Religion and nature

The role of sacred springs and spring deities in Hittite religion is especially relevant to the consideration of the relationship between nature and cult in ancient Anatolia. This paper addresses the subject by first presenting an overview of the most important hydrological terms, including various designations applied to springs. The degree of architectural structuring of the spring itself and its surroundings is given systematic consideration in order to develop and archetonic typology of the spring sanctuaries. The question of the relationship between the spring deity or numen and the physical spring itself is addressed through observations of three different cases: springs among the loci numinosi, the spring Weriyadu, and the writing conventions used to designate springs in a festival celebrated in the city of Tauriša. Both with regard to architectonic typology as well as the degree and manner of personification of sacred springs, clear spectrums can be identified that reflect the diversity of significance and interpretation of springs in Hittite religion.

A critical response to the trends in environmental history well summarized by Paul Sutter in "TheWorld with Us: The State of
American Environmental History", Journal of American History 100 (2013): 94-199.  The entire forum is available here: http://www.journalofamericanhistory.org/issues/1001/#articles

Ecological theology (in short, ecotheology) is a rather new field in academic study of theology. While all Christian theologies can be analyzed for their views about the value of non-human nature, the concept ‘ecotheology’ is often used to refer to theology which explicitly argues on the behalf of the value of the environment. Thus defined, ecotheology refers mostly to Christian theologies since the rise of wider environmental consciousness since the late 1960s. While in the long history of Christian theology there have been interesting and sometimes also influential ecotheological strands, most writing and action on the field is relatively recent.

The amount of ecotheological literature has grown rapidly since the beginning of the 1970s. Although there has lately been growth in international co-operation in research on the field, study of ecotheology tends still to be somewhat sporadic. Many volumes do not take into account the previous research on the field as widely as would be beneficial.

This guide helps especially beginners in ecotheological studies to find the most relevant introductory literature to begin with. Many volumes on ecotheology are massive collections of articles, and it is not easy for a beginner to get a grip on the field. In my studies both in North America and Europe, I have also noticed that the introductory volumes are not known everywhere. Even in academic institutions with a long history of study on the field there may be lack of contact with certain helpful international resources.

This guide has a certain focus on systematic theology. While many of the works introduced below include discussion on ethics and also, to a certain extent, discuss practical environmental work, they mostly analyze and display the overall theological viewpoints of different traditions and theologians.

Exploring the intra-actions of new animist and new materialist movements within the environmental (post)humanities, this paper argues for transductive methods in-between the disciplines of the sciences and humanities and Western, Eastern, and Indigenous disciplines beyond the academy. Following such feminist technoscience scholars as Karen Barad and Donna Haraway down one outgrowth of trails and animist environmental educators like Priscilla Stuckey and M.J. Barrett  and Robin Kimmerer and Winona LaDuke down others, we observe different sets of subjects and objects. Yet each scholar shares an open attentiveness to the liveliness and relational reciprocity of the more-than-human. Being present on the margins of any bounded field or at the crossroads where a pattern of intersecting lines of flight has been seen, it is advantageous to present a gift. In this way, the researcher is not only open to receiving gifts but to the habituation of a transductive relational patterning which allows for the emergence of more expansive becomings.

Presented at the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture conference on Religion and Science at the University of Florida on January 17, 2016

Issues of ecology and Christian relation to the created world are not the domain of the present day alone. The works of the patristic period also contain interpretations and hints concerning the relationship between human beings, God and creation. This is evidenced, for example, in the Fathers' commentaries on the Hexaemeron - a theological, historical and philosophical reflection on the six days of creation described in Genesis. They focus on both animate and inanimate nature, since both are expressions of God's omnipotence and evidence of His existence. During the 4th International Patristic Conference organized by the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, we want to recall and deepen the intuitions and interpretations of early Christian writers concerning the relation of human beings to the surrounding natural world created by God; to consider what models and approaches to the animate and inanimate natural world modern people can take over from the Christians of the patristic period; to what extent they are valid today; to what degree they were part of the philosophical and theological context of their time; and in what respects they were original in relation to pagan views. All scholars of the Christian antiquity are invited to participate in the conference.

