Before examining obstacles that will hinder dark green religion from becoming a powerful social force, as well as some trends and factors likely to spur it on, it is worth noting several things:
First, evolutionary theory has precipitated profound changes. Most forms of what I am calling dark green religion will have been unfolding for only 150 years by the time this book is published, the years since the publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859. There were individuals and groups with dark green perceptions, and important antecedents and tributaries to dark green religion before that momentous publishing event, but nearly everything in the world of religion began to change afterward, at least where awareness of evolutionary theory spread.
Second, the diversity and creativity in dark green religious production during this century and a half has been stunning. Moreover, the spread of such nature spirituality has been breathtakingly rapid. Advances in travel and communication technologies have dramatically accelerated the pace of change.
This is not to say that dark green religion is on its way to prevalence. Prediction about its prospects would be foolish. Hostility in Western cultures to forms of spirituality that venerate the earth is unlikely to disappear. There is, moreover, widespread resistance to the profound worldview alteration the Darwinian revolution involves; this also means resistance to dark green religion, because it generally and strongly embraces evolutionary understandings. There are even plausible theories, based in evolutionary biology and cognitive science, that traditional religious perception and beliefs regarding nonmaterial spirits or divine beings are an evolutionary outcome. Some of these theories suggest that religion evolved because it promotes human survival (fostering ecologically adaptive behaviors by individuals or groups). Other such theories contend that religion is a by-product of behaviors that promote survival (usually because when humans are hyperalert to danger they are more likely to survive, which makes them more likely to perceive beings that are not present, because negative results from such misperception are less than the positive/adaptive function of hyperalertness). These sorts of theories suggest that religion, as conventionally defined, is unlikely to wither away.1
Even where it seems there has been little change, as is the case with much conservative religion, however, important changes are unfolding. Intensified fundamentalist rebellion against the modern world and its secularizing power, for example, reflects in part the threat posed by evolutionary understandings. This competing scientific view must be ignored or explained away. Yet this is difficult because so much of the world’s globalizing infrastructure depends on science, and therefore on universities, where it is difficult to isolate and ignore the biological sciences.
Third, social change does not usually come rapidly—but it can. Dark green religion has, in terms of human cultural evolution, exploded on the scene and has rapidly gone global. As already shown, a significant amount of this influence has occurred within the world’s educated intelligentsia. Yet dark green religion has a long way to go to affect the world’s teeming billions. This majority, however, does not set international and national environmental policies. So when it comes to the possible influence of dark green religion, its impact on the global intelligentsia may be decidedly more important. It is also true, as adaptive-management theorists have noted, that “good ideas acquired in one generation can spread rapidly and be passed to the next generation directly”—a process “that cannot occur in organic evolution.”2 Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions provided a famous analysis of how the Copernican Revolution and other worldview-altering changes have occurred—sometimes rapidly—when the time was ripe.3 So, rapid social change might occur and do so across diverse societal sectors.
Fourth, when rapid social change occurs it is often precipitated by a perceived grave threat or emergency.4 This is another point emphasized by adaptive-management theorists and one to keep in mind when considering the future of dark green religion and how it might influence cultural and ecological systems. Indeed, and for example, to underscore the urgency of the situation, people increasingly speak of climate “crisis” rather than “change,” or of the “sustainability emergency” rather than of “sustainable development.”
To summarize this background: There are times when a decisive change in ideas and practices occurs. This can develop over many generations or rapidly, pressed forward by some perceived crisis or by fantastic new information, emerging from the ground up or the top down or from synergies between popular and elite sectors. So when considering influences, impacts, and trends, it is good to have in mind both near-, medium-, and long-term possibilities. It is especially critical to recognize that social and ecological systems are made up of so many variables that confident prediction would be hubristic. But looking for clues about the trends and possibilities is not a futile exercise. As much or more than prediction, this has to do with envisioning possibilities, an act that itself may contribute to positive outcomes.
With this backdrop in place and the previous case studies in mind, we are ready to consider whether dark green religion will play an important role in the future of religion and the biosphere.
Does the Earth Charter initiative reveal anything about the prospects for a dark green, terrapolitan earth religion? Here is some of what one would expect as positive evidence: First, there would be generic statements of the sacredness of the earth with which most people would feel comfortable, whether they are self-consciously secular, nominally religious or parareligious, or religious in a more conventional sense. Second, there would be clearly stated ethical principles that convey a sense of moral responsibility toward nonhuman organisms and a conviction that they deserve respect and reverent care. Third, there would be a steady increase in behaviors that reflected such dark green perceptions and values.
With the Earth Charter, all three of these elements are present. As shown previously, the charter has significant support, including from world leaders, while conversely some believe it is spiritually and politically dangerous. By digging more deeply into the drafting process that led to the document presented in Johannesburg, however, it is possible to gain a clearer sense of this manifestation of civic earth religion as well as about the obstacles it faces.5 Indeed, I believe the initial “Benchmark Draft” of the charter, which was offered for further discussion and refinement in 1997, provides the clearest collective statement of dark green religion yet produced; it could even be considered an attempted draft of a new sacred text for a proffered terrapolitan earth religion.
