Religion, Sustainability, and Place: Moral Geographies of the Anthropocene 9811576459, 9789811576454

Table of contents :
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
List of Tables
1 Introduction: Religion, Sustainability, and Place
Organization of the Book
References
2 By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them: Religion as Practice
A Short Introduction
Decolonizing Western Bias
Community Religions
Universalizing Religions
The Trajectory of Universalizing Religions
Religion as Methodology
The Basic Recipe
Religion, Science, and Sustainability Today
References
3 Finding/Revealing/Creating Judaism’s Indigenous Core
Introduction
The Land That Drinks from the Heavens
Sustainability
Indigenousness and the Israelite Religion
Strangers in the Land
Creation-Centered Religion
The Political Complexities of Indigeneity
Decolonizing Judaism
Strangers in a Strange Land
After Exile
Intercession and Theurgy—Kabbalah
Revealing the Divine Flow—Hasidism
Conclusion
Works Cited
4 Water Law in Muslim Countries Revisited: A Study of the Qur’an
Caponera’s Water Laws in Moslem Countries (1954, 1973)
Spiritual Essays on Water in Islam
Reading the Qur’an with Water in Mind: Three Experiments
Sura al-Fatiha (the Opening)
Sura al-Baqarah (the Cow)
Reading for Water (Ma’) in the Historical Revelatory Sequence
Reading the Canonical Arrangement and Reflecting on Water Laws for Muslim Countries
References
5 Emerging Places of Repair: A Sustainable Urbanism Approach to Living in and with Cities—Inspired by Vine Deloria, Jr.’s Agent Ontology of Place
An Agent Ontology of Place, Matter–Energy, Solidarity, and Sacred Places
Place as Relationship
Matter–Energy in a Living Universe
Solidarity and the Sacred
Sacred Places
The Emergence of Places of Repair
Welcoming the Camas, Drawing the Line: Places of Repair as a Principle for City Living and Design
Welcoming the Camas, Repairing Relationships: The Native Gathering Gardens at Cully Park in Portland, Oregon
Creating Sacred Place in Momentary Urban Space: The Lummi Nation House of Tears Carvers Totem Pole Journey
To Conclude, We Must Begin
References
6 Saving Mount Shasta’s Sacred Water: The Spiritual Campaign Against Crystal Geyser
Mountain Metaphysics: Defining Sacred Water
A Brief Profile of Ascensionist Esoteric Spirituality
Spiritual Commerce and Water in Mt. Shasta: A Brief History
Water Activism Past and Present
Bibliography
7 Land Cover Change in a Ghanaian Sacred Forest
Introduction
Study Area Landscape
Sacred Natural Sites in Ghana
Governance of Sacred Landscapes in Ghana
Forest Policy in Ghana
Forest Cover Change in Ghana
Forests and Livelihood
Land Use Classification
Results of Land Cover Classification
Forest Cover Change
Conclusion
Appendix
References
8 Role of Faith-Based Social Groups in Promoting Sustainable Food Security in Nigeria
Introduction
Nigeria: The Giant of Africa
Addressing Food Insecurity
Social Groups as Catalysts for Food Security
The Financial Services Euphoria
Pressure for Self-Reliance
Conclusion
References
9 Protecting Ethiopia’s Church Forests: The Disconnect Between Western Science and Local Knowledge
What Is the Ecological Significance of Church Forests?
How Long Have Church Forests Existed, and Are They Remnants of a Vast Native Forest?
How Have Forest Conditions Changed Through Time, and Are They in Danger of Disappearing?
Why Does the Local Community Value the Forest and Take Steps to Protect It?
Why Is There Variability in Church Forest Conditions Today?
In the Face of Potential Factors in Their Degradation, What Steps Should Be Taken, and by Whom, to Bolster Church Forest Protection?
Degradation Narratives and Received Wisdom
Sacred Spaces and Sustainability
References
10 Religion and Spirituality in Hungarian Eco-Villages
Introduction
Eco-Villages
Radical Rural Locality—Place and Eco-Villages
Ecology and Religion
Religion, Faith and Spirituality in Hungarian Eco-Villages
The Role of Faith
Conclusion
References
11 Resource Nationalism and Spiritual Pathways to Sustainability in Kyrgyzstan
Environmental Nationalism in the Soviet Union
Resource Nationalism and Ecological Sustainability in Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan
Religion, Ecology, Nationalism
Conclusion
Bibliography
12 Grounded in Community: Christianity and Environmental Engagement in Scotland
Religion and Ecology
Research Method and Context
Linking Religious Traditions and Environmental Sustainability
Justice
Stewardship and Creation Care
Creation Spirituality
Grounded in Community
Conclusion
References
13 Christian Ideas Influencing US Food Movements
Introduction
Food Safety
Vegetarianism
Organic Farming
Food Justice
Local Food Movement as the Integration of Other Movements
Conclusion
References
14 The Jewish Food Movement: A Sustainable and Just Vision for Place, Identity, and Environment
Introduction
The Alternative Food Movement
Sustainable Food Spaces: Spaces for Jewish Renewal
American Jewish Farming and Post-Earth Day American Jewish Environmentalism
The Jewish Food Movement
Actors and Organization
Hazon: Hub of the JFM
Other Actors and Organizations in the JFM
A Jewish-Sustainability Discourse
From Sustainability to Food Justice: Shmita
Geographical Imagination of the JFM: Scales of Concern
Conclusions
References
15 A Womanist and Interfaith Response to Climate Change
Introduction
Case Study: Virginia Interfaith Power & Light
Values: Constructing a New Theology
Challenges Faced
Misinformation, Rejection of Science and Politicization
Urgency of the Climate Crisis
Viewing Climate Change as a Moral Issue
Connecting Public Policy and Charity
Standing up to Powerful Polluters
Organizational Sustainability
Intersectionality of Leadership’s Identity
Successes Achieved
Conclusion
References
Index

Citation preview

Religion, Sustainability, and Place Moral Geographies of the Anthropocene Edited by Steven E. Silvern · Edward H. Davis

Religion, Sustainability, and Place

Steven E. Silvern · Edward H. Davis Editors

Religion, Sustainability, and Place Moral Geographies of the Anthropocene

Editors Steven E. Silvern Geography and Sustainability Salem State University Salem, MA, USA

Edward H. Davis Geography and Environmental Studies Emory and Henry College Emory, VA, USA

ISBN 978-981-15-7645-4 ISBN 978-981-15-7646-1 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7646-1

(eBook)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image: © Steven E. Silvern This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Contents

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Introduction: Religion, Sustainability, and Place Steven E. Silvern and Edward H. Davis

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By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them: Religion as Practice R. D. K. Herman

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Finding/Revealing/Creating Judaism’s Indigenous Core David Mevorach Seidenberg

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Water Law in Muslim Countries Revisited: A Study of the Qur’an James L. Wescoat Jr.

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Emerging Places of Repair: A Sustainable Urbanism Approach to Living in and with Cities—Inspired by Vine Deloria, Jr.’s Agent Ontology of Place Briana Meier

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Saving Mount Shasta’s Sacred Water: The Spiritual Campaign Against Crystal Geyser Madeline Duntley

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Land Cover Change in a Ghanaian Sacred Forest Madden Bremer and Stephen Young

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Role of Faith-Based Social Groups in Promoting Sustainable Food Security in Nigeria Stephen Morse and Nora McNamara

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Protecting Ethiopia’s Church Forests: The Disconnect Between Western Science and Local Knowledge Peter Klepeis

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Religion and Spirituality in Hungarian Eco-Villages Judit Farkas

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Resource Nationalism and Spiritual Pathways to Sustainability in Kyrgyzstan Vincent Artman

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Grounded in Community: Christianity and Environmental Engagement in Scotland Alice Hague

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Christian Ideas Influencing US Food Movements Edward H. Davis

14 The Jewish Food Movement: A Sustainable and Just Vision for Place, Identity, and Environment Steven E. Silvern

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Contents

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A Womanist and Interfaith Response to Climate Change Faith B. Harris and Kendyl Crawley Crawford

Index

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355 383

Notes on Contributors

Dr. Vincent Artman is a human geographer whose research examines how civic, national, and religious identities are constructed and contested in the post-communist states of Central Asia. Dr. Artman has also researched the connections between citizenship and territoriality in the breakaway regions of Georgia, American soft power in Central Asia, white supremacy and Islamophobic geopolitics in the USA and Europe, and the dynamics of genocide and territorial cleansing. He is the author of numerous articles and chapters, and his work has been published in journals such as Europe-Asia Studies, Central Asian Affairs, Geopolitics, and Territory, Politics, Governance. He is currently Instructor of Peace & Conflict Studies at Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA. Madden Bremer is a graduate student in the Geo-Information Science program at Salem State University. Her research focus is in land change analysis using remote sensing. She investigates the ways people interact with the environment, and how the environment shapes the behavior of people. She currently works as a GIS Analyst at the Cape Cod Commission, a regional planning agency whose mission is to protect the unique

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values and quality of life on Cape Cod by coordinating a balanced relationship between environmental protection and economic progress. Kendyl Crawley Crawford is an activist and community organizer. She is the current Director of Virginia Interfaith Power & Light working on congregational organizing efforts around climate justice. She received a bachelor’s degree in Marine and Environmental Science from Hampton University and has a Master of Science in Environment, Science, and Society from University College London on a Marshall Scholarship. She successfully completed the Midwest Academy Organizing for Social Change Training and received a Master of Nonprofit Studies degree at the University of Richmond where she conducted research on the power relationships between environmental justice social movement organizations and foundations. Dr. Edward H. Davis is Professor and Chair in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Emory & Henry College in Virginia, USA. He earned his PhD in Geography at the University of Illinois. He has published books and articles on rural and agricultural change in the USA and Central America. Funded by the USDA, his explorations for seed savers in the Southern USA led to the collection of dozens of rare heirloom Brassica varieties for the national seed bank. He serves on the board of the Geography of Religions and Belief Systems Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers. Dr. Madeline Duntley is Associate Professor of Sociology at Bowling Green State University in Ohio and teaches courses in anthropology, sociology, religion, theory, and “green” (environmental) criminology. She publishes on a variety of topics related to Pacific Northwest/Cascadia studies and North American religions. Her current project is a monograph on esoteric spirituality in the Mount Shasta region of northern California. Dr. Judit Farkas is Professor of Anthropology at the Department of European Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Pécs (Hungary). Her fields of research include religious, social, and ecological movements. Her key topics are Krishna-believers in Hungary

Notes on Contributors

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and Hungarian ecovillages. Her research has appeared in English in journals such as Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, Journal For The Study of Religion Nature And Culture, Etnofoor Anthropological Journal, Acta Universitatis Sapientiae Social Analysis. She has published one book about ecovillages and one about Hungarian Hare Krishnas, both are still in Hungarian. Dr. Alice Hague is an Environmental Social Scientist at The James Hutton Institute, Aberdeen, UK. Her research takes an interdisciplinary approach and focuses broadly on community engagement with environmental issues and climate change, and how people connect with nature. Alice has a Ph.D. in Environmental Politics from the University of Edinburgh and has a background in environmental science, science communication, and science and innovation policy. Rev. Dr. Faith B. Harris is Assistant Professor of Theology at the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology Virginia Union University and Director of the Johnson A. Edosomwan Center for Faith Leadership and Public Life. She teaches courses in Systematic Theology, Womanist Theology, Practical Theology, Creation Care, Civic Engagement and Missions. She is Vice Chair of Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy and Chair for Virginia Interfaith Power & Light. A Womanist activist she bridges academic and civic interests through the intersection of race, gender, environmental, and social justice policy with interfaith approaches to spirituality. She is an ordained Baptist minister. Dr. R. D. K. “Doug” Herman became the executive director for the Waioli Corporation in Hawaii in 2020. Prior to this he was the senior geographer at the National Museum of the American Indian, which is part of the Smithsonian Institution. His work over the past 25 years has focused on Pacific indigenous cultures and during his career he developed a web-based, indigenous geography project, Pacific Worlds. His work on decolonizing research methodologies and indigenous peoples has appeared in numerous academic journals including: Verge: Studies in Global Asias; American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Political Geography and the Annals of the American Association of Geographers. He recently edited a trans-disciplinary volume, Giving Back:

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Research and Reciprocity in Indigenous Settings (2018, Oregon State University Press). He has served the Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers since 2000. He earned his master’s degree and doctorate in geography at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Dr. Peter Klepeis is Professor of Geography at Colgate University. His research and teaching explore nature-society relationships, political ecology, and environmental history. His scholarship focuses primarily on land use and natural resource management. With case studies from around the world, projects include the investigation of tropical deforestation, rangeland degradation, and the spread of invasive species. The work identifies the dynamics causing land change, different models of conservation, and decision-making pathways that foster sustainable land use. Nora McNamara trained as a social scientist initially and also studied social philosophy, drama, and language. She later studied Agricultural Extension (Reading) and Pastoral Theology (TST, Toronto) and Counselling and Psychotherapy (NUI), Ireland. After graduating from University College Cork (UCC) she worked with the Social Services Centre in Henry St. Limerick, which provided great preparation for Nigeria. She was appointed coordinator for Social Development for the Diocese of Idah (Igalaland, Nigeria) and was instrumental in the creation of the Diocesan Development Services (DDS); the organization at the heart of the discussion in the chapter. She was the director for all Holy Rosary Development projects and programs from 2003 to 2015 and has since retired and lives in Dublin. Briana Meier is a doctoral candidate in the Environmental Sciences, Studies, and Policy program at the University of Oregon. Her current research focuses on informal, material, urban practices, and on ways in which communities of solidarity form in circumstances of disruption, displacement, and upheaval. Prior to her doctoral program, Ms Meier worked for about a decade in the field of urban planning and design, with a focus on community-based planning, green infrastructure, and sustainable building. She holds a master’s degree in urban planning and

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design from Portland State University and a BA in environmental studies and philosophy from Cornell College. Dr. Stephen Morse holds the Chair in Systems Analysis for Sustainability in the Centre for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Surrey, UK. He has authored more than 140 refereed journal papers, 20 books and is a joint editor of three collections (including the Routledge Handbook of Sustainability Indicators and Indices). Dr. Morse has a background in applied ecology and environmental management and his research and teaching interests are broad spanning both the natural and social sciences. These interests include methods for the assessment of sustainability (e.g., indicators and indices) in order to help guide intervention. He has also helped pioneer a number of participatory methodologies for sustainability assessment. He has been involved in research and sustainable development projects across Europe, the Mediterranean, Africa, and Asia. Dr. David Mevorach Seidenberg is the creator of neohasid.org and the author of Kabbalah and Ecology (Cambridge U. Press, 2015). He received his doctoral degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary and was ordained by both the Jewish Theological Seminary and Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. He studied physics and mathematics at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, educational philosophy at Harvard University, and social ecology at the Institute for Social Ecology. Seidenberg’s research and teaching focus on ecology and spirituality, Talmud, Maimonides, Kabbalah and Hasidic thought, embodied Torah, dance and nigunim (Hasidic song), and on ecological and environmental ethics. He teaches Jewish thought in Europe, Israel, and throughout North America and blogs for the Times of Israel. Dr. Steven E. Silvern is Professor of Geography and Sustainability at Salem State University where he teaches courses on environmental sustainability, food geographies, campus food security, and Native American geographies. His research has focused on the geopolitics of Native Americans and their relationship with nature and territory. His current research is a study of American Jewish cultural geographies and a digital atlas of Jews. His research has appeared in journals such as Political

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Geography, Cultural Geographies, Historical Geography, and American Indian Culture and Research Journal. He is editor of The Northeastern Geographer: Journal of the New England-St. Lawrence Valley Geographical Society (a regional division of the American Association of Geographers). Dr. James L. Wescoat, Jr. is Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Landscape Architecture and Geography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has conducted over three decades of field research on historical water systems and modern water problems in India and Pakistan. These include books and articles on Mughal gardens and waterworks, and on drinking water, irrigation, and climate change issues. His books include Water for Life: Water Management and Environmental Policy with geographer Gilbert F. White. Dr. Stephen Young is Professor of Remote Sensing and Environmental Sustainability at Salem State University. His research broadly encompasses three areas: deforestation, climate change, and the presentation of science in art galleries. His research has appeared in journals such as Biological Conservation, Biotropica, Conservation Biology, Forest Ecology & Management, International Journal of Remote Sensing, Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing, International Journal of Applied Geospatial Research, Mountain Research and Development and has had gallery exhibitions at the National Science Foundation, the Boston Museum of Science, as well as international shows in Australia, Canada, Iran, and Tunisia.

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1

Fig. 4.1

Fig. 4.2

Fig. 4.3

Hawaiian “spiritual ecology,” showing network of relationships between the material world and the spiritual world in Hawaiian cosmology (Source Designed by Rubellite Kawena Johnson) The poet Sa’di in a Rose Garden. Mughal ca. 1645 CE. Reproduced with permission from the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art. Gift of the Art and History Trust in honor of Ezzat-Malek Soudavar. F1998.5 “The Story of the Princess of the Blue Pavillion: The Youth of Rum Is Entertained in a Garden by a Fairy and her Maidens”, Folio from a Khamsa (Quintet) of Amir Khusrau Dihlavi 1597–98. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of Alexander Smith Cochran, 1913. 13.228.33 Humayun’s tomb-garden in the Nizamuddin area of New Delhi (Source Author, 2018)

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Fig. 5.1

Fig. 5.2

Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2 Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2 Fig. 7.3 Fig. 8.1

Fig. 8.2

Fig. 9.1

List of Figures

February 10, 2018, in Portland, Oregon: Judy Bluehorse Skelton conducts a smudging ceremony for camas plants and volunteer participants in a planting event at the Native Gathering Gardens in Cully Park. Photo by the author October 14, 2017, in Vancouver, Washington: Participants in the Totem Pole Journey place their hands on the totem pole and each other in a moment of prayer and reflection (Source Photo by the author) Mount Shasta Emergence spring at Panther Meadows Location of the Goviefe Todzi sacred forest in the Volta region of southeast Ghana Slash and burn landscape outside of the sacred forest of Goviefe Todzi Goviefe Todzi community warriors performing music and rituals in the sacred forest Outline map of Nigeria showing the approximate location of Igalaland, the area within which the Diocesan Development Services (DDS) operated from the early 1970s (a and b) Comparison of the structure of the Oja, an indigenous group within Igala society, and Farmer Councils, established by the DDS (Note The Farmer Councils (FCs) typically exist at the village scale, grouped within a Zonal structure spanning a number of geographically proximate villages and having more than one FC. Both structures are hierarchical with elders (men and women) typically having the more senior positions) The church forests of the South Gondar Administrative Zone in northern Ethiopia (Ethiopian church forests: a socio-religious conservation model under change, Orlowska, I., and Klepeis, P., Journal of Eastern African Studies, 2018, 675, reprinted by permission of the publisher, Taylor & Francis Ltd., http://www.tandfonline.com)

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List of Figures

Fig. 9.2

Fig. 10.1 Fig. 10.2 Fig. 11.1 Fig. 12.1

Fig. 12.2 Fig. 14.1 Fig. 14.2 Fig. 15.1 Fig. 15.2

An aerial view of a 7.2 ha church forest in Ethiopia’s South Gondar Administrative Zone (reprinted by permission from Springer Nature: Springer, Human Ecology, Ethiopian Church Forests: A Hybrid Model of Protection, Klepeis et al. 2016, 720). The presence of two churches is rare, but becoming more common as wealthy benefactors donate funds to local communities. A mahabir is a subgroup of the church congregation, which celebrates a particular patron saint; they often gather to share a meal after church services in “mahabir houses.” School huts are affiliated with the church, and house boys being trained for the priesthood Map of Hungarian eco-villages Eco-house, Gy˝ur˝uf˝u eco-village, Hungary, 2009 Map of Kyrgyz Republic EcoCongregation Scotland, an ecumenical membership organization for churches engaging in environmental activity “Green Group” notice board located in church entrance Shmita principles on sign at Abundance Farm, Northampton, MA Abundance Farm, Northampton, Massachusetts Union Hill community members share their stories Interfaith leaders offer prayers on behalf of the Union Hill community

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List of Tables

Table 2.1 Table 2.2

Community religions and universalist religions Comparison of the major basic principles of the spiritual path across three traditions

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1 Introduction: Religion, Sustainability, and Place Steven E. Silvern and Edward H. Davis

Modernity, as Marx and other social theorists have noted, is characterized by flux and change. Political and economic forces span the globe creating broad, often negative changes to human communities and ecosystems. Global capitalism, industrialization, resource extractivism, state-centered political systems and technologically mediated forms of communications (e.g., the Internet) have resulted in displacement, ecological destruction, alienation and placelessness. Anthropogenic climate change, with rising global temperatures, rising sea levels and other associated environmental changes, now threatens the very existence of human and non-human species on the planet. We now recognize this unprecedented era in which S. E. Silvern Geography and Sustainability Department, Salem State University, Salem, MA, USA e-mail: [email protected] E. H. Davis (B) Department of Geography & Environmental Studies, Emory & Henry College, Emory, VA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 S. E. Silvern and E. H. Davis (eds.), Religion, Sustainability, and Place, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7646-1_1

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humans have become a dominant planetary force as the Anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000; Ziegler 2019). In this time of planetary environmental change, we find people increasingly live decentered, disembedded lives—disconnected from nature and their fellow humans. Some argue there has been a hollowing out and destruction of communities, a dehumanization and de-sacralization of social life (Nixon 2011; McFague 2008). The goal of this book is to explore the role religious traditions play in countering the tumultuous environmental and social changes being wrought in the Anthropocene. The key question we seek to elucidate is how religious traditions and belief systems provide a continuing source of wisdom—normative moral frameworks—for living in this moment of change and uncertainty. Despite the growth of secularism and scientific world views, religion remains an important frame of reference for many peoples and cultures around the world (Tse 2014). Given the importance of religion to the day-to-day lives of people and to the institutions that govern societies, it is critical to examine how religious traditions inform conversations about how to promote and achieve environmentally and socially sustainable communities: a moral geography, if you will, for the twenty-first century. There are few multidisciplinary studies that bring together religious and sustainability studies. Until recently, the study of religion and sustainability has been divided into distinct areas of scholarly study. Within religious studies, the study of religion and ecology has long been recognized as a subfield (Bohannon 2014; Gottlieb 2006; Grim and Tucker 2014; Hart 2017; Jenkins et al. 2016). Working in this subfield, scholars have explored how religious groups engage with ecological ideas and environmentalism. For Johnston (2014), the study of religion and ecology needs to turn its attention to the role of religion in the growing social movements engaged explicitly in sustainability work. He writes there is “a dearth of attention to the religious dimensions of sustainability” and that “little attention has been paid to the interdependence of sustainability and religion” (Johnston 2014, 4). His book tries to remedy this through an ethnographic study of how religious and spiritual ideas influence the leaders of key non-governmental sustainability organizations. What is missing from the book is how different religious and

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faith groups are themselves engaged in the construction of sustainability discourses and practices. On the other hand, the field of sustainability studies has been marked by a lack of engagement with the humanities and especially religious studies (Sze 2018). A review of recently published undergraduate sustainability textbooks reveals an emphasis on environmental science, a focus upon the environmental impacts of economic growth, and the discussion of technological fixes that will lead to sustainability (Brinkmann 2016; Caradonna 2014; Mulligan 2018; Robertson 2017; Thiele 2013). There is little or no discussion in these texts of how social values, including spirituality, religion and faith influence sustainability. Koehrsen (2018, 4) notes that the “rapidly growing field of sustainability transitions,” a subfield of sustainability studies, “barely considers religion.” More generally, Robinson (2004, 378) writes that sustainability cannot be achieved solely through new technology and greater efficiencies, but that the “social dimensions of sustainability must be integrated with biophysical ones.” Implied in his notion of the “social dimensions of sustainability” is the need to consider religion and faith traditions. He (Robinson 2004, 379) writes: the meaning and value of sustainability are rooted partly in different philosophical and moral conceptions of the appropriate way to conceive of the relationship between humanity and nature. This means that what can and should be done to achieve a sustainable society is not fundamentally a scientific or technical issue.

Sze’s (2018) recent edited collection is one of the few books (also see Agyeman 2013) that seek to remedy this lack of attention to social dimensions in sustainability studies. It is an interdisciplinary collection of studies that focus on how social justice concerns intersect with sustainability and sustainable development. Sze’s volume, while recognizing that sustainability must engage social values and issues of equity, does not focus upon nor “situate” religion and faith as part of its examination of sustainability and sustainable development (Sze et al. 2018, 6). One reason for this lack of attention to religion in the field of sustainability studies may be that environmental scientists and economists want

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to appear objective and rational, and seek to avoid the coloration of their work as faith-based, or even faith-influenced. Upon closer inspection, however, we find that the landscape of sustainability scholarship is unavoidably in dialogue with various religious ideas and practices. For example, the scholarship on “climate justice” often employs a language with strong religious roots. Here is a line from an article in the prominent journal Global Environmental Politics: …(T)he groups most exposed to the shocks and stresses caused by climate change —marginalized and poor communities comprising precarious and informal laborers, peasant farmers, Indigenous peoples, forest dwellers, residents of informal settlements, and women of all ages—are the most underrepresented in decision-making arenas… (Brown and Spiegel 2019, 157)

Compare that to this line from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah: The LORD enters into judgment against the elders and leaders of his people: ‘It is you who have ruined my vineyard; the plunder from the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people and grinding the faces of the poor?’ declares the Lord, the LORD Almighty. (NIV Isaiah 3:14–15)

The language of these two statements is different, but the overall moral structure is parallel: the powerful are oppressing the weak, and the land suffers as a result. Climate disruption is a moral issue, made recognizable as such by the teachings and legacy of faith traditions. Our goal here is to showcase—through case studies from different geographic locales and religious traditions—the sustainability and moral imaginaries of religious and spiritual communities. Our authors explore the ways sustainability, as a social, economic and environmental discourse, intersects with religious beliefs and practices; how different faith traditions—with specific visions of the good life—can aid in the construction of ethical relationships of people, place and the planet’s ecosystems. Through our multidisciplinary engagement with diverse religious traditions, we hope to provide a resource for scholars, students and the public to re-conceptualize how religious belief systems and practices

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inform efforts to create moral geographies and sustainable relationships between people, places and environments. Ideas and beliefs are made consequential in the here and now of constructing places and landscapes. We not only live out all our lives in places that are dependent on natural systems, but we transform those places through our lived practices, which are political, economic and cultural (Cresswell 2004). So, it matters greatly where we engage in sustainable practices—on farms, in power plants, on streets, sidewalks and highways, in our factories and offices, in our villages. And the reality of human behavior is that faith traditions are and will continue to be part of our engagement with the environment and creation of place, providing beliefs and a system of practices that give meaning to place and shape the materiality of place in accordance with a normative vision of what constitutes the good life and the healthy relationship with the natural world and one’s fellow human beings. This book contains chapters by authors from diverse disciplinary and methodological backgrounds. Yet we have organized it to follow a logical arc from: (1) theological reflection and faith-based ideas about sustainability expressed in a range of sacred texts to (2) theological and faith-based sustainable practices and activism. As we traverse this arc, we find each author giving more or less weight to the tension between ideas versus practice, but often the two are integrated and part of a whole and an ongoing reflexive process. The authors explore in different ways the geographical tensions that define faith-based sustainability. Historically, this is a tension between the particularity of religious faith and the universality of religious ideas. Is faith more tribal and communal, rooted in a particular people of faith, or is faith universal and available to all peoples? The latter, universalistic view of faith has been the source of much criticism noting that when religions are seen as universal they are in danger of co-optation by settler colonialism, with a history of violence and genocide toward non-believing peoples. The tension between particular and universal plays out in different ways in different places. The authors in this volume explore, from their own disciplinary traditions, the tension between what we see as a parochial and inward-looking geography of concern—a more narrow and bounded sense of place—and a geography of care and concern that

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extends beyond the local to the global. The latter being moments when faith-based sustainability movements exercise what Massey (1993) calls a “progressive” rather than a “reactionary” sense of place, viewing the whole planet as a place of concern and care. When this happens, the moral circle of concern is extended to include care for the non-human world; it is a move beyond anthropocentric theologies to ecocentric ones. Connected to this progressive and scalar notion of place is this question: In the current moment of global environmental crisis, can religious and faith-based sustainability movements form alliances with civil movements to promote a just and equitable world? We hope this book moves the conversation forward as to how the wisdom traditions of religions and faiths may inform and be part of broader secular movements.

Organization of the Book The book begins with three chapters that lay the groundwork for exploring tensions between universal and particular, varying senses of place and putting belief into practice in pursuit of sustainability. In Chapter 2, Doug Herman traces his personal spiritual journey, which has drawn on the sacred texts of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and Hawaiian religious traditions. He finds the wisdom in these texts points to shared truths, but warns against a simplified notion of what truth really is. His story demonstrates one broad theme of the book: most religions begin with texts and beliefs, values and narratives, but are given life by practices. This link between text, ideas and practices is essential to restoring health to the planet. Using indigenous Hawaiian religion as a case study, he makes the case for a multi-faith discourse on sustainability. The next two chapters continue this theme, exploring how the sacred texts of Judaism and Islam—rooted in the specifics of the environment of the Middle East—guide normative behaviors toward the land and the water that will sustain the people. Improper behavior will lead to the destruction of the land and the people, who are seen as intimately connected. These texts are rooted in place, yet universal for they are viewed as applicable in all places. They are even seen as portable: they

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are taken wherever Jews and Muslims have settled outside the original “holy” lands, and serve to guide normative behavior regardless of place. Rabbi David Seidenberg examines the link between place and sustainability through the notion of indigenousness. He defines Judaism as an indigenous religion, one whose “rituals, stories, times, dreams and laws” grew out of the ecosystems of Canaan/Israel. Drawing on eco-philosophy and eco-theology, he takes the reader deeply into Judaism’s sacred texts, the history of Jewish exile and Israel’s treatment of the land and its diverse peoples to find wisdom for sustainable practices. James Wescoat (Chapter 4) is also focused on sacred texts: he seeks to provide a thorough understanding of how water law and management can be based on the Qur’an. The Qur’an not only defines the ethical management of community affairs, but provides considerable guidance for how Muslims ought to care for water resources. There is an implicit place dimension here, as the Qur’an is directly applicable to communities with unpredictable rainfall, a challenge which climate disruption is bringing to more and more places. The next three chapters explore the connections between sustainability and place as an ontological agent. Place is seen as having agency and power, a power that people understand as sacred. The sacredness of place, therefore, is understood as separate from humans, emanating from a specific location that must be protected and sustained. By embracing this ontology, people conduct themselves with an ethic of care for place, an ethic that demands proper, and thus sustainable, relationships between people and between people and place/environment; the place seems to demand it. In Chapter 5, Briana Meier sets up this section of the book with a review of the notion that places have agency, an idea developed by Native American scholar Vine Deloria, Jr. Meier applies this idea to “damaged” places in US cities and how such places are being repaired through Indigenous religious practices. She reviews the creation of a sacred garden space by Native tribes in Portland, Oregon, as well as the 2500-mile journey of a totem pole by the Lummi nation. She argues these are demonstrations of the Native American understanding of sacred space. These “places of repair” are evidence of how granting agency to

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places liberates us from modernity’s de-spiritualizing and dehumanizing forces. Madeline Duntley then traces the story of a sacred spring on Mount Shasta in northern California. This spring became the center of a battle over place meaning when a large corporation, Crystal Geyser, sought to open a large bottling plant on a site considered sacred by the Winnemem Wintu tribe and Ascentionists, a form of esoteric faith with a long history in the local community. The coalition that resists this commercial development includes followers of both groups and believes that spiritual tourism is acceptable, sustainable, and more valuable to the town than bottling the water for the global market. Madden Bremer and Stephen Young study the role of traditional religion in community protection of the Goviefe Todzi sacred forest in Ghana. Like hundreds of such forests, this one is understood by the local community to be sacred and is protected and maintained through traditional spiritual practices. Agriculture, urbanization and timber extraction are leading to deforestation in much of Ghana. Ghanaian state forest reserves are managed according to economic values as compared with non-reserved forest lands such as the Goviefe Todzi sacred forest. Using both ground observations and remote sensing, Bremer and Young find that, unlike the state forests reserves, the Goviefe Todzi sacred forest was successfully protected from deforestation. The next four chapters focus on the collision among modernity, colonialism and traditional religious concepts of the sacred. How does a faith tradition mobilize to protect a community in the face of external forces and influences? In these cases, there is a defensive turn inward and rootedness in place sustains communities threatened by commodity-driven agriculture, capitalism, Western concepts of scientific forest management, resource extractivism and the alienating forces of modernity deemed destructive to human community formation and well-being. In Chapter 8, Stephen Morse and Sister Nora McNamara describe the case of one successful effort to support sustainable food security in Nigeria. As regional director of a Catholic development organization in Nigeria, McNamara experienced first-hand the challenges of building sustainable food systems given certain economic and political structures,

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local cultural and religious traditions, and the potential for faith-based development organizations to make a difference. In the next chapter, Peter Klepeis analyzes the role of church forests in Ethiopian forest conservation. Ethiopian Orthodox churches maintain some 8000 forests. How these forests are used and managed by local communities has been misunderstood by international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Based on ethnographic data, Klepeis critiques the “biosphere reserve” strategies proposed by these NGOs, who assume local practices are a threat to the integrity of the forest. He found that local villagers successfully manage and protect their forests based on their spiritual traditions. Klepeis concludes that a community-based approach which includes the local faith traditions and knowledge results in better forestry. Judit Farkas’ chapter explores the influence of religion and spirituality in the Hungarian “eco-village” movement. Eco-villages are intentional communities, home to a diverse mixture of religions and spiritualities. The residents include people of Catholic, Hare Krishna and pagan beliefs. They come together in these communities to create a more sustainable way of living, such as minimizing their carbon footprint and producing their own food. The shared commitment of residents to a sustainable lifestyle that embeds them within the local ecosystem— to a communal construction of place—helps to overcome religious differences within the community. Vincent Artman describes the overlap between religion, nationalism and environmental activism in Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan. He follows the story of gold-mining opponents who combine their love of national territory with their love of nature. The deeply rooted, nature-oriented spirituality they express gives authority to their political discourse, taking it beyond resource nationalism. Artman suggests that the Kyrgyz activists have found a useful synthesis of ecology, nationalism and spirituality. In the last four chapters of the book, we see how faith and religious belief informs religious activism that is working toward sustaining the health of the body, community, local environment and planet. These chapters explore how Jewish, Christian and interfaith communities construct a more “progressive” and a multi-scalar vision of faith, place and sustainability. The authors are informed by faith-based notions of

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social and environmental justice that are rooted in place and yet extend the circle of care to other peoples, places and non-humans. In Chapter 12, Alice Hague takes an ethnographic approach to understanding local environmental activism among Christian churches in Scotland. She describes a range of environmental sustainability campaigns that ground the church in community while linking them to the global climate movement. To these Christians, serving the poor is done by fighting to protect the climate. She finds these churches are successful where they connect face-to-face within and between neighborhoods, while also drawing local concerns into an activist network extending around the planet. Edward Davis’ chapter examines how Christian ideas, such as respecting the body as a temple, living simply, loving all of creation and seeking justice for the poor, have been at the root of the food safety, vegetarian, organic farming, food justice and local food movements. These Christian ideas have been used effectively by leaders like Frances Willard, Rachel Carson, Cesar Chavez and Wendell Berry to change the food system. Davis argues that these food movements are now merging around the notion of place. The chapter by Steven Silvern traces the recent rise of the Jewish food movement in the US. This movement uses Judaism’s sacred texts and traditional teachings to promote ethical consumerism and sustainable local food production. Tied to a Jewish renewal movement, biblical teachings are utilized to ground and renew contemporary Jewish identities. While grounded in local places, he demonstrates that the movement extends its circle of care outward to other peoples and places, embracing a multi-scalar conception of place to promote environmental sustainability, food justice and food security at the local, the national and global scales. In the last chapter, Faith Harris and Kendyl Crawford describe the story of an interfaith climate activist organization. This group, Virginia Interfaith Power & Light, employs a womanist approach to the political challenge of environmental justice. They bring together people from Muslim, Buddhist, Pagan, Christian and Native American traditions with the mission of creating and enacting a theology that values humans, animals, plants, water, air and soil as communal partners in life. They

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argue that this partnering is required if we are to overcome the colonialist theology of America’s past and restore spiritual health to the marginalized communities around us. During the final stages of editing this book, the world is wracked by a pandemic of major proportions. The global reach of the novel coronavirus throws into stark relief the existing social and economic inequalities across the globe. The sickness and death wrought by COVID-19 is not experienced equally across populations and places (see Chalabi 2020). Socially and economically disadvantaged groups and places with insufficient political clout, and limited access to healthcare and other resources are the most impacted. Additionally, many of these communities are already more susceptible to the negative impacts of global climate change (Moseley 2020). It remains to be seen how and whether religious traditions and belief systems may help build resilience in this intense moment of change and uncertainty. We hope that the lessons from this book can be applied to this question in future studies.