The award winning Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature critically explores the relationships among human beings, their environments, and the religious dimensions of life. Further information and sample entries can be found at the urls provided here or via Bron Taylor's website at www.brontaylor.com.

This contribution deals with a group of five late literary testimonies which are connected by modern scholarship with the Celtic oak-cult. The texts under discussion are from Maximos of Tyre (λόγοι 2 (8),8), the Commenta Bernensia (ad Lucan. 1,451), Claudius Claudianus (de consulatu Stilichonis 1,228–231), the late antique comedy Querolus sive Aulularia (1, 2 = p. 17,6–22 RANSTRAND) and the Corpus Glossariorum Latinorum (CGL V p. 633,68 GOETZ). A thorough analysis will show that these passages can only be used with some reservation as evidence for the Celtic veneration of the oak, since the testimonies are either problematic or irrelevant at all.

Wicca or Pagan Witchcraft is the most popular branch of contemporary Western Paganism. Its self-image is that of an ‘old religion’; a reawakening of the spiritual values, ideas, ideals and practices of Pagan ancestors. Amongst these ideas is a romantic veneration of ‘Nature’. Nature is considered to be ensouled, alive, ‘divine’: Wiccan beliefs encompass elements of pantheism and animism. The divine is described both as an impersonal ‘force’ or ‘energy’ manifest in the world of nature and as deities – Goddess and God – who are venerated in ritual in different forms at different seasons of the year. These forms draw on images of wild and untamed nature – the Huntress God, the Green Man of the forest, the Sun God, and agricultural deities, such as Corn Goddess and Corn God. Themes and symbols drawn from nature are central to Wiccan belief and practice, but hearken back to a world far removed from the experience of most Wiccans. How does Wicca view its relationship to the world of nature and does Wiccan belief and practice provide a basis for an environmental ethic?

Pomegranate readers who are familiar with Ronald Hutton’s The Tri- umph of the Moon: A History of Modern Witchcraft—whose twentieth anniversary was just celebrated by the publication of a tribute volume, Magic and Witchery in the Modern West (2019)—as well as essays and books touching on the development of modern Pagan traditions of Wicca and Druidry, might be expecting more of the same. But The Witch is not that book. Propelled partially by Hutton’s own concerns about the persistence of witch-hunting and witchcraft executions in parts of Africa and Asia, it begins in a more contemporary framework with a chapter titled “The Global Context” but ultimately circles back to the problems of studying the European and witch trials, specifically those of the British Isles.

Harvest Thanksgiving rests at the junction of liturgy, nature and memory. From the late-nineteenth century it was a major event on Nonconformist church calendars, drawing crowds well beyond regular attendance. Yet it was the Nonconformist churches’ uneasy relationship with icons, visual display and imagery of all sorts that made the spectacular displays of fruit and vegetables associated with Harvest Thanksgiving so memorable, so marvellously out of the ordinary. Photographs were taken and treasured and these offer a glimpse into a rich and peculiar world of food and display that is at once consonant and disconsonant with Nonconformity’s professed and assumed theological stances on the use of imagery. In this time of celebration and thanksgiving, of spectacle and transformation, how were Nonconformist prohibitions on display, materiality and excess so extravagantly overcome? How was the divide between the sacred and profane so colourfully rearranged? This article explores the histor...