It began thus: “Earth is our home and home to all living beings. Earth itself is alive. We are a part of an evolving universe. Human beings are members of an interdependent community of life with a magnificent diversity of life forms and cultures. We are humbled before the beauty of Earth and share a reverence for life and the sources of our being.” It continued: to avoid “the destruction of ourselves and the diversity of life” a “fundamental change of course is needed,” including to “industrial-technological civilization.” A long list of ethical principles and commitments followed, for example, (1) “Respect Earth and all life. Earth, each life form, and all living beings possess intrinsic value and warrant respect independently of their utilitarian value to humanity”; (2) “Care for Earth, protecting and restoring the diversity, integrity, and beauty of the planet’s ecosystems.” The draft also pledged that its signatories would “reaffirm that Indigenous and Tribal Peoples have a vital role in the care and protection of Mother Earth” and declared that “they have the right to retain their spirituality, knowledge, lands, territories and resources.” Its coda added, “We must preserve a . . . deep sense of belonging to the universe.”6
This Earth Charter draft included most of the themes prevalent in dark green religion. It was informed by environmental apocalypticism; it viewed industrial societies as inherently destructive and indigenous ones as superior; and it expressed understandings of ecological interdependence, biocentric values, and an organicist Gaian Spirituality. This Gaian Spirituality was indebted in part to James Lovelock and in part to beliefs about the spiritual perceptions of indigenous peoples. There were also echoes of Aldo Leopold’s land ethic (in the draft’s words about ecosystem diversity, integrity, and beauty) as well as of Thomas Berry’s universe story (in the concluding language about belonging to the universe).7
But this was only the initial public draft. The charter soon underwent significant changes leading to the release of “Benchmark Draft II” in April 1999.8 Thomas Derr, an astute Christian critic of the initiative, noted that this version muted the biocentrism and “quasi-religious” nature mysticism present in the first draft. Writing for a group that focuses on questions of religious liberty and that is suspicious of international institutions, especially the United Nations, Derr pointed out that the reference to “Mother Earth” had been deleted in the second draft and the statement about the earth being alive was replaced with “Earth, our home, is alive with a unique community of life” (a phrase retained in the final version).9 This revision was, Derr did not need to explain, less offensive to monotheists and others wary of Paganism. Derr also accurately noted that the overall tone had become more anthropocentric, in keeping with the United Nations priorities regarding sustainable development and human rights.10 He concluded, accurately, that despite these changes the second as well as the final draft—the one that was eventually pitched to the United Nations at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development—was still clearly biocentric and subtly pantheistic, citing the charter’s kinship ethics and its expressed intent to awaken a “new reverence for life.”11
Derr’s careful analysis shows that those critical of dark green themes are very good at spotting them. He also demonstrated that most such themes in the original draft remained in the final version. He did not, however, spotlight all of them, including the charter’s evolutionary cosmogony, expressed as, “Humanity is part of a vast evolving universe”; and the overtly religious assertion that “the protection of Earth’s vitality, diversity, and beauty is a sacred trust.” He did notice the concessions made by those he called “the Charter’s originators.” Perceptively, he asserted that the leaders of the initiative had retained some things in the charter they regarded as “indispensable”—I think these were all dark green themes. Derr’s critique provides an example of those who think that the Earth Charter is inconsistent with their own religious beliefs and ethical values. This is most obvious in one of Derr’s final comments, which drew more on what he knew or supposed about the charter’s proponents than it did on the document itself:
There is also, undoubtedly, a kind of neo-paganism among many Charter supporters, whose antipathy to modern society in all its aspects, from industrial to religious, has led them back to a radical pre-modernism, a pan-religiousness that appears to be some (partly imagined) basic form of religious life before the destructive divisiveness of the historic religions appeared. Many supporters ascribe sentience, psychic and spiritual reality, to all things, not only to living creatures but also to natural entities like rivers, forests, ecosystems, even stars—a kind of mystic ecocentrism, one might say. All supporters, apparently without exception, attribute intrinsic value, even rights, to non-human entities.12
Clearly, even though Derr noticed what he considered to be improvements through the various drafts, the Earth Charter was not something he could support. He also concluded that its language about the intrinsic value of nature would prevent adoption by the United Nations.
I draw the following conclusions from the Earth Charter initiative, the revisions it has gone through, and the reception it has received: The Earth Charter is one of many manifestations of dark green religion, and the positive reception it has received is a sign of the growing importance of such religion. Despite refinement of the document in ways designed to make it acceptable to a wider range of the human community, the charter is viewed as spiritually dangerous to many, and some fear that such religion could be repressively imposed on them. Given such views and fears, the Earth Charter is an unlikely “sacred text” for the kind of terrapolitan earth religion envisioned by Daniel Deudney.