References Agyeman, J. (2013). Introducing just sustainabilities: Policy, planning, and practice. London: Zed Books. Bohannon, R. (2014). Religions and environments: A reader in religion, nature and ecology. New York: Bloomsbury. Brinkmann, R. (2016). Introduction to sustainability. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell. Brown, B., & Spiegel, S. J. (2019). Coal, climate justice, and the cultural politics of energy transition. Global Environmental Politics, 19 (2), 149–168. Caradonna, J. L. (2014). Sustainability: A history. New York: Oxford University Press. Chalabi, M. (2020, June 11). 100 New Yorkers. The New York Times https:// www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/11/multimedia/coronavirus-newyork-inequality.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage Accessed 11 June 2020. Cresswell, T. (2004). Place: A short introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

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Crutzen, P. J., & Stoermer, E. F. (2000). The “Anthropocene”. IGBP Newsletter, 41, 17–18. Gottlieb, R. S. (Ed.). (2006). The Oxford handbook of religion and ecology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Grim, J., & Tucker, M. E. (Eds.). (2014). Ecology and religion. Washington, DC: Island Press. Hart, J. (Ed.). (2017). The Wiley Blackwell companion to religion and ecology. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Jenkins, W., Tucker, M. E., & Grim, J. (Eds.). (2016). Routledge handbook of religion and ecology. London: Routledge. Johnston, L. F. (2014). Religion and sustainability: Social movements and the politics of the environment. Sheffield, UK: Equinox. Koehrsen, J. (2018). Religious agency in sustainability transitions: Between experimentation, upscaling, and regime support. Environmental Innovation & Societal Transitions, 27, 4–15. Massey, D. (1993). Power geometry and a progressive sense of place. In J. Bird, B. Curtis, T. Putnam, G. Robertson, & L. Tickner (Eds.), Mapping the futures (pp. 59–69). London: Routledge. McFague, S. (2008). A new climate for theology: God, the world, and global warming. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Moseley, W. (2020, May 12). The geography of COVID-19 and a vulnerable global food system. World Politics Review. https://www.worldpoliticsreview. com/articles/28754/the-geography-of-covid-19-and-a-vulnerable-globalfood-system. Accessed 30 May, 2020. Mulligan, M. (2018). An introduction to sustainability: Environmental, social and personal perspectives. London: Routledge. Nixon, R. (2011). Slow violence and the environmentalism of the poor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Robertson, M. (Ed.). (2017). Sustainability principles and practice (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. Robinson, J. (2004). Squaring the circle? Some thoughts on the idea of sustainable development. Ecological Economics, 48(4), 369–384. Sze, J. (Ed.). (2018). Sustainability: Approaches to environmental justice and social power. New York: New York University Press. Sze, J., Rademacher, A., Beamish, T., Grandia, L., London, J., Warren, L., et al. (2018). Introduction. In J. Sze (Ed.), Sustainability: Approaches to environmental justice and social power (pp. 1–25). New York: New York University Press. Thiele, L. P. (2013). Sustainability. Cambridge, UK: Polity.

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Tse, J. K. H. (2014). Grounded theologies: ‘religion’ and the ‘secular’ in human geography. Progress in Human Geography, 38(2), 201–220. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/0309132512475105. Ziegler, S. S. (2019). The Anthropocene in geography. Geographical Review, 109 (2), 271–280. https://doi.org/10.1111/gere.12343.

2 By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them: Religion as Practice R. D. K. Herman

On September 2, 2015, Pope Francis issued a call to take care of the Earth. He asked God to enlighten “those who hold power and money so that they avoid the sin of indifference” in regard to our planet home. (“Pope Francis” 2015) This marked a watershed moment among religious leaders calling on the world’s people to do something, and do something soon, about global climate change—the ultimate indicator that we are managing the planet unsustainably. It may seem that the world’s religions had heretofore been slow in taking a stance on our looming environmental crisis, but in a world dominated by the market economy, where “growth” and “development” are defined in monetary terms, religion today plays an uneasy and diminishing role. Since the Enlightenment, the core messages of world religions have been subsumed by economics and the rise of global capitalism (Grampp 1948; Greisman 1976; Herman 2008). As so many other aspects of life have become commodified, so too has religion become a matter of shopping: one can choose a system of beliefs from the great R. D. K. Herman (B) Pacific Worlds Institute, Mountain View, HI, USA © The Author(s) 2021 S. E. Silvern and E. H. Davis (eds.), Religion, Sustainability, and Place, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7646-1_2

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catalogue of religions that is available to us all. How often have you heard or even said, when learning about an unfamiliar religion, “Oh? What do they believe?” Terms such as “faith” and “beliefs,” when applied to religion, have the further effect of marginalizing religious practice and religious experiences outside the realm of science: belief (religion) is something one has in the absence of knowledge (science). This notion that religion is something one merely “believes,” and that one can acquire or dispose of as the mood suits, marks it as an entity apart from culture, everyday actions and the realm of the real. This has obfuscated the role that what we call “religion” has traditionally played in human life. Religion at its most basic is a fundamental part of the human experience, not an addon. Most importantly, religion is about practice. Yes, belief plays a role, but the real focus is on what we do.

A Short Introduction To be honest and fair in this discussion, I must position myself. My ascendance into cultural geography began from a series of what I would have called “accidents” but now know better than to be so dismissive of a life path. I had been raised Episcopalian by my Jewish father and a mother who had been exposed to various branches of Christianity (including a Quaker boarding school). We were very active in the church across the street from us, and I served as usher, acolyte, crucifer and altar boy from an early age until I left for college. Then I was introduced to Eastern religions in seventh grade at the Episcopal high school I attended. I didn’t really encounter Eastern religions again until college, but it was clear that I was called. The Hare Krishnas could spot me a mile off and always made a beeline for me. Meanwhile, I found that I loved science. In my four years of high school, I took five years of science classes—chemistry, biology and physics—landing me in the advanced-placement physics program at Dartmouth College. There I briefly attended Quaker meeting before I found myself again drawn toward Eastern philosophy. I gave up physics (admittedly, I was in

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over my head) and pursued the major in comparative religion, focusing on religions of India and China. In the fall of my junior year of college, I found myself at loose ends and disgusted with what I felt to be a meaningless void of college life and the career paths toward which it was aiming. So I took the bold step of going to a Buddhist monastery. I phoned a few monasteries in California (where I was determined to go) and asked each of them the same question: “I’m coming to California and would like to stay somewhere where I can learn more about Buddhism and work for my room and board. Can I do that with you?” The first two gave unequivocal No’s. But the third one bit. “Yes, you can do that here,” the person on the other end said, “but we have a very strict practice. This is orthodox Chinese Buddhism transplanted on Western soil, we make very few concessions for Westerners.” “Tell me more,” I asked. “Well, you have to follow the five lay precepts.” “What are those?” I displayed my cluelessness. He explained: No lying, stealing, killing (including following a strict vegetarian diet), sexual misconduct or intoxicants.” Okay, I thought, I can do that. “And we follow a rigorous schedule: up at 3:30 am,” etc. etc. I told him I would think about it, and hung up. I went and discussed the matter with a friend I felt was older and wiser, and he said, “You know, sometimes you have to go 100 percent.” I agreed and called back to tell them I was on my way. I arrived in the evening two weeks later at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Talmage, California, under the leadership of Ch’an (Chinese Zen) master Hsüan Hua. The monk who greeted me informed me that the evening ceremony was already under way. He walked me over to the Buddha hall. Before we went inside, he stopped me and said, “Now when you get inside, you will bow three times to the Buddha.” I stopped dead in my tracks. I didn’t say anything, but my ego was hitting the breaks. “I’m going to do what ? The hell I am, this is bullshit, I don’t bow to anybody!” Grudgingly, I entered the hall and did as I was told, while my insides tied themselves in knots. I had just had my first encounter with the difference between religion as a belief system and religion as a practice.

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I stayed two months at this monastery, following their rigorous schedule. It was the most transformative experience of my life. What I learned (as I read avidly while there) is that Buddhism is a system, a methodology, aimed at enlightenment, which is a state of pure consciousness. This resonated heavily with my scientific background, as I will elaborate below. I returned East after my two-month stay, but I eventually returned briefly to take refuge as a Buddhist lay person. Back at Dartmouth, a course taken to satisfy a general-education requirement introduced me to geography. Here I found a discipline that made sense of worldliness in a way that Buddhism had made sense of the spiritual. I chose to pursue geography with the notion that, with these two disciplines combined, I could effect real change in the world. After college, I headed to the University of Hawai‘i at M¯anoa for an MA in geography. I knew nothing about Hawai‘i, I just wanted to be closer to Asia. But I soon learned that magic is alive and well in these islands. A spiritual encounter, alone in a remote valley, turned me toward Hawaiian Studies. Meanwhile I had been continuing my comparative religion studies on the side and trained in the technique of ho‘oponopono taught by the healing-kahuna (kahuna la‘au lapa‘au) Morrnah Simeona. I have now been doing this practice since 1985. I have always said, “Buddhism gave me the map, ho‘oponopono gave me the vehicle.” I also discovered Urban and Regional Planning as the more applied aspect of geography and studied under Michael Douglas, with a focus on religion and regional development in Asia. I found a book called Principles of Gandhian Planning that led me to Joanna Macy’s Dharma and Development. I ended up writing a masters’ thesis called “Mind and Earth: A Geography of Being,” which drew on all my religious studies (including, by that point, some American Indian approaches and the worldwide phenomenon of shamanism), my regional planning studies, studies of the unconscious by Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell and Stanislav Grof and the social theories of Eric Fromm, Abraham Maslow and others. It was naïve, but still masterful. This study laid the groundwork for my ongoing approach to the world. While my scholarship was subsequently informed by the cultural turn and post-colonialism, the importance of spiritual practice has grown

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only stronger for me as I have gotten older—as Carl Jung recommended it should for all of us. So I write this paper in part as a cultural geographer, and in part—the larger part, I think—as a spiritual practitioner.

Decolonizing Western Bias To begin to even talk about religion in a Western academic context, we need to clarify the invisible role of Western intellectual bias in defining what even counts as a religion. Until relatively recently, the academic study of religions was focused largely on “World Religions”—those religions who have so many adherents, and in some cases which are spread so widely from their heartlands, as to gain the attention of scholars since the expansion of European scholarship around the globe. This focus is particularly Western and still today carries overtones of the colonial and imperialist heritage of European expansion. Geography itself, as a symbiotic partner with European colonization, furthered such hierarchical notions of religion (Herman 2011). After all, rendering non-Europeans as “heathens” was part of the justification for colonialism late into the nineteenth century (see Shaw et al. 2006, Herman 2011). Lubbock’s (1889) The Origin of Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man suggested that religious ideas are a natural part of mental development; he states that “races in a similar state of mental development, however distinct their origin may be, and however distant the regions they inhabit, have very similar religious conceptions.” Lubbock continues, “I have felt doubtful whether this chapter should not be entitled ‘the superstitions’ rather than ‘the religion’ of savages; but have preferred the latter partly because many of the superstitious ideas pass gradually into nobler conceptions.”1 Thus the Western bias conflates “religion” with “belief in God” (i.e., monotheism) as “rational.”

1 It

must be admitted, he states, that savage religions are in fact opposite to ours: it is an affair of this world, not of the next; their deities are evil, not good; and so on.

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Lest we think that such approaches are a thing of the distant past, here are some examples from recent geography scholarship: Chamberlain (2001) refers to “primitive” religions (he does at least put it in quotes). Harrison (2006) uses the term “mainstream religions,” which again prioritizes what are better called “universalizing” religions over localized systems and practices and the connecting principles on which they rest. Indeed, outside the sub-field of Indigenous geography, most of the literature on religion and geography is focused on these universalizing religions to a near complete disregard of the animist traditions that, 2000 years ago, constituted the “mainstream religion” on this planet, and are still found all over the world. As Tishken (2000) states, the very field of comparative religion itself was “partial to living religions, favored textual religions, preferred religions most like Christianity and elevated those religions that were deemed to be ‘big’ or ‘global’ from a European perspective …in teaching this schema, huge portions of the globe are omitted from religious history for enormous amounts of time, [and] oral cultures are ignored in favor of literate/textual ones.” When indigenous peoples’ beliefs and practices are talked about in the geography literature, it all too often retains a dismissive approach, and rather than discussing them from the points of view of actual practitioners, they are presented in the old anthropological terms that viewed such religions as curious belief systems playing roles in larger social systems, rather than as genuine experiences of spiritual phenomena. Thus does Park (2005) state that “Tribal (or traditional) religions involve belief in some power or powers beyond humans, to which they can appeal for help. Examples include the souls of the departed, and spirits living on mountains, in stones, trees or animals.” Such a description belies the rich spiritual ontology of traditional peoples, in which everything is considered to be “alive” or animated, and “connected in dynamic, interactive, and mutually reciprocal relationships” (Cajete 2000, 75, 79). So from the outset, we must clarify that there are, broadly speaking, two kinds of religions (see Park 2005; Gross 2015): traditional “community religions” that have little or no formal organizations (apart from the cultures in which they exist) but are genuine spiritual traditions integral to aspects of communal life, and the more formal “universalizing religions” that arise from individual revelations and become mobile

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institutions with wide arrays of followers.2 These differences, outlined below, have powerful ramifications for the nexus between religion and environmental management (Table 2.1).

Community Religions 1. They are place-based and particular. Community “religions” evolve as inextricable parts of the economic–social–cultural–environmental matrix. As a group of people learn to adapt and survive to their environment, they evolve modes of production, social organizations, political structures and cultural forms. The culture both reflects upon and informs the other three aspects of society. So a hunting-and-gathering culture will have formations in the other three realms that enable their collective survival. And an agricultural society will have different such structures, and—most likely—somewhat different and very localized emphases in what we would call their religion, but which for them is not something apart from everything else that we might collectively call their “culture.” Here I am including as “culture” their physical, economic, social, political and spiritual aspects of production and survival. Here the discipline of geography can be highly elucidating. In any culture, survival and success depend on how the peoples utilize what is available in their environments. This is not environmental determinism, but (if we had to put a label on it) possibilism: there are various possible ways to utilize what is around us, and even more possible ways to organize how to do that. Each society tends to normalize their recipe as the right way. And of course, each situation will continuously evolve with human ingenuity, diffusion of ideas and technologies from other peoples, and so on. At the same time, the human condition tests us to our limits. As one Native Hawaiian practitioner defined it for me, the spiritual is what you reach for when all else fails. And the spiritual realm may answer that 2The term “Community Religions” is not as widely accepted as the more narrow terms “National Religions,” introduced as early as 1882 by Kuenen, or “Ethnic Religions” (see Park 2005), but relieves both of these terms of their specific particularities. That said, the Community Religions project at Leeds uses the term to denote differences in (predominantly) Christianity across different ethnic communities in Britain, so no single term is foolproof.

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Table 2.1 Community religions and universalist religions Community religions

Universalist religions

1. Heritage of particular local communities a. one does not “join” it, but owns it b. Closely associated with specific ethnic groups c. Cannot be exported: “particular” to place/people 2. Largely oral tradition, not fixed to scriptures

1. Open to Anybody a. Anyone can join, members united by shared beliefs b. Easily crosses ethnic, national boundaries c. Exportable

3. Behavior is critical; “belief” not essential 4. Often characterized by Animism: material world = expression of conscious spiritual forces: Gods, nature and animal spirits, good and bad forces These forces often related to PLACE “Spiritual ecology”: Society, environment, and spiritual world form a larger ecological system: 5. Not about Finding God, but about Maintaining Harmony religious law social order environment link: disharmony = trouble 6. “Sin” is borne by the entire community 7. Links to production: Focus on environment

2. Scriptures (sacred books): a. Fixed reference points across borders BUT: differences of interpretation 3. Belief is critical, behavior not as important 4. Tend to be detached from the Environment God seen as separate from Nature Historical Places are important because of human-divine activities that occurred there Deity-Society-Environment not clearly linked 5. Focus on problems of human existence doctrines: how to transcend these problems can be at purely the individual level 6. “Sin” is accounted for personally 7. Links to production: despite beliefs and doctrines, actual practices are affected economic changes that bring cultural shifts

call—with intuitions, inspirations or guidances that seemingly (and I am not questioning this) come from beyond . And once one has experienced the beyond in person, one realizes that there is something there. Some individuals (and, it appears, some peoples or cultures) more easily experience this spiritual connection, usually because it is an accepted part of their cultures and not considered an aberration.

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But, back to the point: the hunter-gatherer society will have a “religion” that is more focused on the animals and the spirits that guide them, and on guidance to find the right plants. An agricultural society might focus more on sun or rain aspects of the universe. In both cases, the communal manifestation of the religion will embody other aspects of social organization. These cultures—and what we can, from our distance, call their “religions”—are integral to the people and the places in which they live. One does not own it, one is part of it, along with the whole community. It is simply a fact of life, a way of being in the world that is socially affirmed and environmentally based. Hence it is not exportable. It is not a commodity apart from the rest of social, economic and political life. It is place-based, and it is an ontology essential to survival. 2. Their basis is in oral tradition. In such situations, there are generally no scriptures. These are not religions that devolve from the revelation of a single individual, but have accreted from the experiences of community members over generations. They have become lore, without accruing dogma. 3. Behavior is more important than belief . Because these “religions” are integral aspects of society, they emphasize behavior rather than belief. There is no claim to absolute truth, just to what is understood within that particular system, so the main issue is what you do. Such traditions, being intimately intertwined with the living world, tend to be more what Westerners would call animistic: the material world is understood as the expression of conscious, spiritual forces. And these forces are generally connected to places. Hence such cultures demonstrate spiritual ecologies of being , in which society, environment and the spiritual world form a larger ecological system. In such an ecology, humanity sees and understands itself as part of an integrated web that constantly seeks homeostasis. If humanity upsets that balance by affecting other species, it affects the entire web and in turn affects humanity. So, if we create a monocrop agricultural system (removing all other plant species but one), then spray pesticides on it (further eradicating some insect and probably bird species and soil microbes); the resulting imbalance will affect humanity: through losses of additional species (e.g., pollinators), increases in other species (“pests”),

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and decreases in productivity requiring more chemical inputs. The spiritual aspect of existence underlies all of this, and informs us—if we listen—how to not let our selfishness and thinking mind get ahead of what is appropriate. 4. Emphasis on maintaining harmony. Within such a system—as in any ecosystem—the emphasis is on balance and harmony—within the community, between the community and the rest of creation, and between the community and the spiritual world. The people have devised—through generations of observation—principles of order in the world across the environmental/economic, social and spiritual realms. Again, anything that causes imbalance in one realm can bring imbalance all around. So the focus is on maintaining harmony, rather than on some form of spiritual salvation. If things go out of balance, effort is made to bring them back into balance. This is where sustainability comes into play. The very nature of sustainable management is finding—and maintaining—a balance between the needs of the community and the needs of the natural world. Unsustainable activity such as the overharvesting of a particular species creates an imbalance that will have impacts on the human community. The current COVID-19 crisis may be just such an example (Kadaba 2020). Now, scientific experts can tell us, based on physical data, how to act more sustainably. The ancients had both physical and social data (observations over generations) and intuition (spiritual guidance) that they learned to listen to. 5. The negative effects of one’s actions are communal . Again, anything that brings disharmony affects the entire community: the rains don’t come, the animals don’t come, a pestilence does come, or whatever. To restore balance, the cause of this disharmony must be found, and restitution must be made in some form. Shamans—people who have the gift of traveling between the human, environmental and spiritual worlds—are often the ones to determine the problem and the solution. Their spiritual guides will tell them what needs to be done to restore the balance.

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Universalizing Religions In contrast to these community religions, universalizing religions are religions that anyone can join, regardless of race, gender, class, language or location. They derive from the revelation of one individual, whose teachings (written down then or later) become a canon. 1. They are open to anyone. What makes these “universalizing” religions is that anyone can join. They are not about the place, the culture or the environment, but about the individual’s relationship to the Ineffable. Hence they can transcend ethnic and cultural boundaries. They are exportable. But this also means that they are not linked to place. There is no necessary, inherent connection with the local environment. Divinity can be seen as entirely separate from (and even antithetical to) Nature. True, places associated with special events in the history of the religion can be important, but there is not the divinity–society–environment interconnection found in community religions. 2. They have scriptures. What makes them even more exportable is written scriptures, e.g., the Bible, the Qur’an, the myriad Buddhist texts. Once you get the texts, you can follow the instructions yourself. The texts can be sent (or brought) to other places and spread among other peoples. Of course, such religions also often tend to proselytize, sending out missionaries to encourage non-adherents to join, or (in other cases) converting people by force. 3. Belief can be more important than practice. Whereas community “religions” are inseparable from the broader culture and environment, universalizing religions are something one can take on. But first you must believe in the doctrines presented. In some cases, belief itself is thought to be enough to bring salvation in an afterlife, regardless of one’s actions, as in the case of those who convert on their deathbeds. At the popular level, mere adherence to a particular religion—regardless of anything one does—can be mobilized for purposes distinctly opposite the teachings of the religions themselves, such as war, genocide, oppression and expulsion. 4. The emphasis is on individual salvation. Universalist religions focus primarily on the individual. They provide instructions for a path to some

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sort of salvation, in this life or the next. True, they teach how one should act toward others, but the emphasis remains on the individual: you act appropriately for your own good, ultimately, not the good of others. Though if you read closely, your own path is intimately linked with how you treat others. 5. The negative effects of one’s actions are personal . Any action that causes disharmony (“sin”) is an individual matter, not a community matter. It is up to the individual to atone for one’s actions, or bear the penalty for wrongdoing. The principles elaborated above are quite general, and specific points can and are debated.3 And as I will elaborate below, as universalizing religions spread, they adapt with local cultures, and also evolve over time in these new locales, creating what may appear more like community religions. So the division between community and universalizing religions is not clear cut. But it does offer us a powerful tool for considering the relationship between religious practice and environmental sustainability.4

The Trajectory of Universalizing Religions Because universalizing religions spread beyond the core group to farflung regions and peoples, they have a very different relationship to culture than community religions. The pattern goes something like this: An individual, generally after some period of trial and tribulation, experiences the Ineffable. Then they teach others about it, sharing it with others who become followers. Those teachings become doctrine, and are written down. A formal organization arises, perhaps after the founding teacher is gone. Such organizations then become the mediators that interpret the original teachings. Differences over interpretations lead 3 Park

(2004), for example, separates “tribal” or “traditional” religions (such as those of indigenous peoples) from Judaism and Hinduism, which he categorizes as “ethnic religions.” For discussion of “Hinduization,” see Sikand and Katju (1994), and for Jewish proselytizing, see Goodman (1992, 54). 4 Of course, all religions—even “community” ones—can serve to confer legitimacy on relations of power within the society.

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to divisions within the organization, and sections split off, nominally of the same religion but emphasizing somewhat different sets of beliefs and practices. As the religion spreads geographically, it intermixes with local cultures to take on new meanings, interpretations and practices that are acceptable to the local peoples. And as those cultures’ values change over time, the religion adapts to those changes (however slowly and reluctantly). In all cases, these sets of beliefs and practices influence how the members approach issues of the human condition—poverty, social justice, gender equality, environmental justice and so forth. So a universalizing religion that is, say, 2000 years old will look very different from what it looked like at the outset, and will be practiced very differently in locations far from its original homeland. The evolution of local culture, the admixture with new cultures, then the evolution of cultural values, ideas and technologies, as well as the influx of new ideas from outside, push these changes. For example, Christianity—a Middle Eastern religion—came to the USA from Europe some 1500 years after its founding. By that time, through diffusion and differentiation, it had taken on myriad forms that for the most part were nearly unrecognizable to its origins, despite the existence of a written doctrine. When it was spread to the Hawaiian islands in the 1820s via Congregationalist missionaries from New England (where two centuries earlier, Protestants from England had planted themselves to avoid religious persecution), these New Englanders saw Christianity as inextricably linked with their own culture. Hence they insisted that in order to be Christians, Native Hawaiians had to be dressed in Western clothing, live in Western-style houses, eat with knives and forks, work eight-hour days and receive “Christian” (i.e., EnglishLanguage) names. None of this is found in the original teachings; none of this was practiced by the immediate disciples of Jesus. In Africa, on the other hand, efforts to decolonize and indigenize Christianity in the late nineteenth century drew on elements from traditional African religions and cultures, leading to the establishment of African Indigenous Churches disconnected from Western church traditions and their structures, leaders, doctrines and disciplines. As Fatokun (2005, 367) states, “These indigenous churches, which developed in

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response to the needs and understanding of African people have together become an extensive movement characterized by rich creativity and astonishing diversity.” In China, the native Taoism mixed with the teachings of Confucius plus Buddhism (from India) to become what geographers call “Chinese religion,” a term describing “the myriad beliefs adhered to by the majority of the Chinese population, which is highly eclectic, reflected in the varied nomenclature adopted to describe it” (Tong and Kong 2000, 32). Buddhism has diversified further with its spread to Tibet, Japan, Korea and the United States. Here again, it is important to point out that while the community religions emphasize balance and sustainability, the universalizing religions may not. This is particularly true of Protestant forms of Christianity that found ways to justify the emerging capitalist system with its exploitative behavior. Much has been written regarding what Weber5 called the “disenchantment of the world” that took place after the Reformation: the living world was rendered as “resources” and nature was poised apart from (if not antithetical to) humanity, hence open for exploitation (Herman 2015; Van Ruler 2000; Plumwood 1991; Greisman 1976). This shift in ontology marked the demise of sustainability for the planet. Finally there is the reshaping of religious beliefs and practices by modernity. This is easily exemplified by the perhaps more directly exemplified by the adoption of artificial birth control in the wealthier Catholic countries. Ordinary people broke with the Catholic leadership on how to determine the number of children they have. The birthrate in Italy (wherein the Vatican resides) is among the lowest in the world. Catholic countries Spain, Portugal and France are not far behind (Population Reference Bureau 2019). Why? Because of the demographic transition that accompanied the industrial revolution and the urbanization of modern society, rendering children an economic burden, not the economic benefit they were in peasant agrarian society. This change in values and economic priorities overrode the teachings of the church.

5 Weber

is quoted in H. C. Greisman “‘Disenchantment of the World’: Romanticism, Aesthetics and Sociological Theory” The British Journal of Sociology, 27/4 (1976): 496–497.

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Religion as Methodology What my science background taught me was the notion of universal laws: principles that are always true, everywhere, without conditions (to the best we know). In short, truth is unconditioned . It cannot be dependent on something else; it cannot be one thing here and another thing there. There cannot be one true god for the Christians and another true god for Muslims, and so forth. That is not truth. That is more like the four blind men with the elephant, each believing they have found a different phenomenon. What all religions have in common is a methodology for the individual to experience that ultimate, unconditioned state of being. This is generally more clearly outlined in the universalizing religions, but is found everywhere else nonetheless. Each tradition presents a coherent system, a methodology, for experiencing the Ineffable. And different traditions (or sub-traditions within larger, umbrella traditions such as the universalizing religions) offer different pathways. It is up to the individual to find the particular path that works best for them.6 But the work is no easy task. This is the path of saints, sadhus, monks and nuns. It is the work of stripping away all that is conditioned in oneself to reach the unconditioned mind. It is the very opposite of fun and pleasure. I make this point to draw our attention away from “belief systems” as a way of talking about religions. Sure, you do have to believe in the efficacy of the system you are using in order to be truly committed to it, but belief itself is just a tool toward the actual knowledge and experience of the Ineffable, and is not an end in itself. The basic principle underlying spiritual methodologies is selflessness. There are two opposing aspects of human nature. The first is our egobiological nature, rooted in our physical bodies and encoded in the universal instinct for self-preservation. Like all living beings, we are inherently coded to protect ourselves and our immediate families. I call this aspect self -ish-ness. In all societies, there are forces and structures 6 Hinduism

and Buddhism are particularly overt about this, embracing wide ranges of techniques to suit the needs of different people.

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in place to mitigate against the worst tendencies of outright selfishness toward which this could lean. The spiritual nature is rooted in our self -less-ness. By letting go of things—everything, including the ego—one can experience one’s true nature as a part of Divinity. Religions lay out methodologies and instructions for others to follow a path in order to achieve such divine realization. At the societal level, religions (whether community or universalizing) admonish us in the direction of self-less-ness and toward taking care of each other and the world around us. The spiritual principle leans toward humility, frugality, social equity and balance and harmony across human, natural and spiritual worlds. Unfortunately, the tension between these two aspects of the self makes following the path to divine realization very difficult. Hence “many are called, but few are chosen” (Matthew 22:14). Most people make do with a limited degree of adherence to those guidelines, and otherwise focus on raising their families, doing their jobs and living ordinary lives. These we can call “lay people.” Each religion, however, has its small groups that really try to do what their founders instructed: monks, nuns, yogis, Sufis, Kabbalists.7 They renounce the world to follow the path.

The Basic Recipe Earlier I noted the Five Lay Precepts of Buddhism that I encountered at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. I am going to add to these “possessionless-ness,” for while this is not required at the first stage of being a Buddhist lay person, non-attachment is a fundamental principle of Buddhism enshrined in the Four Noble Truths: (1) life is dissatisfying (often translated as “suffering”); (2) we experience constant dissatisfaction because of our attachments: to objects, to feelings, to people, and to our own egos; (3) letting go of attachments brings the end of dissatisfaction; and (4) the key to letting go of attachments is the Eightfold Path of focusing one’s mind, body and activities toward this end. 7I

locate Christian priests (and their counterparts in other universalizing religions) as somewhere in between lay people and true adherents. Their renunciation is partial, and their business is still with the worldly.

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So the lay precepts are not about morality. They are the foundation of a life path—a practice—toward letting go of attachments. I found nearly these exact same five as the first precepts (yamas) of Jñana Yoga, the Hindu yoga of knowledge (Daniélou 1955). As with Buddhist monasticism, this is a strict practice for those truly dedicated to the realization of the Divine. At the introductory level, the practice includes five vows, only one of which differs from the Buddhist lay precepts. Then, re-reading the Gospels, I came across nearly this exact same recipe. There is an oft-cited incident (Matthew 19: 16–24), the punchline of which is commonly known but the lead-up is too often forgotten: And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? And he said unto him…”if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.” He saith unto him, “Which?” Jesus said, “Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” The young man saith unto him, “All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?” Jesus said unto him, “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.” But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions. Then said Jesus unto his disciples…“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”

Putting this together, we see the recipe. Table 2.2 puts these together side by side, showing the overlap of five main principles, with some variations in emphasis beyond them. It shows that there is a clear pattern here on behavior. And these kinds of behavior required should have implications for how one interacts with the environment. Here is where the confluence of the universalizing with the local should produce something that both teaches the path to revelation, but also respect for the living world as manifestations of (for lack of a better word) Divinity. Had this happened, and had the principles of selflessness been maintained, we would not be in so bad an environmental crisis as we are in today.