In every religion animals, plants, and other nonhuman natural beings are divine messengers, bringers of spiritual or material gifts, gods, guardian spirits, or sacred ancestors.  Sometimes natural entities are holy models for emulation, kin who share human souls, arbiters of virtue and vice, or partners in the project of existence.  At other times religious experiences with natural beings solidify notions of humanity’s separateness from the rest of the natural world.  However, to date we have not asked why such experiences appear as they do nor have we posed questions regarding what they mean.  <Learning Love from a Tiger: Religious Experiences with Nature> distinctively does just this.  This accessible book is filled with gripping tales of mystics who learn from house cats how to meditate, rivers who grant spiritual salvation, trees who teach us how to develop patience, shamans who shape-shift into jaguars, sacred human-apes, mountain gods who seek servants, bees who receive revelations, cobras who reward spiritual respect with gold, amorous lion goddesses, crickets who pray, and many more.  Primary subjects include Christian, Muslim, Hindu, indigenous Mayan, indigenous Himalayan, Buddhist, and Chinese shamanic encounters with nature, along with the nature mysticism of the American naturalist John Muir.  Many of the experiences derive from original field work done in a Christian church, a Hindu ashram, and a Buddhist monastery, adding a contemporary, personal, and living character.  With its unique and fascinating tales this book will appeal to anyone interested in relationships with nature or world religions as well as researchers from a variety of fields.  Its readability also makes it a great choice as a text for college courses on religion and nonhuman nature or, more broadly, culture and nature.

Earth and nature-based spirituality is proliferating globally. In Part I of this study, I argued that although participants in these countercultural movements often eschew the label religion, these are religious movements, in which persons find ultimate meaning and transformative power in nature. Focusing on the deep ecology movement, I further argued that (1) experiences of nature spirituality are evoked by practices as diverse as mountaineering, neo-shamanic ritualising and states of consciousness induced by hallucinogens; (2) earthen spiritualities are often contested and may be viewed as inauthentic or dangerous by practitioners of other forms of nature spirituality, and (3) despite significant diversity, a sense of connection and belonging to nature (sometimes personified as a transforming if not transcendent power) unites these
cross-fertilising, and sometimes competing, spiritualities. Part II examines additional forms of nature-oriented religion, searching further for continuities, discontinuities and ironies among its diverse forms.

It is easy for human beings to ascribe meaning to trees because they are satisfyingly homologous with people; they are alive in a way that stones, however impressive, cannot be. In the landscape trees are frequently dominant and inspirational, like the giant California redwoods (Sequoiadendron giganteum) which grow to remarkable heights, or the ancient Huon pines of Tasmania, which can live for up to three thousand years. Holy trees are part of sacred nature, the physical world that is infused with the divine. Ancient Pagans and Christians alike used trees to express profound cosmological and spiritual truths. Trees are used as an image of the world (imago mundi), and as the centre (axis mundi), which mapped territory and connected the earth to the heavens above and the underworld below. Trees marked out physical territory, conferred identity on the peoples who lived in the vicinity of their sheltering branches, functioned as meeting places for religious and political assemblies, and were places of ritual.

In the twenty-first century trees are again spiritually significant, not only for religious people, due to the devastating impact of environmental destruction, and the loss of biodiversity and animal habitats resulting from the industrialized nations’ rapacious exploitation of natural resources. This special issue traces the sacred tree: from the theological writings of the Orthodox monk St Maximus the Confessor in the seventh century; through its depiction in the Byzantine Christian architecture of medieval Italy; to Glastonbury (UK) where the Holy Thorn signified the resurrection of Christ. The relevance of sacred trees beyond the Christian tradition and in the modern world is probed in articles that consider four disparate cases: the sacred grove on Joseph Smith’s estate in New York state, now a major Mormon pilgrimage site; the aesthetics of tree veneration in contemporary India; trees in nature-oriented modern Paganism; and trees in the Australian national and social imaginary.

This essay discusses the role of comparison in the historical study of religions by means of three case studies of wilderness mythology from ancient religions – Mesopotamia, The Hebrew Bible, and early Christian-ity. Then, the concept of wilderness and a spatial-narrative theoretical strategy of analysis are presented, and it is argued that concept-based comparison is constitutive for the academic study of religions. It is a great pleasure to dedicate this comparative discussion of " wilderness " to my esteemed colleague, Tim, because we share an interest in not only ancient religions and religion and nature, but also a view of comparison as vital to the study of religions.