A comparative reference point that buttresses this conclusion: Conservative Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, have been some of the most ardent supporters of religious nationalism. This is because such civic religion generally assumes that it is their God (the God of Abraham) who established the nation and its earthly mission. It would be difficult for proponents of Gaian earth religion to draw such people into viewing the protection of the earth as a sacred trust if these religious people think that by doing do they might countenance an idolatrous worship of nature. Such concern explains much of the uneasiness among conservative monotheists toward environmentalists. Ever on the alert for Paganism, they certainly can see such spirituality in environmentalists. As the present study has amply demonstrated and as Jonathan Benthall put it, “Almost all strands of the environmentalist movement affirm a sense of the sacred, the spiritual or the aesthetic—however it is defined—in the cosmos.” Benthall concluded that “from a global scale, such as Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth, down to regional, national and local organizations, these have a parareligious aspect.”13 This conclusion and my own fieldwork support James Proctor’s finding that large numbers of people in Europe and the United States express “deep trust in nature as inherently spiritual or sacred.”14 For many with religious understandings grounded in the Abrahamic traditions, these are disturbing developments.15
In an autobiographical epilogue to his most famous book, published in 1995, James Lovelock made a similar observation. He began by describing his father’s “kinship with all living things” and distress even “to see a tree cut down,” then subtly implied that his father shared the kind of natural Paganism that he thinks is common among country people. “I owe much of my own feeling for natural things to walks with him down country lanes and along ancient drives which had . . . a sweet seemliness and tranquility,” he continued. Then, he conjectured that our sense of beauty, wonder, and excitement in perceiving “the true nature of things” is consistent with a Darwinian view that such pleasures reward us for pursuing “a balanced relationship between ourselves and other forms of life.”16 This prologue led to an especially revealing paragraph:
My father never told me why he believed that everything in this world was there for a purpose, but his thoughts and feelings about the countryside must have been based on a mixture of instinct, observation, and tribal wisdom. These persist in diluted form in many of us today and are still strong enough to power environmental movements which have come to be accepted as forces to be reckoned with by other powerful pressure groups in our society. As a result, the churches of the monotheistic religions, and the recent heresies of humanism and Marxism, are faced with the unwelcome truth that some part of their old enemy, Wordsworth’s Pagan, “suckled in a creed outworn”, is still alive within us.17
This statement revealed Lovelock’s affinity with a kind of naturalistic Paganism—a feeling Joseph Wood Krutch spoke of similarly when describing the “kind of pantheism” commonly expressed by American nature writers. Lovelock’s statement was also noteworthy for its recognition of the enduring conflict between such religion and monotheistic religions, as well as of what Lovelock and others engaged with dark green religion consider to be the hubristic, anthropocentric ideologies of humanism and Marxism.
In short, both sides of the divide—those who see the sacred above and beyond the world and those who view the world as sacred—understand that these worldviews are incompatible. This accounts for the ambivalence and sometimes hostility toward environmentalism that is often found among those involved in Abrahamic religions as well as similar feelings toward them by those engaged in dark green religion. Yet as Lovelock also suggested, “The idea of Mother Earth or, as the Greeks called her, Gaia, has been widely held throughout history and has been the basis of a belief that coexists with the great religions.”18
It might just be that the mutual dependence of all people on the earth’s ecosystems will yet unite them in common cause to reverse the headlong rush toward biocultural simplification. There is, after all, only one thing that all humans share, namely, dependence on the earth. Presumably, nothing is more likely to unite people than ensuring the health of these ecosystems upon which they all depend. There are, indeed, important efforts underway to encourage environmental stewardship within the world’s major religions, and these include ways to speak about the value and even sacredness of the earth without contradicting traditional religious doctrines.19 On the other hand, for dark green religion in general, or terrapolitan earth religion in particular, to gain the critical mass necessary to decisively influence national and international environmental politics, it may be that the religious forms that fear and resist them must lose adherents and social power. This is a process that is well underway in many advanced industrial countries, but it appears that in many countries such a development will take a long time, if it happens at all.
If earth-revering dark green religion were to become a social epidemic, on the other hand, it could precipitate wide-scale political, economic, and ecological changes, even in the face of ambivalence and hostility. I borrow the idea from Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point, which argued that ideas, tastes, or practices can and do spread rapidly like viruses, coming as if from nowhere and with unstoppable momentum. Social epidemics can be both positive and negative, he explained, as he provided examples from criminology, social psychology, fashion, and social mores. Gladwell’s choice of the word epidemic is pertinent to this study because some fear the spread of dark green religion. If understood as a social possibility, however, those engaged in dark green religion would find hopeful the possibility that their spiritual and moral sentiments, and earth-revering practices, might spread like a virus.
Gladwell argued that there are three keys to understanding social epidemics. The first is “the law of the few,” by which he meant that individuals make a huge difference to whether things “tip” (positively or negatively). Three types of individuals are essential: “connectors” are those who build networks among people, “mavens” are teachers who share the essential knowledge within these emerging networks, and “salespeople/persuaders” are those who convince others to think and behave in new ways. Critical virtues found variously among these types are positive energy, charm, and optimism, all of which help to overcome resistance to innovation.20
The second key to social epidemics Gladwell labeled “the lesson of stickiness.” By this he meant ways of communicating ideas that people easily remember and even have difficulty forgetting. To risk a painful pun, a social epidemic of nature religion could be called a pandemic. If the pun is bad enough, the idea may be memorable.21
The third key, according to Gladwell, is “the critical importance and power of Context/Environment.” Gladwell believes that when it comes to promoting positive epidemics or stopping bad ones, establishing an optimistic and positive atmosphere, often through small changes that may initially seem unimportant, is critical. Gladwell concluded his book by suggesting that knowing these principles can make it easier for individuals to facilitate positive social change: “Tipping Points are a reaffirmation of the potential for change and the power of intelligent action. Look at the world around you. It may seem an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push—in just the right place—it can be tipped.”22
The idea of a tipping point is not new; it has long been an important notion in the American counterculture.23 An explicitly spiritual version common in New Age and environmentalist subcultures is the fable “The Hundredth Monkey.” In this story, when enough monkeys on one island learned a new behavior, potato washing, as if by magic the practice began on nearby islands. The implication was that this occurred by a telepathic transmission of consciousness from one group of monkeys to the other. This transmission could not occur until enough monkeys on the first island joined in thinking “potato washing.” The lesson was that everyone must optimistically and continually do their part to promote the needed spiritual, ecological, and political changes, because one never knows who the decisive monkey will be.24
Many would view Gladwell’s clever book as an oversimplification of how social change happens. Yet it provides useful lenses for an observer looking for signs that dark green religion (or environmentalism in general) might be on the cusp of becoming a decisive social force.
