities.¹  Religions and cultures are a part from and they cannot exist without any relationships to others in the nature world.

  Second, the environmental degradations are the most important and urgent issues in the twenty-first century, no one can exist without earth, the environmental degradations will result in perish of all species around the nature world. Religions provide worldviews, in which people lived and treated all beings in the nature world, so our thoughts and actions are combined in our daily life, scholars and leaders of religion must provide moral guide for their believers in daily life from traditional and spiritual field.² 

  Under this two assumptions, we will talk more about the role of religion in ecological crisis from the definition of some religious scholars.

Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern. – Paul Tillich

  According to Paul Tillich, the definition of religion is about an ultimate concern which is from the ultimate reality of each religion, he tried not to use the word "God" to make the definition suitable for every religions. In this context we know one thing that he tried to deal a basic issue of religion -- universality and particularity, which is also a basic and important issue in religion and ecology field.

  Because, there are many different concepts and teaches among all religions about the ultimate reality, and the most important is that Is the ecological crisis an ultimate concern for each religion? If the answer is "yes", why? if the answer is "no", why? It's an inescapable question for every religions, only religious leaders or scholars face and respond the duties of ecological crisis, believers can have appropriate and ethic behavior in the world. That's what we must take in concern from the definition of religion of Tillich.³ 

Religion is the inmost voice of the human heart that under the yoke of a seemingly finite existence groans and travails in pain. – D. T. Suzuki

  Obviously, the definition of religion of D.T. Suzuki is different from Tillich, for Tillich, the core of religion is ultimate, but for Suzuki is not, religion is immanence, created by “the human heart”. It means, the meaning of life is not from transcendence but immanence, human beings are meaning creators of their life, especially from the experiences of suffering.⁴
 
  Whether transcendent or immanent perspective of religion, when we talk about religion and ecology, are important. Because only when human being be fulfilled in each field (body, mind, spirit), he will co-exist and co-develop with others and entry transcendent field, and the most strongest power for co-exist and co-develop with others is from the human heart, in that moment, we will make a perfect connection between outside and inside, make us return to a holistic and spiritual being.

A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single community all those who adhere to them. – Emile Durkheim

  There are two part of Durkheim’s definition of religion, (1) religion separated believers’ life in two parts, sacred and secular.; (2) religion can not only unify a community, but guide the members behavior in society. Unlike Tillich, Durkheim understands “Ultimate” as something human beings create, but not as something real and outside human control. That also resulted in the second part of Durkheim’s definition of religion. In order to avoid profane the sacred, we have to unify a community which had it’s own traditions, rituals, thoughts, etc., to guide us how to practice in our life.⁵ 

  Durkheim’s definition takes us into different aspect of religion and ecology, he does not address the substance of religion – the supernatural (Ultimate) or natural (groans and travails) reality to which it responds. Instead, he asks how religions function to keep societies cohesive. These scholars focus on the actions and beliefs of existing religious practices, observing religion as it currently is rather than arguing for what it should be.⁶ 

  It means that religions should try their best to keep all beings co-existing in this planet well before they arguing who/what they are, especially in different religions encounter. Solutions and collaborations of current problems in ecological crisis are the first step of all religions, and any theories are the second step. Religions can comprehend each other well in collaborations.

A religion is (1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men [and women] by(3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic. – Clifford Geertz

  As Durkheim, Geertz emphasized the function of religion in society, but he focused on symbols. He regarded religion as a system of symbols, which live and evolve in human history from generation to generation. In other words, religious symbols formulate “conceptions of a general order of existence” that justify and explain current moods and motivations.

  Religions provided a consistency of worldview and ethos, in which human beings understand how reality works and what human beings are expected to do within that reality in the face of a changing world. That means, symbols are constructed by communities of people and guide those people’s behavior in their daily life, and even become a habit or nature of communities.

  That definition raises a very important concept of religions, can and how religions change? It is also a central task in religion and ecology, because are all existing religious traditions flexible enough to deal with the contemporary ecological crisis? Do we need a new or common symbol system to deal with environmental degradation? If it is necessary, who has the authority and power to change the tradition of religion or develop a new symbol system.⁷  

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for real happiness. – Karl Marx

  Unlike others, Marx regarded religion as an ideology, which soothes and comforts the poor masses, but in doing so legitimates the economic imbalances that keep the poor. It shows a hierarchical oppression in society, and religion is the accomplice of bourgeois, a negative phenomenon tied to economic oppression.

  In other words, richer and power people created an illusion by religion to make the poor masses accept the conditions, poor and be ruled, in a spiritless, heartless and be constructed world . This world gives a salvation hope in the future, in a immaterial world and prevent poor people to seek the material happiness in real world.

  The definition of Marx raises an vital question: is it possible for religion to be a force for positive social change, or is religion inevitably only concerned with spiritual, immaterial matters and completely a product of oppressive and destructive systems?⁸ 

  Above all are the perspectives of relationship between religion and ecology from religious scholars’ definitions of religion, then we will talk about some respective from the other side.