Avatar and Nature Spirituality explores the cultural and religious significance of James Cameron’s film Avatar (2010), one of the most commercially successful motion pictures of all time. Its success was due in no small measure to the beauty of the Pandora landscape and the dramatic, heart-wrenching plight of its nature-venerating inhabitants. To some audience members, the film was inspirational, leading them to express affinity with the film’s message of ecological interdependence and animistic spirituality. Some were moved to support the efforts of indigenous peoples, who were metaphorically and sympathetically depicted in the film, to protect their cultures and environments. To others, the film was politically, ethically, or spiritually dangerous. Indeed, the global reception to the film was intense, contested, and often confusing.

This document includes the book's Table of Contents and the contributions by its editor, Bron Taylor. 

To illuminate the film and its reception, this book draws on an interdisciplinary team of scholars, experts in indigenous traditions, religious studies, anthropology, literature and film, and post-colonial studies. Readers will learn about the cultural and religious trends that gave rise to the film and the reasons these trends are feared, resisted, and criticized, enabling them to wrestle with their own views about the film and the controversy. Like the film itself, Avatar and Nature Spirituality provides an opportunity for considering afresh the ongoing struggle to determine how we should live on our home planet, and what sorts of political, economic, and spiritual values and practices would best guide us.

La mediazione simbolica fra uomo e natura, fra individuo e cosmo, ha trovato nella letteratura, dopo il mito e prima dell’attuale egemonia della tecnica, uno degli spazi di elaborazione privilegiati. Un’altra funzione ‘antropologica’ che la letteratura svolge - funzione forse più recente, o solo più evidente negli ultimi secoli - è quella di riparare simbolicamente alla disarmonia dell’esperienza. La letteratura affiora dalle ferite, crepe e lacerazioni dell’esperienza a rimarginare e cicatrizzare. A partire dal XVIII secolo la perdita di rapporto diretto fra l’individuo e il cosmo, di un rapporto empatico con la natura, si manifesta nella ricostruzione deliberata di tale relazione (basti pensare al nuovo stile dei giardini o all’alpinismo); e trova nella letteratura, oltre che nella filosofia, un idoneo luogo di elaborazione.
La scoperta del mare che Carlino Altoviti fa nel IV capitolo delle Confessioni di un Italiano di Ippolito Nievo è un esempio di ricostruzione letteraria di tale perduto rapporto fra individuo e cosmo. Vedere il mare è parte di quell’esperienza dell’orizzonte – dell’illimitato e della limitatezza dello sguardo umano, della perdita di un orientamento consueto e della partecipazione al sublime della natura attraverso tale perdita – che tanta parte ha nella costruzione del soggetto che si potrebbe convenzionalmente indicare come ‘romantico’. Il significato dell’esperienza di Carlino è sviluppato secondo un modello che ha origini settecentesche (si cita Voltaire, ma la traccia ideologica è Rousseau, precisamente la Professione di fede del vicario savoiardo, nel IV libro dell’Émile); rispetto al modello si ha tuttavia una novità, che si manifesta non sul piano intellettuale ma su quello strettamente letterario. Il testo non solo provvede infatti a descrivere una esperienza intorno a cui costruire un mondo di valori, ma si configura come descrizione dell’esperienza di tale esperienza. La spia stilistica più appariscente è nella parola “mare”, che non compare mai nel testo: sta al lettore comprendere che Carlino ha visto il mare. La sua esperienza è cioè trattata con la tecnica dello straniamento. La situazione del lettore di Nievo, alla metà dell’Ottocento, è più compromessa, per così dire, di quella di un lettore settecentesco, e non si tratta più di educare la sensibilità del lettore al sublime della natura e a far discendere da tale percezione un intero universo morale, ma anzitutto di far sentire come originaria, vergine, una esperienza consueta e logorata. Tutto il passo è retoricamente volto a proteggere dal disincanto ciò che un secolo prima era stato eletto a incantato, sublime, fondativo di un nuovo Io.