Dark Green Religion has drawn attention to the diversity and regional breadth of those who have been promoting such perception. There are many interlocking networks of activists, intellectuals, scientists, politicians, and cultural creatives (in the terminology of Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson) who are engaged in and promoting dark green spirituality and ethics.25 As I near the end of this book, however, I am aware that I have left unexplored many important examples.
Teachers are “mavens,” a group that Gladwell spotlights and that merits greater attention. I have already discussed teacher-scholars who have promoted dark green religion, including natural scientists, ecological anthropologists, and ethnobiologists. While reviewing historical watersheds in the development of such religiosity, I have also pointed out how some environmental philosophers, historians, literary critics, and religion scholars are both observers of these trends and sometimes also enthusiasts for them. Here I wish to underscore the critical role that environmental studies scholars (broadly understood as an interdisciplinary field that explores all aspects of nature-human relationships) play in dark green spirituality by providing three especially interesting examples.26
The first spotlighted scholar is the environmental historian Donald Worster, who excavated from Darwin’s notebooks the remarkable statement of felt kinship with nonhuman organisms cited earlier. Many points in Worster’s writings demonstrate his affinity with such sentiments and with other dark green themes. In one revealing passage in the concluding pages of the first edition of Nature’s Economy (1977), Worster discussed the conversion of Joseph Wood Krutch from “melancholic humanist” to “a kind of pantheist or ethical mystic, caught up in the joy of belonging to ‘something greater than one’s self.’ ” Worster attributed this change to a repeated reading of Thoreau and to “an education in ecological principles [that] . . . confirmed him in an organismic sensibility” and that led “directly to a moral awakening: a new sense of biological relatedness and communalism.” Signaling his affinity with Krutch, Worster continued:
Krutch was clear-eyed enough to perceive that ecology, “without reverence or love,” could become naught but “a shrewder exploitation of what it would be better to admire, to enjoy, and to share in,” but his own approach to the science helped turn him from the pursuit of self toward a “sense of the community of living things.”
From its impact on Krutch and others, it is clear that ecological biology could still lead to natural piety, no matter how many of its leading scientists had purged themselves of such tendencies.27
In Dark Green Religion I have suggested the possibility that most scientists have natural piety and that those who do are increasingly willing to express it. For his part, after making the above point, Worster subtly applauded how Aldo Leopold and many others drew on understandings of ecological interdependence as a basis for values. Worster then suggested that scientists and moralists should work together to break down the barrier between “Is” and “Ought” in the quest for ethical truth, which he suggested might well be found in just such an “ecological ethic of interdependence.” He contended, moreover, that when it comes to ethics, “there is really no place to go but nature.” He concluded this seminal book with these words:
Perhaps, too, a quasi-religious conversion, similar to Krutch’s, will be needed to open men’s eyes to the “oneness” in or beyond nature. Whether this development is likely to come out in our culture the historian is not ready to predict. More to the point here is whether the experience of the past indicates that such an amalgamation of science and moral values is at all feasible. The answer to that question is a cautious yes. Ecological biology, while in general reinforcing certain values more than others, has been and remains intertwined with many of man’s ethical principles, social aims, and transcendental ambitions. There is no reason for believing that this science cannot find an appropriate theoretical framework for the ethic of interdependence. If the bioeconomics of the New Ecologists cannot serve, then there are other, more useful, models of nature’s economy that await discovery.28
Thus, in one of the most widely read texts in environmental history and environmental studies, it is apparent that Worster was a keen observer of what I am calling dark green religion. He insightfully showed how, for many, ethics and religion have become intertwined with science—specifically, the science of ecological interdependence. The paragraph above and other passages not cited suggest that he also has sympathy for these trends and hopes they will be increasingly successful. As a cautious historian, however, he refrained from prediction.29
The second scholar I highlight is the philosopher J. Baird Callicott. In 1971, as a young professor at a University of Wisconsin campus, Callicott taught the first university course in environmental ethics. In the following years, Callicott became a leading interpreter and promoter of Leopold’s land ethic, arguing that Leopold saw earlier and clearer than anyone else how to ground environmental ethics in an evolutionary-ecological worldview. Callicott argued as well that religions originating in Asia, and those typical in indigenous traditions, were more compatible with Leopold’s land ethic than Abrahamic ones. Then in 1994, he published Earth’s Insights, which is arguably an exercise in constructive, terrapolitan earth religion. In it he considered both the resources and obstacles to a Leopold-compatible environmental ethics within a wide variety of the earth’s traditions and regions. While he found some of these religions more amenable to a land ethic than others, he concluded that they could all move in such a direction while retaining their core beliefs. But he also insisted that when religious beliefs do not cohere with what can be known scientifically, they should give way or be modified. In essence, he was arguing that people around the world, whatever their particular beliefs and in their own ways, could come to understand the ecological community as having intrinsic, even sacred value.30