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Table 2.2 Comparison of the major basic principles of the spiritual path across three traditions Buddhist Lay Precepts

Yogic Yamas

Matthew 19: 16–24

Do not kill Do not steal Do not lie

Ahimsa (do no harm) Asteya (no stealing) Satya (truthfulness)

No sexual misconduct

Brahmacharya (moderating the senses, includes celibacy) Aparigraha (non-possessiveness)

Do not murder Do not steal Do not bear false witness Do not commit adultery

Non-possessiveness

Give away all your possessions

Do not take intoxicants Honor thy father and thy mother Love thy neighbor as thyself

But as I have elaborated elsewhere (Herman 2015), Christianity in general began transforming with the Reformation and the Industrial Revolution, and increasingly over time came to accommodate and justify capitalist expansion, the de-sacralization and exploitation of nature as “natural resources,” and global imperialism. “Lead us not into temptation” gave way to the promotion of goods, services and experiences for consumption. Capitalism thrives on temptation and desire, on wanting more than we have or need. Advertising, television and the internet have taken this to the most remote places on the globe. Pursuit of individual self-interest even earned the name “economic rationalism” and became the gospel of economic development approaches.8 Thus not only has core religious message of self-less-ness fallen prey to the cultural and economic forces of self-ish-ness, but this trend is actually fostered as a positive value—a religion, even, that needs to be defended against “heretics” who might suggest we should all lead simpler, more sustainable lifestyles. Hence at the outset of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, U.S. president George H.W. Bush famously declared:

8 Ling

(1980) argues that economic development in Sri Lanka (a predominantly Buddhist country) would proceed more easily if their form of Buddhism became more “Protestant.

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“The American way of life is not up for negotiation. Period.” (The Economist 2003). Moreover, religious organizations, like any other organisms, too often end up working to ensure their self-preservation rather than focusing on the perpetuation of the original message. Some religious leaders and institutions take up social and political ideologies that foster enmity toward certain groups of people. Some religious believers of different persuasions hate, fight and even kill each other. Some religious leaders fall prey to corruption. And so on. The original teaching—the path of selflessness that can lead to the experience of the ineffable—can have a hard time remaining front and center amidst all these forces.

Religion, Science, and Sustainability Today Before the twentieth century, religion and science were not seen as being in opposition, but as two different and complementary pathways to knowledge (Hutchinson 2011; Hayek 1955). The cultural split between these two approaches to knowledge needs to be healed. The sciences have taught us what traditional religions have maintained all along: that we are thoroughly interconnected with the natural world, to the point of sharing the bulk of our DNA with all other creatures (Hinchliff et al. 2015). We are linked in a web of cycles—carbon, water, energy, minerals, etc.—and cannot understand our being apart from these cycles. To take care of the world is to take care of ourselves, and vice versa. As a small example of how religion can be reinterpreted for the needs of today, I have seen Indigenous students and scholars integrating science with their traditional ontologies to produce new research and new initiatives addressing environmental issues. I have seen students from Haskell Indian Nations University use GIS software to map and approach issues on tribal lands integrating traditional legends, lessons and values. They are at one and the same time advancing the use of scientific tools and traditional knowledge and ontology. My more intimate involvement has been with Native Hawaiian spiritual tradition. Hawaiian tradition is distinctly tied to a place and its people, seeing all the world as family. This is most clearly encoded in the

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Kumulipo, a genealogical chant that outlines—very much like a natural history—the appearance of life forms from the most minute to the largest and most complex. The point of the story, as it is told today, is that all of creation is genealogically related. Specifically, the islands themselves, the taro plant (the staple food) and humanity are direct siblings. And in animist style, the manifest world is understood as interconnected with and emerging from an unmanifest world, the world of gods, demonstrating a holistic spiritual ecology (Herman 1999) (Fig. 2.1). While this system fell largely into disuse first with the ending of the religio-legal kapu system in 1819 by Hawaiian leaders, and was then hammered almost to extinction by Christian missionaries and capitalistminded Westerners, it is today making a return in a new form. As I pointed out earlier, all religions speak to us in the codes and terminology that are appropriate to our culture and worldview. Modern Hawaiians— of which there are an ever-growing number with advanced degrees in sciences—do not think in the same terms as their ancestors, but push

Fig. 2.1 Hawaiian “spiritual ecology,” showing network of relationships between the material world and the spiritual world in Hawaiian cosmology (Source Designed by Rubellite Kawena Johnson)

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their understanding and interpretations in new directions in accordance with new intellectual perspectives. In the first major scholarly treatise on Hawaiian religion, Dudley (1986, 1990) redefined the Hawaiian term “akua,” theretofore translated as “gods,” to mean “active consciousness.” This idea has recently been taken much farther by Kealiikanakaoleohaililani and Giardina (2016, 63): all forms and functions (biotic and abiotic, physical and non-physical, observable and non-observable, dynamic, inert, internal, external) are akua expressions. As a result, all interactions are by definition akua or potentiality, and so are sacred. But what does that mean, to be sacred? In native Hawaiian thought, sacred means that there is vitality about an object, a thought, a feeling, or an action, which is experienced through relationship. It is this vitality or mana [life force] that brings form to some things and consciousness to others.

In their works, these authors detail ways in which Hawaiian holistic tradition is being re-interpreted and reapplied for people today: how the gods of old are now being understood as principles in nature that have distinct and recognizable characteristics and how important it is that each of us understand our interconnection to all of creation: “to ignore, permit, or actively participate in the degradation of kanaka [people] or the aina (environment) is to ignore, permit, or actively participate in the degradation of a family member. Ultimately, this degradation returns to the self ” (ibid.). On the ground, sustainability manifested in the moku-ahupua‘ a system: islands were divided like slices of a pie, from the mountains to the sea. Larger divisions (moku) were intended to be mostly self-sustainable. Smaller slices within the moku (ahupua‘a) were controlled by a chief, who appointed a land/sea manager (konohiki ). That person’s duty was to manage the resources of the ahupua‘a sustainably. So when the konohiki saw that a particular resource (a type of tree or species of fish, for example) was getting low, they would put a kapu (taboo) on it until it was able to regenerate. This of course was lost with the American conquest of the islands and the imposition of free-market capitalism.

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Today I have seen contemporary Native Hawaiians getting laws passed to protect subsistence lifestyles (Herman 2018a), or rejuvenating an 800year-old fish pond that had fallen into disrepair, or reviving traditional holistic medical practices (Herman 2018b), all using science. In just the past few years, ahupua‘a markers have been placed along the highways. There are other glimmers that ahupua‘a /thinking may be coming back. And certainly the COVID-19 crisis has emphasized the importance of being locally sustainable.9 True, it is easier on an island to recognize the interconnection with the natural world, and the fragility of maintaining that balance. But what today’s environmental crises—climate change, species extinction, pandemics10 —have been teaching us is that the Earth is an island. It’s small and fragile and we have nothing else, so we need to take care of it. This does not mean that Native Hawaiians—or any other traditional society—have always acted sustainably. The role of the tradition is to encourage such behavior against the self-ish-ness that resides in human nature. But sometimes people forget, or a tragedy of the commons occurs in which a resource is over-exploited. We now know that there were flightless birds on the Hawaiian Islands when Polynesians arrived, which are long since extinct. Same is true of the ostrich-like moa in Aotearoa (New Zealand). But people can learn from their mistakes, hence there is a M¯aori proverb Kua ngaro i te ngaro o te moa, “Lost as the moa was lost” (Wehi et al. 2018). This is a lesson we need to re-learn today. Today’s environmental crisis demands that we reconnect with the core principles of balance and harmony between the human, natural and spiritual realms. It is a moment when every adherent of every religion—heeding science—should realize that something is wrong with how humanity has been altering this planet, and to realize that it comes from not following the basic principles that every religion has taught us: that self-less-ness must rise above self-ish-ness, that we are embedded within all of creation, and that how we treat that whole affects us in turn. The

9 At

the present time, the majority of food in the state (as much as 90%) is imported, arriving by cargo ship. In pre-contact times, the islands may have self-supported a population equally large as today’s. 10 I write this as the coronavirus pandemic approaches its peak.

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belief system which holds that infinite economic growth in a finite world is both possible and desirable needs to be cast aside as heresy. These principles exist in all religions and have been elaborated by environmental writers for decades. The trick is to experience our interconnectedness with all of creation as a lived reality. And that requires seeing your spiritual tradition as a practice—no matter what tradition it may be—and strive to implement it in your daily life. Inasmuch as I understood Buddhism as a scientific approach to spirituality, so too can any of us understand spirituality as a science of being and becoming that focuses on the entirety of our existence in the world. Every religion teaches us how to act, and where we act is right here— wherever we are at the time. In Hawaiian language, the term pono means to act in a way that is appropriate for the situation, in order to restore balance. There is no formula for it, it is a judgment call based on your highest intuition and moral compass, and sometimes it requires that you take the hit. I can think of no greater contribution to the discussion of religion and spirituality than this notion of pono, and its implication for our responsibility to treat the world sustainably. Do the right thing, right there where you are. For you are God’s eyes on the scene. And it is the fruits of your actions, not your beliefs, that can save the world.

References Cajete, G. (2000). Native science: Natural laws of interdependence. Santa Fe: Clear Light Publishers. Chamberlain, P. G. (2001). Topomystia: Investigation into the concept of mystic place. Journal of Cultural Geography, 19 (1), 97–123. Daniélou, A. (1955). Yoga: The method of re-integration. New York: University Books. Dudley, M. (1986). A philosophical analysis of pre-European-contact Hawaiian thought. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Hawai‘i. Dudley, M. (1990). A Hawaiian nation I: Man, Gods, and nature. Honolulu: Na Kane O Ka Malo Press. The Economist. (2003, February 13). A greener Bush. https://www.economist. com/leaders/2003/02/13/a-greener-bush. Accessed 5 June 2020.

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Fatokun, S. A. (2005). Christianity in Africa: A historical appraisal. Verbum et Ecclesia, 26 (2), 357–368. Goodman, M. (1992). Jewish proselytizing in the first century. In J. Lieu, J. North, & T. Rajak (Eds.), The Jews among Pagans and Christians in the Roman Empire (pp. 53–78). New York: Routledge. Grampp, W. D. (1948). Adam Smith and the economic man. Journal of Political Economy, 56 (4), 315–336. Greisman, H. C. (1976). ‘Disenchantment of the world’: Romanticism, aesthetics and sociological theory. The British Journal of Sociology, 27 (4), 495–507. Gross, R. (2015). Models of religious belonging. In S. Premawardhana (Ed.), Religious conversion: Religion scholars thinking together (pp. 32–44). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Harrison, V. (2006). The pragmatics of defining religion in a multicultural world. The International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 59, 133–152. Hayek, F. (1955). The counter-revolution of science: Studies on the abuse of reason. London: Collier-Macmillan Limited. Herman, R. D. K. (1999). The aloha state: Place names and the anti-conquest of Hawai‘i. Annals, Association of American Geographers, 89 (1), 76–92. Herman, R. D. K. (2008). Reflections on the Importance of indigenous geography. American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 32(3), 73–88. Herman, R. D. K. (2011). The life of the land: Missionary geography in the Hawaiian Islands. Missiology: An International Review, 39 (1), 59–78. Herman, R. D. K. (2015). Traditional knowledge in a time of crisis: Climate change, culture and communication. Sustainability Science, 11(1), 163–176. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11625-015-0305-9. Herman, R. D. K. ed. (2018a). Pacific Worlds: H¯a‘ena New. http://www.pacifi cworlds.com/haena2htm/index.htm. Herman, R. D. K. ed. (2018b). Pacific Worlds: He‘eia. http://www.pacificwo rlds.com/heeia/index.htm. Hinchliff, C., Smith, S., Allman, J., Burleigh, J., Chaudhary, R., Coghill, L., et al. (2015). Synthesis of phylogeny and taxonomy into a comprehensive tree of life. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(41), 12764– 12769. Hutchinson, I. (2011). Monopolizing knowledge. Belmont, MA: Fias Publishing. Kadaba, K., (2020). 5 ways environmental damage drives human diseases like COVID-19. Ecowatch, https://www.ecowatch.com/environmental-dam

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age-human-diseases-2645853728.html?rebelltitem=4#rebelltitem4. Accessed 4 May 2020. Kealiikanakaoleohaililani, K., & Giardina, C. (2016). Embracing the sacred: An indigenous framework for tomorrow’s sustainability science. Sustainability Science, 11, 57–67. Ling, T. (1980). Buddhist values and development problems: A case study of Sri Lanka. World Development, 8(7/8), 577–586. Lubbock, J. (1889). The origin of civilisation and the primitive condition of man. New York: D. Appleton and Company. Macy, J. (1983). Dharma and development: Religion as a resource in the Sarvodaya Self-Help Movement. West Hartford: Kumarian Press. Narayan, S. A. (1960). Principles of Gandhian planning. Allahabad: Kitab Mahal-Allahabad. Park, C. (2005). Religion and geography. In J. R. Hinnells (Ed.), Routledge companion to the study of religion (pp. 439–455). London and New York: Routledge. Plumwood, V. (1991). Nature, self, and gender: Feminism, environmental philosophy, and the critique of rationalism. Hypatia, 6 (1), 3–27. “Pope Francis calls on wealthy and powerful to protect the Earth”. (2015, September 2). The Statesman. https://www.thestatesman.com/world/ pope-francis-calls-on-wealthy-and-powerful-to-protect-earth-86937.html. Accessed 5 June 2020. Population Reference Bureau. (2019). World Population Data Sheet: Births per 1,000 population. https://www.prb.org/international/indicator/births/table. Shaw, W. S., Herman, R. D. K., & Dobbs, G. R. (2006). Encountering indigeneity: Re-imagining and decolonizing geography. Geografiska Annaler, 88B(3), 267–276. Sikand, Y., & Katju, M. (1994). Mass conversions to Hinduism among Indian Muslims. Economic and Political Weekly, 29 (34), 2214–2219. Tishken, J.E. (2000). Ethnic vs. evangelical religions: Beyond teaching the world religion approach. The History Teacher, 33(3), 303–320. Tong, C. K., & Kong, L. (2000). Religion and modernity: Ritual transformations and the reconstruction of space and time. Social and Cultural Geography, 1(1), 29–44. van Ruler, H. (2000). Minds, forms, and spirits: The nature of Cartesian disenchantment. Journal of the History of Ideas, 61(3), 381–395.

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Wehi, P., Whaanga, H., & Cox, M. (2018). Dead as the moa: Oral traditions show that early M¯aori recognised extinction. The Conversation, https://the conversation.com/dead-as-the-moa-oral-traditions-show-that-early-maorirecognised-extinction-101738. Accessed 4 May 2020.

3 Finding/Revealing/Creating Judaism’s Indigenous Core David Mevorach Seidenberg

Introduction The biblical religious traditions that birthed Judaism are indigenous to Canaan/Israel/Palestine. Why this matters, and how it plays out both in the indigenous context of Judaism’s origins and in post-exilic contexts, is the focus of this chapter. What wisdom can be found in Judaism’s indigenous past, and how does that indigenous wisdom evolve and get deepened under conditions of exile from the land of Judaism’s origins? “Indigenous” is a valorizing term, for good reasons. Seeing Judaism as an indigenous tradition can mean that it is a repository for essential and unique wisdom related to the land.1 There are reasons to contest this premise: Most significantly, the biblical stories themselves do not claim that the Israelites are indigenous. Moreover, academic discussions 1 My

teacher Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi taught that every religion functions as an essential organ of the body of the human species necessary for redeeming the world.

D. M. Seidenberg (B) Northampton, MA, USA © The Author(s) 2021 S. E. Silvern and E. H. Davis (eds.), Religion, Sustainability, and Place, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7646-1_3

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outside of Jewish studies largely presume that the Jewish polity in the land of Israel is an example of settler colonialism. This presents us with a conundrum. Evaluated independently from Zionism, Judaism and Jewish peoplehood meet all the criteria for being indigenous. Evaluated independently from Judaism and Jewish peoplehood, Zionism is barely distinguishable from settler colonialism. Given that no generally agreed upon theoretical framework yet exists to integrate these realities, most contemporary discussion about Jewish indigenousness becomes mired in polemics about the conflict between Israel the state and Palestine, not yet a state. We need to establish a perspective that is not contingent on that modern conflict. A more productive perspective arises from the frameworks of eco-philosophy and eco-theology and the question of sustainability. We can test this perspective in two ways. Firstly, does the lens of indigenousness helps us better understand Jewish peoplehood and Judaism? Secondly and more pressingly, does it enable us to discern wisdom that our world needs now, not only because it might resolve political conflicts, but more importantly because it might help us deal with the deeper catastrophic conflict of humanity with the more-thanhuman world we call Nature, a conflict that threatens life as we know it on this planet? To explore these questions, I will start with an imagined understanding of the historical context in which biblical religion arose.

The Land That Drinks from the Heavens Seven thousand years ago, Sumer, in Mesopotamia, was one of the greatest civilizations the world has ever known—the creator of paradigms and inventions that spread the world over, including writing and the plow (Eisenberg 1998, 69–125; 2000, esp. 26–41). It was moreover a morally creative civilization, the best of whose shepherd-kings took responsibility for the poor and articulated laws to protect them (Starr 2015; Zaccagnini 1994). Its collapse would have had a tremendous impact on the many civilizations it had touched, whether through trade or slaves or war or treaty.

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The details of Sumer’s collapse remain the subject of debate. But some combination of ecological factors almost certainly led to this collapse. These included the Sumerians’ own over-farming of what had been marshlands and over-flooding those lands with standing water that came from the Tigris or Euphrates via a system of canals, along with overlogging of the slopes where the great rivers originated, which was carried out not by the Sumerians but by their trading partners to meet Sumer’s wealth-born need for wood (Perlin 1995, 35–43). The land bloomed with salt as the original water table rose, rain patterns on the slopes that fed the rivers changed without a forest to moisten the air as it passed over, and fertile nutrients that were once carried from those slopes to the valley in right measure eroded away as the slopes were denuded, the flow leeching mineral salt as it sped on faster and faster to distant plains (Artzy and Hillel 1988; Perlin 1995, 38, 43; Eisenberg 1998, 122– 124). The main staple crop that could be grown shifted from wheat to barley, the land’s fertility declined, and eventually, the land of Sumer was abandoned (Artzy and Hillel 1988; Jacobsen and Adams 1958; Eisenberg 1998, 124). By the time the Sumerians realized there was a problem—even if they could have understood its ecological causes—it would have been too late. The salinization of the land that ended Sumer still affects the fertility of the Mesopotamian valley to this day, five thousand years later (Eisenberg 1998, 32). Mesopotamia was the matrix from which Canaanite and Israelite culture grew (Middleton 2005, 130–136, 147–184).2 This is reflected in the Genesis story, when Abram, soon to become Abraham, leaves the Mesopotamian valley and Ur Kasdim with his family to head to Canaan. What is history, what is memory, what is myth, is beyond discernment. His story, set after the biblical dispersion from Bavel (Babylonia), seems 2 Pointedly,

in Mesopotamia, the king alone was also seen as the image of God. The Torah’s assertion that all humanity was “in God’s image” was a both a rejection and refinement of that idea (Middleton 145). Sumer’s stance vis-à-vis its own culture’s achievements was also ambiguous: The destruction of the natural world resulting from human insecurity is a major theme of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the highlight of which is Gilgamesh’s journey to the sacred mountain forests with his companion Enkidu, where they slay Humbaba, god of the forests, and strip the forests bare. This can be read as a story of human triumph, or a story of human desecration (Sentesy 2020).

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to start at least one or two civilizations after Sumer. What is important is that the sought-after land of Canaan was archetypally the opposite of Mesopotamia—a hilly land dependent almost entirely upon rainfall, which could not be irrigated by diverting any river’s flow. The references the Bible makes to a land watered by rivers are not to Sumer, however, but to the land of Egypt, whose social system and wealth were entirely sustained by the annual overflow of the Nile. Egypt takes Sumer’s place, becoming the biblical paragon of an unsustainable, hierarchical, idolatrous, even murderous society, one radically out of sync with divine intention. Being out of sync was a function of Egypt’s ecology: Because the river could be counted on to flood like clockwork, Egypt had no need to appeal to divine providence for its sustenance. This distinction, which to most modern ears would sound like a boon, is the reason for Egypt’s contumely and Canaan’s praise: For the land that you are coming to is not like the land of Egypt, which you came out from, where you sowed your seed and gave drink with your foot (by pumping water from the Nile), like a garden of greens. [For] the land where you are passing over to is a land of mountains and valleys – through the rain of the heavens will she drink water – a land which YHVH your God seeks after; the eyes of YHVH your God are continually upon her, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. (Deut. 11:10–12)3

A land that must drink from the heavens is a land where people depend on rainfall and have no control over irrigation, a land subject to drought. And yet the Torah teaches this is the ideal land, the land of promise, because “the eyes of YHVH your God are continually upon her.” This mystical-sounding relationship describes a simple ecological reality, imagined from a divine perspective: The lack of human control over irrigation means that God is continually assessing whether the people merit rain. Canaan was the opposite of the land of Egypt, which can go for centuries sustained by the Nile’s flooding and the technology of the pedal pump, no matter the state of the weather or the state of justice, until it finally 3YHVH is usually translated as “the Lord” but more accurately refers to the source of all being. All translations are the author’s.

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gets its proverbial 7 years of famine or its ten all-consuming plagues. Unlike Egypt, the feedback loop in Canaan is short and swift—the loop may be closed, the consequences felt, within a season or two. It is that very fact—that everyone’s tenure is tenuous—that makes Canaan/Israel a holy land. That this is the intended meaning is clear from the passage that follows, Deut. 11:13–21, which Jews the world over recite as the second paragraph of the prayer called the Sh’ma. This paragraph describes the calamitous weather that comes as a consequence of not listening to the covenant: “the heavens will be shut up and there will be no rain, and the ground will not give her produce, and you will be destroyed quickly from off the good land which YHVH gives you” (Deut. 11:17).

Sustainability The consequence of following the covenant, which is the very definition of sustainability, is the opposite: “[Y]our days and the days of your children will increase on the land which YHVH swore to your ancestors to give to them, like the days of the heavens over the land” (Deut. 11:21). What sustainability looks like is specific to Canaan: the land will receive the early rains and the late rains. The people will gather in grain and wine and olive oil, and there will be grass in the fields for their animals (Deut. 11:14–15). The continuity of living on the land for as long as the heavens stay suspended over the earth was not simply a reward for obedience. Three areas of commandment most determined one’s fitness to remain in the land: eschewing idolatry and doing justice for the poor, widow, orphan and stranger, that is, for the vulnerable (e.g. Jer. 7:5–7), and allowing the land to rest (Lev. 25–26). Sustainability in the ecological sense and in the social/political sense is a direct outcome of following the latter two. Tying all three together was the observance of Shabbat, the weekly celebration of Creation and Creator, when agricultural activity stopped and animals and people rested. Shabbat in turn was a miniature version of the Sabbatical or Shmitah year, when land ownership was annulled, when poor and rich would be sustained equally from a common food

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supply, when wild animals would share the produce of the land with the people, when the land would rest, and when the people would recognize God’s sovereignty over the land (Lev. 25). Other agricultural commandments (e.g. Lev. 19:9–10; Deut. 24:19–21) similarly emphasized caring for the poor and limited the scope of human ownership over the land. Living securely in the land is the measure of what it means to “choose life.” The Torah states, “See, I am making heaven and earth today be witnesses for you: life and death I have set before you, the blessing and the curse. And you, choose life, so that you will live, you and your seed” (Deut. 30:19). But the divine promise about the land was double-edged: Observing the covenant would allow the Israelites to settle securely in the land (life and blessing), but if the Israelites failed too, the privilege of settling in the land could be rescinded (death and curse). A third promise is found in those same sections: a remnant of the Israelites will eventually return to the land, and that the land will return to its fecundity (Lev. 26:42–45; Deut. 30:1–7). The ancient Israelites may have even realized that land watered by rainfall can never be made permanently infertile by salinization, the way the Mesopotamian valley was. One could say that the purpose of religion, from the Torah’s perspective, was to teach people how to live in true symbiosis with the land. Any other relationship was parasitic. On the largest human scale, the mission of the Torah was to create a sustainable model of agriculture that could last for unlimited generations—the opposite of Mesopotamia, the progenitor of the unsustainable civilization we now inhabit—in other words, its mission was to change the direction of what we now call the Anthropocene.

Indigenousness and the Israelite Religion Indigeneity is not only determined by the mere fact of being first or longest in a place. The culture of a people evolving indigenously becomes acutely sensitive to the rhythms and possibilities of the place they have lived in for generations. An indigenous religion is therefore one whose rituals, stories, times, dreams and laws are tied to a particular land and

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to its ecological rhythms and necessities (Gindin 2017; Rappaport 1979, 1999). One could describe the nature of these ties as constituting a covenant between a people and a land. By these measures, Judaism as a religious culture and civilization should be described as indigenous to Canaan/Israel (Hiebert 1996, esp. 61–62, 78, 136; Hfttermann 1999; Davis 2009; Joerstad 2019, esp. 22–23), and even as “pagan” (Schwartz 1985, 2000; Hammer 2004; Seidenberg 2015, 8–10, 23), to use a term rarely associated with Judaism. Every one of Judaism’s celebrations is exquisitely tuned to Canaan’s ecosystems and crop cycles. Sukkot marks the fall harvest of tree fruit as well as the crucial beginning of the rainy season, Passover comes when barley is harvested in spring at the end of the rains, which is also the beginning of the maturation of the wheat, and Shavuot is when the first loaves made from the new wheat were offered in the Temple, and also when first fruits have started to form on trees, followed again in the fall by the fruit harvest. The way the seasons and festivals interlock was experienced as a dimension of the land’s holiness (Waskow 1982). The prayers and sacrifices for rain during the Sukkot festival were so important that they were preceded by ten days of purification from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur. One powerful example of an indigenous, shamanistic rite occurs during Sukkot. The Torah and Jewish law prescribe taking in hand a bundle comprising four species of plants from four endemic types of ecosystem—desert, mountain, river, and lowlands—and shaking it in every direction. The four species used, such as date palm, myrtle, willow, and citron, require the most water of all the plants growing in their respective ecosystems. Together they make a kind of map of last year’s rainfall, and together they call forth the coming year’s rainfall (Schaffer 1982, 136–139; Seidenberg, n.d.). Many other laws in the Torah are directed toward sustainability. Some examples include the prohibition against taking a wild bird tending its nest along with the eggs or nestlings (Deut. 22:6–7), and the prohibition on cutting down fruit trees, even in times of war (Deut. 20:19). Most important is the Sabbatical year, which is the capstone achievement of a society following the covenant (Avery-Peck 1991, 1–4; Rosenblum 2001; Deutscher et al. 2013; Seidenberg 2013).

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Laws defining which animals are kosher are especially tailored to the land of Canaan. The land animals acceptable for sacrifice or eating were uniquely suited to maximize the available resources: cloven hooves mean an animal can graze rocky and hilly land unsuitable for farming, while chewing cud means that an animal can eat plants inedible to human beings. Several rules pay special respect to the parent–child bond in bird and mammal species (Lev. 22:27–28; Exod. 23:19, 34:36; Deut. 14:21). Moreover, the ancient Israelites saw domestication as a mutual covenant between species (Seidenberg 2019b).4 This is made especially clear by the fact that the Israelites cast God as their shepherd. These religious elements are connected to the land and only make sense in relation to the land.

Strangers in the Land However, there is one element found in many indigenous traditions that is not found in the Hebrew Bible or Judaism at all. Many such traditions describe the people as being born from the land to which they are indigenous. The opposite is the case for Israelite religion and the Judaism of the rabbis that grew from it. Even though both are acutely attuned to the hills of Canaan, the Torah adamantly asserts that the Israelites and their ancestors were not from Canaan.5 Rather, the Israelites’ self-understanding was that they came from other places—Ur 4 Part

of that covenant was that the animistic soul of the animal, understood to be located in the blood, was off-limits for any use but the altar in the desert Tabernacle or the Temple, where the animal’s blood could be harvested as a sacred offering. Only treating the soul as sacrosanct could allow the animal’s flesh to be eaten (Gen. 9:4, Lev. 17:10–14, Deut. 12:23–27, 15:23. See Seidenberg (2015, 171–173, 174–175). 5The books of the Bible “share in common…the insistence that the Israelites were outsiders, a non-indigenous group…distinct from the Canaanites” (Killebrew 2005, 151; Machinist 1994; Wazana 2014). A related indigenous motif, however, holds an important place in Jewish imagination: the world was built starting from the center of the indigenous land. In the case of rabbinic Judaism, the foundation stone from which the whole Earth was built, also sometimes described as the navel of the earth, was the stone at the center of the Temple in Jerusalem (Mishnah Yoma, 5:2 (2nd cent. Palestine), Tanchuma (Zundel 1968), Q’doshim 10 (approx. 9th cent. or earlier), Bemidbar Rabbah Naso, 12:4 (approx. 12th cent. Europe), and this same stone was where Abraham slew a ram in place of Isaac. The Dome of the Rock is thought

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Kasdim (Abraham), Aram (all Jacob’s sons except Benjamin), both in Mesopotamia, and Egypt (the Israelites, after they evolve from a family into a nation)—to settle in Canaan. Even more dissonant than this is the biblical commandment that the Israelites displace and dispossess, or even wipe out, the original, i.e., indigenous, inhabitants of Canaan (Deut. 11:22–25; also Gen. 15:18–21, Exod. 33:2, 34:11–13, Deut. 7:1–6, Josh. throughout). It is no small relief to anyone who believes in humanistic values to learn that the stories of genocide and destruction of the Canaanites at the hand of Joshua are unsupported by archaeological finds (Smith 2002, 6–7; Dever 2003; Killebrew 2005, esp. 181–185). There is near consensus that the Israelites did not cause the collapse of Canaanite culture but rather benefited from the vacuum that a prior collapse might have created. Some speculate that the Israelites comprised indigenous Canaanites, escaped slaves from Egypt, the nomadic Apiru, and such, with some suggesting that the Canaanites who identified as Israelites fled to the hills as refugees, splitting off from their brothers and sisters (Killebrew 2005, 184–185). But if that is true, why would these stories depict the IsraeliteCanaanites as strangers in the very land where God commands them to reside in order to fulfill their covenant? No one can be confident that they have understood the intent of the people who received and redacted the Torah without finding a way to explain this fact. In this author’s opinion, the Israelites understood well what it meant to reject the claim of indigeneity and instead claim to be strangers. The Torah teaches that “you will treat the stranger the same as one native-born, and love them as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Lev. 19:34). Explicit in this verse is the idea that seeing oneself as a stranger is necessary in order to adequately empathize with the stranger. Even on the narrative level, the story of being strangers in Egypt makes the Israelites strangers in the land of Israel, because part of that story is that Egypt, not Canaan, is where their national identity was formed. by Muslims to be built around this stone. Midrashic texts also describe the Temple as the site from which soil was taken to form the first human.

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Implicit in this structure is the idea that one could be exiled from the land and still return. As portrayed in Leviticus, from God’s perspective they were and would always remain strangers and temporary residents in the land, gerim v’toshavim atem imadi (25:23), while only God could be the land’s true owner and protector. This pattern of exile as both origin and destiny is etched into the biblical story of humanity as a whole. God shapes adamah, dirt or soil, into the first human, the adam, in a place that is not Eden. Only then does God take the first human from its birthplace and place him or them in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 2:7–8, 15). When the humans sin by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge, they are expelled from the garden, but they are not cast out into the wide world. Rather, they are specifically sent from Eden to “serve the land from where [the adam] was taken” (Gen. 3:23)—a kind of second chance to connect to the Earth by connecting to that earth that is flesh of their flesh. Exile and re-connection happen simultaneously, along the same path. These stories operate on mythical, historical and political levels to reinforce two ideas: one can be at home anywhere upon the Earth,6 but one can never own any part of Earth.

Creation-Centered Religion Other defining features of the ancient Israelite vision of the land are brought into high relief when one views Judaism and the Hebrew Bible as parts of an indigenous tradition. Four ideas stand out. First, Creation as a whole is inherently “very good.” Second, religion’s purpose is to increase life. Third, farming is a sacramental act of service to the land itself. Fourth, God will take the side of the land over the people if they are in conflict. I will treat these elements here. 6The classical rabbis emphasized this point by imagining that the soil used to make the first human being was gathered from every place on Earth: “The One began to gather the dirt (to make the first human) from the four corners of the world…Why from the four directions of the earth? So that if one…reaches the end (of his life) to separate from the world, the land won’t say, ‘The dirt of your body is not from me. Return to the place you were created’” (Yalkut Shimoni [Shimon of Frankfurt, n.d., 13:2]; see also Tanchuma, Pekudei, 3:17).

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1. The first story of Creation in Genesis 1 culminates in God beholding the entirety of what God created and seeing that it is “very good” (Gen. 1:28). In the context of the Genesis story, God’s power to behold the goodness of the entire Creation, the heavens and Earth together, is as much a part of God being Creator as is the act of creation itself. In Hebrew, the word aretz denotes both the Earth and the land. God, as guarantor of Creation’s goodness, is also the figure who controls, owns and defines what is good for the land. This is a precondition for God being able to determine at all moments whether the people have the right to remain in the “holy land.” 2. As discussed, the Torah in Deuteronomy (30:19) commands the people to “choose life.” When one reads this verse through an indigenous lens, what stands out is that the commandment is not to choose the life of one’s people, or human life, but to choose Life itself, that is, life for all the creatures. 3. The multitude of laws about agriculture teach that farming is an act of service—to fellow human beings, to the poor, to God, but above all, to the land itself. This is clear in the second story of Creation, where even though God has created the land, without human beings there is no vegetation: And all the growth of the field was yet to be in the land, and any plant of the field was yet to sprout, for YHVH Elohim had not cause it to rain on the land and there was not any human being to serve the ground. (Gen. 2:5)

After the human is created from the soil, he or they are deployed in the garden to “serve her and watch over her7 ” (Gen. 2:15). Farming or gardening is a sacrament performed for the sake of the land. 4. The Israelites believed that injustice and violence damage the land, and that YHVH covenants with the land, not just with the people. There is no divine promise that the land will belong to any group just 7 In

the Hebrew phrase l’ovdah ul’shomrah, l’ovdah is almost universally but incorrectly translated as “to work her” or “to till her.” But the phrase l’ovdah is an exact parallel to l’ovdo “to serve Him,” i.e., God, in Deut. 11:13, Jos. 22:5, Zeph. 3:9.

