This interdisciplinary project conjoins Kearns’s expertise in the sociology of religion and ecology with Rigby’s in the environmental humanities. It examines the emergence of new understandings of ‘world’ and practices of ‘world-making’ within contemporary Christian environmental thought and action, including case studies of eco-Christian initiatives from the UK, USA and Kenya (the latter will not have been completed). These initiatives run counter to the tradition of Christian ‘otherworldliness’, whereby earthly existence is discounted in favor of a heavenly beyond, and they turn away from a prevalent mode of worldliness, within which the things of earth are construed as a mere means for human ends, namely as ‘resources’ and ‘ecosystem services’, or a storehouse of ‘natural capital’. We are researching two Church of England Eco-churches. In the UK, grassroots initiatives to transform churchyards into mini refugia for species of plants, fungi and animals that have been deprived of congenial habitat due to intensive agriculture, urban expansion, and the loss of insect-, bird- and small mammal-friendly gardens. We will also report on related efforts in the U.S. bringing in at least a Catholic and Black Protestant example. Reclaiming earlier Christian understandings of the natural world as God’s good ‘creation’, these initiatives are informed also by contemporary natural sciences, ecological ethics, and sometimes non-Euro-Western, especially Indigenous, knowledges and practices. We examine whether ‘world’ is thereby re-imagined as a work-in-progress in which humans collaborate with other-than-human entities in the co-creation of renewed potentials for multispecies flourishing in the context of deepening ecological imperilment and environmental injustice, and to what effect for the communities involved, their faith traditions, and, potentially, wider socio-cultural-ecological contexts and concerns?
Laurel Kearns
Vita
Dr. Laurel Kearns has researched forms of religious environmentalism since the late 1980s, and taught at Drew Theological School since 1994. Her research focuses on religious involvement (as well as religious opposition) in ecological issues and movements, with a particular interest in environmental justice, climate change, and food/agriculture. In addition to co-editing and contributing to Religion and Nature in North America (with Whitney Bauman) and EcoSpirit: Religions and Philosophies for the Earth (with Catherine Keller) she has contributed chapters to volumes such as The Oxford Handbook on Climate Change and Society; The New Evangelical Social Engagement; Grounding Religion: A Field Guide to the Study of Religion and Ecology and many others. She co-founded the Green Seminary Initiative, and has served on the boards of GreenFaith and the Parliament of the World's Religions.
Forschungsschwerpunkt
Religion and:
nature
ecology
climate change
environmentalism
social movements
Publikationen (Auswahl)
Religion and Nature in North America. Co-edited with Whitney Bauman. London: Bloomsbury, 2024. Co-authored introduction, plus chs on environmental racism, and Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Eco-Spirit: Religion, Philosophy and the Earth. Co-edited with Catherine Keller. New York: Fordham University Press, 2007. Co-authored introduction, solo chapter on religious climate activism in the United States.
“Trojan Horses Facing the Mirror: A comparison between religious anti-environmental movement organizations in the US and Brazil,” co-authored with Renan dos Santos, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture, 2024.
“Climate Change” and “Grounding Religion in the Environmental Humanities,” co-authored with Kate Rigby. In Grounding Religion: A Field Guide to the Study of Religion and Ecology, edited by Whitney Bauman, Richard Bohannon, and Kevin O'Brien. New York: Routledge, 3rd edition, 2023; 2nd edition, 2017.
“Conspiring Together: Breathing for Justice.” In the Bloomsbury Handbook on Religion and Nature: The Elements, edited by Laura Hobgood and Whitney Bauman. 2018.
"The Bitter and the Sweet of Nature: Weaving a Tapestry of Migration Stories," co-authored with Veronica Kyle. In Grassroots to Global: Broader Impacts of Civic Ecology, edited by Marianne Krasny. Cornell University Press. 2018.
“Green Evangelicals.” In The New Evangelical Social Engagement, edited by Brian Steensland and Philip Goff. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013: 157-173.
“Issue: Ecology and the Environment.” In The Blackwell Companion to Religion and Social Justice, edited by Michael Palmer. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2012: 591-607.
"Religious Climate Activism in the United States." In Religion in Environmental and Climate Change: Suffering, Values, Lifestyles, edited by Dieter Gerten and Sigurd Bergmann. Continuum, 2012. 132-151.
“Religion and Ecology” in Religion, Globalization, and Culture, edited by Peter Beyer and Lori Beaman. Boston: Brill Publishing, 2007.