A decade after Earth’s Insights, Callicott wrote an essay titled “Natural History as Natural Religion.” This autobiographical reflection included a humorous admission that there was some hubris in the endeavor he and other scholars had set out for themselves, trying to infuse philosophy and religion with an evolutionary-ecological worldview and a corresponding environmental ethic. He traced this mission to Lynn White, who had convinced them that better religious ideas were the key to arresting environmental decline. But Callicott also noted that there was evidence in the “greening of religion” phenomenon that their effort was having some modest success. After reiterating the main thesis in Earth’s Insights—that most traditional religions could become green—Callicott candidly concluded his essay promoting (what I would call) naturalistic dark green religion:
If it weren’t for ecology we would not be aware that we have an “ecologic crisis.” If it weren’t for the theory of evolution we would be both blind and indifferent to the reduction in global biodiversity. The world’s newly green religions thus tacitly orbit around the evolutionary-ecological worldview. I myself consider most religions . . . to be grounded in primitive superstition and ignorance. . . . I am, however, immensely grateful for the greening-of-religions . . . The religious potential of natural history that Leopold so beautifully tapped but only scarcely explored is perhaps centuries away from its full actualization. But while a true—that is, an epistemically sound and scientifically compatible—religion gestates, people now have to be reached where they are with some kind of environmental ethic. . . . If the popular traditional religions can be marshaled to achieve a better fit between global human civilization and the natural environment in which it is embedded, I shall not worry their green apologists . . . with logical and philosophical quibbles.31
Callicott was no doubt sincere in his appreciation of the greening of mainstream religions. Yet he does seem to envision the eventual emergence of a religion of natural history that would supplant the forms he considers out of synch with a scientific worldview. In the meantime, he implies, this religion of natural history gestates. That religion could be called dark green religion.
The final point to note about Callicott is that he saw the role of philosopher-teachers in a way similar to Gladwell—as contributing significantly to radical change. He cited an article by Earth First! cofounder Dave Foreman to buttress his belief that “academic philosophy” had been a critical spur to radical environmental activism. Foreman had said such philosophy had a tremendous positive impact because it was now widely taught and urged conservationists, with dramatic results, to consider the ethical challenge represented by the idea that nature has intrinsic value.32 My own experience teaching environmental ethics and environmental studies courses within academic settings affirms these observations—there are always students who are moved by and drawn to Leopold and others who articulate ecocentric values and spiritualities. Moreover, notions like “deep ecology” and “intrinsic value” are “sticky” in Gladwell’s sense. They are easy to remember and difficult to forget. Like a virus, they are hard to kill.
The third scholar I wish to discuss is William Cronon, perhaps the most prominent environmental historian in the generation after Donald Worster and Roderick Nash. I bring him into focus not so much to analyze his writings for evidence of their sympathy for dark green religion but because of Cronon’s reaction to a manifestation of such religion. First, I must provide background.
In 1992, Neil Evernden published The Social Creation of Nature.33 Soon afterward, debates spread as to whether, given the widespread impact of human activities, any “nature” remains available to function as a basis for environmental conservation or restoration. The controversy intensified when Cronon published the essay “The Trouble with Wilderness.”34 Cronon argued that the idea of a wilderness, defined as a place “untrammeled” by humans in America’s 1964 Wilderness Act, is untenable and ethically problematic—untenable because there is no such place and ethically problematic because it distracts people from caring for the environment nearly every place else. Cronon was harshly criticized. Many felt he was attacking something sacred: biologically diverse wilderness reserves.35
Assailed by some in the environmental community who he considered compatriots and allies, Cronon offered an apology that was as much religious recantation as an explanation of his argument:
One problem with “The Trouble with Wilderness,” then, is that in reminding those who worship at the altar of wilderness that their God (like all deities) has a complicated and problematic past, I have perhaps not been as respectful of this religious tradition as I ought to have been. I mean this quite genuinely: to the extent that I have given offense by treading too carelessly on hallowed ground, I sincerely apologize. Had I been writing about Judaism or Christianity or Islam or Buddhism, or about the spiritual universes of native peoples in North America and elsewhere, I certainly would have been more careful to show my respect before entering the temple to investigate and comment on its architecture and origins. The reason I did not do so in this case is that the religion I was critiquing is my own, and I presumed a familiarity which readers who do not know me can be forgiven for doubting.
. . . I criticize wilderness because I recognize in this, my own religion, contradictions that threaten to undermine and defeat some of its own most cherished truths and moral imperatives. I have not argued that we should abandon the wild as a way of naming the sacred in nature; I have merely argued that we should not celebrate wilderness in such a way that we prevent ourselves from recognizing and taking responsibility for the sacred in our everyday lives and landscapes.36
One mark of the power of a religion is its sanctioning power. Cronon’s pledge of allegiance to the wilderness church was, in my estimation, a sign of the social force of dark green religion, its ability to enforce conformity within the community of believers. But the other side of that coin is that participants in religion in general find meaning and a sense of belonging through their common participation in their tradition. This kind of belonging is also a part of dark green religion, part of why it is a social force to be reckoned with, as well as evidence of it. As with most religions, the deeper the participant enters the dark green religious milieu, the easier it is to recognize one’s brethren and to notice when they stray from the path. For his part, Cronon’s reply shows that he knows the elders of the tradition he shares with his critics. He implicitly expressed his fidelity to Thoreau by insisting that he had no intention of abandoning an understanding of the wild as sacred. In this, he showed that he belonged by affirming his own faith that “in wildness is the preservation of the world.”