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by virtue of inheritance. Though festivals and sacrifices tied Israelite communities to the rhythms of the land and its abundance, living securely in the land depended on justice: For if you make good your ways and your practices, if you do justice between a person and his fellow, [and] stranger, orphan and widow you will not oppress, and innocent blood not spill in this place, and not walk after other gods, to the harm of yourselves—I will make you dwell in this place, in the land I gave to your ancestors, from forever and til forever (Jer. 7:5–7; also Ezek. 22:7, 15, 22:29– 30, Zech. 7:9–14). If not, the divine promise is that the people will be exiled. In other words, people can lose those privileges that come with being indigenous, privileges that we think of as rights. The most ecologically relevant understanding of what that divine punishment looks like is found in response to not letting the land rest, in Leviticus 26:16–38 (Seidenberg 2015, 157n509). There one reads a progression of curses that represent the unraveling of the relationship between the people and the land, starting with not getting to eat the food one grows, proceeding through famine, predators and cannibalism, and culminating with the curse, “You will be lost in the nations and the land of your enemies will eat you” (26:38). Symbolically, if the land eats the people, this represents the final step of the nation’s destruction: a complete reversal of the right relationship between people and land. However, like any natural living system, no state is permanent: While the people are exiled, the land will get its years of rest (Lev. 26:34–35, 43). Eventually, the people will regain the privilege to return to the land (Lev. 26:44–45; also Deut. 4:29–31, 30:1–5; Isa. 10:21, 11:16; Jer. 23:3, 29:10–14, 30:3; Mic. 7:18; Zech. 8:7).

The Political Complexities of Indigeneity Does this myth of “eternal return” imply that the Jewish people are irrevocably indigenous to the land of Canaan? Not necessarily by contemporary standards. Even according to the Torah and prophets, the Jewish people can only restore their belonging to the land through

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a relationship characterized by humility, justice, and compassion. For example, Leviticus states: “then their hearts will be humbled… and I will remember for them the covenant of the first ones whom I took out from Egypt” (26:41, 45; also Mic. 6:8, 7:18; Jer. 22:3, 23:3). The early Zionists certainly believed they could return to the land while upholding those virtues. Abraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935), chief rabbi of Palestine, once wrote: Since we (the Jewish people) are a “righteous nation, keeping faith,” our conquest [of the land of Israel] can only take place via the path of peace, by means of purchase with money. It [must be] our will to uphold the commandment to “love your neighbor like yourself ” not only with individual people, but also with [other] nations. (1988, 252)

This is not how it happened (Morris 1989). But this raises a critical question. If, according to the indigenous knowledge of the ancient Israelites, a renewed relationship with the land cannot be forged without love and equal justice for both neighbor and stranger, can a people whose relationship with the land is lacking in those qualities be deemed indigenous? If the answer is no, if Judaism’s indigeneity is conditional, this leads to a more fundamental question: if Judaism was once indigenous, can it again become indigenous? From this perspective, the idea that the right to return to the land will eventually be renewed is the covenantal equivalent of the idea that the Jewish people can in fact become “re-indigenized.” However one attempts to answer this question, one is immediately confronted by the polemical and political dimension of most arguments for or against Jewish indigeneity. For example, many Zionist settlers in the West Bank see themselves as indigenous people going back to the land (Benstein 2004, 138–139).8 But so too do many Jews involved in 8The polemical need to lay claim to being indigenous is a consistent mark of settler colonialism in other places and times according to Lloyd (2012), Tuck and Yang (2012, 8ff.), Veracini (2013), and Penslar (2017b, 31). Settlers do not generally realize the irony this imputes to their claim. Nevertheless, in Israel’s case the claim is not entirely devoid of solidity: the traditions on which Judaism is based are indigenous to the hills of the West Bank, generally called Judea and Samaria by the settlers and their supporters, not to the coast of Tel Aviv.

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the Jewish environmental movement in North America, who claim or reclaim indigenousness is a way of embracing the natural world where they live (Deutscher et al. 2013; Krantz 2016; Winkler 2003; Wilderness Torah, n.d.). At the same time, outside Jewish studies, the state of Israel is mostly seen by academia as a settler-colonial enterprise bent on uprooting the indigenous people of Palestine.9 According to Benstein (2004, 108), While much has been written both for and against the colonialist interpretation of Zionism, most of the scholarly writings on the subject assume that it has to be one way or the other: if colonialism, then the consciousness of return is a dangerous, wholly invented myth; if “reindigenization,” then colonialism is an anti-Semitic libel… Few have been able to acknowledge that a phenomenon as complex as a national movement can be Janus-faced in this way—not either/or, but both/and.

Whatever the truth about Zionism’s essence, the manner in which the state of Israel administers the West Bank today is virtually indistinguishable from how a settler colonial state would act. Most of the literature about colonial imperialism and settler colonialism presumes that a bright line can be drawn between indigenous people and colonizers. In this author’s opinion, there is little theory that satisfactorily addresses the specificities and contradictions of Israel/Palestine.10 Virtually none reflect on Jewish religious practice

9 See

e.g. Piterberg (2008), Lloyd (2012), Amoruso et al. (2019) (along with the whole issue in which Amoruso appears), Khalidi (2020). Busbridge (2018) argues that the purpose of academic study should be to create political solidarity with Palestine, and that the paradigm of settler colonialism is the best way to accomplish that. Penslar (2017a) has reservations about the settler colonial paradigm, but agrees that Israel became a colonizing state after 1967. But Thompson (2017) and Khalidi describe Zionism as already being a colonial enterprise in 1917. 10The closest approximation would be Albert Memmi, somewhere in the space between his works The Colonizer and the Colonized (1965) and Decolonization and the Decolonized (2006). Memmi’s pro-Israel stance led to his being written out of the field of postcolonial studies (Linfield 2019). See also Case (2018) and Penslar (2017a), who takes pains to differentiate the Zionist movement from typical settler colonialism, along with Cole’s critique (2017) of Penslar. Yiftachel (1997, 505) articulates a model of colonialism that takes the Jewish history of exile and persecution into account (“colonialism of the displaced”). Newman (1997) discusses the same with greater empathy. See Benstein (2004, 107–109).

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and its indigenous relationship to the land of biblical Israel (excepting Benstein 2004, 107).

Decolonizing Judaism As Bellerose (2017) and Rÿser (2014), both indigenous, point out, the Jewish people seem to meet the criteria for indigenousness articulated by José Martínez Cobo, UN special rapporteur on discrimination against indigenous peoples. Nevertheless, having the majority of the people separated from the land for almost two millennia without self-determination meant that Jewish tradition developed huge gaps in its knowledge of the land. The Jewish people’s self-understanding and worldview became thoroughly colonized by Western ideas, including the modern idea of the nation-state. Among secular Zionists, the most extreme example of which was the “New Canaanite” movement (Shavit 1987, ch. 3; Kuzar 2001, 12–13, 197–132), this meant that Judaism had no relevance to the project of being/becoming indigenous. Through the centuries, indigenous ways of thinking resurfaced in diaspora Jewish communities—several examples will be examined below. Nevertheless, without the framework of indigeneity, Judaism has been consistently misinterpreted—by Jews themselves (Seidenberg 2015, 23, 30–33, 110–114, 123–126) as well as by others (see, e.g., Te Ahukaramü Charles Royal 2002, 30, 63). For example, Jews mostly forgot that the Sukkot rituals function as shamanistic rain prayers. Indigenous conceptions of the universe were also overwritten as Judaism aligned itself metaphysically with the body–soul dualism that characterized Hellenism (Seidenberg 2015, 131–138, 354–356). None of this is surprising, given that the Jewish people needed to survive within societies that denied their rights and asserted that the Jewish covenant had been superseded. The result of these transformations was a version of Judaism that Jews could hold fast to under simultaneous pressure and enticement to assimilate to Hellenism and Western culture. But the alienation induced by this process led to absurdities such as the idea that Judaism is concerned with history in opposition to Nature, or that concern for Nature is “pagan”

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(Schorsch 1991; Sokol 2002, 261–264). As Jews confront the tragedy of the Anthropocene extinction, they (here I might say, “we”) have become conscious of the way being colonized distorts the Torah. When Jews took up the mantle of Zionism in the nineteenth century, they imagined they could restore their indigenous knowledge. Jews emigrating to Palestine could have made swift progress toward this goal by learning from the “natives” (including Arab Jews) about living in the land. (It should be emphasized, however, that Palestinian and Bedouin cultures, on the level of religion, are mostly not indigenous.11 ) But by and large, the mostly European settlers saw themselves as bringers of modern knowledge, rather than students ready to receive knowledge (Penslar 2017a, 280–282). They also saw themselves as the true indigenous people of the land (Koffman 2019, 216). In sum, what existed at the time of the formation of the state were two cultures, each holding parts of the equation of indigenousness, one based on a religious tradition that encoded indigenous knowledge, and one based on practical knowledge and experience with the land (Gindin 2017). Whether these two realms of indigenousness can or will ever be brought together in synergy, rather than enmity, is a question as yet unresolved.

Strangers in a Strange Land When the claim that Jews are indigenous is used to abnegate the Palestinian and Bedouin claims, this necessarily leads, in modern terms, to the violation of human rights. Under the terms of the covenant itself, such violations, along with any activity aimed at alienating people who are strangers to you, undermine the very conditions under which the Jewish

11Though

Islam is the most important religion in Palestinian culture, it is the religion of Palestine’s conquerors. Islam is rooted in a desert culture, making it readily transferable to the context of Israel/Palestine, and the Muslim conquest defeated far more oppressive Christian rule, but that does not make it indigenous. Of course, Christianity in its origins would have been indigenous to Israel/Palestine, but the form it took when it was turned into an instrument of conquest makes it no more indigenous to Palestine than it would be to Ireland. This contradiction seems to be ignored in postcolonial literature about Palestine.

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people are privileged to return to the land. Becoming indigenous or “reindigenizing” can never be accomplished by competing for the mantle of indigeneity. The ancient Israelites’ self-understanding that they were strangers in the land should have the power to counteract this self-defeating dynamic. As a mythically charged story, it teaches that the goal is not to become “native,” but rather to go from being strangers in a strange land to being strangers in a land that is nevertheless home. If we were to fully internalize the message that we are all strangers, no one would feel compelled to insist that God gave the Jews the “promised land” to the exclusion of everyone else. But if that is Judaism’s wisdom, should such a gap between an indigenous people’s wisdom and its contemporary way of life prorogue the privileges that come with indigenousness? Given that it was the Roman Empire’s conquest that caused the Jewish people’s separation from the land, should that separation be allowed to impair any Jewish claim to be indigenous? Wouldn’t that ratify and privilege the conqueror’s aggression? If there is hope for restoring indigenous cultures, then even a great gap between a people and its land and way of life must not be allowed to irrevocably cancel their indigenous status. Regardless of the answer, having mostly non-Jewish, mostly European academics in postcolonial studies decide whether the indigenous rights of the Jewish people should be suspended or forfeit is intolerable. None of these considerations changes the fact that the competition over indigeneity leads to vastly unequal consequences that severely harm Palestinians. The power to determine everyday life is overwhelmingly in the hands of Israel. Radical Jewish settlers from settlements like Yizhar take this inequality as license to destroy and burn down olive trees belonging to Palestinian farmers (Magid 2017; Shezaf 2019). This is not just tragic and horrifying. It is also a kind of witless self-immolation, given that destroying fruit trees is a direct violation of the very covenant that is the settlers’ basis for claiming the land (Deut. 20:19–20). In a more just world, Israel would immediately expel settlers committing such crimes from the West Bank, and permanently ban them from re-entering.

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Judaism’s indigenous core will be incomplete as long as it fails to recognize what is indigenous in Palestinian and Bedouin culture. Understanding Judaism through an indigenous lens should teach us how to do this.

After Exile We have explored the originary indigenous wisdom of the Torah and the Israelites, most importantly in relation to the idea that injustice harms the land, that the land has rights, and that the rights of the land take precedence over the rights of the people. But not all of Judaism’s wisdom was developed in the land of its origins under indigenous conditions. Some of the wisdom that arose in “strange lands” is equally significant for sustainability, and therefore supportive of indigenous knowing. The rabbis of the classical period (second through sixth centuries C.E.) evolved their wisdom in a state of exile under Roman and Christian imperial rule, even though much of their literary production was in the land of Israel, rechristened Palestina after the Romans destroyed the second Temple. Another great portion was composed in Babylonia, where a large Jewish community had existed for centuries in the land of the empire that destroyed the first Temple. This wisdom emerged as the response of an indigenous culture to its colonizers, and allowed the Jews to survive as a tribal people into the heart of modernity. One cord of that connection was forged by the rabbis’ insistence that Jews living in the land of Israel under foreign laws were also living in a state of exile. The connection to the land provided the foundation for the truly great project of the rabbis, which was to preserve Jewish civilization’s indigenous worldview in the face of empire (Kadushin 1938; Seidenberg 2015, esp. chs. 2, 4, 5, 12; Watts Belser 2015). After the classical rabbinic period, Jewish culture continued to elaborate its indigenous wisdom, though sometimes the dominant trends within Jewish culture undermined that wisdom. Here I will focus on just a few of the contributions of Jewish philosophy and mysticism that supported Judaism’s indigenous ways of knowing.

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In twelfth century Spain and Egypt, Moses Maimonides (Moshe ben Maimun, perhaps the most important Jewish philosopher of any period) in his Guide for the Perplexed (1:72) articulated a radically organic and holistic picture of the universe, comparable in many ways to Gaia theory (Seidenberg 2015, ch. 10). His interpretation of Torah and monotheism in the Guide (3:12, 3:13) vehemently opposed anthropocentrism.12 Maimonides provides a roadmap for how modern biblically based traditions and communities can come back to Earth, literally. The Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) is also a wellspring of ideas important for thinking about ecology and sustainability. In many ways, Kabbalah rejected the Hellenistic patterns of thought that guided Jewish philosophy, and novelly restored earlier mythic ways of thinking (Liebes 1993). Kabbalah affirmed that the pattern of divinity called God’s image was found in the body—a rabbinic idea that had been rejected by philosophy—while adding heretofore unimagined levels of complexity and detail to this description (Seidenberg 2015, 176–177, 187–201). Moreover, in Jewish philosophy and much of Christian theology, the divine image understood to be present in the human soul and intellect divided humanity from the rest of Creation, but in Kabbalah, the divine image united the human body and soul with Creation, which was itself seen by Kabbalists like Yosef Ashkenazi (c.13th/14th cent.) as the greatest image of divinity we can know, and the one eliciting the greatest care from God (Seidenberg 2015, 215, 238, 250–254). Most importantly, Kabbalah searched for God’s presence not only in the divine unity that underlies Creation, but also in the divine infinity that generates the inexhaustible diversity of created beings (Seidenberg

12 Maimonides

employed Gen. 1:28 (“And God saw all that God had made, and behold, it is very good”) to both ends (Seidenberg 2015, 15–17). He explained that the goodness of every created thing (“and God saw that it is good”) meant that each creature exists for its own sake, rather than for the sake of humanity, while the description of Creation as very good indicated the value of the whole Creation, which incomparably surpasses the value of any creature or species including humanity (3:12, Pines 452). Furthermore, the goodness that makes Creation “very good” is what God showed Moses when Moses asked to see God’s own goodness. According to Maimonides, apprehending this goodness means understanding the “nature [of all existing beings] and the way they are mutually connected” (1:54, Pines 124). For further discussion of Maimonides, see Seidenberg (2005) and (2015, 23–30, 70–72, 148, 345).

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2015, 231–233, 256–257, 343; see e.g., Zohar, Margaliot 1984, 2:15b– 16a; 2:176a–b). The kabbalists also found the divine image in specific aspects of Creation, such as fruit trees, the animals of Ezekiel’s chariot, rainbows, constellations, the four elements and directions, the rainbow, and more (Seidenberg 2015, chs. 6, 7). This focus on directions, colors, and other correspondences wrought a cosmology closer to other bodies of indigenous knowledge than even the cosmology of the Torah (Seidenberg 2010; 2015, ch. 7). As with religious knowledge in general and indigenous knowledge in particular, my contention is that the truth of these ideas lies not in their metaphysics but in their ethical impact. In this context, that means creating a sustainable civilization.

Intercession and Theurgy—Kabbalah The role of the people was transformed in an ecologically vital way in Kabbalah. To be a kingdom of priests, as the Torah enjoins (Exod. 19:6), already implies being responsible to pray for all of humanity. In a similar vein, Abraham is instructed that his progeny will become a blessing for “all the families of the earth” (Gen. 12:3, 18:18, 22:18, 26:4, 28:14). But Kabbalah expanded this responsibility into a quest to draw down cosmic blessing not just for humanity but for all creatures and all Creation (Seidenberg 2015, xi, 37, 218, 335–336). According to Moshe Cordovero (1522–1570, Palestine), “This is the principle: [a person] should make life stream forth to all” (Cordovero 1969, ch. 3, 20; 1974, 82), meaning to all creatures in all realms. The Zohar (13th cent. Spain) sees Creation as a single body, similar to Maimonides, but in the Zohar, this grounds the idea that the human body and person, the work of Creation, and the Torah all correspond to the image of God (Margaliot, 1:134b). In Kabbalistic theurgy, these correspondences magnify both human responsibility and the human power to bring blessing or curse to Creation. These motifs defined the existential purpose of Torah and the Jewish people as sustaining the world.

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Revealing the Divine Flow—Hasidism Much of Kabbalah was developed in Spain in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and then in the land of Israel itself, in the Galilean city of Tsfat (Safed) in the sixteenth century. Even though the protagonists of the Zohar wandered through what was often a mythical landscape, the Kabbalists of Tsfat emphasized going out into the real fields to pray. The human role in the cycle of divine blessing was always important in Kabbalah, but its relation to the actual world of Nature became sharper in Kabbalistic circles shortly before Hasidism began (see e.g. Chemdat Yamim 1763, 2:109a–b; Seidenberg 2015, 357–359). In the hands of Hasidic thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the Zohar’s mythical overlay onto a fictionalized land of Israel was transformed into a relationship with the real lands where they lived in Eastern Europe, while for some, like Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk, that relationship led them to move their entire communities to Palestine. (This phenomenon of indigenization also exists outside of Hasidism— indeed, its echo can be heard in the description some contemporary Ashkenazi Jews give of themselves as Diasporists indigenous to Eastern Europe.) This re-indigenization of Hasidic life also corresponded to a theurgic re-energization of life in relation to the more-than-human world. Most vitally, we find within Hasidism belief in a kind of ecosystem of divine energy that includes and sustains all Creation, in which the human being is but one organ of a complex cycle nurturing both Life and divinity (Seidenberg 2019a, 133–134). Here are two such models of the universe, one from Nachman of Breslov (1772–1810, Ukraine) and one from Shneur Zalman of Liady (1745–1813, Russia). Nachman instructed his followers to go alone everyday into the fields or forests to pray aloud. He taught that human prayer derives its strength from the prayers of the field and plants (Nachman 1965, 2:11). He also explained that when the shepherd—the one who takes care of other species—walks through the landscape, the shepherd weaves a melody or niggun from that landscape. By singing that melody, one helps the plants there grow (Nachman, 2:63). Nachman also taught that when a person sings a nigun, they can cross the cosmogonic crack that separates

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all Creation from the divine, and sustain the entire universe (Nachman, 1:64). Nachman’s teachings conceptualized how each ecosystem or habitat can be a unique expression of divine blessing and love, how human beings participate in that habitat, and how humanity leverages that role to bring healing to the entire Creation. Shneur Zalman perceived spiritual light radiating from plants and trees, which he described as greater than the manifestation of light from all the heavens. This light, he said, is a revelation of the original, infinite light of Creation—and the only manifestation of that light still revealed to us (Schochet 1956, fol. 129a–133a). Shneur Zalman emphasized that this light upwells from the Earth itself, without need of human intervention. (He also believed that human cultivation of plants could greatly arouse the flow of divine energy, which resonates with the indigenous Israelite understanding of agriculture as sacrament.) Together, Nachman and Shneur Zalman describe an ecosystem of light, song and prayer. The mutualistic quality of our relationship with the land is assumed in Torah. But Kabbalistic and Hasidic thought gave us new ways to think about this mutuality, deepening these indigenous ideas.

Conclusion There are many more teachings related to these themes at every stage of Jewish thought and reflection, teachings that can serve to strengthen and heal the human connection with the more-than-human world. Can we say for sure that they have roots in what makes Judaism indigenous? After all, they also have roots in the cultural and religious milieu of the places where Jews were living. But this is a mistaken way to think about indigenousness. Every indigenous culture is liable to learn from other wisdoms that it comes in contact with. What connects such teachings to indigenousness are the filtering mechanisms that enable a culture to transplant worthy ideas into its own soil, to “nativize” what will be fitting for creating a right relationship to its land of origin. Indigeneity in postcolonial thought may be treated as an ontological category, but it is actually something created through relationships,

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something that grows and evolves and can wax or wane. In this respect, though a people may be counted as indigenous based on blood or genetic inheritance, a culture can only be indigenous based on its living relationship to the land. That relationship can be nurtured even in exile—and it can be undone even in the land of the promise. After the exile that started in the year 70, rabbinic Judaism found a way to maintain its relationship to the land. The wisdom endemic to that land was characterized by ideals about the personhood of the land, agriculture as sacrament, and husbandry as covenant. That wisdom became sealed within vessels that were easy to transport but more difficult to open. Despite this, indigenous Israelite wisdom continued to evolve in the diaspora. But in the context of modern European nationalism, which embodied itself in the state of Israel, some of those vessels were opened in a way that distorted the mission and the message. The only way to safely open those vessels, to validly reclaim indigeneity and restore indigenous wisdom, is to embrace the prospect of being in a land that is home to more than one indigenous people and more than one type of indigenousness. By doing so sincerely, the Jewish people might also find the common ground needed to thrive together with the Palestinian people. This is also the only way that the mission of Israelite civilization—to create a world which does not self-destruct the way that Sumer self-destructed, a world in which humans serve the land and live in justice—can be reborn and fulfilled. We live in a political moment where it is almost impossible to imagine that happening. But if the covenant that established the Israelites’ indigenous connection to the land is internally coherent or connected to what is real, then it guarantees that this will happen, even if it must happen through the advent of another exile.

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Seidenberg, D. (2019a). Building the body of the Shekhinah: Reenchantment and redemption of the natural world in Hasidic thought. In A. Green & A. Mayse (Eds.), A new Hasidism: Branches (pp. 129–154). Author’s version: http://neohasid.org/pdf/BuildingShekhinah.pdf. Seidenberg, D. (2019b). Veganism and covenantalism: Contrasting and overlapping moralities. In J. A. Labendz & S. Yanklowitz (Eds.), Jewish veganism and vegetarianism: Studies and new directions (pp. 161–194). Albany: SUNY Press. Sentesy, M. (2020, November). Gilgamesh and ecology. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Association of Environmental Philosophy, Pittsburgh PA. Shavit, Y. (1987). The new Hebrew nation. London: Frank Cass. Shezaf, H. (2019, 11 November). 120 Olive trees belonging to Palestinians destroyed in West Bank. Haaretz. https://www.haaretz.com/middle-eastnews/palestinians/.premium-120-olive-trees-belonging-to-palestinians-des troyed-in-west-bank-1.8101584. Accessed 12 Feb 2020. Shimon of Frankfurt-am-Main. (n.d.). Yalkut Shimoni. Jerusalem: Vegshel. Smith, M. S. (2002). The early history of God: Yahweh and other deities of ancient Israel . Grand Rapids MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans. Sokol, M. (2002). Ethical implications of Jewish conceptions of the natural world. In H. Tirosh-Samuelson (Ed.), Judaism and ecology: Created world and revealed word (pp. 261–282). Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Starr, J.J. (2015, 2 February). The Sumerian shepherd kings. https://sumeri anshakespeare.com/70701/502901.html. Accessed 31 Jan 2020. Thompson, E.F. (2017). Moving Zionism to Asia: Texts and tactics of colonial settlement, 1917–1921. In Colonialism and the Jews (pp. 317–326). Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press. Tuck, E. & K.W. Yang. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 1–40. Veracini, L. (2013). The other shift: Settler colonialism, Israel, and the occupation. Journal of Palestine Studies, 42(2), 26–42. Waskow, A. (1982). Seasons of our joy. Boston MA: Beacon Press. Watts Belser, J. (2015). Power, ethics, and ecology in Jewish late antiquity: Rabbinic responses to drought and disaster. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wazana, N. (2014). The land within and without: The cycle of Israel’s life. AJS Perspectives: The Land Issue (Spring). Wilderness Torah. (n.d.). Teachings. https://wildernesstorah.org/teachings/. Accessed 30 Jan 2020.

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4 Water Law in Muslim Countries Revisited: A Study of the Qur’an James L. Wescoat Jr.

The Qur’an refers to water many times and in many ways—from the waters of creation at the beginning of time to those of paradise gardens “underneath which rivers flow” and the boiling waters of hell on the day of judgment. Between the waters of creation and resurrection, and linking them to one another, the Qur’an refers to the waters of this world in ways that aim to guide human understanding and sustainable behavior in changing places and times. Previous research on Islamic water management has often compiled selected verses of the Qur’an, hadiths of the Prophet Muhammad, and legal sources to address various water issues, from scarcity to water rights, drought, and pollution. Foremost among these previous publications is the mid-twentieth century study of Water Laws in Moslem Countries by the Italian legal scholar Dante Caponera (1954, 1973). Caponera’s survey is a well-structured survey of Islamic water law beginning with the Qur’an, the sunnah (life and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad), J. L. Wescoat Jr. (B) Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 S. E. Silvern and E. H. Davis (eds.), Religion, Sustainability, and Place, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7646-1_4

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and other legal texts (usul al -fiqh). Its primary emphasis, however, is on modern water legislation, regulation, and administration in 27 case study countries, which makes it an explicitly geographical approach to Islamic water law (cf. Wescoat 1995a). The country case studies are thus to some extent place-based, though many of them bear the heavy impress of colonial legislation that was purposely disconnected from Islamic tradition. Subsequent research in this genre has focused on specific water issues in Islamic water law, e.g., water supply (Abderrahman 2000), water quality (Ahmad 1999), and on the need to more closely link sacred texts with modern water institutions in Muslim countries, including those that promote sustainability (e.g., Faruqi et al. 2001). Following Caponera, geographers have primarily contributed to these institutional studies of Islamic water law to date, and only a few geographers have written about the sacred sources of Islamic water law in spiritual terms (e.g., Amery 2001; Wescoat 1995a). The second section of this paper surveys a parallel literature on Sufi interpretations of water in the Qur’an, hadiths, and spiritual poetry (e.g., Chittick 2005; Halman 2013; Lings 1968; Schimmel 1985). Most studies of water in Islam acknowledge its spiritual qualities, but they treat them to varying degrees and in different aesthetic and symbolic ways. Sufi literary approaches to water tend to be more universalizing than are formal legal studies, and they are less focused on specific places, cases, or countries. However, related fields of art, architectural, and landscape history inspired by Sufism do link spiritual piety with vivid geographical imagery of different regions and times (e.g., Blair and Bloom 2009). Indeed, the arts often place these timeless and temporal perspectives in spatially explicit tension with one another, as for example, when the Persian poet Sa’di (d. 1292 CE) urges a man collecting flowers to leave them aside for wisdom that never fades. A Mughal painting of Sa’di’s Gulistan conveys this maxim in hyper-realistic landscape detail (Fig. 4.1). But the poet’s claim to permanence is also an illusion in a world that the Qur’an teaches will come to an end, which raises questions about what sustainability means in any of the world’s apocalyptic traditions. A second example, drawn from the narrative poem of the Eight Paradises (Hasht Bihisht ) by Amir Khusrau, alludes to paradise gardens

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Fig. 4.1 The poet Sa’di in a Rose Garden. Mughal ca. 1645 CE. Reproduced with permission from the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art. Gift of the Art and History Trust in honor of Ezzat-Malek Soudavar. F1998.5

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Fig. 4.2 “The Story of the Princess of the Blue Pavillion: The Youth of Rum Is Entertained in a Garden by a Fairy and her Maidens”, Folio from a Khamsa (Quintet) of Amir Khusrau Dihlavi 1597–98. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of Alexander Smith Cochran, 1913. 13.228.33

and their waterworks. A later Mughal painting renders these waterworks in splendid detail, from a Persian wheel in the background to a series of channels and pools that irrigate the garden (Fig. 4.2). Not

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Fig. 4.3 Humayun’s tomb-garden in the Nizamuddin area of New Delhi (Source Author, 2018)

far away from the Sufi shrine of Shaikh Nizamuddin Awliya in Delhi where Amir Khusrau is buried lies the funerary complex of the second Mughal ruler Humayun whose tomb and garden are laid out on a hasht bihisht pattern (Koch 1991; Parodi 2009)(Fig. 4.3). However aesthetically inspiring these works and places may be, we shall show that these multiple allusions among poems, tombs, gardens, and heavenly paradise in the built environment remain far removed from the water symbolism of the Qur’an. The wisdom of the Qur’an differs from those of the painter and the architect. It is no accident that the sacred word of Qur’an is not represented in pictorial ways, but rather only through the visual written art of calligraphy and verbal art of recitation. Thus, when one seeks wisdom associated with water in the Qur’an, one works primarily with the text and with commentaries on its meanings, which leads to other challenges. For example, the poetic and pragmatic studies of water in Islam

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introduced above tend to employ what Anna Gade (2019) has recently termed a “keyword approach.” That is, they identify keywords associated with water in the Qur’an to compile a handful of quotations relevant to specific concerns about water supply, demand, disasters, purity, and so on. They treat the Qur’an as a resource rather than as a comprehensive guide. The third section of this chapter thus tries an approach that is both traditional and new for the study of water in Islam. It returns to the original sacred source, the Qur’an, and reads it in new ways for its comprehensive perspective on water and society. Instead of compiling a small selection of water-related keywords and references from different suras (chapters) and ayats (verses), arranged in predetermined thematic ways, this study treats the keywords more systematically and expansively than has occurred to date by starting with a wide range of moisturerelated keywords. This involves some 368 moisture-related verses. This sample still represents only about seven percent of the Qur’an, but it is broader in scope than previous approaches. We purposely limit this study to the Qur’an for several reasons: first, because we seek to go beyond the keywords approach to this most important of all Muslim sources of water law; second, because the next most important source, the hadiths or sayings attributed to the Prophet and his companions, requires a separate study and different methods; and third, because the Qur’an helps us focus on the inherent tensions between place-based and universal truths, and between the ideals of sustainability and eschatology. Moreover, while the hadiths have more detail on specific types of places and some issues of sustainability, they have less authority on these topics than the Qur’an, which makes it the single best starting point for this investigation. With these initial considerations in mind, we conduct three brief reading experiments. We begin with the first two suras in the Qur’an, Sura al-Fatihah and Sura al-Baqara, reading for moisture-related verses in any and all of its forms, including water (ma’ ) per se (Fahd et al. 2012). This experiment sheds light on extensions of the concept of water as revealed in the Qur’an, and thereby on the Qur’an’s guidance with respect to the breadth of water-related phenomena and concerns. While rich and fascinating, this way of reading is not practicable for the Qur’an as a whole in an article of this length. Thus, the second

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reading experiment reviews the entire Qur’an with one word for water— ma’ —in view. This reading takes two paths, one that begins with the suras in their reconstructed historical-geographic sequence, that is, from the earliest suras revealed in Mecca to later ones in Mecca and the final ones revealed in Medina (as outlined by Ernst 2011, 39–40, 44–45, and 229–233). This approach seeks place-related continuities in Qur’anic guidance regarding the uses and meanings of water. The second path briefly considers the word water (ma’ ) in the final canonical order of suras from number 1 to number 114, that is, in the order in which they have come down to Muslim readers from the late-seventh century after Muhammad’s death until today. These three readings of water in the Qur’an are more systematic than previous approaches, and yet they still only touch the surface of what is possible in the rich and complex field of Qur’an interpretation (tafsir ) for the world’s more than one billion Muslims and many more like myself who are interested in its insights (Ernst 2011; Rippin 2012; Saleh 2015).

