Religion and Ecology

Catalog description

Course explores Western religious and philosophical roots of human separation from, and assumed superiority to, nature and non-human beings that underlie contemporary extractivism (drilling, mining, deforestation, industrial fisheries, etc.). Via selected texts from the ancient world through the “Scientific Revolution” we locate patterns of belief that, for many, persist into the present. We then explore the time of the “Great Dying” in the Americas following European conquest, turning to alternate religious orientations to the natural world. Our particular focus will be on Indigenous worldviews and practices that enmesh human beings within a “covenant of reciprocity” with ancestors, with other living beings, and with the land.