In their own ways and with their own words, Worster, Callicott, and Cronon noticed, described, and expressed what I am calling dark green religion. Like them, I will not predict how this phenomenon will spread. I would be surprised to see it break out like some new ecotopian contagion, however, in part because I think there are countertrends that may well prevent such a development.
There are nevertheless signs that dark green religion is gathering strength and breaking out in new places and ways. It is arguably at the heart of what can be called the sustainability revolution, and corporations are increasingly the persuaders/salespeople. This may seem surprising, but there is greater receptivity among business people to the global sustainability movement than ever before. There is growing cross-fertilization between environmentalists and business people, and green themes are increasingly expressed in corporate mission statements and advertising. That corporations feel a need to articulate environmental commitments is evidence that a green cultural transformation is well underway. When corporations do express green commitments, they set the bar higher for their own environmental performance, influence corporate culture itself, and also provide leverage to environmentalists who can then urge a company to live up to its creed.
Two Japanese examples illustrate this phenomenon. The first takes us back to Johannesburg during the WSSD, when a consortium of Japanese power companies inserted a four-page advertisement into the International Herald Tribune declaring their commitment to both nuclear power and renewable energy. On the front page was a photograph of an origami crane, symbolizing gratitude, with the words, “Let’s be Grateful to Mother Earth.” Of course, most environmentalists do not support nuclear power and viewed this advertisement cynically. That these companies chose to promote their business by appealing to tropes usually associated with Native Americans, is nevertheless noteworthy. It is worth pondering what role such images, increasingly used in corporate advertising, have and will play in promoting dark green religion. Is it possible that corporate advertising will provide the tipping point toward terrapolitan earth religion?
Some readers may think I have taken leave of my senses at this point. But as remote as such a corporate contribution to dark green religion may seem, I keep running into tantalizing possibilities. Some seem of little import, like Gaia Traffic, a regional bus system in Bergen, Norway, that when I was last there touted its fleet of low-emission buses. Or the biocentric essays and activist exhortations that regularly appear in the catalogs of the outdoor apparel and equipment company Patagonia. These would seem unlikely to influence large numbers of people. But on an April 2008 visit to Freiburg, Germany, which is known as a leading green city, I encountered an advertisement that surprised me perhaps more than any other experience reported in this book. I picked up an issue of Time titled “How to Win the War on Global Warming.” In the middle of it was an advertisement by a Japanese electronics company for rechargeable batteries.
The advertisement began with large words proclaiming that “Sanyo is at the forefront of making clean energy an everyday reality.” It then declared, “Rare is the corporation that devotes its resources to making the world—and the future—a better place. But, with its Think Gaia corporate philosophy, Sanyo leads the way, delivering on its unique vision of dealing with energy and environmental issues.” This Gaia philosophy appeared in a banner across the bottom of the ad, and it drew its central proposition directly from Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis: “Sanyo sees the earth as a single living organism and, for the state of future generations, is striving to create the products needed to help us live in harmony with the planet.”
On the corporate website (with text in fifteen languages), the company went into more depth, even expressing an animistic sensibility:
“GAIA” is a term that encompasses the Blue Planet, “Earth,” and the infinite varieties of “life” that live and breathe on it. It describes the world as a single living organism, where all life and nature co-exist interdependently. SANYO is committed to listening to GAIA’s voice and engaging in activities that are beneficial to life and the Earth.
As a testament to this, SANYO pledges to respond by developing only products that are absolutely essential to life and the Earth. We aim to bequeath a beautiful Earth to future generations. This is SANYO’s Brand Vision—Think GAIA . . . All for the Earth. All for life. All for GAIA.”37
In a further description, the site sounded as though it were making the argument in this book, that dark green religion is a globalizing social force: “ ‘Gaia’ is a word rapidly taking hold in the 21st century, which describes the world as a single living organism, where all life and nature co-exist interdependently. The Earth has traditionally been viewed as ‘the Earth’ or ‘Globe.’ However, from now on, SANYO will view the Earth as an independent organic body and refer to it as Gaia.” I have never seen a clearer confession of Gaian Earth Religion. A note hyperlinked to the word Gaia traced the idea directly to Lovelock, explaining that he “proposed the idea of earth as a living, green organism where mankind and all living things live in harmony. He used ‘Gaia,’ the name of the goddess Earth Mother in Greek mythology, to describe this living organism (Earth).” The final section of the website’s text decried materialism and advanced the idea that people must symbiotically coevolve with all life, pursing sustainable solutions to ensure “positive co-existence with Gaia.”
This remarkable promotional campaign raises many questions. Is Sanyo the first corporation to officially sign on to Gaian Spirituality? Is this a reflection of Japanese religious heritage, especially Shinto, which involves animistic perceptions and a reverence for nature? What influence, if any, will this campaign have on Sanyo’s own business practices, their competitors, or consumers? Is this a sign that dark green religion is poised to go mainstream, that the movement toward earth-revering nature religion is becoming a green pandemic?