Caponera’s Water Laws in Moslem Countries (1954, 1973) In 1951, the legal scholar Dante Caponera conducted a groundbreaking survey of Water Laws in Moslem Countries for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. His survey went through two editions, the first published in 1954 when many Muslim majority countries were gaining independence. A revised two-volume edition followed in 1973, by which point the number of independent Muslim nations had doubled, and the field of international water resources law had also grown considerably. Caponera’s analytical approach remains relevant today, particularly for the way in which it jointly treats religious and geographical aspects of water management. Its introduction lays out the religious sources of Islamic water law beginning with the Qur’an and followed by the traditions of the Prophet (sunnah and hadiths), followed by community consensus (ijma), and the exercise of analogy (qiyas). It then surveys major schools of Islamic law and their geographic distribution. Chapter II discusses concepts of Muslim water regulation and water rights, while

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chapter III surveys customary laws related to water rights, distribution, use, and local administration. These chapters are followed by a section on law codes, with a focus on the Ottoman Mejelle Code of 1877 that prevailed in many Middle Eastern countries, and modern trends in codification. With this legal framework established, the largest part of Caponera’s text examines 27 country case studies that follow a well-structured policy template. Each case begins with an introduction to the country, a survey of legislation in force, and sections on water ownership, water rights, priorities, beneficial uses, harmful effects, water quality, groundwater, waterworks, protected zones, water rights administration, water development agencies, implementation, and customary water laws. These topics are common categories of water management, and some of them reflect approaches in the United States (e.g., the doctrine of “beneficial use”) where Caponera studied law in the late 1950s. The 1973 edition is an excellent survey, but it is now dated and used more for background than for research or planning purposes. Moreover, its country case studies only occasionally incorporate material from the introductory section on Islamic water law per se, as those cultural sources had been largely superseded by colonial and post-independence water institutions in practice. The 1973 edition is now 46 years old and long outdated. Several related bodies of research on Islamic water law and policy have developed in recent decades. The most rigorous studies have involved intensive field and archival research on local irrigation institutions and practices (e.g., Maktara 1971; Wilkinson 1977, 1978, 1990). International water development organizations like the World Bank and U.S. Agency for International Development have commissioned studies of contemporary water policy in specific Muslim countries (e.g., Yu et al. 2013). Essays by water law and policy organizations like the International Association for Water Law have periodically examined Islamic legal principles and trends (Faruqi et al. 2001; Naff and Dellapenna 2002). Several studies have compared Qur’anic water norms with contemporary practices in Muslim countries and the USA (Wescoat 1995b, 2014). For example, a comparison of the right of thirst for animals in Punjab province in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan with water law in the State

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of Colorado in the western USA documented much stronger formal legal protection in the former, but mixed protection in actual practice (Wescoat 1995a). Increasing emphasis has focused on water quality, pollution, and reuse (e.g., Ahmad 1999; Mokhtar et al. 2015). Although these water policy studies often address practical issues in specific places, few of them delve deeply into the sources of Islamic water law in the Qur’an. For that, we turn to a separate body of scholarship.

Spiritual Essays on Water in Islam A separate literature, small in size but large in significance, focuses on spiritual dimensions of water in Islam. Like the water law and policy literature, it begins with the Qur’an and sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad, and treats them on multiple levels of inner (batin) and outer (zahir ) meaning. From there, however, the two types of writing diverge, one toward water management applications and the other toward spiritual experience, as discussed below. Spiritual writing about water in Islam takes several forms. Depending upon what the historian Marshall Hodgson (1974) has called an author’s precommitments, some delve into theological interpretations (tafsir ), while others seek insights in Sufi mysticism (ma’rifah). The latter’s emphasis on poetics has extensions into the visual arts that are addressed by a third set of writings on art, architecture, and garden history. In each case, it is not water per se as much as its relationships with deeper questions of experience, meaning, and guidance. M.A.S. Abdel Haleem (1989) wrote an important essay titled, “Water in the Qur’an,” which presents a series of themes drawn from verses in the Qur’an that are linked with one another through thoughtful commentary. Haleem’s quotations begin with the dynamism of clouds and storms, followed by rain that is “brought down” or “sent down” for the sustenance of life on earth including human life, and for the purification of body and soul. Fresh and salt waters are distinguished, and the sea (bahr ) that separates them conveys benefits as well as dangers. Haleem links these themes with Qur’anic guidance on practical and principled water matters. The Qur’an’s dynamic language in which topics,

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pronouns, and actions shift rapidly within as well as between verses readily conveys these dynamic aspects of water phenomena. They provide manifold signs of Allah’s existence, care, and promise that human beings should observe, recognize, and contemplate, and have gratitude with the hope of admission to the paradise “underneath which rivers flow” at the end of time. An early Sufi essay on “The Qoranic Symbolism of Water” by Martin Lings (1968) associated water with divine mercy and by analogy with the revelation that is “sent down” for the sustenance and salvation of all life. Water is a symbol of creation, sustainability, and resurrection, and offers a plenitude of signs for those whose eyes and hearts are open to them. Hardened hearts can be opened, as when a spring flows from a rock (2:60). Lings’ article ends with two parables in the Qur’an, the first of Moses’ fruitless yet instructive quest for the water of life led by the mythical figure of Khwaja Khidr (18:60–82), and the second of queen Bilqis’ visit to Solomon where she learned that the polished palace floor was not a body of water and declared her devotion with Solomon to God (27:44)(Morray-Jones 2001). These are two of many frequently cited parables related to water revealed in the Qur’an. Annemarie Schimmel wrote a short but characteristically eloquent essay on Sufi water symbolism titled, “The Water of Life,” which began with the Qur’anic reference, “We made everything alive from water” (Schimmel 1985, 6). Her essay flowed from the waters of creation to the rivers of paradise, comparing them with oases in the Arabian desert. She reminded readers of ocean symbolism in writings of the Andalusian mystic Ibn Arabi, and of the poetics of river foam and spiritual love in the poetry of Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi. Schimmel noted the everyday association in modern Turkey between nourishing rainfall and divine mercy (rahmat ). She too wrote of Moses’ (and Alexander’s) quest for the water of immortal life at the symbolic meeting of two seas, concluding with a moving couplet from Rumi’s Mathnawi: “When the thirsty seek the water in the world, The water too is seeking the thirsty in the world” (ibid., p. 9). These short essays convey the depth of Sufi spirituality of water, and there are also book-length treatments of some instances of Sufi water symbolism, such as Hugh Talat Halman’s (2013) study of Moses and

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Khwaja Khidr titled, Where the Two Seas Meet: The Qur’anic Story of al -Khidr and Moses in Sufi Commentaries as a Model of Spiritual Guidance. In Sufi terms, the main story is not so much about the waters of immortality, though that liminal space (barzakh) between the two seas has profound symbolic significance, as it is about Moses’ effort to follow his spiritual guide whose knowledge exceeded what Moses could possibly comprehend. Mystical stories like that of al-Khidr have frequently been rendered in prose, poetry, and painting. Blair and Bloom (2009) have compiled one of the best collections of essays on water in Islamic art, architecture, and landscape titled Rivers of Paradise: Water in Islamic Art and Culture. This book ranges from essays on water in Arab poetry to studies of Islamic gardens, fountains, and waterworks—and it thus spans and links the spiritual and material dimensions of water culture. As illustrated in the example of Humayun’s hasht bihisht tomb complex at the beginning of the paper, art history is valuable for associating Islamic mystical thought with specific people, places, and times, both in its studies of patronage and in artistic representations of the landscape. It provides a bridge between religion and place. Theological and mystical literature by comparison tends to be transcendental and placeless (Sells 1996). Mystical literature has a history and geography, but it purposely strives to transcend those specific details in its quest for universal insights.

Reading the Qur’an with Water in Mind: Three Experiments In each example of the previous research discussed above, the Qur’an is the preeminent source of Islamic inquiry and interpretation. Many studies take a thematic approach to water in the Qur’an. For example, Anthony Johns’ (2006) entry on “water” in the Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an begins with the hydrologic cycle (i.e., atmospheric, terrestrial, and marine waters) and proceeds to key societal concerns about right action, warning, reward, punishment, and purification. Other interpreters start with water management topics that range from supply to

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demand, quality, and hazards. Still others structure their review around keywords like water (ma’ ), rivers (nahr ), springs (‘ayn), wells (bir ), etc., and then compile verses (ayat ) from different chapters (suras) thematically by types of water bodies and Qur’anic guidance. This approach may appeal to water specialists, but it does not reflect the chronological, geographical, or textual structure of the Qur’an. In her recent book on Muslim Environmentalisms Anna Gade (2019) has questioned the simple keywords approach to thematic environmental interpretation of the Qur’an and hadiths. As an historian of religions who also uses ethnographic methods, she argues both for more locally grounded and theologically systematic approaches to the study of Islamic environmental norms and values. As a step toward that systematic direction, this section of the paper reads the Qur’an in several distinct ways. The first reading undertook an expanded word search of moisturerelated words that identified 383 verses. The search terms included alphabetically bath, boat, cloud, dam, deluge, dew, drink, drop, drought, dry, flow, fluid, fountain, frost, hail, irrigation, lake, mist, ocean, pool, river, rain, sail, sea, shower, snow, spring, storm, stream, swim, tears, tide, torrent, wadi, weep, well, and wet. This reading began with the first Sura al -Fatiha (The Opening) and continued through the second Sura al Baqarah (The Cow) with all of the broad moisture-related phenomena in mind, which yielded 20 verses. If done for all 114 chapters, this approach would require a book rather than a book chapter. The second and third readings do address those 114 chapters but focus solely on the word water (ma’ ), which identified 63 references in 61 verses. The second reading followed those references in the order of their revelation, from the early Meccan period verses to the later ones in Medina, which identified interesting patterns and trends. The final reading considered those same water-related verses as one would experience them in the Qur’an as it was canonically compiled and is currently experienced from beginning to end.

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Sura al-Fatiha (the Opening) The first chapter of the Qur’an is only seven verses long, but it has profound significance in Muslim faith and practice. None of its verses refer to water. Verse 6 prays to Allah to “show us the straight path” (sirat al -mustaqim), that is, the “right way,” or the “middle way” between asceticism and indulgence, the path that ‘bridges” from this world to the paradise promised to the faithful, which is mentioned over thirty times in the Qur’an. The “straight path” in Sura al -Fatiha also brings to mind the word shari‘a, which is likewise translated as the “straight path” or “way” later associated with Islamic law. The word shari‘a is mentioned only once in the Qur’an (45:18), and it is noted here because it has etymological roots in the “path to water,” which is likewise associated with the path to goodness (Nasr 2015, 1220).

Sura al-Baqarah (the Cow) Sura al -Baqarah is the longest chapter in the Qur’an, about one-twelfth of the text, and was revealed relatively late in Medina. Its complexity has led to multiple ways of reading (Klar 2017), from a linear sequence of sections (Robinson 2003) to chiastic ring cycles that seek to discern symmetrical beginnings and endings with the meaning in the middle of each ring and of the chapter (Farrin 2010). This reading considers the both the linear progression and repetition of themes. Introductory verses 1–39 distinguish believers from unbelievers and hypocrites. The first two water references in this section underscore the contrast between storm clouds and darkness that terrify the unbelievers (v. 19–20) and the rain sent down from the heavens that “brought forth therewith fruits for your sustenance” as believers (v. 22). It is interesting to consider that the same storms that brought terror to unbelievers provided sustenance for the faithful in the deserts of Arabia. It is also interesting to reflect upon the seemingly close relationship between traditional ideas about sustenance (rizqah, also translated subsistence or provision) and modern ideas about sustainability. While similar in outcome, they differ in who is acting and how, and in the essential link

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between faith in and dependence upon Allah for the means of sustenance. While revealed in Arabia, the text does not refer to the desert and thus is interpreted as applicable everywhere, i.e., it is a universal and not a place-bound principle. The next section of the sura addresses the Children of Israel reminding them of the parting of the Red Sea in which believers escaped and Pharaoh’s people drowned (v. 50). Clouds provided shade for the believers for whom manna and quails were sent down from heaven (v. 57). Biblical parallels continue as when Moses struck his staff on a rock from which 12 springs issued forth for the twelve tribes and, “Each group knew its own place for water. So eat and drink of the sustenance provided by Allah, and do no evil or mischief on [the face of ] the earth” (v. 60). Allah ordered the Israelites to slaughter “…a heifer not trained to till the soil or water the fields” (v. 71), a command that they resisted and only reluctantly obeyed. Their hearts were hardened like, “…a rock and even worse in hardness. For among rocks there are some from which rivers gush forth…” (v. 74). This verse repeats the imagery of Moses striking a rock to bring forth water for the twelve tribes. The next passage shifts from hypocrites to unbelievers who worshiped (literally “drank”) the calf, just as those with darkened hearts drink uncontrollably from their passions and disbelief (v. 93). These are all vivid place-based Biblical references meant for Jewish and Christian as well as early Muslim audiences in Arabia. The Red Sea and Mount Sinai were well-known from direct experience as well as textual traditions. From these accounts of error in specific Biblically historical places, Sura al -Baqarah turns to general signs “for a people that are wise” (use reason, have sense, understanding), namely, “In the creation of heavens and the earth… in the sailing of ships through the ocean for the profit of mankind, in the rain which Allah sends down from the skies, And the life which he gives therewith to an earth which is dead” (v. 164). This verse announces the benefits of both freshwaters and oceans for humankind, on a vast geographical scale, and it is the first reference to them as signs (ayat ) of beneficence and reward for believers, which is a central message of the Qur’an. Other verses in this section offer guidance on eating and drinking during the fast and against drinking wine wherever one may be (v. 196, 219). This section of the text completes the progression from

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Biblically specific sites of harsh lessons to the Qur’an’s geographically universal lessons for “people that are wise.” The sura then turns to place-based Biblical parables of Saul and David facing Goliath and the Philistines (in 1 Samuel 17; and of Gideon against the Midianites in Judges 7: 5–7), in which his followers were divided into two groups at a stream crossing, where only the small group of those who drank with their hands followed Saul into battle. In this case, behavior at a water body became a test of loyalty, which later led to an important victory against great odds (2: 249–252). Another parable follows of a man who wondered about the possibility of the resurrection and as proof was made to fall asleep for what he thought was a day but was restored after 100 years to find that his water, food, and donkey were unchanged, to which he acknowledged, “I know that Allah hath power over all things” (v. 259). The final water-related verses in Sura al-Baqarah (v. 264–266) present three of its most beautiful parables, which have vivid landscape imagery but are not bound to specific geographic places. They begin with the parable of miserly hypocrites who are like a hard rock covered in dust that when rain falls is exposed as simply a rock (v. 264). The contrast that follows presents the believer, “…as a garden, high and fertile: heavy rain falls on it but makes it yield a double increase of harvest, and if it receives not heavy rain, light moisture sufficeth it. Allah seeth well whatever ye do” (v. 265). The final parable asks, “Does any of you wish that he should have a garden with date palms and vines and streams flowing underneath, and all kinds of fruit.…” (v. 266). This verse shifts perspective from being to having a well-watered garden, and it goes on to warn that even this ideal can be lost in a whirlwind or fire that oneself and one’s children may be powerless to prevent. “Thus, doth Allah make clear to you [His] signs, that ye may consider” (v. 266). A whole book chapter could be written on these three verses about water-environment-society relations, just as a book could be written on the water-related verses in Sura alBaqarah that begin with parables from ancient Israel, offer guidance on right behavior, and conclude with a suite of three water-related parables of prosperity, right livelihood, and divine judgment. These concluding parables thus offer a synthesis between the lessons of specific Biblical stories and sites, and those of general or universal human experience. It

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is interesting to compare this dialectic with the “betweenness of place” that Entrikin (1991) posited in his study of western social thought.

Reading for Water (Ma’) in the Historical Revelatory Sequence How did the word water ma’ appear in the Qur’an over the historical course of its revelation? This section draws upon modern scholarship about the historical vis-à-vis canonical sequence of chapters (suras). This topic has generated a large literature with many technical debates that will not be reviewed here; instead, we follow the historical sequence developed by Noldeke and adapted in Ernst (2011). Verses on “water” constitute some 20% of the moisture-related verses discussed above and only 1% of all verses in the Qur’an. However, the hope is that with a small sample like this, an historical reading will offer insights related to the historical geographic context and meaning of water verses from Mecca 610–622 CE to Medina 622–632 CE. The Early Meccan Period (610 –617 CE). The early Meccan period began with the first revelation in 610 CE. In this period only 7 of 48 suras (14.5%) refer to water (ma’ ), which are discussed in their historical sequence below. Interestingly, the first historical revelation of the word water occurs in the last reference of the canonical order of chapters (number 86). Sura 86 reveals that humans are, “created from a drop emitted” (86:6). Creation from a droplet is mentioned several times in the Qur’an, and is followed in one instance by a reference to life-giving rain, “We pour forth water in abundance” (80:25). The next historical passage reminds listeners that the creation drew forth, “… its moisture and its pasture” (79:31). Sura 77 presents two related water verses, “Have We not created you from a fluid” (77:20), and “…provided for you water sweet [and wholesome]” (77:27). These early Meccan verses then underscore the connection between signs of creation at the beginning of time, sustainability in our lifetime, and belief in resurrection at the end of time, stating, “And do We not send down from the clouds water in abundance, that we may produce corn and vegetables, and gardens of luxurious growth. Verily, the day of sorting out is a thing appointed”

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(78:14–17). An epic reminder is that Noah was saved when others were drowned (69:10–11). The last water verses in this first Meccan period reaffirm the connection between creation, sustenance, and resurrection, with the promise of a paradise that has, “water flowing water constantly, And fruit in abundance” (56:31–32). Sustainability is bracketed by the creation and resurrection. Although vitally important, it is ephemeral in comparison with the timeless paradise promised to the faithful. The Middle Meccan Period (617 –619 CE) has a higher proportion of suras with water verses (12 out of 21 or 57%). They begin with sura 54, which presents three water warnings. The first two verses return to the story of Noah in which torrents of water were unleashed “for a matter decreed” (54:11–12). This is followed by the punishment story of the Thamud tribe that was ordered to share water among themselves and with a she-camel, but when they hamstrung her they were destroyed for it (54:28)(Wescoat 1995a). Disasters that threaten global or local sustainability are decreed often as punishments. After these water warnings, emphasis shifts to bounteous water signs, “And We send down from the sky rain charged with blessing, And We produce therewith gardens and grains for harvest…Thus will be the resurrection” (50:9–11). Comparing the earth to a carpet spread out, “He… sent water down from the sky. With it have we produced diverse pairs of plants…. Verily in this are signs for men endued with understanding” (20:53–54). And a strong reminder that Allah, not humans, controls the rains that fall from the sky (15:22). The carpet metaphor is repeated along with the rain sent down, “…in due measure; and We raise to life therewith a land that is dead; even so will ye be raised [from the dead]” (43:10–11). These signs of land reclamation in life portend the paradise that awaits the faithful on the resurrection. They are sometimes conditional and questioning: “Just think, if all of your water were to sink deep into the earth, who could give you flowing water in its place?” (67:30). These revelatory cycles are repeated to remind believers that water is sent down from heaven in due measure for their needs (23:18), and that out of water is fashioned every living thing (21:30; 27:60). An encompassing sequence of verses links the pure water sent down from heavens that brings life to a land that is dead (mawat ) for all people, which should evoke gratitude, especially from those to whom the

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prophecy is sent; followed by the allegory of the two seas of fresh and saltwater separated by a liminal barrier (barzakh); and concluding with the reminder the humans were themselves created from water (25:48–54). Three stern warning verses in Sura al -Kahf (The Cave) conclude the middle Meccan period. The first of these presents a horrific image of those in hell condemned to drink water like “molten copper” (18:29). Those who are arrogant about their worldly gardens suffer water that sinks into the ground (18:41), even when rain falls their plants become chaff scattered by the wind (18:45). The verses of this period link promise and warning, with increasing emphasis on the latter, which raises questions about the sustainability of most if not all human endeavors in this life, and the horrific permanence of hell in the hereafter. Group 3. Late Meccan Period (619–622 CE). (15 of 21 Suras [71%]). The late Meccan period has the largest number and proportion of water verses of any group. All but six suras mention water (ma’ ) in some way. By now the themes are familiar, and it is their progression that holds particular interest. The creation of humans from water (32:8), the provision of water for dry (dead) land as a sign (32:27), and the frequent message of water sent down to bring abundant blessings in this life and to give proof of the resurrection to come for those who perceive these signs and understand (41:39; 16:10; 16:65; 30:24). After these passages, a cycle of verses in Sura Hud presents a series of Biblically related references to God’s throne upon the water at the creation (11:07), and the flood that destroyed all but Noah and those who were on the Ark (11:43), until the waters subsided and the divine commandment was fulfilled (11:44). Foul waters and intense suffering await the evildoers in hell on the day of judgment (14:16), compared to the faithful who are reminded of the divine beneficence of waters sent down from heaven (14:16). Biblical events in the lives of earlier prophets including Noah, Abraham and Moses are interwoven with these generalized warnings and promises. For example, Sura 28:13 recounts the story where Moses watered the flocks of the young women of Midian, and was rewarded for his good deed. The last five verses in this period repeat the sign of water sent down from heaven to bring life to the earth, but which can also be taken away (39:21; 29:63; 10:24; and 35:27). Those doomed

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to hell will cry out for water, but it will be denied them (7:50). Thus, those on earth must recognize that water sent down to bring life to a “dead” land portends the resurrection of the dead on the day of judgment (7:57). The pronoun shifts in these passages and others discussed above are striking: “It is He who sendeth down rain the skies; With it We produce vegetation of all kinds…,” as “Signs for people who believe” (6:99). Suras from the late Meccan period thus place an extraordinarily consistent emphasis on the compound message of water sent down from heaven as a sign of beneficence in this world, dependency upon Allah, and proof of the resurrection to come. And yet, they encompass mysteries as well as proofs, as in Sura ar-Ra’d (Thunder) where gardens irrigated with the same water have different yields (13:04), people futilely stretch out their hands for water from false gods (13:14), and waters sent from the skies generously fill riverbeds, “each according to its measure, the foam driven away and disappearing “while that which is for the good of mankind remains on the earth” (13:17). This combination of clear signs and mysterious unknowns comprise the believers’ experience and the basis for faith in the sustainability of this world, and even more so in the paradise to come. Group 4. Medinan Period (622–632 CE). (7 out of 24 suras [29%]). Notwithstanding the rich references to water in Sura al -Baqarah discussed above, references to water in the suras following Muhammad and his followers’ migration (hijra) from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE dropped dramatically to only 7 of 24 suras. The Medina suras are many of the longest in the Qur’an, and it is interesting that these latest revelations had relatively fewer verses on water, compared with those in the middle and late Meccan periods. Sura al -Baqara is believed to be one of the earliest revelations after the hijra to Medina, and it has some continuities with those of the later Meccan period. It reminds readers of the waters sent down and the fruits they produce to warn against setting, “…up rivals unto Allah when ye know [the truth]” (2:22). They are also warned against hard-heartedness, with the example that water can even flow from rocks (2:74). The creation is blessed by water sent down that revives the earth that is dead

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(mawat ) as a sign, “for a people that are wise” (2:164), and not deluded into worshiping false idols. Purity comes into focus in Medina suras like al -Anfal which notes that rain is also sent down to purify one of sin (8:11). A parable contrasts the garden with its “water incorruptible” and all sorts of delights, with hell where boiling water tears one’s bowels (47:15). Two verses in this period, including the last chronologically, specify practices of ablution that substitute clean sand or dust if there is no water (4:43; 5:6). Some passages become more complex, for example when unbelievers who mistake a mirage for water in the desert (24:39) are contrasted with believers’ recognition that Allah “has created every animal from water” (24:45). If one doubts the resurrection, Sura al -Hajj reminds us that one need only see, “the earth barren and lifeless, but when We pour down rain upon it, [and] it is stirred [to life]” (22:05), “For it is Allah who understands the finest mysteries” (22:63). The Medina verses offer a rich layering of signs, images, and mysteries associated with water. It is fitting to conclude this historical geographic reading of the Qur’an with its combination of clear signs and fine mysteries, for that is the combination of life-giving and enigmatic qualities of water celebrated in both Sufi poetry and Islamic water law.

Reading the Canonical Arrangement and Reflecting on Water Laws for Muslim Countries The historical reading above situates references to water in the places and times of their revelation in the Qur’an. The canonical sequence of suras, by comparison, is the final order established in the Qur’an, as it has been recited from the early eighth century to the present. We will not repeat the water verses in canonical sequence but instead note five key points and then turn to some concluding reflections: 1. The canonical order of the suras is organized roughly from long to short, and thus from Medinan to Meccan, rather than the reverse. Thus, the early suras in the canonical sequence have relatively few,

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yet rich and complex, water verses that increase in frequency and familiarity through the middle chapters of the Qur’an. Not surprisingly, water-related themes in the canonical sequence oscillate more from signs to laws, warnings, and parables than in the historical sequence. This dynamic oscillation of messages and grammatical shifts within chapters and even verses is ever-challenging to one’s understanding of sustainability, ruptures, and destruction in this life. The historical sequence of chapters also has interweaving themes, but it has repeating verses especially in the late Meccan period. There is a pattern of canonical references to water from sura 56 to 86 (i.e., the third quarter of the text) that focus on water’s life-creating role for humans and vegetation both as signs of divine beneficence and proof of the resurrection to come, which is arguably the key association between water and sustainability in the Qur’an. After that, in the last 28 chapters from sura 86 to 118, the word water (ma’ ) does not appear at all. This is just an interesting lexical note, as water-related verses do still occur, as in the destruction of the Thamud tribe for denying water and causing harm to a she-camel in Sura al -Shams (91:11–14). This is the period of relatively short early Meccan chapters that announce the prophecy, and describe the promise of verdant paradise for believers and horrific punishment of hell for others. The canonical order of the Qur’an is appreciated for its beauty as well as its message, which is an underdeveloped dimension of this chapter. How are the rhymes and syntax of water-related verses experienced by those who hear them and believe? What difference does this experience make for values and behaviors? These are questions raised but unaddressed in this initial study. Some are addressed in the hadith literature, but that lies beyond our scope.

In light of these rich and complex textual patterns, it comes as little surprise that modern authors on Islamic water law have identified keywords in the Qur’an, and then selected verses to address modern concerns in clear but textually and culturally disconnected ways. Caponera (1973) did give primacy to the Qur’an, but he treated it too briefly to do justice to the messages and meanings discussed

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above, and instead proceeded to schools of modern law and legislation that addressed his primary concern with Islamic water law. Abdel Haleem’s (1989) reading of water in the Qur’an, by contrast, followed the phenomena encountered in the canonical sequence of suras, which now helps us understand why some of his first images are of storm clouds in Sura al -Baqara (2:19 ff.). His reading and the Sufi ones of Lings (1968) and Schimmel (1985) share an emphasis on the inner spiritual as well as outer practical significance of water in the Qur’an. Their readings revolve around the frequent references to Allah’s beneficence in sending down water that creates life in this world as proof of the resurrection to come, and the blessings of the paradise “underneath which rivers flow” for the faithful who have done good works. These verses link the promise of the world to come with the imperatives and blessings of this world. It is not surprising that most studies of water law and management in Muslim countries proceed rather quickly from the Qur’an to the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad (hadiths) as they address a wide range of practical situations, and then to the legal schools of fiqh that address even more specific water management issues in detail (e.g., if a well becomes contaminated with “x,” how many buckets of water “y” should be withdrawn and discarded before it is considered clean). Something profound is missed, however, if one glosses over Qur’anic references to water too quickly. It is not just that they provide the highest level of guidance from Allah, though that is a primary reason. We have also shown that rich insights emerge from systematic reading and repetition of moisture-related verses—insights that link experience of the human body and community with sustainability of the natural environment and eternity of the world to come, insights that link practical outer and spiritual inner meanings, and above all link the believer with Allah. Careful reading of verses on water in their historical-geographic sequence revealed patterns of significance from the limited but highly charged references to water in the earliest and latest revelations of Mecca and Medina, and the frequent repetition of messages in the middle and later Meccan periods, perhaps in intensifying efforts to convert the Meccan population. Although we did not undertake a detailed historical interpretation of verses, the principal theme emerging from it is the importance of water as the joint proof of Allah’s blessing in sustaining

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this world and promise in the next, that is, of water’s jointly practical and spiritual role in linking this world and the next. Reading the canonical sequence of suras, by comparison, leads to experience of water-related verses as they have come down in compiled form for all subsequent places and times including but extending far beyond Mecca and Medina. For that widening historical and modern readership, place-based categorizations of Meccan and Medinan suras may not be as relevant as the universal experience and understanding of water. Both readings of the Qur’an bear comparison with the vivid placebased imagery of Persian poetry, Mughal painting, and Humayun’s tombgarden, discussed in the introduction. While these arts and the places they represented and shaped sought greater permanence than the flowers that quickly fade, and in humanistic terms they have had enduring significance in some measure. However, they fall far short of Qur’anic norms and imperatives, and to some extent their inscriptions indicate an awareness of those shortcomings. Thoughtfully restored waterworks remind us of their intentions and of their practical significance for modern society. However, the countless humble graves and simple dug wells surrounding saint’s shrines and royal tombs, most of them now absorbed by urban park lawns and development, may hold and sustain secrets closer to the heart of the Qur’anic revelation than surviving objects and monuments. In other words, the places not sustained may have sustainability beyond the grave. We showed that keyword studies of “water” per se provide too small a lexical sample to discern overarching themes in the canonical text. The closer reading of moisture-related terms in Sura al -Baqara, by comparison, yielded a richer basis for discerning Qur’anic guidance for water laws in Muslim countries. Consider the final reference to the word water (ma’ ) in the Sura al -Tariq (“What Comes by Night”), which concerns the creation of humankind, together with the final reference to water of any type in the Qur’an in Sura al -Kawthar, which refers to a beautiful water body in paradise and by extension to an abundant good (Nasr 2015, 1082): Now let man but think from what he is created, He is created from a drop emitted (86:5–6)

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To thee we have granted the fount (of abundance) (kawthar ) Therefore to thy Lord turn in prayer and sacrifice (108:1–2)

Taken together, these Qur’anic verses link the water of human creation at the beginning of life with that of the resurrection at the end of time, and abundance in this world in between, in ways that can help guide the progressive development of water laws of Muslim countries and help begin to update Dante Caponera’s (1973) classic text on that subject. Acknowledgements I am grateful to Muslim colleagues who have generously shared their ideas on this topic over the years. I alone am responsible for errors in this study of water verses in the Qur’an. Translations are mainly from Abdullah Yusuf Ali (1990).

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5 Emerging Places of Repair: A Sustainable Urbanism Approach to Living in and with Cities—Inspired by Vine Deloria, Jr.’s Agent Ontology of Place Briana Meier

In this chapter, I propose that the agential capacity of places—and, indeed, all of the world’s entities—allow for the emergence of new sorts of sacred places, which I refer to as places of repair . Attention to the creation of new sorts of places—new kinds of relations of things to each other—can foster a new type of sustainable urbanism that embeds solidarity between settler and Indigenous peoples at its heart. This type of repair can and should begin in the everyday places of North American towns and cities. This essay recognizes the enormous contribution of Vine Deloria, Jr.’s effort to bridge the ontological schism he recognized between Western and Indigenous cultures. Further, the essay proposes that these ontological schisms can be bridged—and repaired—in place and with place. I propose that urbanism—which includes city design, building, and dwelling—must move beyond the outdated western metaphysical notion B. Meier (B) University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 S. E. Silvern and E. H. Davis (eds.), Religion, Sustainability, and Place, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7646-1_5

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of a world composed of inert objects and that Deloria’s metaphysics offers an important place to start. In his 1972 book God is Red (2003), and also in his 1999 books For this Land (1999a) and Spirit and Reason (1999b), Vine Deloria, Jr. categorizes four ways in which places are considered sacred for Native Americans. Within his description, Deloria emphasizes the potential for new sacred places to emerge. This potential for emergence is a function of the capacities of places to express information for humans, for nonhumans, and even for non-physical entities. A place is composed of an intelligent, communicative energy that pervades the entire universe, including things that dominant culture typically considers “inanimate entities.” Deloria states that “[…] all inanimate entities have spirit and personality so that the mountains, rivers, waterfalls, even the continents and the Earth itself have intelligence, knowledge, and the ability to communicate ideas” (Deloria 2003, 151). As such, places, in Deloria’s account, are active agents with whom reciprocal relations exist with other entities, including plants, animals, stones, and humans. Places can reveal aspects of the sacred, and they can become sacred in various ways. Philosopher Scott Pratt refers to Deloria’s metaphysics as an agent ontology in recognition of the capacity of both nonhuman and human entities to act expressively (Pratt 2006, 5). This chapter builds on Pratt’s agent ontology concept. The claim that sacred places can emerge as a result of the agential capacities of place presents a particular ontology that differs sharply from that of dominant Western cultures. Deloria’s work acknowledges this philosophical divide between Western and Indigenous cultures and seeks to help repair that divide. In another book, The Metaphysics of Modern Existence, Deloria maintains, “The fundamental factor that keeps Indians and non-Indians from communicating is that they are speaking about two entirely different perceptions of the world” (Deloria 2012, 1). In his effort to develop a metaphysics of modern existence that draws from world cultures, but is not limited to any one culture alone, Deloria offers a place to start and an alternative metaphysics to dominant Western approaches that instrumentalize the world and its inhabitants. Deloria claims that, although perceptions of the world vary by culture, the world

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itself is composed of the communicative energy described above and can be perceived by humans from varied cultural traditions. My proposal, inspired by Deloria’s metaphysics, adds to and reorients the basic assumptions that drive much of sustainable urbanism in the North American context. Sustainable urbanism remains a small subset of overall urban development in the US, but it has grown significantly since the 1990s when, according to renowned urban planning scholar Peter Hall, “sustainable urban development became almost a mantra” for planners and designers (Hall 2014, 10). Although increasingly popular then and now, the field is marked by a lack of both clarity and agreement on what constitutes sustainable urbanism. The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Neighborhood Development (LEED ND) system advanced by the US Green Building Council (USGBC) typifies a widely adopted approach to sustainable urbanism (US Green Building Council 2020). The USGBC and other similarly oriented initiatives operate within the structures of state-controlled, capital-driven development and emphasize reshaping auto-dependent urban form in favor of compact, mixed-use neighborhood designs (US Green Building Council 2020). Such approaches seek to reduce energy consumption, encourage more active living through daily walking and cycling, and foster greater social connection (Beatley 2000; Farr 2007; Hall 2014). Economic concerns such as housing affordability are peripherally addressed in some schemes, and some emphasize the importance of humans’ access to natural areas, food security, and clean air and water, and the protection of habitat for nonhuman lifeforms (Beatley 2000, 2010; Farr 2007). Attention to the agential capacities of place and humans’ ethical responsibilities to place itself is absent from these approaches, which tend to be informed by anthropocentric perspectives that conceive of place and non-biotic elements of the environment as valuable only insofar as they support human needs or, to some extent, provide habitat for preferred species. Architect and scholar Brook Muller, though, offers a relational, ethical take on sustainable urbanism that focuses on place and the material world. For example, Muller argues that environmental crises in the American West are in large part a function of the lack of relations between urban dwellers and their surroundings. Muller states, “While

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there are technical dimensions … they stem in a large measure from and abet a larger problem of cultural disassociation, inattention, and a failure of perception” (Muller 2018, 5). For Muller, the design and form of contemporary cities perpetuates disconnect and a lack of relation. Water and power infrastructures are hidden and, when visible, they loom large as imposing, centralized, grid-tied plants, inaccessible and forbidding. Water, the source of life, is treated as a nuisance, a pollutant, and a problem to solve. Muller states that an ever-expanding metropolis distances urban dwellers more and more from the broader hydrological and ecological realities upon which they depend. Muller’s approach makes water and other hidden infrastructure more visible and tangible and can help designers and urban inhabitants cultivate awareness of the agential capacities of place by bringing urban residents more closely in contact with the oft-hidden urban elements that support all life. Efforts to restore awareness of relationality are important aspects of places of repair. While social justice commitments generally remain sorely underdeveloped within dominant forms of sustainable urbanism, even less attention is given to the long legacy of violent appropriation of the lands of Indigenous peoples’ and sustained policies of genocide against Native Americans. Eve Tuck’s and K. Wayne Yang’s article, “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor,” reminds readers that American cities are a fundamental part of the ongoing settler colonialism of this continent. As they state, “Decolonizing the Americas means all land is repatriated and all settlers become landless” (Tuck and Yang 2012, 26). For the authors, decolonization is not about repairing conceptual rifts, it is about returning land to native peoples. Tuck and Yang emphasize that decolonization is about land and life for Indigenous peoples; the authors emphasize that decolonization is a different kind of effort than other social or environmental justice efforts. Social justice movements, for the authors, largely ignore the state of affairs that all settlers—whatever their conditions of oppression—occupy Indigenous lands (Tuck and Yang 2012, 35). Tuck and Yang’s essay makes clear the multiple levels of obfuscation and attempts to sidestep the issue of decolonization that settlers employ. They assert, “Urban land (indeed all land),” for the authors, “is native land”; land is about recovery of Native peoples’ life, culture, and

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sovereignty (Tuck and Yang 2012, 23). However, their essay’s emphasis on American land as Native land does not include acknowledgement of the agency of land itself. Deloria adds to Tuck and Yang’s argument by emphasizing the agential capacity of land and the rest of the material world, the corresponding moral relations that are required of humans and the land and the rest of the entities in the universe (Deloria 1999a and 1999b; Pratt 2018). I build from Deloria’s agent ontology by acknowledging the personhood of all lands and beings and the corresponding obligations of reciprocity that extend across American Indian and non-Indian human communities.