This article traces how a motif from folklore, that of the marauding dragon, became reinterpreted by UK Pagans and Earth Mystics—for whom it symbolised a mysterious 'dragon energy' circulating harmoniously through the landscape—and by a radically motivated branch of Paganism, namely Eco-Paganism. Eco-Paganism, which emerged during the environmental anti-road protests of the 1990s, advocated a blend of direct and magical action in the form of 'dragon-raising' rituals for the protection of threatened pieces of land. The history of this idea of the dragon is presented, with examples of political and dragon-raising rituals, with particular reference to those performed by the Dragon Environmental Group.

Eliot’s   visionary   poem   The   Waste   Land   gnaws   at   the   bones   of   twentieth-­century   Anglo-­American   society   to   reveal   the   alienation   of   the   modern   west   from   the   non-human   world,   alongside   a   desperate   but   convoluted   longing   to   re-­commune   with   organic   elements   and   forces.   The   poem’s   arid   world   of   shattered   and   scattered   images   conveys   the   fragmented   state   of   the   urbanized   soul   as   well   as   its   desacralized   environment.  Eliot’s  wasteland  succeeds  in  displaying  modernity’s  failure,  existing  both   within   the   psyche   and   without   it,   in   the   world,   illuminating   the   existential   dilemma   of   twentieth century   life   as   well   as   anticipating   the   ecological   crisis   looming   from   within   the   shadows  of  the  very  project  of  urban  civilization  itself.  

Performance, Religious Imagination, and the Play of the Land in the Study of Deep Ecology and Its Practices

By Craig S. Strobel

Abstract

In this dissertation I demonstrate that a Performance Hermeneutic methodology can uncover the role(s) of embodied imagination in the processes of emerging religious phenomena.  In order to prove this contention, I study the processes in the Deep Ecology movement which imaginatively structure the Deep Ecology worldview and performatively place the bodies of its adherents within that world through ritual, role playing, performance and social action. 
I begin by making the case for a Performance Hermeneutic, which is a process of interpretation and understanding based within the various ways and means in which the human body interacts with its environment.  I argue that the body itself thinks - that cognition is an activity of the whole body. The style of investigation is
Through on-site research as a participant-observer, and occasionally as a facilitator-participant-observe in workshops, rituals and training events, I apply a Performance Hermeneutic to the performative practices of certain persons within the Deep Ecology movement. I argue that Deep Ecology is an emerging religious phenomenon that has arisen as an attempt to articulate and embody the core experience of Deep Ecology practitioners of their relationship with the natural world.
From those experiences I draw the following conclusion: A Performance Hermeneutic operates at the level of the engaged and interconnected imagination.  Its value lies in its ability to experience simultaneously both the imaginative creation and externalization of internal worlds and the internalization of how and what the external world impresses upon the human recipient.  This suggests that new religions emerge as a descriptive attempt to make sense of what a group of people experience of the external world and how it is that they experience that world.  Religion emerges as an imaginatively constructed world whose formal elaboration occurs as an expression of a world-view. The reciprocal nature of this religious imagination reveals itself in the rituals and performances constructed in order to celebrate this world, as well as to reinforce the authenticity of the world-view which purports to describe it.

Lynn White, Jr.'s 'The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis', which was published in Science in 1967, has played a critically important role in environmental studies. Although White advanced a multifaceted argument, most respondents focused on his claim that the 'Judeo-Christian' tradition, especially Christianity, has promoted anthropocentric attitudes and environmentally destructive behaviors. Here, in Part One of a two part study, I demonstrate that White was not the first to make such an argument and analyze how White's article precipitated efforts by religionists and scholars alike to uncover, or invent, pro-environmental interpretations of many religious traditions. I then label subsequent claims that the world's religions are becoming more environmentally friendly as 'The Greening of Religion Hypothesis' and argue that this cultural history of the post-White ferment sets the stage for a much-needed comprehensive review of research illuminating this hypothesis, which is taken up in Part Two of this study., and two anonymous reviewers, for their helpful comments and suggestions on the initial draft of this article. A small portion of this article was integrated into an article I co-authored with Gretel Van Wieren and Bernard Zaleha (2016) and is reprinted here with permission of the publisher.