That a green pandemic is unfolding is essentially the argument of sustainability pioneer Paul Hawken. Hawken may be prone to ecotopian visions; his first book lauded the intentional community in Scotland known as Findhorn, which was founded upon animistic perception.38 But in the 1990s he focused on promoting environmentally friendly capitalism.39 A decade later, after a study of diverse social movements, he concluded that “environmental activism, social justice initiatives, and indigenous culture’s resistance to globalization, all have become intertwined” and are precipitating “the largest social movement in all of human history.”40 He found that undergirding these trends were many of the elders of dark green religion, including Darwin, Emerson, Thoreau, Muir, Leopold, Gandhi, Carson, and Brower—and he expressed affinity with them. These individuals and the movements they inspired were united in their perception of “the sacredness of all life.” Hawken concluded passionately: “It has been said that we cannot save our planet unless humankind undergoes a widespread spiritual and religious awakening. . . . Would we recognize a worldwide spiritual awakening if we saw one? . . . What if there is already in place a large-scale spiritual awakening and we are simply not recognizing it?”41
Here Hawken sounded like Jane Goodall, who has repeatedly stressed that she is hopeful because humans are ingenious, resilient, and capable of compassion. To paraphrase Hawken’s conclusion: it is not too late to save both human and natural communities; but to do so, both social-justice and environmental advocates must unite and recognize that their causes are mutually dependent.
By spotlighting individuals, movements, and trends that share his values, Hawken was hoping to encourage and strengthen them. Perhaps he even thinks that his writings might provide the tipping point to a green future. At the very least, he represents another example of, and passageway into, the global bricolage of dark green religion.
Dark green religion is no phantom. Although unrecognized by the Parliament of World Religions, it is as widespread as most religions, more significant than some, and growing more rapidly than many others.42 It has neither a priesthood nor institutions officially devoted to its promotion. Nor does it have an officially adopted sacred text. It does have, however, revered elders, creative leadership, and texts its adherents consider sacred. It does generate significant resources and it has institutional manifestations. Most critically, it has a coherent set of beliefs that its adherents find compelling. Rather than rescue from this world, it offers an enveloping sense of belonging to the biosphere, which is considered sacred.
Dark green religion is not easily fused with the world’s long-standing religious traditions. Yet dark green religiosity is influencing the world’s religions and producing novel hybrids. The influence of dark green religion thus extends beyond the environmentalist milieu and secular cultures in advanced industrial societies. It can be widely seen, including in the Earth Charter movement, and is influencing theological reflection in a variety of traditions.43 It is also increasingly influential within the Parliament of World Religions itself, which has increasingly taken “Healing the Earth” as a central religious mission.44 Such greening of religion would not have occurred to the extent it has in the absence of dark green forms. The increasing environmental concern of the world’s predominant religions is further evidence of the possibility, however remote, of terrapolitan earth religion.
There is little doubt that dark green religion is perilous, including a terrapolitan form of it. So, for that matter, is every religious worldview in which the pure, pristine, and sublime are contrasted with that which is impure, polluted, or desecrating. The dark in dark green religion is to remind those engaged in such spiritualities to be alert to their shadow side.45 Some engaged in dark green religion have been indifferent to the suffering of marginalized peoples, whether African slaves, indigenous people, or the urban poor, who have little chance to share the experience of wild nature. This shadow side can also include self-righteousness and a tendency to demonize adversaries. In general, however, the main themes of dark green religion—which include the idea that all living things have intrinsic value—do not easily lend themselves to indifference toward human suffering, let alone to virulent streams of religious, ethnic, or territory-based hatred.
Another way to address the danger of dark green religion is through risk analysis, so here is a brief argument based on one. When it comes to religion, reasonable people argue that negative consequences outweigh the positive.46 With regard to dark green religion, I would argue, the dangers are miniscule compared to the risks of an anemic response to what are potentially catastrophic environmental dangers. Dark green religion could help prevent an anemic response; it might already be doing so.
To elaborate, here are four propositions, each of which depends on verifiable claims:
1. Those involved in the extreme branches of dark green religion (radical environmentalism) are unlikely to precipitate significant social or environmental harms through the tactics they deploy; this is because, generally speaking, they recognize the mutual dependence of human beings, nonhuman organisms, and the entire environment.47
2. Future scenarios by natural and social scientists since the early 1990s have grown steadily more apocalyptic with regard to the health and resilience of environmental and social systems. Strategies involving modest risks that might contribute significantly to reducing possible or likely catastrophic outcomes should be aggressively pursued.
3. Dark green religion has been mobilizing a wide variety of individuals to engage in efforts to arrest environmental decline. This kind of religion is likely to spread because the social and environmental factors that gave rise to it are unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
4. Since dark green religion involves only modest risks, but could help human beings alter their potentially catastrophic course, it ought to be welcomed instead of feared. Dark green religion represents a potentially valuable contribution to the social mobilization necessary for the creation of environmentally sustainable and socially just lifeways.
It is always legitimate to fear and be on the alert for religions that might repress individual liberties or erode democratic institutions and hopes. Such concerns ought not to be minimized. When what is known about the history and forms of dark green religion is examined judiciously, however, such fears should ebb. Far more dangerous is the present course, with increasing numbers of human beings ingeniously managing to increase per capita consumption of the world’s ecosystems, directly causing a concomitant decline in available ecosystem services, which threatens widespread environmental and social collapse sometime in the twenty-first century.48 If these trends are not reversed, suffering will intensify. These are nature’s laws, from which human beings are not exempt.49
It might seem that dark green religion, with its stress on ecological interdependence and kinship, and its deep sense of the value of biological and cultural diversity, could provide a counterweight to the current ominous trends. It is difficult to be optimistic, however, even if one believes such religion is salutary and has the potential to foster positive trends toward sustainability. The weight of evidence seems to be that the decline of ecosystems and the global competition for resources is intensifying, precipitating new conflicts and exacerbating others. It seems clear that these destructive trends have much more momentum than the movements around the world that have arisen to resist them.