An Agent Ontology of Place, Matter–Energy, Solidarity, and Sacred Places Vine Deloria, Jr.’s body of work, spanning nearly half a century, has educated, inspired, enlivened, confronted, and comforted countless American Indians, and non-Indians alike, across multiple generations. Deloria, of Standing Rock Sioux heritage, trained in theology and law and wrote prolifically about Native American religious, political, and cultural issues throughout his life. Born in 1933, Deloria continued to publish until his sudden death in 2005 (Dunbar-Ortiz 2014; McKenna and Pratt 2015). His first book Custer Died for Your Sins (1988) helped to spark the American Indian Movement and brought contemporary Native American issues into the consciousness of the non-Native American public. Less well known, though, is Deloria’s work on metaphysics. In his 1979 book, The Metaphysics of Modern Existence ( 2012), Deloria develops many of the philosophical themes and arguments he emphasized throughout decades of subsequent texts and talks. This essay uses the terms metaphysics and ontology as roughly interchangeable and employs Deloria’s definition as, “that set of first principles we must possess in order to make sense of the world” (Deloria and Wildcat 2001, 2). First principles in Western philosophy typically include topics such as being, space, and time; however, important among these concepts is also that of place (Casey 1998, 3).

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Place as Relationship Although most of his texts focus on issues of place, Deloria rarely defines the term; however, he is explicit in Power and Place, where he explains place as “the relationships of things to each other” (Deloria and Wildcat 2001, 23). Embedded in this simple definition is a distinct understanding of what is meant by things and what it means to exist in relationship with them. By foregrounding relationships, Deloria clearly distinguishes the concept of place from the typical Western notion based on a coordinate location. An agential, matter–energy notion of things informs the understanding of relationships. In sum then, Deloria’s ontology is based on the understanding of place as relationship (Deloria and Wildcat 2001, 2).

Matter–Energy in a Living Universe Matter, in Deloria’s account, is not composed of an assemblage of inert building blocks. Rather, matter, here, is better conceptualized as matter – energy. Deloria elaborates, “Again, we are dealing with a complexity of relationships in which no particular object is given primacy over any other object or entity. Energy or spirit and the manifestation of purposeful order seem to characterize both modern scientific speculations and Indian beliefs” (Deloria 2003, 94). Contemporary physics shows what Native American peoples have long asserted: energy and matter take on aspects of each other and cannot be rightly separated. Notions of the nature of energy are also being transformed through contemporary science. Through examples of ways in which a scientist’s participation in an experiment necessarily alters its results, Deloria illustrates what he asserts is a long-standing belief of many Native American cultures, that energy is personal and communicative. In Power and Place, Deloria refers to energy as power (Deloria and Wildcat 2001). In this text, power refers to the “spiritual power or life force” and “the living energy that inhabits and/or composes the universe” (Deloria and Wildcat 2001, 2, 22–23). In contrast to an everyday Western understanding, energy is not simply the ability to conduct work, but more analogous

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to the tenets of contemporary quantum physics. Deloria explains, “We may grant that the energy described by quantum physics appears to be identical to the mysterious power that almost all tribes accepted as the primary constituent of the universe” (Deloria and Wildcate 2001, 5). The power, or living energy of the universe, in interaction with the entities that make up places, creates particular sorts of places that generate unique sorts of expression. As Deloria puts it, “Power and place produce personality” (Deloria and Wildcat 2001, 23). For Deloria, the conclusion that follows is that existence must be approached in a highly personal manner, according to very specific and individualized kinds of relationships. The agent ontology presented by Deloria extends from material existence to all entities that live in spirit form. Deloria argues that spirits, like other entities, exist in relation to the rest of the physical world. This claim is made based on the accounts of other human members of the community, which, because they have direct experience with the spirit world, is valid information. Like the rest of the world, spirits are specific to place. In God is Red , Deloria posits that various religions arise as a function of the relationship of specific peoples with the spirits of particular places (2003, 290–293). Spirits include deities of various sorts, as well as beings that once lived in the physical world, who continue on in spirit form. Deloria’s last book The World We Used to Live In (2006) catalogues numerous historical accounts of interactions with spirits and medicine men (Deloria’s terms) of various tribes, including the Ojibway, Oglala Lakota, Cheyenne, and Kiowa. These historical accounts demonstrate the vast types of interactions Native American people have had with the agential nature of both the material world and their direct experiences with the spiritual dimensions that exist in continuity with it. Deloria demonstrates the depth of lived experience with the power and personality of place for peoples across great extents of time. He is clear, however, that notions of energy and spirit are not at odds with each other—contemporary science and Indigenous religious traditions are complementary endeavors (Deloria 2003, 94).

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Solidarity and the Sacred These conceptions of spirit, energy, and agency are closely tied with the concept of the sacred. I propose that the notion of the sacred is integral to the ethical implications of an agent ontology. While Deloria argued that the agential capacities of the physical world as understood by Indigenous peoples align with contemporary physic’s understanding of a matter– energy-based world in which matter–energy exhibits a personality, he also made clear the significance of revering the world as sacred for Indigenous peoples. However, those with a secular commitment often refuse to entertain the notion of the sacred in everyday practices of urban design and inhabitation. Such a refusal is ethically inappropriate for two reasons. First, Deloria has provided an avenue by which people might transcend cultural variations as they relate to spirituality through direct, personal experience. For Deloria, the agential nature of all things can be experienced by any human under certain conditions. The direct experience of the intelligent, communicative universe is a sacred experience, independent of one’s religious affiliations. Second, Deloria’s arguments that the universe must be experienced in a personal manner includes the claim that people may receive different sorts of communications from places; therefore, this ontology necessitates a pluralist approach to religion and spirituality. Rather than an appeal to sameness, Deloria’s is an argument to acknowledge and respect differences in spirituality that have emerged from long-term relationships between peoples and places. In other words, as Rosiek et al. (2020) have argued, for settlers to stand in solidarity with Indigenous people, it is necessary to take up their cause on their terms. Acting in solidarity means respecting Indigenous understandings of the world as sacred. Actions that adopt only the secular aspects of the worldview presented by Deloria would constitute yet another act of appropriation and another effort at the erasure of Native American cultures. Additionally, the concepts of power-as-energy, personality, and place delineated by Deloria point to the ethical significance of the notion of all of the universe as sacred. Like place, matter, and energy, Deloria’s concept of the sacred is much different from that of dominant Western science, which assumes spiritual aspects of existence do not, in fact, exist.

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As Deloria remarks, “[It is] the idea […] that there is nothing spiritual, [that] everything is material. You find that just promulgated throughout science” (as cited in McLeod and Maynor (2001)). In religious contexts within Western cultures, there is, then, continual friction regarding what is sacred and what is profane. Deloria’s comparison of ways in which various cultures conceive of what is meant by sacred is an important part of the implications of an agent ontology of place. According to Deloria, for Native American peoples, the sacred is based on an understanding of a matter–energy world. Matter–energy composes the places of the Earth and the universe, which, for Deloria, are made sacred in a number of ways. Sacred places provide important instructions about ethical living. Deloria states, “Sacred sites which higher powers have chosen for manifestation enable us to focus our concerns on the specific form of our lives. These kinds of experiences have shown us something of the nature of the universe by an affirmative manifestation of themselves, and this knowledge illuminates everything else that we know” (Deloria 1999a, 212). For Deloria, then, sacred places are those where the intelligent energy in all things makes itself known, but importantly, because the world is alive, intelligent, and communicative, the sacred can emerge at any point in time or space. At issue with the division between the sacred and profane in Western cultures is the accompanying principle that the physical world has no moral standing, that humans have no ethical responsibilities toward the rest of existence. In their essay “How Much of the Earth is Sacred Space?” Hughes and Swan (1986) explain these deep cultural differences between what sacred means. Generally, Western religions conceive of the sacred as something outside or beyond this physical reality. Sacred places, for Westerners, are those that are demarcated from the mundane or profane spaces of the Earth, such as a church, or even a sacred grove. Sacred space, in the Western tradition, has become something based on the idea of sanctuary (Hughes and Swan 1986, 247). A sanctuary, by definition, is a place separated from those places around it. For early Christians in particular, churches and monasteries were, as Hughes and Swan describe, “oases of sanctity in a desert of evil. As outposts of heaven on a fallen earth, they could be established anywhere. By the time the Europeans were ready to invade the homeland of the American Indians, the idea

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of sacred space as a distinct area consecrated by ecclesiastical authority was firmly established” (Hughes and Swan 1986, 249). Outside of these sacred spaces, designated as such by church authority only, the Earth itself is a realm of the profane or mundane, conceived of as only a collection of living and nonliving material entities that do not include the divine and therefore require no ethical consideration. Deloria rejects the distinction between the sacred and profane because such distinctions are drawn from the Western mindset that separates the spiritual from the material world (Deloria 2012, 204). If profanity is to be found, Deloria recognizes it in “the sin that alienates our species from the rest of the natural world” (Deloria 2012, 205). Sacred places, for Deloria, should not be understood in opposition to the profane, but instead in terms of the interconnectedness of all things (Deloria 2012, 204). Importantly, for Deloria, the sacredness of existence is an empirical claim. Deloria emphasizes that people from various cultural and spiritual traditions can directly experience the sacred in interaction with place and with other entities.

Sacred Places As mentioned near the beginning of this chapter, three of Deloria’s texts categorize various types of sacred places (Deloria 1999a, b, 2003). His essay in For this Land , written for a non-Native American audience, is clear in its disclaimer that such categorization is a gross simplification of reality, but in general, according to Vine Deloria, Jr.’s account, four different kinds of sacred places exist. First, there are places of historical significance to humans, defined as those “where, within our own history, regardless of our group, something of great importance took place. Every society needs these kinds of sacred places. They help to instill a sense of social cohesion in the people and remind them of the passage of the generations that have brought them to the present” (Deloria 1999b, 327). These places are those where events of cultural significance among humans took place. Deloria provides the site of the Battle of Gettysburg as an example. The second category of sacred places is one in which the sacred appears in an otherwise secular situation. The essence of these kinds of place

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events is that the sacred has become a part of our experience in a way it previously was not. To relate with people from Western traditions, Deloria here uses the example of the place where Moses saw a burning bush (Deloria 1999b, 328). As he approached the bush, God spoke to Moses and gave him specific instructions about how to live and how to care for his community. In the book of Exodus, God also told Moses to remove his shoes because the place where he spoke to Moses had become holy ground (Carroll and Prickett 2008). Historian of Religion Mircea Eliade calls this type of experience a hierophany, which he describes as an act in which “something sacred shows itself to us” (Eliade 1987, 11). The place where Moses encountered God talking through the burning bush was made sacred through the hierophany that Moses experienced. The third kind of sacred places is what Deloria calls higher powers. These higher powers have made themselves apparent to humans over long periods of time to various cultures and peoples. Deloria explains that “there are, on this earth, some places of inherent sacredness[…]. [There are sites that are Holy in and of themselves[…]. These Holy Places are locations where human beings have always gone to communicate and be with higher spiritual powers. This phenomenon is worldwide and all religions find that these places regenerate people and fill them with spiritual powers” (Deloria 1999a, 209–210). Outside of the North American context, Sri Pada (also known as Adam’s Peak) in Sri Lanka and Mount Kailash in Tibet provide examples of sacred places that have been revered by multiple religious groups for millennia. The fourth type of sacred place is one that engages the universe in personal, intelligent, and communicative ways. Deloria makes the power of these types of sacred places clear when he states, “Human beings must always be ready to receive new revelations at new locations. If this possibility did not exist, all deities and spirits would be dead” (Deloria 1999a, 211). Inherent in the ontology presented by Deloria is the possibility for emergence of new sorts of communications, interactions, persons, and places. Because the universe is composed of intelligent, living energy, it is intrinsically generative. This generative state of existence suggests that, by unifying within the creation of the sacred through human interactions with both the intention and the creativity inherent within design, building, and dwelling, new sorts of sacred places can emerge.

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The Emergence of Places of Repair I propose that inhabitants of contemporary North America can build from this possibility of emergence by cultivating places of repair. Places of repair are those through which reciprocity between humans and nonhumans is actively practiced. Places of repair are designed, built, and inhabited according to the Delorian metaphysics that recognizes an intelligent energy undergirding all things. While humans from all traditions can directly experience the agential capacity of place and the nonhuman world, places of repair are created through acts of solidarity that respect the specific connections to place and protocols of Indigenous and other spiritual traditions. Designing and inhabiting places of repair requires acknowledging the possibility for emergence of new ways of being in any place and time. According to Deloria, new sorts of places and new sorts of information can and do emerge. Humans and nonhuman entities interact relationally as part of this emergence. The concept of emergence is beautifully depicted in Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel, Ceremony (2016). Ceremony suggests that new sorts of relations among humans and with nonhumans are needed to heal the entangled wounds of the Earth and its peoples. Old Betonie, one of the novel’s healers, who lives surrounded by refuse, overlooking the reservation, which is located on sacred, Navajo ceremonial grounds, teaches Tayo, the sick and wounded protagonist, “At one time, the ceremonies as they had been performed were enough for the way the world was then. But after the white people came, elements in this world began to shift; and it became necessary to create new ceremonies [teaching] me this above all else: things which don’t shift and grow are dead things” (Silko 2016, 115–116; my emphasis). Silko’s novel inspires my proposal for places of repair as a dwelling and design approach for sustainable urbanism. Attention to creation of new sorts of places—new kinds of relations of things to each other—will lead to new and productive sorts of ceremonies. Urban design is, in itself, a sort of ceremony for bringing a new world into being, and the ways in which urban residents inhabit and relate to their places can be, too. Designing, building, and dwelling in

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places of repair cultivates the conditions of possibility for the emergence of new sorts of relationships between humans and the intelligent, personal, communicative universe, including the human-made artifacts of the contemporary, built environment. Healing and repair are not only possible, they are critical to the future of an ethical and sustainable urbanism. Places of repair, as discussed in the following pages, are made from intentional efforts on the part of humans to create new ways of interacting and also to conscientiously give back to the land. In the following pages, I provide examples of contemporary projects that demonstrate these possibilities.

Welcoming the Camas, Drawing the Line: Places of Repair as a Principle for City Living and Design Here, I present two recent urban design interventions that took place in the North American Pacific Northwest that illuminate Deloria’s concepts of place as relationship, agency of place and matter, and reciprocity. These cases demonstrate instances of repair and emergence in which the relational nature of existence becomes apparent. The first case is a newly opened public park in Portland, Oregon, that is built on a former construction dump at the border of a residential and industrial area. The second example takes the form of temporary events in urban public spaces, where a design artifact—a newly carved totem pole—is introduced and shared with people who gather with the express intention of creating solidarity and sacred space. These cases illustrate how urban design might emphasize the creation of places of repair within a capitalist, state-controlled, settler colonial context.

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Welcoming the Camas, Repairing Relationships: The Native Gathering Gardens at Cully Park in Portland, Oregon Cully Park, located near the Columbia River on the far north side of Portland, Oregon, is one of the city’s newest parks; it opened to the public in July 2018. This place of repair includes a Native Gathering Gardens located along the southern edge of the park, built with the intention of recognizing the contemporary Indigenous peoples of the region, who are descended from more than 380 tribes, by making space for Indigenous land practices (“Making the Invisible Visible, Let Us Build Cully Park”). The Native Gathering Gardens includes two large gathering areas, connected east to west by a linear path. One is built atop a large mound that rises about twenty feet from the path encircling its base. Looking north from the mound provides a view of Mount Saint Helens. Looking east, Mount Hood is framed within the tall cedar poles encircling the second gathering space. The Columbia River flows westward less than a mile to the north of the park (Fig. 5.1). I attended “The Day We Welcome the Camas” event in February 2018. In her introduction to the group of about sixty-eight people who gathered to help plant the camas, Judy Bluehorse Skelton (Nez Perce/Cherokee) explained the story of the land and the story of the Native Gathering Gardens: “This is sacred space. For so long, people came to the shores of the Columbia River, to fish, to trade, to be together” (J. Bluehorse Skelton, personal communication, February 10, 2018). According to Bluehorse Skelton, historically, people would collect vast amounts of the camas bulbs from tended fields and then roast them slowly in long trenches dug in the ground. The harvesting, preparation, and cooking activities were large community events. Since European colonization, the fields of native camas that used to populate the region, tended by native peoples for centuries, have largely been destroyed (J. Bluehorse Skelton, personal communication, February 10, 2018). Planting the camas in Cully Park begins to repair that severed relationship. This act begins to reestablish severed relations between place and the Indigenous peoples of the region, and it creates new systems of reciprocity between current urban denizens and the place they inhabit.

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Fig. 5.1 February 10, 2018, in Portland, Oregon: Judy Bluehorse Skelton conducts a smudging ceremony for camas plants and volunteer participants in a planting event at the Native Gathering Gardens in Cully Park. Photo by the author

Cully Park is bordered on the north by railroad tracks and a busy city highway. Single-family homes and a large, empty lot flank the west side. Several commercial and industrial sites border the east and south of the park. Directly beyond the cedar poles of the Native Gathering Gardens, the land of the park slopes down steeply to the grade of the industrial properties to the south where junkyards filled with piles of tires and scrap metal mark the park’s edge.

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The park itself is built on a former construction dump, and significant remediation issues have dictated much of its design. No trees can be planted yet, and no fires can be lit due to the flammable methane gas seepage from the dump beneath the thick plastic membrane that caps it. Bluehorse Skelton shared the hope to be able to plant trees and light ceremonial fires within the lifetimes of those who are children now (J. Bluehorse Skelton, personal communication, February 10, 2018). In doing so, she demonstrated Deloria’s account of Indigenous peoples’ commitments to give deeply to the land for many generations. As Deloria states, “The first dimension of Indian feeling about the land is therefore an admission that we are part and parcel of it physically. However, our physical contribution makes sense only because our memory of land is a memory of ourselves and our deeds and experiences” (Deloria 1999a, 253). Deloria further explains that “when non-Indians live on a specific piece of land for a number of generations, they also begin to come into this reflective kind of relationship” (Deloria 1999a, 254). The land in this place is actively processing the rubble and rubbish deposited over decades. In the recent past, this place was treated as a site where waste materials could be dumped. Now, the processes beneath the plastic membrane are acknowledged as part of the relationships that are being established by the human and nonhuman elements of the place. Repair extends down into the Earth and across many generations. “This space is about healing,” said Bluehorse Skelton. She continued, “[It’s] about healing the land, the people, and the plants” (J. Bluehorse Skelton, personal communication, February 10, 2018). That day, we all gathered on this former dump—trains, airplane noise, imported soils, imported peoples, flocks of birds, babies, grandmas, strangers, and the rare, warm February sun. Today was the day we welcomed the camas. The camas plants, perhaps fifty in total, each resting in their own black plastic pots, were placed at the center of the gathering circle. We listened as several people of Indigenous heritage spoke about the significance of the place, the experience of collaboratively designing and creating this park, and the cultural importance of the camas. Before we began planting, Bluehorse Skelton offered to smudge everyone present. Smudging is a traditional cultural practice for many Indigenous tribes of North America. As explained by First Nations

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author Lisa Charleyboy, burning sacred herbs and other plants in a smudging ceremony can purify a space and clear it of negative energies (Charleyboy 2012). Cat Criger, then aboriginal elder-in-residence at the University of Toronto, suggests that smudging rituals, conducted in respectful ways, can help non-Indigenous people learn about Indigenous culture and the healing capacities of plants. Criger explains, “To understand the protocol means you have to learn something about aboriginal people. So in a sense the medicines are working in a kind way, saying ‘learn about me and we can respect each other and we can walk together’” (as cited in Charleyboy 2012). Judy Bluehorse Skelton began the planting ceremony by “smudging” the camas, thereby acknowledging and honoring the plants. After the introductory ceremony and smudging, we carried the camas plants to the base of the west side of the mound; this area had been chosen for planting because the slope creates a moist soil preferred by the plants. A Portland Parks Department representative of Indigenous heritage showed us how to plant. A young girl brought a toddler from the group to place the first camas plant in the ground. We welcomed the camas as a group that included Native Americans from across the continent, settlers of European descent, African-Americans, and people of mixed descents, abilities, ages, interests, and agendas. This place is sacred, partly because of the relations established with the ground and partly because of the plants, the rocks, the birds, the railroads, the piles of tires, and the humans who interacted. As defined in Delorian agent ontology, the interactions of these entities with each other and with the power inherent in all of them produce the place, which is made sacred through these interactions. Deloria explains, “Luther Standing Bear once remarked that a people had to be born, reborn, and reborn again on a piece of land before beginning to come to grips with its rhythms. Thus, in addition to the general contribution of long occupation, comes the coincident requirement that people must have freely given of themselves to the land at specific places in order to understand it” (Deloria 1999a, 254). Here, at the Native Gathering Gardens, as we must do as part of our relationships with it, we gave reciprocal respect to the land. Repair here has begun by initiating reciprocal relations among the humans, camas plants, and land of Cully Park.

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Creating Sacred Place in Momentary Urban Space: The Lummi Nation House of Tears Carvers Totem Pole Journey Across the Columbia River, a few miles north of Cully Park and a few months before “The Day We Welcome the Camas,” the Lummi Nationled Totem Pole Journey arrived in Vancouver, Washington, on a Monday evening in October 2017. There, on the traditional lands of the Chinook and Cowlitz people, on East Evergreen Boulevard outside the downtown public library, a group of thirty or so people gathered in prayer around a truck and trailer carrying a newly carved and painted totem pole. Animal figures painted in black, red, and white at the base of the pole supported the figures of two human women, whose shoulders held up a white, round top piece (a harvest moon) carved with a human figure seated next to a fire. The pole, about sixteen feet in length, was to continue on the Totem Pole Journey with the House of Tears Carvers across the continent to Pittsburgh, where it would join a Natural History Museum traveling exhibit for over a year before finally being raised on Orcas Island just across the water from the Lummi reservation (Fig. 5.2). Just before sunset, all present were invited to gather around the trailer. We placed our hands on the wooden totem pole. Children were asked to stand closest to the pole, and those who could not reach the pole itself placed their hands on the backs and shoulders of the strangers and friends who stood in front of them. Lummi Master Carver Jewell James led us in a short prayer and then asked the group to send their well wishes into the pole (J. James, personal communication, October 16, 2017). At the direction of Lummi tribal member Freddie Xwenang Lane, the whole group called out, “Kwel Hoy—We Draw the Line from Vancouver, USA.” We waited for a bus to pass, then we called out again—this time louder—“Kwel Hoy - We Draw the Line from Vancouver, USA!” (F. Xwenang Lane, personal communication, October 16, 2017). Next, James sang a song he wrote in 2001 after the September 11th attacks; it was then that the carvers made their first journey and brought a healing totem pole from the Lummi tribal land on the coast of Washington State to New York.

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Fig. 5.2 October 14, 2017, in Vancouver, Washington: Participants in the Totem Pole Journey place their hands on the totem pole and each other in a moment of prayer and reflection (Source Photo by the author)

On that evening in October, Evergreen Boulevard, the group of humans who gathered there, the totem pole, the trailer holding it, and the truck that would pull it across the continent together made a sacred place. Our declaration—“We draw the line!” —was shouted, intentionally with a double meaning. We collectively established a boundary, a line past which further oil and gas extraction projects could not encroach. By doing so, we also established a place of repair inside the line in Vancouver and networked across the continent, a sacred place in which we gathered together in solidarity. The creation of sacred places in this project is key to the organizers’ approach. As James explained in an article published a few years earlier, “What we’re doing is we’re using it to call people to gather. It’s when people gather together that the sacred exists” (cited in Cortes 2014).

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James’ statements align with Deloria’s claims that among the four categories of sacred places are those where “something of great importance took place” as a result of human beings coming together, however momentarily (Deloria 1999a, 207). Further, Deloria also suggests that new ceremonies for humans emerge from revelations as a result of direct contact with the sacredness of place (Deloria 1999a, 256–257). I had the sense that the House of Tears Carvers are also allowing for a sort of reverse causal relationship between ceremony and sacredness of place they are transforming the urban spaces along the Totem Pole Journey into places of repair. The carvers, in bringing the totem pole to the centers of towns and cities across the continent and using it to call people together, are creating a new kind of ceremony that allows humans from many traditions to access a direct experience of the sacred. Such experiences create conditions of possibility for urban dwellers, so often alienated from our everyday environs, to develop a more reciprocal, relational connection to place and to each other. These acts of the Lummi people invite non-Indigenous humans to engage in solidarity, and they offer a way of relating to each other and relating to place that demonstrates place as sacred. A video produced by Freddie Xwenang Lane places the efforts of the project firmly within the agential, living universe detailed by Deloria and emphasizes the importance of solidarity across human and nonhuman communities: There is a prophecy that tells of a day when the rivers and skies turn black and the fish and the animals die. But it also speaks of a time when the people will stand together to stop this from happening. […] The totem pole journey is a project that makes visible the struggle for life. […] As the totem pole travels from place to place and comes into contact with more and more people, it grows more powerful. People who touch it give it power, and it gives power to them. The journey also spreads the story of the prophecy and in doing so, it draws a line in the sand (Lane and Jones 2017).

The reckoning of settler peoples with the ongoing legacy of colonization and genocide takes place within place. Places—the relationships between people and things—are made through solidarity, but they are equally produced through alienation and disconnection. Solidarity is

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an essential part of recognition, repatriation, and revitalization. Efforts like the creation of the Totem Pole Journey and the Native Gathering Gardens at Cully Park in Portland proceed within the confines of the settler colonial state. Within these contexts, the Indigenous creators of the events and places consider them to be places of healing, renewal, and reconciliation; they are sacred places. The Totem Pole Journey and the Native Gathering Gardens are not explicitly places of repatriation; they are, though, an acknowledgement of the peoples and cultures that settler colonial society has systematically attempted to erase from the land and from dominant culture. Scholars, designers, planners, builders, and urban dwellers can learn from these moments. They and we can learn how to emphasize the essential role public places serve as civic and reciprocally ethical places within built environments. A park, a plaza, a street corner and a bioswale are the seemingly mundane elements of the everyday which are essential and active elements in the creation of places. These are sacred places where repair, reciprocity, and solidarity should, can, and do emerge. The principles that inform the creation of these places can help to inspire and transform contemporary, dominant approaches to sustainable urbanism.

To Conclude, We Must Begin Living in and building American cities in new ways does not change the fact that their very existence is part of an ongoing project to erase Indigenous peoples. The cities of this continent are a fundamental part of ongoing settler colonialism. American cities are critical pieces of the concerted institutional machinery that has for centuries sought to destroy Indigenous peoples by forcing them from their homelands. Contemporary, dominant approaches to sustainable urbanism perpetuate the violent legacy of colonization of the continent and support the continued displacement of Indigenous peoples from their lands. Yet this essay has asked if and how urban design and dwelling informed by Deloria’s agent ontology, which includes the concept of place as relationship, can address issues of alienation from place and foster acts of solidarity across American Indian and non-Indian communities.

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This chapter has taken up Vine Deloria, Jr.’s offer of how Indians and non-Indians (his terms) together might update the Western, mechanical view of the world by suggesting that the everyday built environment of contemporary North American cities can be perceived, conceived, and even built according to the principle of places of repair . Sustainable urbanism must be an urbanism committed to repairing the legacy of violent displacement from traditional lands. As noted by Tuck and Yang, urban development as currently practiced in America perpetuates the erasure of Native peoples (Tuck and Yang 2012, 23); at the same time, it contributes significantly to the ongoing degradation and destruction of all of Earth’s life support systems and is a tool in the dismantling of many sorts of traditional cultures. Urban development is also part of a concerted effort to prevent the emergence of new forms of culture, Indigenous or otherwise. However, urban development, even in a capitalist context, is not totalizing. Land may be bought and sold, but a place is never completely controlled by any people. Design, building, and dwelling are inherently creative and generative activities; informed by the metaphysics of modern existence that Deloria has envisioned, these activities can foster new modes of existence through the creation of places of repair . Deloria’s metaphysics of modern existence includes the potential for emergence and repair at any time, in any place. Welcoming the camas was not just about a Portland Parks Department volunteer day; the event opened up the world, creating an entirely new, sacred, and ethically reciprocal place. These projects and those that the other authors and I have mentioned continue to allow for the emergence of these types of relational places. As discussed, places can be made sacred by human activities. At the totem pole events, because people came together in ceremony, the place became sacred. We initiated ongoing relationships, just as we experienced and contributed to the creation of a place of ethically minded repair. Deloria recognized and advocated for a major transformation to take place within the philosophical and cultural divides between Native American and Western peoples. As he noted in his last book, “We have already seen that tribal peoples observed the world around them and quickly concluded that it represented an energetic mind undergirding

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the physical world, its motions, and provided energy and life in everything that existed. This belief, as we have seen, is the starting point, not the conclusion” (Deloria 2006, 197). A metaphysics of modern existence includes an understanding of the agential qualities of a matter– energy world, and these qualities are the very same that compose the built environment. Rather than attempting to appropriate Indigenous cultures, non-Indians can listen and work in solidarity at the borders where Indigenous peoples are offering to share. Here, the contradictions in worldview can be examined and perhaps, as Deloria hoped, transformed. The ethics embedded in a metaphysics of modern existence call for respect for all things—living and nonliving. In other words, reciprocity is a required component of sustainable urbanism and includes respectful engagement with the sacred across spiritual traditions. Working at the borders between cultures—between worlds—necessarily produces new worlds. Inhabitants of the built environment can apply our good intentions to these borders and create sustainable ways of living. The native gathering gardens and the totem pole gatherings are the moments and places in which a qualitative shift produces material changes in the matter–energy world. These are the moments and places in which material changes in the matter–energy world produce qualitative shifts in the ways humans relate, both with place and with each other. These times and places operate markedly with, but also distinctly from, the ongoing political and legal work of decolonization that takes place in the time of histories, laws, and policies. Along with Deloria’s metaphysics, these moments show us that repair is possible, and they demonstrate that all places—especially urban places—are excellent places to begin these processes. Acknowledgements My thanks goes to the editors for including my essay in this book. I am grateful for the Lummi Nation House of Tears Carvers, the Totem Pole Journey participants, and the many people who brought to life the Native Gathering Gardens at Cully Park for their ongoing work to heal relationships with the Earth and its humans. I also give my thanks to Scott Pratt and Brook Muller for their guidance on this project. To my friend and editor, Toby Veeder, thank you for your endless encouragement and clarity.

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My deep gratitude goes to the places of the Earth with which I have been so fortunate to entangle and to Vine Deloria, Jr. for his leadership, brilliance, generosity, optimism, commitment, and humor.

