Concept

Spiritual Ecology

Also known as: religion and ecology, ecospirituality, religious ecology

An interdisciplinary field — academic, contemplative, and activist — that engages the relationship between spiritual/religious traditions and ecological understanding and practice. Emerged as a distinct field in the late 20th century from converging streams: the work of **Thomas Berry** and his student **Brian Swimme** on the *new cosmology*; the academic field of **religion and ecology** organized substantially through Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim's Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology and the ten-volume Harvard *Religions of the World and Ecology* series (1996–2003); the deep-ecology movement; the engaged-Buddhist work of Joanna Macy and Thich Nhat Hanh; the indigenous-led work of Robin Wall Kimmerer, Vine Deloria Jr., and others; the Catholic encyclical *Laudato Si'* (2015) and the broader Catholic ecological theology tradition; the Islamic ecological theology of Seyyed Hossein Nasr; the Jewish ecological theology of Arthur Waskow; and many other parallel streams. The field treats the ecological crisis as fundamentally a spiritual crisis — produced by orientations toward the more-than-human world that are themselves disordered — and looks to spiritual traditions for substantive resources for the necessary reorientation.

The phrase spiritual ecology names a field that has emerged across the late 20th and early 21st centuries through the convergence of several streams of thought and practice. The field is genuinely interdisciplinary; it spans religious studies, ecology, theology, philosophy, indigenous studies, contemplative practice, and activism. The general claim around which the field organizes: the ecological crisis is fundamentally a spiritual crisis — produced by disordered orientations toward the more-than-human world — and the necessary reorientation will require substantial resources from spiritual traditions, both received and renewed.

The principal streams

A non-exhaustive map of the field’s sources:

[[thomas-berry|Thomas Berry]] and the new cosmology. The American Catholic priest and scholar [[thomas-berry|Thomas Berry]] (1914–2009) and his student Brian Swimme (the mathematical cosmologist) developed across the 1980s and 1990s a substantial articulation of the universe’s evolutionary history as itself a sacred narrative — The Universe Story (1992) being the principal book. Berry’s earlier The Dream of the Earth (1988) was foundational for much subsequent work. Berry’s argument: every great religious tradition has rested on a cosmology, and the new scientific cosmology (the 13.8-billion-year story of the universe’s evolution) is the cosmology a renewed religious tradition will rest on. The Earth as a single sacred community is his recurring claim.
The Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale, founded in 1998 by [[mary-evelyn-tucker|Mary Evelyn Tucker]] and John Grim (Berry’s principal academic successors), built on the ten-volume Harvard Religions of the World and Ecology conference series (1996–98) and book series (1997–2003). The Forum has been the principal academic institutional anchor of the field, producing publications, conferences, course materials, and the influential film Journey of the Universe (2011) with [[brian-swimme|Brian Swimme]].
[[deep-ecology|Deep ecology]] ([[deep-ecology]] — already in the wiki). Arne Naess’s 1973 articulation of ecological commitment as deeper than environmental management; the recognition of intrinsic value in non-human life; the substantial subsequent literature.
[[engaged-buddhism|Engaged Buddhism]]. [[thich-nhat-hanh|Thich Nhat Hanh]]‘s articulation of ecological practice as continuous with mindfulness practice; Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects; the broader engaged-Buddhist environmental tradition.
Indigenous-led work. [[vine-deloria-jr|Vine Deloria Jr.]], [[robin-wall-kimmerer|Robin Wall Kimmerer]], Linda Hogan, Oren Lyons, and many others — making the indigenous tradition’s continuing teachings on land, kinship, and reciprocity available to wider audiences. The field has been substantially shaped by indigenous scholars insisting that indigenous knowledge is foundational, not auxiliary.
Catholic ecological theology. Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home (2015) is the principal recent statement; it draws on [[thomas-berry|Thomas Berry]]‘s work, on Franciscan spiritual ecology, and on the broader Catholic theological tradition. Earlier figures: Teilhard de Chardin (the Jesuit paleontologist whose work prefigured Berry’s), Francis of Assisi (the patron saint of ecology in Catholic tradition).
Protestant ecological theology. [[wendell-berry|Wendell Berry]], Sallie McFague, Jürgen Moltmann, Larry Rasmussen, Bill McKibben, and others. Substantial body of work integrating biblical theology with ecological ethics.
Islamic ecological theology. Seyyed Hossein Nasr (especially Religion and the Order of Nature, 1996) is the principal articulator; substantial subsequent work in Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, Iran, and elsewhere.
Jewish ecological theology. Arthur Waskow’s Shalom Center; the broader work on Sabbath ecology, on shmita (the seven-year sabbatical year for the land), on the integration of Jewish ritual life with ecological commitment.
Hindu ecological theology. [[vandana-shiva|Vandana Shiva]]‘s substantial work; the broader recovery of Hindu ecological resources.
The Forum on Religion and Ecology’s tradition-by-tradition work has produced edited volumes on each major religious tradition’s ecological resources.