Yet, the resistance that is dark green religion is young and powerful in its own way. At its best it is attractive—even “sexy” to use contemporary parlance—mostly due to its love and reverence for life. It has compelling stories, expressed in writing, film, ritual, music, and spoken word. All of these are capable of moving and motivating. It offers an enriching and meaningful understanding of how the world came to be and of the human place in that world. Although dark green religion has no officially recognized institutional forms, those engaged in it learn to recognize each other and find community.
I sometimes muse over what I have found through my long immersion in the environmental milieu. I think that like an anthropologist from an entirely different planet I have somehow stumbled across a new global earth tribe, one largely unnoticed by other scholarly observers. The tribe is unnamed and little noticed because the scholarly fashion is to stress national, regional, ethnic, and gender differences rather than commonalities, connections, and bridges. But everywhere I find the same thing: people with wildly different backgrounds sharing “dark green” perceptions and values. They may be a minority. They sometimes feel isolated and alone. But as best they can, in their own ways, and against long odds, they stand up for life.
It does not matter what I think about dark green religion. Nor does it matter what it is called or whether one concludes that the term religion is aptly applied to the phenomena I have described. What matters is whether people are moved and inspired when they encounter such spirituality. What matters is whether they find meaning and value in its beliefs and practices, whether they identify with it and are drawn to others engaged in it, whether it will spread and influence the way people relate to, live from, and change the biosphere.
I will nevertheless offer a few personal reflections. I do so not to satisfy curiosities about what I believe or to impart spiritual wisdom. I have no spiritual wisdom, and I really do not think what I believe matters. Rather, it simply seems proper to join the conversation in a more personal way, as a form of reciprocity and to express respect to those whose views I have taken the liberty to analyze. Perhaps doing so will establish a better basis for future conversations about the value and consequences of dark green religion. I consider this part of a dialogue about what it might take to grapple toward environmentally sustainable modes of existence.
I begin with a profession. With Loren Eiseley, I am convinced that the theory of evolution is the best explanation for the beauty, diversity, and fecundity of the biosphere. I also agree with him that nothing in the world fully explains the world. As he put it, “I am an evolutionist . . . [but] in the world there is nothing to explain the world. Nothing to explain the necessity of life, nothing to explain the hunger of the elements to become life, nothing to explain why the stolid realm of rock and soil and mineral should diversify itself into beauty, terror, and uncertainty.”50 This humble admission captures, I think, the idea that the universe is a Great Mystery. Understanding it is, in the final analysis, beyond our meager if still considerable abilities. The Great Mystery is an apt expression for this kind of acknowledgment, which accurately or not Charles Eastman attributed to Native Americans cultures.51 Aldo Leopold liked and also used the expression. Rachael Carson expressed affinity with such sentiments, stating, “every mystery solved brings us closer to the threshold of a greater one.”52 She then noted that many questions will remain unanswered. For Carson and Leopold, such humility involves acknowledging that it is impossible to see behind those forces we can see, taste, hear, smell, and touch. I concur. The mystery is beyond our ken, at least from this vantage point in what we call time.53
This does not mean we should dispense with religion—at least if we start with a malleable definition. When I consider how much misery religion has brought, however, and how much human and natural capital is consumed in producing and maintaining it, I am not easily convinced that its positives outweigh its negatives. So, I often think we need an entirely new religion. At least, I think this until I remember that the kind of affective connections to the earth and its living systems, the feelings of wonder and awe at the beauty and bizarre surprises in our universe, the kinship some people feel toward their fellow living travelers in this earthly odyssey—all have long been part of the human experience.
It seems to me, however, that it would be much easier to develop sustainable societies if religions were firmly grounded in an evolutionary-ecological worldview. Religious thinkers since Darwin have gone through excruciating contortions in their efforts to graft such a worldview onto their faith traditions, which generally consider essential some sort of nonmaterial spiritual dimension and one or more divine beings inhabiting it. The result simply fails the laugh test for many if not most scientifically literate people.
How much better it would be if we would simply let go of ancient dreams (“whistling in the dark,” as Leopold once put it) for which there is no evidence and many reasons to doubt. Far better to ground our future philosophies, whether or not we call them religious, in what we can confidently say is the real world. This is the world we can understand through our senses (including when aided by our ingenious gadgets). The diverse examples in this book show that worldviews based on the senses can be just as evocative, inspiring, and meaningful as those purportedly based on divine (and nonreplicable) revelations.
Even though I am a naturalist, in the absence of any compelling explanation for the universe as a whole or the life that is in and around me on this little blue planet, I can think of no better term than “miracle” to describe all I perceive. Even the bizarre fact that I am here to perceive it, reflect on it, and share my musings strikes me as nothing less than miraculous. In this, I fully understand the impulse of scientists and others who fall back on religious terms to express their deepest feelings of delight and wonder at all they sense and know.54
What I have been long looking for is a sensible religion, one that is rationally defensible as well as socially powerful enough to save us from our least-sensible selves. If there is a sensible post-Darwinian religion, then, there must be a sensory post-Darwinian religion. For this, dark green religion is a reasonable candidate.