References Beatley, T. (2000). Green urbanism: Learning from European cities. Washington, DC: Island Press. Beatley, T. (2010). Biophilic cities: Integrating nature into urban design and planning. Washington, DC: Island Press. Carroll, R., & Prickett, S. (Eds.). (2008). Exodus 3: 1–22. In The Bible: Authorized King James version. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Casey, E. S. (1998). The fate of place: A philosophical history. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Charleyboy, L. (2012). The ancient art of smudging: Purify yourself and your home with a traditional native American practice. Spirituality & Health Magazine. https://spiritualityhealth.com/articles/2012/10/19/anc ient-art-smudging. Accessed 22 Apr 2020. Cortes, A. (2014). Treaty rights and totem poles: How one tribe is carving out a resistance to coal. Grist. http://exp.grist.org/lummi. Accessed 22 Apr 2020. Deloria, V., Jr. (1988). Custer died for your sins: An Indian manifesto (reprint). Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Deloria, V., Jr. (1999a). For this land: Writings on religion in America. New York: Routledge. Deloria, V., J. (1999b). Spirit and reason: The Vine Deloria, Jr. reader. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing. Deloria, V., Jr., & Wildcat, D. R. (2001). Power and place: Indian education in America. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing. Deloria, V., Jr. (2003). God is red: A native view of religion (30th anniversary edition). Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing. Deloria, V., Jr. (2006). The world we used to live in. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing. Deloria, V., Jr. (2012). The metaphysics of modern existence (revised edition). Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing. Dunbar-Ortiz, R. (2014). An indigenous peoples’ history of the United States. Boston: Beacon Press.

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Eliade, M. (1987). The sacred and the profane: The nature of religion (W. R. Trask, Trans.). New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. (Original work published 1957). Farr, D. (2007). Sustainable urbanism: Urban design with nature. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Hall, P. (2014). Cities of tomorrow: An intellectual history of urban planning and design since 1880 (4th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell. Hughes, J. D., & Swan, J. (1986). How much of the earth is sacred space? Environmental Review, 10 (4), 247–259. https://doi.org/10.2307/3984349. Lane, F. X & Jones, J. (2017). From the ancestors to our grandchildren [film]. Our shared responsibility: A totem pole journey. https://totempolejourney. com/2017-totem-pole-journey/. Let Us Build Cully Park. (n.d.). Native gathering gardens. https://letusbuildcu llypark.org/park-feature/native-gathering-gardens-phase-2/. Making the Invisible Visible. (n.d.). Portland Indian leaders roundtable. http:// www.oneskycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/MakingVisible_F INAL.pdf. Accessed 22 April 2020. McKenna, E., & Pratt, S. L. (2015). American philosophy from wounded knee to the present. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, An Imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. McLeod, C., & Maynor, M. (2001). In the light of reverence [film]. A Production of the Sacred Land Film Project of Earth Island Institute. https://sacred land.org/in-the-light-of-reverence/. Muller, B. (2018). Blue Architectures. Environmental Philosophy, 15 (1), 59–75. Pratt, S. L. (2006). Persons in place: The agent ontology of Vine Deloria, Jr. APA (American Philosophical Association) Newsletter, 6 (1), 3–10. https:// cdn.ymaws.com/ www.apaonline.org/resource/collection/13B1F8E6-014245FD-A626-9C4271DC6F62/v06n1American_Indians.pdf. Pratt, S. L. (2018, 21 April). Indigenous ontologies and the moral universe. What is Universe? Plenary presentation conducted at the University of Oregon in Portland. https://blogs.uoregon.edu/whatisuniverse/. Rosiek, J. L., Snyder, J., & Pratt, S. L. (2020). The new materialisms and indigenous theories of non-human agency: Making the case for respectful anti-colonial engagement. Qualitative Inquiry, 26 (3–4), 331–346. https:// doi.org/10.1177/1077800419830135. Silko, L. M. (2016). Ceremony (reprint). New York: Penguin Books, An Imprint of Penguin Random House, LLC.

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Tuck, E., & Yang, K. W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 1–40. http://www.mlajournals. org/doi/pdf/10.1632/pmla.2008.123.5.174. US Green Building Council. (2020). LEED certification for neighborhood development. https://www.usgbc.org/leed/rating-systems/neighborhood-dev elopment. Accessed 22 Apr 2020.

6 Saving Mount Shasta’s Sacred Water: The Spiritual Campaign Against Crystal Geyser Madeline Duntley

America’s thirst for bottled water has produced a new generation of grassroots water activists. Nature journalist Elizabeth Royte describes the sequence of events that occur when a bottling company sets up operations in a small town specifically targeted for development: the fight over water is a fight for democracy itself.…People who’ve never read their town bylaws or land-use tables get out their dictionaries, neighbors come out against neighbors….property is purchased, information is presented at endless meetings, and a juggernaut is set in motion.…Planning boards move to closed session. Rumors of corruption fly: citizens sue to halt operations, injunctions are filed, then appealed. It is wearing, and it is expensive. (Royte 2009, 183)

This is typical of the situation facing Mt. Shasta, California (pop. 3287). Since 2001, residents have resisted a succession of water and soft drink M. Duntley (B) Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 S. E. Silvern and E. H. Davis (eds.), Religion, Sustainability, and Place, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7646-1_6

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Fig. 6.1 Mount Shasta

bottling enterprises: Dannon, Coca-Cola, and now Otsuka Pharmaceutical’s Crystal Geyser tea, juice, and water bottling facility. Yet Mt. Shasta’s current water campaign is also atypical because it involves sacred water. Sociologist C. Clare Hinrichs reminds us to consider the specificities of place and the “associative meanings and values” of the moral networks linked to a particular geographic region (Hinrichs 2007, 12). Mt. Shasta city is the namesake of Mount Shasta, a 14,179-foot Cascade volcano uniquely listed as a US “Cosmological District” from the 8000-foot timberline and higher (Wolf and Orlove 2008).1 Because of its location near this sacred mountain, the town’s water activism has an explicitly spiritual dimension (Fig. 6.1).

1 Conventional

usage is “Mt. Shasta” for the town; “Mount Shasta” for the mountain.

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Mountain Metaphysics: Defining Sacred Water Mt. Shasta city’s slogan: “Where Heaven and Earth Meet” is borrowed from medieval alchemy and alludes to this town’s reputation as a haven for practitioners of esoteric alternative spirituality. A community’s values are indeed “reflected in its water” (Lloyd-Sidle 2009, xi). Residents of this town have promoted the spiritual benefits of its mountain-sourced waters since the nineteenth century. Commercial water bottlers agree with residents that the point of origin of a water source is important, as purity of place helps to sell the bottled product. Both sides in the conflict consider the commercial and spiritual power of Mt. Shasta’s water to be directly related to its source: that the water here is a part of this place. Yet unlike the Crystal Geyser bottling company, the activists believe that the mountain endows the water with its own sacred life force. Activists also attest that they have a spiritual connection to this area; they belong here. As the pioneer naturalist, Viktor Schauberger once observed: In every drop of water dwells a world of possibilities…If we destroy water, if we remove it from its cradle…then we stupidly rob ourselves of our most prized possession….With it we lose our place of birth—our habitat—as well. (Bradley 2012, 199)

Spiritually motivated water activism has an immediacy that John Wennersten calls “water karma.” There is a positive cosmic effect derived from actively protecting water from capitalist extraction, just as there is an immediate deleterious cosmic effect in passively permitting the misuse or abuse of water to occur (Wennersten 2012, 27). Mountain-centered metaphysics also shape Mt. Shasta’s water advocacy by providing the foundation for an effective political alliance with the local Winnemem Wintu tribe. The Winnemem Wintu name means “Middle Water People,” and they describe themselves as “stewards of the water.” They are not a federally recognized tribe, but California’s Native American Heritage Commission recognizes them as a tribe at the state level. The Winnemem Wintu tribe has a Memorandum of Understanding with the California Department of Fish and Game and legal

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agreements with the US Forest service that facilitate access to traditional tribal sites and waters that are now located on public lands. Once numbering 14,000 people, by 1910 the tribe was reduced to 400 members, and today has fewer than 150. On Earth Day in 2019, Caleen Sisk, tribal Spiritual Leader and Chief, was awarded the Anthony Grassroots Prize by the Rose Foundation for Communities and Environment to honor an “outstanding example of grassroots environmental activism” (Spiritual Leader and Chief, 1). As tribal Chief, Caleen Sisk testified before the United Nations Permanent Commission on Indigenous Issues in 2012: Sawal mem. Sawal Suhana. Water is sacred. Water is life. Water is a great spiritual being. We are a water people. We come from a sacred spring and are the keepers of the water in our River…The water in our spring and river is part of our ceremonial practices. It…holds our world together. (Water as a Sacred Place, 1)

The Winnemem Wintu have a special stake in the Mt. Shasta water controversy. Panther Meadows, a subalpine meadow at the 7500-feet elevation on Mount Shasta, contains a natural spring which traditional myth marks as the Winnemem Wintu place of emergence onto the earth (Fig. 6.2). In 2007, at the height of a California drought this sacred spring ran dry for the first time in recorded history (Little 2015, 4). The Winnemem Wintu tribe considered this to be a direct consequence of the local Coca-Cola commercial bottling company and its unregulated water extraction practices. Because the Winnemem Wintu actively support the anti-Crystal Geyser campaign, Mt. Shasta water activist groups reciprocate by helping the Winnemem Wintu with their long-standing campaign to stop the proposed 18.5-foot raising of the Shasta Dam. Shasta Dam is the largest reservoir in the state of California, and when it was built in the 1940s ninety percent of the tribe’s traditional lands were flooded. Raising the dam would destroy 39 of the tribe’s remaining ancestral sacred sites, where members still gather each year to perform calendrical ceremonies and rites of passage (Stop the Shasta Dam Raise 2018). In August 2019,

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Fig. 6.2 Emergence spring at Panther Meadows

the Winnemem Wintu celebrated a legal victory: the California Third District Court of Appeal upheld a Shasta County Superior Court decision to stop the Westlands Water District from doing an analysis of the effects of raising the Shasta Dam. The judge’s decision rested on the fact that no state or local agency is legally allowed to do any work or planning that would have an adverse impact on the McCloud River, a protected “Wild and Scenic River” in the State of California. In issuing this preliminary injunction, the judge agreed with many of the arguments made by environmental groups. Post-climate change water activism typically focuses on controlling declining resources, resource use and possession, environmental degradation, and natural resource extraction processes (Brisman and South 2018). Mt. Shasta activists showcase problems with the bottling plant that range beyond spiritual concerns, such as the bottling factory’s commercial noise, waste runoff and diesel transportation air pollution, the unregulated tapping of drought-ridden groundwater aquifers, and

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call attention to the forest fire risk posed by the expansion of aboveground power lines built to serve the plant. Yet metaphysical motivations still frame more secular rhetoric. Activists claim that it is wrong to use their priceless sacred water as base water for sugary teas and juices, or as mass-produced bottled water in single-use plastic. On this point, they find common ground with the Winnemem Wintu. According to tribal historic preservationist Mark Miyoshi, the “Winnemem Wintu were born from the pristine water of Mount Shasta and regard this water as a sacred relative, a living being that is being exploited, desecrated and polluted when it is put in a plastic bottle and commoditized” (Bacher 2018, 3). Local resident Suzanne Frost points out that many people visit Mt. Shasta for “spiritual reasons.” Mount Shasta is a beautiful, sacred…precious tourist destination with sacred water and a sacred mountain….Crystal Geyser Corporation is the antithesis of what is needed in this special sacred environment. Privatizing water is a dangerous idea….corporations everywhere need to look at the importance of realizing the higher purpose of such areas as beloved Mount Shasta. (DEIR Comments 2017, 139)

The town acknowledges that Mount Shasta is widely considered to be one of the very few cosmic mountains in the world, and the only one in North America. Activists argue that the only acceptable commercial use of sacred water is to promote spiritual tourism, because spiritual commerce honors the sacred waters as a resource for spiritual insight, healing, and growth. When Crystal Geyser Water Company announced plans in 2013 to reopen the old Dannon/Coca-Cola plant, many concerned residents joined three nonprofit environmental groups: We Advocate Thorough Environmental Review (W.A.T.E.R), a group formed in order to lobby for an Environmental Impact Report; the Gateway Neighborhood Association (G.N.A.), comprised of householders living in the immediate vicinity of the bottling plant; and Water Flows Free (WFF), a nonprofit that maintains a large email list to keep members in a constant communication loop. These groups also work closely with the Mt. Shasta

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Bioregional Ecology Center, a nonprofit founded in 1988 by Michelle Berditschevsky to block the proposed development of a ski run, condos, golf course, RV park, and shopping center at the mountain’s upper slopes near the Winnemem Wintu’s emergence spring at Panther Meadows. Berditschevsky recalls that she formed the organization for the purpose of preventing the “mountain’s desecration.” This “crusade to protect the mountain” was a public articulation of the idea that preserving the mountain’s pristine, primordial beauty as a “world class attraction” was a much smarter long-term investment than any commercial development (Berditschevsky 2016, 6). These four activist organizations involve nearly half of the town’s residents. W.A.T.E.R also participates in the Upper Sacramento Regional Water Action Group and the state-wide NGO Water Collaborative Group. In the past seven years, members of these groups have collected thousands of dollars for legal counsel, and two thousand signatures to place Measure H on the 2016 ballot. Measure H was an initiative to amend the county’s groundwater ordinance by removing the exemption for water bottling and to require the county ordinance to cover all groundwater. The measure did not pass, but received strong support with 44% “yes” votes. In 2015, these groups successfully lobbied to delay the opening of the Crystal Geyser plant until a complete Environmental Impact Report (EIR) was prepared. Members also submitted public comments on the draft EIR. Two lawsuits (2017 and 2019) were filed and lost, and one appeal was filed at the state level (2019). Despite years of unsuccessful bids to stop or regulate water commerce, Mt. Shasta activists sustain hope in their eventual success. They are inspired by the recent campaign in Jackson County, Oregon, just 75 miles across the state border. Environmental activists in this rural county spearheaded a landslide victory over chemical agribusiness Monsanto Company, by successfully passing Oregon Measure 15-199 in the 2014 election (66% voted yes out of 82,000 voters). Through passage of this measure, Jackson County was able to prohibit all future cultivation of genetically modified crops in the county. This campaign also utilized an explicit nature mysticism rhetoric and mobilized family farms and organic businesses to form an effective bipartisan alliance that passed

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a progressive initiative in a county that was 54% Republican (Nichols 2014). Studies of deeply rooted commitments to non-anthropocentric ontologies have so far been limited to radicalized groups such as Earth First!, the Sea Shepherd society, and old-growth forest “Tree-Sitters” (Taylor 2009; Cianchi 2016; Pike 2017). The Crystal Geyser protest is a valuable case study of the spiritual motivations of environmentalists who choose more conventional resistance methods. While Native American activists often extol water as a spiritual or sacred resource, such declarations of water sacrality are rare among non-indigenous activists. While radicalized environmental groups tend to create roving activists who traverse the country to participate in protests, Mt. Shasta’s cause is more parochial. Mt. Shasta water activists protect the water because it is of this place: water here is sacred because it comes from the cosmic mountain. On any given day, one might find dozens of visitors at the Mt. Shasta City Park filling jugs and bottles of water directly from the surface water at a site in the park known as the Sacramento Headwaters. Here, the water is believed to “emerge” from its volcanic underground repository. The Mountain is more than a natural wonder to protect; it is a spiritual being in its own right, a being who guides the activists in their endeavors to save its sacred water. As Vicki Gold, a leading activist in Mt. Shasta, states: Most special thanks to…tribal members for leading us in awareness of the sacredness of the Sacramento River, Panther Meadows, and our water source, in considering the 7 Generations. Sacramento means ‘sacrament.’ It is our responsibility, our duty to protect our region and to be the Beacon to the Planet that Mount Shasta has been and always shall be. The time is now. We are the ones. The spirit of our Mountain is guiding this. (Gold 2016)

Although their political commitments are intensely local, Mt. Shasta activists and the Winnemem Wintu choose to incorporate both national and international “right to water” language in their campaign against Crystal Geyser (The Right to Water 2010). When these local activists use the “Water is Life” slogan, they are expressly echoing the slogan’s

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use by Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Water activists in Mt. Shasta agree that it is a basic human right to have reliable and consistent access to safe drinking water (UN, The Right to Water 2010, 24, 25). Yet they also feel that the world’s sacred water needs additional legal protections, in the manner of legislative designations like the indigenous Maori-sponsored Whanganui River Claims Settlement Bill (2017) in New Zealand that recognizes a sacred river as “having all the rights, powers, duties and liabilities of a legal person” (LaPier 2017, 3).

A Brief Profile of Ascensionist Esoteric Spirituality To say that Mt. Shasta’s water is sacred is not a ruse: many Mt. Shasta business owners and activists make no secret of their spiritual orientations. At first glance, one may be tempted to classify these views as ecological “green” spirituality or as New Age eclecticism. Yet after five years of field research with this spiritual network, I prefer to call them “Ascensionists.” Esoteric Ascensionists trace their lineage to a West Coast, Christic-oriented Theosophy that utilizes key principles and practices of New Thought, Anthroposophy, and Rosicrucian spirituality. Ascensionists assert that each person is refined through successive lifetimes of “lessons” until the soul is fit to “ascend.” Ascension is a rare, elevated state wherein one is no longer subject to the death/rebirth cycle. “Ascended Masters” are those select few who have completed this elevation process but who choose to remain deeply involved in earthly affairs. Ascended Masters function somewhat like bodhisattvas: they assist spiritually advanced humans and provide them with much needed wisdom, aid, and guidance (Rudbøg 2013). This Ascensionist style of theosophical spirituality begins with the 1905 publication of a book called A Dweller on Two Planets—the first of many “channeled” books to proclaim Mount Shasta as a cosmic, sacred mountain. Channeled texts are purportedly transmissions received by an earthly medium or “channeler” directly from an interdimensional or intergalactic spiritual entity.

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To say Mount Shasta is “cosmic” means that it is connected to a vibrational communication grid system that also extends to interstellar, interdimensional, and interplanetary intelligences on Venus, Sirius, and the Pleiades. Ascensionists often claim that Mount Shasta is the last remnant of the lost continent of mythic Lemuria, a scientifically advanced ancient culture whose surviving descendants live in secret underground chambers inside the mountain (Ramaswamy 2004). Dozens of New Religious Movements and Ascensionist Internet groups assert the cosmic sacred status of Mount Shasta in their foundational narratives, most notably the Saint Germain Foundation, a.k.a. I AM Activity. Historic groups that are connected to this Ascensionist network include The Church Universal and Triumphant, The Radiant School of Seekers and Servers, The Bridge to Freedom, The Ascended Master Teaching Foundation, Ascension Mastery International, The Radiant Rose Academy, The Eureka Society, The Dolphin Temple, and Astara (Duntley, 2014). The story of the Ascended Master Saint Germain’s appearance in visible form to Guy Ballard (the co-founder of the I AM Activity, whose pen name was Godfré Ray King) at Mount Shasta in 1930, is featured in Ballard’s influential book, Unveiled Mysteries (1934). Saint Germain’s appearance at Mount Shasta also sanctifies the region for a growing global Internet community who eagerly consumes Saint Germain’s past and present channeled messages. Ian Bradley affirms esotericism to be a “significant source” of “spiritual thinking about water” (Bradley 2012, 201). Ascensionists endorse theosophist Alice Bailey’s mid-twentieth-century notion of the coming “New Age.” This “New Age” is a paradigm shift, an epochal transition from the 2000-year-old Age of Pisces (fish) that began with the birth of Jesus, to the Age of Aquarius, which means “water-bearer” (Bradley 2012, 203). With this shift comes a renewed responsibility for the spiritual stewardship of water. Religious studies scholar Lucy Bregman notes that perceived paradigm “shifts” are times when new alliances are imagined and forged (Bregman 2014, 155). Mt. Shasta activists see the Winnemem Wintu as fellow “water-bearers” of the Aquarian Age. Other twentieth-century thinkers who have shaped Ascensionist thoughts about water include Rudolf Steiner, Geoffrey Hodson, Edgar Cayce, and Edna Ballard. All spiritual communication pivots around

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utilizing “vibrational science” (Trower 2012). Ascensionists encourage contact and communication with nature spirits referred to collectively as “elementals” “devas,” or “undines.” The twentieth-century theosophical rediscovery of nature spirits is arguably attributable to theosophist Geoffrey Hodson, who published over 50 books on the topic of angels, spirits, clairvoyance, reincarnation, vibration science, and other esoteric topics. Hodson’s nature spirits called “devas” were later popularized by Findhorn co-founders Dorothy Maclean and Eileen and Peter Caddy (Caddy even lived in Mt. Shasta for several years in the 1980s). Ascensionists believe that Ascended Masters and nature spirits reach out to human beings at key transition moments in earthly history in order to help humans avert disaster, such as our current global warming and climate change crisis. The I AM Activity, the religious organization that Edna Ballard and her husband Guy Ballard co-founded in 1932, recently reissued an inexpensive paperback anthology of channeled dictations from nature spirit Elementals of Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water. The Water Elemental declares: Mankind cannot contaminate that which God has given, and [will] suffer, until that contamination is dissolved and replaced by the original Purity….Water is one of the Four Elements that Mankind has so contaminated….it needs your conscious attention and Our Cosmic Help to bring about the Balance again; where mankind may arise and become once more the Pure, Beings of Light. (The Four Elements 2011, 38, 52)

Ascensionists typically use sound–color–music vibrational waves or frequencies in their spiritual practice. They value daily “decrees,” which are ritually vocalized affirmation statements. They use cosmic-centered methods of horticulture. Vibrational techniques for health and wholeness include crystal healing, hydropathy (water healing), chromopathy (color healing), and spiritual cymatics (sound healing). Ascensionists are also fans of the New York Times bestseller, The Hidden Messages in Water, Masaru Emoto’s esoteric study of sound waves and water purity. Emoto’s experiments with water designate mountain water as the purest form of “natural water.” Only “natural” water can form a completely intact crystal when it is cooled. Tap water, polluted water, or water that

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was exposed to noise, discordant music, or verbal abuse will only take the shape of deformed crystals when cooled. Emoto showed that even polluted water can be restored to purity by music and ritualized speech acts, especially when exposed to positive vibrations of blessings and gratitude. This awareness that the water in our bodies can also respond to verbal and mental vibrations constitutes an “awakening of the consciousness” (Emoto 2005, xxxiii, 37). I AM Activity writings also address the latent powers of cellular water with this decree to: “Call forth the Illumination of the water in the cells of your bodies” (The Four Elements 2011, 53).

Spiritual Commerce and Water in Mt. Shasta: A Brief History The Crystal Geyser bottling plant straddles land that is partially outside incorporated city limits and so is jointly administered by Siskiyou County and the Mt. Shasta municipality. This means that Crystal Geyser must involve both the Mt. Shasta City Council and the Siskiyou County Board of Directors in the permitting process for water extraction limits, leach field regulations, and sewer and electrical upgrades. Crystal Geyser has garnered a great deal of support from the Mt. Shasta City Council and the pro-business Siskiyou County Board of Directors. Contentious “letter to the editor” exchanges persist between water activists and bottling plant supporters in The Mount Shasta Herald , the city’s long-standing weekly newspaper. Residents who support the scheduled 2020 opening of the Crystal Geyser plant hope it will diversify the town’s dependence upon employment within the regional Mercy Health Care system and will create year-round job opportunities to balance the preponderance of seasonal work generated by tourism and recreation. A commingling of spiritual and capitalist interests in water resource extraction has a long history in this rural community. The volcano naturally produces two very different types of water: high-quality spring water for drinking and mineral-rich medicinal water (Chapelle 2005). Water tourism at first centered around the sale of its mineral-dense healing water. In 1889, The Mt. Shasta Mineral Springs Company formed as a commercial hydropathy company. Hydropathy’s main premise is that

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water treatment, in conjunction with a careful, plant-based diet, could restore patients to a “condition of purity.” When applied both internally and externally, water had “almost sacramental power to remove impurities” (Fuller 1989, 17). The Mt. Shasta Mineral Springs Company’s “Articles of Incorporation” list the following corporate goals: “Buying, selling, leasing and dealing in real estate, and preparing, manufacturing, marketing and selling mineral and other waters” (Tipton 1973, 3). By the early twentieth century, Mt. Shasta had 600 residents and was actively developing its two major industries: the lumber industry and water tourism (Cox 2014, 67). Mt. Shasta Mineral Springs Company built Shasta Springs, the first spiritual retreat designed for railway passengers taking the scenic Central Pacific Railroad’s “Wonderland Route.” A tram took visitors from the railroad tracks up the hill to a dining room and cabins; later, an impressive two-story hotel was built, complete with veranda, guest cottages, swimming pools, and clubhouse (Weston 1992). At the Shasta Springs station train depot, passengers could disembark and purchase a souvenir tin cup for a taste of Shasta’s healing mineral waters. A tourist visiting in 1913 recalls a scene where hundreds of people disembark to “take the waters” which were dispensed from an oversized drinking fountain resembling a gigantic baptismal font: Ten minutes is allowed, and everyone, including the train officials, hurry out to the famous spring. The crystal-clear waters, conveyed from some mysterious source below, bubble up into a large raised basin like a church font. (Johnson 1913, 327)

The Mt. Shasta Mineral Springs Company bottled its rare healing mineral waters and tonics in imported glass “siphon” bottles until the company was sold to Shasta Water Company in 1928. The new owner, Shasta Water Company, closed the hydropathic mineral water bottling operation and instead utilized the area’s abundant spring water as an inexpensive resource to produce new “soft drink beverages” flavored with syrups. As automobile travel gradually supplanted train excursions, the Shasta Springs spa and resort was also forced to close, and the city’s tourist economy suffered. By the late 1940s, even the Shasta Water Company was in dire financial straits. In 1948, Edna

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Ballard stepped in to save the day. Edna Ballard was married to Guy Ballard when they co-founded the I AM Activity (a.k.a. Saint Germain Foundation). After her husband’s death in 1939, Edna Ballard became a major spiritual leader in Ascensionist circles. She paid $230,000 for a large tract of the sprawling Shasta Resort to serve as the group’s Western Retreat Center. Ballard chose this location because Mount Shasta plays a prominent role in Unveiled Mysteries, her organization’s foundational text. Ballard’s purchase of Shasta Springs resort single-handedly revived spiritual tourism in the area. Each year since 1950, an estimated 2000 I AM members from around the world make an annual “homecoming” pilgrimage to Mt. Shasta in order to attend events, classes, pageants, and retreats at the organization’s Western Enclave at Shasta Springs (Duntley 2014). Edna Ballard’s purchase influenced this region in three ways: it saved Shasta Water Company from bankruptcy and secured the town’s reputation as a center for both Ascensionist esoteric spirituality and spiritual tourism.

Water Activism Past and Present After Shasta Water Company was sold and relocated to Hayward, California in 1985, Mt. Shasta had a reprieve from the bottling industry until the year 2000 when Dannon Waters announced plans to build a spring water bottling plant on Ski Village Drive. The Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors granted the Dannon plant permission to open without requiring the standard Environmental Impact Report (EIR). In 2001, concerned Mt. Shasta citizens filed a lawsuit against the County’s Board of Directors, but after alleged “threats and intimidation” from Dannon’s lawyers this lawsuit was dropped. When the city’s water treatment system proved unable to handle the volume of Dannon’s factory waste effluent, Dannon was issued a special permit to discharge its rinse water waste to an adjacent leach field. A local environmental group, the Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center, filed a petition challenging the California Regional Water Quality Control Board (CRWQCB) and issued a negative mitigated declaration on Dannon’s operations.

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Even though hundreds of citizens in this small town filed complaints in the legal record reporting plant pollution, factory noise, and household well issues, the Siskiyou County courts upheld Dannon’s right to proceed with plant operations. These problems continued, even after Coca-Cola succeeded Dannon in operation of the plant. Many residents reported “household pumps sucking gravel and wells going dry when the Coca-Cola plant was operating” (Little 2015, 3). After the Coca-Cola plant closed in 2010, Mt. Shasta city leaders sought commercial options to fill the economic void left by the bottling and soft-drink industry. The town began to promote two year-round industries: outdoor recreation and spiritual tourism. Unfortunately, this strategy was undermined by the California drought (2011–2017), especially the driest years from 2011 to 2014 (Kinkade 2014a). The depleted snow pack took its toll on local ski resorts (Aldous 2014). The drought not only reduced snowpack for winter sports, but failed to supply enough fresh water in the spring to sustain the trout, steelhead and salmon populations in rivers and streams for summer recreational fishing (Sabalow 2015). The city of Mt. Shasta pulls its own municipal water from the Big Springs Aquifer, which has such excellent water quality that it flows untreated directly into municipal pipes (Kinkade 2014b). During the six drought years, the Big Springs Aquifer did not provide enough water for the city in the summer. When demand exceeds supply, the city reverts to its own well system to meet the water needs of this small municipality of less than 3300 residents. Based on these prior experiences with commercial bottling companies, it is no wonder that Otsuka Pharmaceutical’s purchase of the old Dannon/Coke bottling factory was greeted with apprehension. Residents who were heavily invested in recreation and spirituality tourism viewed the Crystal Geyser plant as a threat to its steadily developing tourismbased economy. In 2013, spiritual businesses comprised the majority of Chamber of Commerce memberships (Mt. Shasta Business 2013, 18). In supporting spiritual commerce and tourism as a strategic business plan, Mt. Shasta activists addressed the economic concerns of stakeholders. By 2014, several nonprofit groups were active in protesting the Crystal Geyser plant opening: Water Flows Free (WFF), Gateway Neighborhood Association (GNA), and We Advocate Thorough Environmental

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Review (W.A.T.E.R). These groups allied with the Winnemem Wintu tribe to successfully petition for an EIR to assess the city’s hydrological status in drought-ridden California (Gerace 2016). The ongoing controversy with Crystal Geyser received ample coverage in the local newspaper, with major stories reaching larger news and television outlets in Redding and Sacramento. Activist groups encouraged public attendance at hearings and council meetings via announcements over email and Facebook. The town’s museum hosted “Water Talks,” a speaker series in 2015– 2016 addressing drought-related issues such as aquifer depletion and Mt. Shasta snowmelt-induced mudflows (Science, Policy of California Cascade Aquifers 2016). To display public support for the EIR, activists distributed small signs that read “FULL EIR” for residents to attach to the rear windows of their cars. Fundraising events and festivities provide ample evidence of the spiritual dimensions of this anti-Crystal Geyser campaign. The themes and graphics displayed in the publicity flyers reflect the centrality of Ascensionist spirituality. In September 2015, Water Flows Free and the Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center co-sponsored a day event—an enjoyable “Fun Raiser” for “education, unity and action” at the City Park. It was called “Water: Every Drop Sacred.” The flyer stated “love for water and love for the Earth are our sacred duties.” In words echoing Masaru Emoto, the flyer stated that “With our words, actions, dances and songs, we can help to protect, cleanse and purify the waters.” In May of 2016, the Silk Road Cultural Center in Mt. Shasta hosted “From Mt. Fuji to Mount Shasta,” a candlelight “Water Ceremony” in order to “awaken and unify awareness about the sacredness of water.” In July of 2016, a “World Water Appreciation Day” fundraiser was held at the City Park during the day, and at the indoor Temple of Intention in the evening. It was advertised as a globally synchronized declaration of world peace and world water appreciation. It featured prayers to the Seven Galactic Directions, a Water Ceremony, and hosted guest speakers from W.A.T.E.R., Water Flows Free, and the Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center. Crystal Geyser responded to the pro-EIR campaign and multiple fundraisers by hiring a public relations specialist and buying full-page “Fact Sheet” advertisements in the local newspaper. This fact sheet listed the company’s compliance with all city and county laws, zoning,

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and regulations. It also affirmed its ties to the community by highlighting its financial sponsorship of a Boy Scout group, the Spring Hill Trail reclamation, a free Summer Concert Series, and construction of the new baseball field for the High School. Crystal Geyser also served as official sponsor of the Fourth of July Fireworks, the High School Ski and Snowboard Teams, and made generous donations to the Sisson Museum and the Trout Fisheries Project. Crystal Geyser sponsored a free summer lunch program at the local schools and donated bottled water to civic athletic and cultural events, including the annual Mt. Shasta July 4 Run/Walk. The fact sheets published in The Mount Shasta Herald distanced Crystal Geyser from its Japanese-owned Otsuka pharmaceutical parent company, listing its corporate headquarters address as Calistoga, California. Crystal Geyser celebrated its promotion of “green” energy and sustainability, its commitment to plastic recycling, and its generous employment benefits and commitment to gender equity in hiring and promotion (Community Commitment 2016, A10). In 2015, an initial lawsuit filed by W.A.T.E.R. and the GNA (Gateway Neighborhood Association) resulted in the town’s loss of a three million dollar matching funds grant to upgrade an electrical Pacific Power grid that was needed to service the plant, which delayed the plant’s initial opening (Steinheimer 2016). The lawsuit also coerced Crystal Geyser into proceeding with an Environmental Impact Report, or EIR. The report took a year to complete, and in 2016 the EIR recommended that Crystal Geyser be allowed to open the plant with only a few mitigation requirements. The public was given the opportunity to formally comment on the findings of the Draft EIR, called the DEIR, until February 27, 2017. The W.A.T.E.R. website offered online training documents to assist in the composition of public comments, including the DEIR text, the City Council’s response to the DEIR, tips on how to write effective public comments on the DEIR, and the addresses for both email and mailed submissions (Submitting 2017; Gold 2017). More than 150 citizens filed nearly 400 pages of feedback critiquing the scope and findings of the report (DEIR Comments 2017). After these comments were received, a final EIR, or FEIR, was drafted and released. This FEIR was approved by the Siskiyou County Planning Commission in September of 2017, and an appeal of that decision was rejected by

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the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors in December of 2017 (Smith 2017, 2018). In March of 2018, Crystal Geyser obtained an Industrial Use Permit in a 3-2 vote from the Mt. Shasta City Council. This permit allowed the company to discharge its effluent to a leach field because the city water sewage plant was not large enough to treat it (Lamanna 2018). Earlier in 2018, W.A.T.E.R filed a petition for a writ of mandate requesting that this FEIR approval be overturned due to alleged CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) violations (Smith 2018). This lawsuit was co-sponsored by W.A.T.E.R and the Winnemem Wintu tribe against the Siskiyou County and Crystal Geyser Water Company. It challenged “many errors in fact, procedure and interpretation of the CEQA” (Kinkade 2019, 1). The lawsuit also cited noncompliance with California Environmental Quality Act’s A.B.52 (Assembly Bill number 52) for failing to consult with the Winnemem Wintu tribe about a project that may cause significant and adverse changes to a tribal cultural resource. AB 52 regulates: a project with an effect that may cause a substantial adverse change in the significance of a tribal cultural resource, as defined, is a project that may have a significant impact on the environment. The bill would require a lead agency to begin consultation with a California Native American tribe that is traditionally and culturally affiliated with the geographic area of the proposed project, if the tribe requested to the lead agency, in writing, to be informed by the lead agency of proposed projects in that geographic area and if the tribe requests consultation, prior to determining whether a negative declaration, mitigated negative declaration, or environmental impact report is required for a project. The bill would specify examples of mitigation measures that may be considered to avoid or minimize impacts on tribal cultural resources. The bill would make the above provisions applicable to projects…[filed] on or after July 1, 2015. (Assembly Bill no. 52, 1)

In June 2019, Siskiyou County Superior Court Judge Karen Dixon heard the case and asked attorney Marsha Burch, representing W.A.T.E.R and the Winnemem Wintu tribe, for further briefing information on AB 52. On August 29, 2019, Judge Dixon denied the petitioner’s challenge (Kinkade 2019, 1). On November 21, 2019, W.A.T.E.R and the

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Winnemem Wintu tribe announced they were “taking our appeal of this ruling to the Appellate court in Sacramento.” This challenge focused on the following points: no upper limit on the amount of water CG may pump out of the ground…a faulty and inadequate environment review of water supply, water quality, traffic, noise, hazards and hazardous materials, air quality, climate change, aesthetics, light and glare and land use…[and] in approving this EIR the County violated fundamental mandates of the CEQA and its own land use plans and ordinances. (On to Sacramento 2019, 1)

In a second legal action, W.A.T.E.R appealed to the Superior Court of Siskiyou County for a writ of mandate petition against the City of Mt. Shasta, challenging the city’s March 26, 2018, split-vote approval of the Industrial Waste Discharge Permit for Crystal Geyser (Bacher 2018). W.A.T.E.R claimed that the FEIR includes additional waste streams that were not evaluated in the EIR process and that the leach field circumvents a much-needed upgrade to the city’s wastewater system, making the city vulnerable in the interim to pollutants entering the groundwater from effluent pumped to the leach field. The legal records of citizen feedback to the DEIR contain many spiritual arguments about the sacred nature of the mountain and its waters, and critiques of the DEIR’s failure to note the economic potential of water purity and aesthetic beauty to attract future spiritual tourism. Comments emphasize the global range of spiritual tourism: People are drawn to Mount Shasta from all over the world to experience spiritual renewal. Yes, Crystal Geyser will create a few jobs, but at what price? If our clean water is despoiled….this sacred place will lose its reputation as a tourist destination for many, many people that our tourist economy depends on. (DEIR Comment 2017, 50)

Several people remark that the region has “special spiritual qualities” (DEIR Comment 2017, 82) Comments consistently referred to “our sacred waters” and dozens repeated the “Water is Life” activist slogan. Many claimed a “higher purpose” for Mount Shasta waters than mere

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commercial water production. Lewis Elbinger expressed these sentiments well: I INSIST THAT THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC-SPIRITUAL ASPECTS OF MOUNT SHASTA BE TAKEN INTO CONSIDERATION. My neighbors have written eloquently…that Mount Shasta…[is] universally regarded as a sacred site. I add my voice to that chorus. The Native Americans considered the mountain so sacred that they did not approach its peak. Those of us who are lowercase “n” native Americans also feel reverence for this place and for its unique water. I make no apologies in my claim that there is a spiritual dimension to the case for limiting and eliminating the effects…of water extraction in this area. (DEIR Comment 2017, 116)

Light pollution and the inability to see “starry skies” also have a spiritual meaning. Allison Austin writes that not only is Mount Shasta sacred to Indian tribes, but Mt. Shasta is a center for non-indigenous metaphysical use as well, a “pilgrimage site for ‘Harmonic Convergence’ (1987) …[and] identified as one of two ‘power spots’ where one could observe an alignment of planets, and harmony with peoples and the environment” (DEIR Comment 2017, 126). Carolyn Real notes that one issue omitted in the DEIR was “no acknowledgement that people come here from all over the world for the peace, the quiet, the clean water and air, the mountain, the sacredness” (DEIR Comment 2017, 129). Holly Cordoza claims: Mount Shasta is a SACRED MOUNTAIN, and it’s not for corporate abuse or water privatization. Mount Shasta is not to be poked, prodded, and pumped whenever Crystal Geyser feels like it. We, as a community, are supposed to be preserving the sacred nature of the Mountain, not desecrating it. (DEIR Comment 2017, 149)

Winnemem Wintu tribal member Luisa Navejas agrees: “As a member of a Tribe indigenous to this mountain, I cannot move somewhere else when our homeland is desecrated….Please do not allow our water to be desecrated because of the politics of water bottling. Please reject bottling water at the source” (DEIR Comment 2017, 146).