Recurring themes

Across this internally diverse field, several themes recur:

The ecological crisis as spiritual crisis. The recognition that the practical-political failure to protect the more-than-human world is rooted in deeper failures of orientation, attention, gratitude, and reciprocity — which spiritual traditions have substantial resources to address.
Cosmology as foundation. Following Berry, the recognition that any religious-spiritual tradition rests on an implicit cosmology, and that the contemporary scientific cosmology requires substantial integration with the spiritual traditions if either is to be adequate to the present moment.
Place-based practice. Sustained attention to specific places — bioregions, watersheds, particular ecosystems — as the location of spiritual life. [[0mn1one|The platform]]‘s bioregional methodology is in this lineage.
Cross-tradition collaboration. The recognition that no single tradition is adequate to the planetary scale of the crisis; the necessity of substantial collaboration across traditions while respecting their distinctness.
Integration of contemplation and action. The recognition (across [[engaged-buddhism|Engaged Buddhism]], [[liberation-theology|liberation theology]], indigenous teaching, and elsewhere) that contemplation and action are not separable.

Honest framing

A note for clarity. The field has produced substantial scholarship, beautiful writing, and substantial institutional infrastructure. It has also been criticized — sometimes fairly — for having been better at articulating the necessary reorientation than at producing the political-economic changes the crisis actually requires. [[0mn1one|The platform]] takes the field seriously as substantive intellectual context for its own work, while recognizing that intellectual articulation alone is not the same thing as the substantive shift the situation demands.

What this gives the platform

Three contributions:

An intellectual home. [[0mn1one|The platform]]‘s commitment to abundance for every form of life finds in spiritual ecology a sustained academic-intellectual community working on adjacent problems with substantial seriousness.
A continuing teaching across traditions. The field’s tradition-by-tradition work has produced substantial resources from each of the world’s major spiritual traditions for ecological commitment.
A model of institutional collaboration. The Forum on Religion and Ecology, the [[mind-and-life-institute|Mind & Life Institute]], the various denominational ecological commissions, and the indigenous-led work together represent what cross-tradition collaboration on the major questions can look like.

Sources

[[thomas-berry|Thomas Berry]]. The Dream of the Earth. Sierra Club Books, 1988. Source class: book / foundational.
[[brian-swimme|Brian Swimme]] & Thomas Berry. The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era. HarperSanFrancisco, 1992. Source class: book / foundational.
[[mary-evelyn-tucker|Mary Evelyn Tucker]] & John Grim (gen. eds.). Religions of the World and Ecology (10 vols.). Harvard CSWR, 1997–2003. Source class: book series / scholarly survey.
Pope Francis. Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home. Vatican, 2015. Source class: encyclical / Catholic ecological theology.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Religion and the Order of Nature. Oxford, 1996. Source class: book / Islamic ecological theology.
Larry Rasmussen. Earth-Honoring Faith: Religious Ethics in a New Key. Oxford, 2012. Source class: book / Protestant ecological ethics.
Robin Wall Kimmerer. Braiding Sweetgrass. Milkweed, 2013. (See [[braiding-sweetgrass]].)

Lenses still to grow

Each of the tradition-specific ecological theologies in their own right.
The Forum on Religion and Ecology as a continuing institution.
The Laudato Si’ tradition in Catholic life since 2015.
Journey of the Universe as a film and continuing project.
The political-economic critique of the field — the question of whether spiritual ecology has been sufficient.

What links here, and how

Inbound connections from across the wiki, grouped by lens and by relationship. These appear automatically — every entity page declares what it links to, and that data populates here on the targets.

Scientific

subset of

Brian Swimme co-articulator with Thomas Berry of contemporary spiritual ecology; the principal scientific voice in the new-cosmology project
Mary Evelyn Tucker the principal academic-institutional successor to Thomas Berry in spiritual ecology; the figure (with John Grim) most responsible for the field's contemporary institutional infrastructure
Thomas Berry the principal articulator of contemporary spiritual ecology in its English-language Catholic-Christian form; the figure whose work shaped much of the subsequent field

part of

The Universe Story the foundational text of contemporary spiritual ecology in its new-cosmology articulation; widely read across the field

Practical

parallels

The Work That Reconnects the practical-experiential face of much of the broader spiritual-ecology field; the place where the field's intellectual claims meet group practice

5 inbound links · 2 outbound