Most images of yetis in Western popular culture and scholarly literature portray them as secular, predatory monsters. These representations overlook important religious dimensions of yetis that are hidden in the current literature so I take a new look at yetis in Tibetan religions in order to clarify our understanding of these legendary creatures. Following a phenomenological approach that sets aside the issue of the ontological existence of yetis, I examine texts, art, ritual, and folklore in order to propose four yeti personal ideal types: the Buddhist practitioner, the human religious ally, the friendly yeti, and the mountain deity yeti. These ideal types enhance earlier scholarship by demonstrating that yetis may appear in friendly as well as dangerous guises, may play religious roles even when they are not venerated, and may embody numinosity even when they are most fearsome.

The latest developments in climate change science and policy counter the traditional political and economic global structure. In this paper, approaching climate change as a collective action problem, I focused on adaptive co-management (ACM) as an innovative management concept. I assumed that the ACM might help us to inaugurate an inclusive social-ecological contract among humans, and between humans and other species. With the aim of enhancing the concept of adaptive co-management, I benefitted from the analytical studies conducted in the field of religion and nature. I first reviewed the literatures on adaptive co-management, and on religion and nature. Further, I elaborated the concepts of religion, religiosity, and Homo religiosus as well as the development of the religion and nature discipline. I then scrutinized the religious dimension of the ACM, and evaluated the religious challenges to it, using the findings of selected studies. Finally, I discussed the implications of the human mind’s comprehension of (ecological) reality. The conceptual discussion confirmed by the findings indicated that the hegemonic regime of truth still rests on an egocentric cosmology, and this attitude is independent of whether it relies on monotheistic faith or positivist science. In either case, human beings display the characteristics of Homo religiosus, connecting to reality in a dogmatic way.

Overview of the meanings and uses of "nature," as both concept and referent, in studies of religion and in contemporary religious belief and practice. Covers "nature in itself" (including debates over its "social construction"), "nature in and with religion," "religion in and with nature," "nature religion" and "ecological religion," and "religious ecologies in practice" (including Creation care, sacred groves, green pilgrimage, eco-paganism, et al.).

Unlike traditional religious ideas, romantic period writers such as Blake and Wordsworth, examine the presence of God in nature and self. They see God as not a separate existence, but inside the creation of himself: man and nature. Blake and Wordsworth, as well as the other Romantic poets, see imagination as the source of spiritual energy. Through the imaginative powers, the poet becomes a representative of God. In this essay, I aim to explain the ways religious experience is represented in the natural world by Blake and Wordsworth. While Blake explains the divine form of God is reflected in the human soul but corrupted by the church, Wordsworth refers to the ability to perceive God from nature; they both say, eventually humans lose these holy qualities as they move from "innocence” to “experience”.

Earth and nature-based spirituality is proliferating globally. In Part I of this study, I argue that although participants in countercultural movements often eschew the label religion, these are religious movements, in which these persons find ultimate meaning and transformative power in nature. Focusing on the deep ecology movement, I further argue that (1) experiences of nature spirituality are evoked by practices as
diverse as mountaineering, neo-shamanic ritualising and states of consciousness induced by hallucinogens; (2) earthen spiritualities are often contested and may be viewed as inauthentic or dangerous by practitioners of other forms of nature spirituality; and (3) despite significant diversity, a sense of connection and belonging to nature (sometimes personified as a transforming, if not transcendent power) unites these cross-fertilising and sometimes competing spiritualities. Part II examines additional forms of nature-oriented religion, searching further for continuities, discontinuities and ironies among its diverse forms.

