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In social scientific examinations of religious pluralism, the typical scale of analysis is the nation state, though considerations at the community or neighbourhood level are also common (e.g., Mislin in Saving Faith: Making Religious Pluralism an American Value at the Dawn of the Secular Age. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2015; Phan in The Joy…
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Literature on the U.S. Pacific Northwest generally paints the region in exceptionalist stripes, certainly in the deep connection its people maintain with an abundant natural landscape. Is Ecotopia exceptional? We interrogate the empirical basis for this claim, applying results from a mixed-method study of intentional and other communities in Oregon, and a comparative survey situating…
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We dedicate this series of articles to Jim Kopp, gentle bear of a man and utopian scholar, who patiently introduced us to the immense related literature and keygures in Oregon’s history. Though Jim did not live to see the fruits of our collective labors, his inuence shines throughout these writings. We also acknowledgenancial support via…
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This essay aims to offer a rudimentary map of the subfield of religion and ecology by describing three distinct scholarly responses to the challenge leveled by Lynn White’s influential 1967 article. It articulates an organizational view of the field by accounting for the three most prevalent perspectives on the antagonism between religion and environmentalism. The…
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This paper presents basic empirical research about the role of religion and religious actors in the global politics of sustainability. Drawing on insights from three overlapping fields of study—environmental politics, religious transnationalism, and religion and ecology—this study analyzes data gathered through ethnographic interviews with representatives of religious non-governmental organizations at the 2012 United Nations Conference…
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The intensifying processes of globalization have forced scholars and policy-makers to recognize the limited capacities of nation states and have reanimated interest in cosmopolitanism and in global ethics, that is, the idea that people are directly responsible to each other rather than indirectly through collective agencies such as states. This article describes problems that attend…
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During the past decade, many scholars including both natural and social scientists have begun to think and talk about climate change with a new kind of urgency. Where they once focused exclusively on the prevention of serious harms in the future, scholarly discussions have begun to grapple with the immediacy of climate harms, describing how…
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Understanding the cultural dimensions of climate change requires understanding its religious aspects. Insofar as climate change is entangled with humans, it is also entangled with all the ways in which religion attends human ways of being. Scholarship on the connections between religion and climate change includes social science research into how religious identity figures in…
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Devoted to Nature explores the religious underpinnings of American environmentalism, tracing the theological character of American environmental thought from its Romantic foundations to contemporary nature spirituality. During the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, religious sources were central to the formation of the American environmental imagination, shaping ideas about the natural world, establishing practices of…
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Highlighting the interplay of religion, ecology, and sustainability Building on the success of Everyday Religion and Sustainable Environments in the Himalaya (ERSEH), the Sacred Himalaya Initiative: Sacred Landscapes and Sustainable Futures explored links between religious beliefs and environmental sustainability. The India China Institute (ICI) at the New School in New York worked with a team of…