Ecology and Religion

  Like religion, ecology is best understood as a broad idea that covers a lot of territory and can be bent and shaped in various ways. First, ecology is a subdiscipline of biology, and the second, most broadly, ecology is the study organisms in their living and nonliving contexts. The science of ecology is based on the idea that every part of the natural world is connected to other parts. So, we cannot understand plants or animals in isolation, but must instead pay careful attention to their interactions with one another and with the world surrounding them.⁹ 

  We will emphasize on broad idea of ecology, just as a biologist, Ernst Haeckel, coined the word “ecology” as a call for a new science based on the Darwinian idea of natural selection, a science to study organisms in relationship with their living and nonliving environment.
  Haeckel believed that such study of nature not only produce the data and analysis, but also reveal the “order of nature” and the “virtues” by which human beings could live harmoniously with it. He wrote: “the orderly course of evolution, according to fixed laws, now leads the human spirit through long eons from a primeval chaos to the present ‘order of the cosmos’”. It will lead to cosmic truth, so ecology is both a natural science and worldview.¹⁰ 

  Harmony life of human beings is the most important connection between religion and ecology. Ecological crisis is also crisis of human beings, only keep our environment alive, we can keep human beings alive in harmony.

  An ecological crisis includes environmental degradation- climate change, species destruction, toxic pollution, and environment injustices- but also implies an explanation for these problem: wrong relationships within humanity and between our species and the rest of the world.¹¹ 

  So there are three distinct approaches of relating ecology to a traditional religion, recover, reform and replacement. Recover means that all resources to respond the contemporary ecological crisis already within tradition, all we have to do is to recover and express.¹² 

  The goal of reformation strikes a middle path between assuming that the tradition has all the answers and that it has none. In other words, there are some treasure values or wisdom insights in religious tradition, and those are good for us to face ecological crisis, however, those values and insights should be rethought or reanalyzed with contemporary reality, such as ecological insight and environmental degradation. Therefore, we can make wisdom of religious tradition in practice in our daily life and ecological problems.¹³ 

  Replacement tries not to recover or reformation religious tradition, but instead moves away from them in favor of something more suited to contemporary problems. Take Bron Taylor as an example, in his book “Dark Green Religion” he pointed a deep question of religion, recover and reform are all both based on religious tradition, but if they didn’t take ecological crisis as the core concern, they will away from the plan of saving our planetary.

  Taylor thought all beings in planetary are sacred, even rivers, mountains, rocks, forest, seas etc.. They are more important and original than any religious theories in traditions, only we can accept this point, we can solve ecological problems.
 

Conclusion

  After the Winter Course and above theories, I'll state some of my opinions about university for life and peace to the committee.

1. Without any doubt, awareness is the most important thing of all, not only could be find in ULP winter course, four groups of students all recognized that, but also in definitions of religion, any definition of religion stands on self, for example, if you don’t aware the power of ultimate, you will not agree the definition of Tillich.
   Follow this context, how to make the students of ULP aware of ecological crisis and always keep aware of other crisis of planetary is most important thing for ULP, and it will make ULP to be the most different university than others.
    
2. No any religion can solve ecological crisis by itself, it needs cooperation. So it’s not enough only to recover or reform religious traditions, for ecological crisis we need to create a platform for all religions can involve in, and take ecological crisis as the first step. I wish ULP can take this important role.
    
3. No matter from which side, "inter" is the most important concept to face ecological crisis, likes inter-religion or interdisciplinary, and open mind and cooperation with others are the core of "inter", so for all ULP students in future need to learn about this two elements, especially in field of inter-religious dialogue. So ULP may take shifu, R. Panikkar, P. Knitter etc., as examples as basic course for students to learn the attitudes of "inter" to open their mind and to cooperate with others.
    

¹Grounding Religion : A Field Guide to the Study of Religion and Ecology (Canada: Routledge press.), Whitney A. Bauman edit. (2011), pp. 2.
² Ibid, pp. 7.
³Grounding Religion : A Field Guide to the Study of Religion and Ecology, Whitney A. Bauman edit. (2011), pp. 14-16.
⁴Ibid, pp. 16.
⁵Ibid, pp. 17.
⁶Grounding Religion : A Field Guide to the Study of Religion and Ecology, Whitney A. Bauman edit. (2011), pp. 18.
⁷Ibid, pp.18-19.
⁸Grounding Religion : A Field Guide to the Study of Religion and Ecology, Whitney A. Bauman edit. (2011), pp. 19-20.
⁹Ibid, pp. 51.
¹⁰Grounding Religion : A Field Guide to the Study of Religion and Ecology, Whitney A. Bauman edit. (2011), pp. 49.
¹¹Ibid, pp. 53-54.
¹²Ibid, pp. 61.
¹³Ibid, pp.60.