Monograph:
Shaw, J. 2007. Buddhist Landscapes in Central India: Sanchi Hill and Archaeologies of Religion and Social Change, c. 3rd century BC to 5th century AD. London: British Academy (hardback)
Available to purchase here: https://www.routledge.com/Buddhist-Landscapes-in-Central-India-Sanchi-Hill-and-Archaeologies-of-Religious/Shaw/p/book/9780367605452

Paperback edition (2020) London: Routledge.  Available to purchase here: https://www.routledge.com/Buddhist-Landscapes-in-Central-India-Sanchi-Hill-and-Archaeologies-of-Religious/Shaw/p/book/9780367605452

Ebook version  (2016):
Available on Taylor & Francis Ebooks
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315432656

E-rental version (2020):
An e-rental version is available on Internet Archive with limited access to (1) verified blind and print-disabled patrons and (2) general patrons via controlled digital lending -  https://archive.org/details/buddhistlandscap0000shaw

Book reviews:
Hawkes 2012 -  http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00048146
Becker 2012 - doi:10.1353/asi.2014.0006

Julia Shaw (2016) Religion, ‘nature’ and environmental ethics in ancient India: archaeologies of human:non-human suffering and well-being in early Buddhist and Hindu contexts, World Archaeology, 48:4, 517-543

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2016.1250671

Keywords: Archaeology as Environmental Humanities; Indian religion and ‘nature’; Agriculture, food change and environmental control; Violence and non-violence; Purity and Pollution; Monasteries as gardens

This paper assesses archaeology’s contribution to debates regarding the ecological focus of early Buddhism and Hinduism and its relevance to global environmentalism. Evidence for long-term human:non-human entanglement, and the socio-economically constructed element of  ‘nature’ on which Indic culture supposedly rests, challenges post-colonial tropes of India's utopian, 'eco-friendly' past, whilst also highlighting the potency of individual human:non-human epistemologies for building historically grounded models of Indian environmentalism. For early Buddhism,I mediate between two polarized views: one promoting the idea of ‘eco-dharma’, as a reflection of Buddhism’s alignment with non-violence (ahiṃsā), and the alleviation of suffering (dukkha); a second arguing that early Buddhist  traditions have been misappropriated by western environmentalism. I argue that the latter view subscribes to canonical models of passive monks removed from worldly concerns, despite archaeological evidence for socially-engaged monastic landlordism from the late centuries BC. Others cite this evidence only to negate Buddhism’s eco- credentials, thereby overlooking the human:non-human entanglement theme within modern environmental discourse, while the predominant focus on non-human suffering overlooks convergences between modern and ancient ecological ethics and environmental health. Case studies include examples of Buddhist land and water management in central India, set within discussions of human v. non-human-centric frameworks of well-being and suffering, purity and pollution, and broader Indic medico-ecological epistemologies, as possible models for collective responses to environmental stress.

Author: Sam Arts
Publisher: CBE International

When we say, “We are persuaded from Scripture that masculinity and femininity are rooted in who we are by nature,”1 what do we mean by “nature”? How do we relate our view of nature to our understanding of the role of women? In this article, I will examine how John Calvin, to whom contemporary Reformed churches owe so much for their confessions and practices, used the argument from nature to understand the role of women as different from that of men.

Infernal rivers, like the Styx, flow in the world of the living. This paper examines this apparent inconsistency by investigating what could have prompted close contacts between the realm of the dead where infernal rivers were supposed to flow and the world of the living where they were reported flowing. It argues that the picture of the realm of the dead as a wet place crossed by streams of water, consistent from Hesiod to Diodorus and afterwards, is related to the observation of a geological phenomenon very common in Greece (and in the Mediterranean): karst landscapes, which makes many Greek rivers have sections of their course underground. Thus, this paper will discuss to what extent the practical observation of subterranean rivers by ancient Greeks contributed to the elaboration of a picture of the unseen world, and in particular inspired the conception of the world of the dead as a region ringed and circumscribed by waters.