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Mt. Shasta esoteric Ascensionists and the Winnemem Wintu both believe that sacred water is native to place. Letters to the editor, fundraising flyers, and citizen feedback to the EIR clearly display the spiritual intentions of these activists, but they also show how activists seek “buy-in” from other economic stakeholders. Activists circle back to the town’s historic pattern of advocating the use of local water for spiritually oriented commerce. Mt. Shasta’s spiritual campaign against Crystal Geyser concedes that tapping water to attract spiritual tourism is acceptable and that place-based tourism is the best way to save the mountain’s sacred water from the desecration of extractive capitalism. ∗ ∗ ∗ Acknowledgements I would like to thank Jude Baldwin, Faculty Librarian of The College of Siskiyous Library, and Dennis R. Freeman, Emeritus Librarian, for expert assistance and consistent access to the library’s Mount Shasta Collection; and to graduate assistant Lindsey Aldrich from Bowling Green State University for her help with organizing and cataloguing newspaper coverage of the controversy. Bowling Green State University’s Institutional Review Board HSRB #712534 approved the initial interview and survey data collection phase of this study.

Bibliography Aldous, V. (2014, March 15). Weather puts end to hopes for ski season. Medford Mail Tribune. https://mailtribune.com/oregon-outdoors/skiing/wea ther-puts-end-to-hopes-for-ski-season. Accessed 15 Apr 2020. Arthur, D. (2019, August 29). Order to stop Shasta dam raising report upheld by appeals court. Redding Record Searchlight. https://www.redding.com/ story/news/2019/09/30/westlands-water-district-stops-work-shasta-damstudy-after-court-loss/3826124002/. Accessed 11 Nov 2019. Assembly Bill No. 52. (2014). https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavCl ient.xhtml?bill_id=201320140AB52. Accessed 12 Nov 2018. Bacher, D. (2018, May 8). Winnemem Wintu tribe sue to stop waste discharge at Mt. Shasta water bottling facility. Counterpunch. https://www.counterpu

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nch.org/2018/05/08/winnemem-wintu-tribe-sue-to-stop-waste-dischargeat-mt-shasta-water-bottling-facility/. Accessed 12 Nov 2018. Berditschevsky, M. (2016). Saving a sacred mountain. The North State Review, 5 (4), 5–7. Bradley, I. (2012). Water: A spiritual history. London: Bloomsbury. Bregman, L. (2014). The ecology of spirituality. Waco: Baylor University Press. Brisman, A., & South, N. (2018). Environment, conflict and profit. In T. Spapens, R. White, D. van Uhm, & W. Huisman (Eds.), Green crimes and dirty money (pp. 18–41). New York: Routledge. Chapelle, F. H. (2005). Wellsprings: A natural history of bottled spring waters. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Cianchi, J. (2016). Radical environmentalism and the role of nature. In G. Potter, A. Nurse, & M. Hall (Eds.), The geography of environmental crime (pp. 33–57). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Clarke, T. (2007). Inside the bottle: Exposing the bottled water industry (Rev ed.). Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Community Commitment, Crystal Geyser Water Company 2012-Present. (2016, May 11). Mount Shasta Area Newspapers, p. A10. Cox, C. J. (2014). Communities of the Mount Shasta region. Nevada City: CAREAN Publishing. Crystal Geyser-Mt. Shasta: A History. W.A.T.E.R. Press Release. (2015, June 3). Clippings File, Crystal Geyser. Mount Shasta Collection, College of the Siskyous Library. DEIR Comment: Crystal Geyser Draft EIR Public Comments. (2017). https://www.co.siskiyou.ca.us/planning/page/crystal-geyser-draft-eir-publiccomments. Accessed 3 Mar 2017/3 Nov 2019. Duntley, M. (2014). Spiritual tourism and frontier esotericism at Mount Shasta, California. International Journal for the Study of New Religions, 5 (2), 123–150. Emoto, M. (2005). The hidden messages in water (D. A. Thayne, Trans.). New York: Atria Books. Fuller, R. C. (1989). Alternative medicine and American religious life. New York: Oxford University Press. Gerace, S. (2016, March 30). County moving forward on EIR for Crystal Geyser. Mt. Shasta Area Newspapers, p. A1. Gleick, P. H. (2010). Bottled and sold: The story behind our obsession with bottled water. Washington, DC: Island Press. Gold, V. (2016, May 5). Water Flows Free listserv. Gold, V. (2017, February 24). Water Flows Free listserv.

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7 Land Cover Change in a Ghanaian Sacred Forest Madden Bremer and Stephen Young

Introduction This chapter is the result of a partnership between the community members of Goviefe Todzi, the Accelerated Rural Development Organization (ARDO) led by Pascal Benson and Winfried Donkor, the United Nations Development Programme Global Environmental Finance (UNDP GEF) Small Grants Programme with support from Ghana’s National Coordinator Dr. George Ortsin, New England Biolabs Foundation (NEBF) led by Jessica Brown, and Salem State University’s (SSU) Graduate Program in Geo-Information Sciences (GIS) with faculty member Dr. Stephen Young and graduate students Madden Bremer and Peter Adortse. In the Fall of 2017, NEBF Executive Director Jessica Brown proposed an opportunity to conduct research in Ghana’s Volta region to Dr. Stephen Young. The objective was to conduct a M. Bremer (B) · S. Young Salem State University, Salem, MA, USA S. Young e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 S. E. Silvern and E. H. Davis (eds.), Religion, Sustainability, and Place, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7646-1_7

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community mapping workshop for a network of Ghanaian conservation organizations, including ARDO, and then travel to one of ARDO’s project area sites to demarcate the boundary of the Goviefe Todzi sacred forest. The community mapping workshop focused on building GIS expertise and promoting the capability of community mapping as a tool with which local actors can document community points of interest, make informed planning decisions, solve geospatial problems, and increase the sharing of knowledge. After completion of the workshop in Sogakope, the research team, consisting of Dr. Young, Madden Bremer, and Peter Adortse, travelled to the Goviefe Todzi sacred forest in the Volta region with Pascal Benson, Winfried Donkor, Dr. Ortsin, and Jessica Brown and collected Global Positioning System (GPS) data on the location of the sacred forest. Prior to this, we lacked maps of the precise perimeter of the sacred forest. Coinciding with our visit to the sacred forest was the induction of Ms. Jessica Brown as an honorary Queen Mother of Goviefe Todzi, a distinction awarded for her years of support to the community. The sacred forest of Goviefe Todzi can only be entered for specific occasions and at designated times throughout the year by the community; therefore, we coordinated our research visit with the Queen Mother induction ceremony which permitted entrance into the forest. Upon arriving at Goviefe Todzi, Peter Adortse introduced Madden Bremer and Stephen Young as newcomers to the community, outlined our research objective to the community leaders, and proposed the request to enter the forest. The leaders discussed among themselves and agreed to permit our entry into their sacred forest. Before collecting the data, the research team and community members hiked to the sacred site and participated in several traditions associated with the forest. Before crossing an unmarked boundary into the grounds of the sacred forest, we removed our shoes and socks and washed our faces with water. The community leader then sacrificed a chicken at a designated location and sprinkled the ground with libations. The group then gathered in a small clearing and watched as community members led songs and dances with accompaniment by drums. Several of the men wore brown tunics to designate their status as traditional warriors of the community. A large meal of roasted goat, soup, and palm wine was shared in the clearing after

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which the group began the descent back to the village for a ceremony honoring Jessica Brown as a new Queen Mother of the community. The following day, three community members led the research team again to the sacred site and travelled on foot with us along the perimeter to collect GPS points of the forest boundary and observe the character of the sacred forest. Digital image processing and analysis of the satellite imagery was conducted at Salem State University following the site visit. The site visit was a success due to the willingness of the community leaders to approve and support the research team’s proposal, the efforts of Dr. Ortsin, an expert in Ghana’s sacred natural sites, Pascal Benson and Winfried Donkor of ARDO who have a long-standing relationship with the community of Goviefe Todzi, Jessica Brown who had previously visited the village and sacred site, and Peter Adortse for continuous translation throughout the visit.

Study Area Landscape Ghana is a West African country bordered by Togo to the East, Burkina Faso to the North, Ivory Coast to the West, and the Atlantic Ocean to the South. The country is demarcated into 16 administrative regions, each with a capital and subregional administrative districts. Ghana’s regions each have unique cultural, spiritual, culinary, and linguistic traditions. In some cases, there are significant character differences within individual regions themselves depending on their size and geographic distribution. The Volta region, home of the Goviefe Todzi sacred forest, spans over 300 km from north to south with noticeable variation throughout the landscape. The sacred forest of Goviefe Todzi is located in the Volta region within the Akwapim-Togo mountain range in the Afadzato South District, proximate to the town of Kpeve where the residents are predominantly of Ewe descent. Despite the steep terrain, the semideciduous forest of the Akwapim-Togo range is fertile enough to farm both tree and ground crops. Goviefe Todzi, like many communities in the area, is considered rural with a large number of citizens relying on agriculture as their primary income source (Fig 7.1).

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Fig. 7.1 Location of the Goviefe Todzi sacred forest in the Volta region of southeast Ghana

Sacred Natural Sites in Ghana Verschuuren et al. (2012) state that ecosystems are not built just from physical attributes, they are also subjected to and influenced by cultural perceptions and values. Sacred landscapes in Ghana come in a variety of forms including but not limited to ponds, forests, caves, mountains, boulders, and other natural features. They are recognized as sacred by the people living in or near the location; however, this distinction may not be recognized outside of the community’s extent. The long-term association between a community and a sacred natural site is one that often dates back many generations, creating a distinct biocultural character (Mallarach 2008). Biocultural identity can be described as the intersection of people, culture, and ecology (Maffi 2014). Unlike biodiversity alone, biocultural diversity is a more inclusive concept which describes the interwoven “web of life” in nature and culture (Maffi 2014).

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The IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas guidelines recognize the biocultural dimension of sacred natural sites, and they may now be considered Category V protected landscapes/seascapes. The Category V level refers to the protection of places where the interactions of people and nature over time have created an area of unique character with important biological, cultural, or scenic value. In protecting these areas, it is important to safeguard the interactions which have created the significant biocultural area (Phillips and World Conservation Union 2002). This level of recognition is the result of many years of focused efforts to combat a history of overlooking and undervaluing the multifaceted character of sacred natural sites (Oviedo and Jeanreneaud 2007). Historically, efforts to conserve nature have not always been conducted inclusively with consideration for cultural heritage despite the fact that biocultural diversity and its associated traditions are the very reasons these natural sites exist today. Much of the sacred aspect of natural sites derives from the general belief that one or many local deities reside within them. The deities are believed to communicate through a traditional priest, sometimes referred to as the fetish priest, who is tasked with relaying messages to the community and maintaining the fetish shrine (Ormsby and Edelman 2010). In addition to their responsibilities to the shrine, traditional priests sometimes act as healers and possess an understanding of traditional medicinal and ecological practices, making them vital to the well-being of a community (UNESCO 2003). While the fetish priest is the main interface between the spiritual forces and the local community, the community as a whole is held responsible for protection of the sacred site (Ntiamoa-Baidu 2008). To be in compliance with all community protocols, our research team met with the village leaders, in addition to the fetish priest, before they permitted our entry into the sacred forest. Sacred site protection remains successful due to strong traditional belief systems and spiritual attachments (Ntiamoa-Baidu 2008). Aniah et al. (2014) found that in the Northeast region of Ghana, specifically the Tingaani area, community members affirm that their livelihood derives directly from the natural environment and each aspect of the environment carries with it an intrinsic value. This school of thought strongly dissuades unsustainable extractive and degradative practices as it would

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result directly in negative livelihood outcomes for the individual as well as the greater community in the form of bad health, poor crop yields, unfavorable weather patterns such as drought, and even violent conflict (Aniah et al. 2014). The long-standing success of traditional sacred landscape protection can be attributed to more than simply fear of negative outcomes and desire for livelihood. In the case of the Malshegu Sacred Grove near the Northern city of Tamale, the origin story of the community and its associated deities lends great importance to its continued protection. It is believed by the people of the Malshegu community that the fetish god Kpalevorgu helped defend the community from slave raiders and generated positive outcomes in battle (Dorm-Adzobu et al. 1991). This particular deity took the form of a boulder beneath a baobab tree, which became the official sacred site to be protected by the fetish priest and the community (Dorm-Adzobu et al. 1991). Many sacred sites trace their history to origin tales similar to the Malshegu sacred site. As a story is passed from generation to generation, the importance of protecting the sacred sites is preserved. The oral history associated with an individual sacred natural site is just one of the invaluable aspects of biocultural heritage fostered by community and nature that can be found in Ghana’s sacred groves. See Appendix for a brief background on the origin of the Goviefe Todzi sacred forest and beliefs associated with it, provided by Pascal Benson and Winfried Donkor of ARDO. Nearly 400 sacred natural sites have already been inventoried throughout Ghana, and this number will only increase with time as the study of sacred landscapes continues to gain momentum on a global scale (Ortsin 2015). Though not officially inventoried at the time of this research, preliminary investigation suggests there are as many as 5000 traditionally managed sacred landscapes throughout Ghana estimated to cover up to 10,000 hectares in total (Ortsin 2015). The existence of sacred landscapes exemplifies the interconnected nature of human beings and the landscapes in which we live. Central to the study of sacred natural sites is the understanding that a landscape influences inhabitants just as the inhabitants influence their landscape. The historic relationship

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between humans and the landscapes in which they live and rely on is considered by some scholars to be the very foundation of human spirituality (Verschuuren et al. 2010).

Governance of Sacred Landscapes in Ghana Once nestled among vast expanses of forest cover, Ghana’s existing intact sacred natural sites are remnants of undisturbed habitat (Bossart et al. 2006). As stretches of continuous forest cover succumbed to forces such as sprawling development and urbanization, bush fires, logging, mining, agricultural land conversion, and habitat fragmentation, the sacred natural sites remained protected by long-standing traditional belief systems (Ntiamoa-Baidu 2001, UNESCO 2003). Successful community-led land governance is the reason sacred forests like the Goviefe Todzi site still exist today. Community stakeholders balanced natural resource requirements such as fuel wood, timber, and demand for agricultural land needed to sustain the livelihoods of the community while keeping the majority of the sacred site undisturbed. It is important to note that community protection of the Goviefe Todzi sacred forest is the direct result of a strong commitment to traditional spiritual practice. Within the last five years, Community Resource Management Area (CREMA) emerged as a management framework for collaborative and inclusive natural resources governance. CREMAs are geographically defined areas of a group of communities that agree to collaborate in sustainable use of natural resources. The structure of CREMA is three-tiered: CREMA Executive, Community Resource Management Committees, and individual farmers or land holders as members of the CREMA. Activities and guidelines defined within a CREMA’s constitution and executive body are built on existing community decision-making structures. As of 2017, there were 32 CREMAs throughout Ghana.

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Forest Policy in Ghana As stated by Kotey et al. (1998) in a comprehensive report on Ghana’s forest policy, the primary objective of Ghana’s forest legislation is conservation and sustainable development of the nation’s forest and wildlife resources for maintenance of environmental quality and the perpetual flow of optimum benefits to all segments of society (Kotey et al. 1998). Successful implementation of this primary goal depends on the delicate balance between competing interests directly and indirectly tied to the forest sector. The careful maintenance and monitoring of these agendas are not a challenge faced by Ghana alone. This obstacle is identified globally as it relates to successful environmental conservation and sustainable development. An imbalance of power between the individuals or groups of people tasked with enacting forest policy results in some agendas progressing at the detriment of others with the possibility of significant negative consequences, intended or unintended (Kotey et al. 1998). To contextualize the character of Ghana’s sacred forests, this section discusses national forest policy. We believe it further illuminates the need for biocultural valuation of sacred natural sites. As is the case with many African nations once inhabited and still affected by colonizing powers, current policy initiatives are often rooted in norms and ideals introduced during colonial occupation by external agents (Mayers and Bass 2004). A continuous examination of ingrained practices and principles is necessary to ensure national policy reflects the true interests and well-being of all the citizens of a nation. Evidence of colonial-driven forest policy is seen in the demarcation of forest reservation land for the primary purpose of supporting the production of crops with high export value such as cocoa. While colonial occupants did practice conservation in some forested areas, it was specifically to ensure production of lucrative cash crops by protecting watersheds and maintaining soil integrity. This practice is merely one example of many which support the widespread notion that forest policy in Ghana has historically been exploitative in nature (Teye 2008). Poreku (2014) refers to the protection of national park land as “fortress conservation” because it resembles that of a guarded, valuable asset. It is customary for armed officials to stand watch over entry points into the

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protected forest areas and patrol the forest area, although they are often not able to prevent poaching and other illegal, destructive actions from taking place within the forest. Poreku (2014) highlights the immense cost of “fortress conservation,” especially considering it is known to be less than effective at protecting reserves. Amy Corbin of the Sacred Land Film Project states that the establishment of reserves is a European concept (Corbin 2008). The belief that land within the reserve must remain untouched and land exterior to the reserve can be heavily exploited does not reflect a traditional forest management system. Traditional management practices such as those witnessed at the Goviefe Todzi sacred forest are orchestrated at the local level and are, by comparison, extremely cost-effective and altogether more holistically successful concerning the protection of forest resources. Many types of land tenure and management systems exist in Ghana, comprising both state and customary roles, or formal and informal roles (Kasanga and Kotey 2001). State (formal) actors of land and forest management in Ghana include, but are not limited to, the Lands Commission, Environmental Protection Council, Environmental Protection Agency, Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, Ministry of Environment, Science, and Technology, Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, and the Forestry Commission. Today, the two most apparent formal actors in forest policy decision making are the Forestry Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency, although this was not the case historically. The Environmental Protection Council (EPC) was established in 1974 largely as a reaction to the 1972 United Nations Stockholm Conference on Human Environment, during which it was acutely stated that human activities had begun to create significant challenges environmentally and that continued human activity could pose serious environmental harm with long-standing consequences (Ando 2014). The emerging, unclear identity of environmental protection and human well-being in Ghana is reflected in the early years of the EPC, during which it was frequently re-assigned to various Ministries. The EPC operated within the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, and the Ministry of Environment, Science, and Technology. Following its transition from EPC to Environmental Protection

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Agency (EPA) in 1994, the true purpose of the organization solidified as regulating the environment and ensuring proper implementation of government policies as they affect the environment. As forest policy took shape in Ghana, informal forest management was still operating beneath the surface as it had historically upon arrival of British colonizers. Chieftaincy was the dominant form of local government and had only been strengthened by indirect colonial rule (Kotey et al. 1998). While individual local communities lacked a formal definition of land tenure rights and access to forest resources, informal agreements between timber extraction operators and chieftains were negotiated until both parties reached an agreeable outcome. This simultaneously undermined formal policy initiatives and created a precarious relationship between powerful industries and local communities. As the timber industry transformed into a domestically operated industry under the guide of a newly independent government, development became the driving force behind forest policy. While timber extraction began to encroach into non-timber forest areas, local communities reverse migrated into soon-to-be reserved state forest land as an attempt to lay claim to the area before government demarcation and limitation of access to the area was enforced (Kotey et al. 1998). Aside from formally protected forest areas, it is community land holding groups that have managed to retain old growth forest for a variety of reasons including traditional spiritual beliefs.

Forest Cover Change in Ghana The subject of deforestation within Ghana and the greater landscape of West Africa is considered contested by many scholars. Haile et al. (2016) state that between 1982 and 2006, 20% of global land degradation occurred within Africa, south of the Sahara. Within Ghana, estimates of total forest cover loss between 1900 and the 1990s reach as much as 50% (Teye 2008). The Forestry Commission finds that the high forest zone land area in Ghana diminished from 8.2 million hectares to approximately 1.6 million hectares over the last century (Forestry Commission 2010; Acheampong and Marfo 2011). The overall deforestation rate

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within Ghana is now believed to hover around 2% annually (IUCN Global Forest and Climate Change Programme 2016). Research on the topic of deforestation is skewed heavily toward studying change within Ghana’s allocated state forest reserves as compared to non-reserved forest land such as the Goviefe Todzi sacred forest. This trend in the literature could be partially attributed to the vast size differential between sprawling state forest reserves and the typically smaller land areas of non-reserved forest land areas. As large forest reserves are more easily analyzed with freely available satellite imagers such as Landsat and MODIS, more research efforts can be conducted without the added obstacle of obtaining the high-resolution imagery needed to differentiate subtle changes in smaller geographic study areas. This observation speaks to the importance of increasing availability of high-resolution imagery for research efforts in underrepresented geographic areas within their relevant academic fields. Sacred forests are generally located amid naturally occurring, nonsacred forested land. This fact makes definition of sacred forest boundaries difficult and thus poses an obstacle to monitoring consistent land cover change in the sacred landscape as compared to its surrounding land cover types. The nature of these sacred landscape boundaries requires a local understanding to successfully undertake research within the area. For these reasons, approximate rates of forest cover change in sacred natural sites is not well understood. What is well understood are the documented threats to the integrity of sacred natural sites. There is ample literature and field observation focused on the forces that result in forest cover loss throughout Ghana. Ghana’s 2010 REDD+ readiness proposal states the main drivers of deforestation are agricultural expansion, timber harvesting, urban sprawl and infrastructure development, and mining and mineral exploitation. The drivers of deforestation do not exist in a vacuum from one another. Our ARDO colleagues noted that the increasing popularity of monotheistic Christianity is also a threat because the sacredness of the forests diminishes in Christian theology. Therefore, one does not feel so bad cutting trees in the sacred forest or expanding agriculture there. It allows various drivers of deforestation to have access to the forest, which the sacredness prevents.

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Fig. 7.2 Slash and burn landscape outside of the sacred forest of Goviefe Todzi

Agricultural expansion within the context of this research is defined as the deliberate conversion of non-agricultural land of any type to agricultural land, including everything from small-scale subsistence farming to expansive commercial-scale farming. The USGS EROS program found that between 1975 and 2000, Ghana’s agricultural land increased from 13 to 28% of the country’s total land area. That percentage climbed further to 32% of total land area between 2000 and 2013 (CILSS 2016). According to the 2010 FAO Global Forest Resources report, of the 78 countries that participated in their study from the years of 2003 to 2007, Ghana was one of the most severely affected countries by forest cover loss due to forest fire (Food and Agriculture Organization 2010). The nature of the fire that resulted in forest cover loss is not defined within the context of these statistics and encompasses both anthropogenic and naturally occurring fires. Although Ghana was not among the top five countries for total forest land area lost to fire, it was among the top five for percentage of forest cover lost along with Chad, Senegal, Botswana, and Portugal Food and Agriculture Organization 2010). In addition to loss of forest cover to fire, Ghana was identified as a country in

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which non-forest, wooded land is likewise affected by fire. This FAO report suggests these findings to be a result of fire as a land-management tool (Food and Agriculture Organization 2010). While this particular report does not quantify the amount of forest lost specifically to fire for agriculture purposes, it is reasonable to infer that the goal of many anthropogenic fires is to clear land for agriculture. On both of our 45minute hikes up to the sacred forest through the slash and burn forested landscape, we witnessed people burning the forest in their rotation of plots (Fig 7.2).

Forests and Livelihood Central to the rural livelihoods of Ghanaians, forest resources provide direct and indirect economic benefits to approximately 2.5 million people in country (Acheampong and Marfo 2011). Timber harvesting includes the use of forest resources for logging, illegal chainsaw activity, charcoal generation, and fuel wood collection. The subject of timber harvesting intersects a great deal with land tenure and tree tenure systems in Ghana. Chainsaw milling in particular, though it has been officially banned since 1998, is still prevalent throughout the country due to a perceived lack of clarity over land and tree tenure rights (Acheampong and Marfo 2011). The outright ban of chainsaw milling was established in reaction to “indiscriminate” tree-felling that was “inconsistent with sustainable forest management practices” (Marfo 2011). Alo and Pontius (2008) found in a study of land cover transitions in Ghana’s Southwestern region that outside protected forest areas, closed forest land is most often converted to farmland. Comparatively, within protected forest areas, logging is the main cause of forest cover loss. On our journey from Sogakope (mapping workshop) to Goviefe Todzi, we saw a couple of hefty trucks pass us by filled with a variety of large logs. We were told by our ARDO colleagues that these were most likely illegally logged in the mountains of the Volta region. Rapidly growing populations both in urban and rural communities increase the pressure to maximize land use for agriculture to meet both domestic and foreign expectations (Poreku 2014). In addition to the

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need for expanded agricultural land, infrastructure is needed to support growing populations. With more people, come a need for new settlements. Witnessed firsthand during the research team’s visit to Ghana, the city of Tema is a testimony to the rapid rate of expansion experienced throughout the country. The construction of homes and new developments is quickly outpacing the rate at which roads are built to accommodate the new cities. What was once untouched wetland or grazing area is now home to many residents living just beyond the Accra area. Such is the case in Ghana’s more rural areas as well. Poreku (2014) cites the creation of a new northern district and its capital city of Daboya as an example in which road construction will directly threaten the health of a sacred forest. The construction of a road from Daboya to the regional capital Tamale will intersect the Jaagbo sacred forest and cause fragmentation of the forested land. In a 2009 video report posted on the video streaming website YouTube, Voices of Africa mobile reporter Edward Kwame Aklade investigated how development projects in Pokuase, a suburb of Accra, threaten the Guakoo sacred forest. Residential and commercial development was believed to be prohibited in the area proximate to the sacred forest, yet Aklade captures video footage of buildings in mid-construction and the poor quality of the remaining forest habitat in the sacred area. Local community members attest to the degradation of the sacred forest and report illicit development as the catalyst for habitat destruction in this particular instance.

Land Use Classification Knowledge of the study area’s characteristics was required in this land cover classification exercise because there was a great range of variation within any given land cover class. For the analysis of the high-resolution imagery (2.44 meters spatial resolution), the following informational classes were used in land cover classification: closed forest, open forest, sparse forest, agriculture activity, bare ground, developed/settlement, and water. A histogram peak cluster analysis was conducted for the 2012 and 2015 scenes, and significant clusters were reassigned to their most appropriate informational class to generate land cover maps for 2012 and

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2015. Informational classes were assigned based on observations gathered in the field using georeferenced photographs taken within the study area as well as close inspection of supportive imagery such as Google Earth. Developed or settled land was characterized by non-permeable surfaces such as paved roads and permanent structures in dense clusters. Also included were dirt roads and informal structures both in dense and intermittent spacing. Agriculture activity included a wide variety of farming from subsistence to commercial farming of crops such as cassava, corn, rice, palm, banana, cocoa, and coffee. Subsistence or small-scale farming often occupied areas of land smaller than capable of identification through satellite imagery. Discerning intermittent tree crops from undisturbed forest was particularly challenging. Sparse forest cover was categorized by predominantly grasslands with intermittent stands of trees, low shrubs, and scrub brush. Open forest cover was categorized by predominantly tree cover with sparse undergrowth and no dense canopy. Closed forest was categorized by dense old growth tree cover with thriving underbrush and a dense canopy. For the medium-resolution Landsat data (30 meter spatial resolution) of the University of Maryland’s Global Forest Change dataset (Hansen et al. 2013), we used their percent forest cover and analyzed all forest cover greater than 20% for the entire Volta region.

Results of Land Cover Classification The influence of human intervention was observed within the general study area, most notably the practice of slash and burn on shrub land and secondary forest that resulted in burn scars which drastically altered the appearance of the land cover type both on the ground and through satellite imagery. Stow and Benza-Fiocco’s (2016) work in Ghana discussed challenges in identifying land cover classes. Difficulties include persistent cloud cover, pollution, Harmattan effect wind-borne dust, comingling of agriculture and natural vegetation, and trouble detecting impervious surfaces due to consistent soil covering. Of the identified challenges, the colocation of natural vegetation and agricultural activity was the most

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difficult to rectify during image processing and may have resulted in agriculture land classified incorrectly as either sparse, open, or closed forest and vice versa. Successful identification of agriculture land was more common when considering ground crops as compared to tree crops.

Forest Cover Change Using the high-resolution imagery, we analyzed change in the sacred forest between 2012 and 2015 as well as the surrounding Volta region between 2000 and 2017. Within the 28 hectare sacred forest, the largest loss by land cover type was closed forest with a loss of 13.75%, equivalent to approximately 3.85 hectares. The next largest loss was open forest at 4.83%, followed by sparse forest at 4.38% and agricultural activity at 2.8%. Concerning gains in various land cover classes, open forest increased 13.34%, followed by a 7.82% gain in closed forest, 3.07% gain in agricultural activity, and 1.54% gain in sparse forest. The net change was a decrease of closed forest by 5.93% and a decrease of sparse forest by 2.84%. On the increasing side, open forest increased by 8.51% and agriculture by 0.27%. The main results seem to be that some closed forest became open forest and some sparse forest also became open forest. To a lesser extent, some open forest appears to have become closed forest and some agricultural land was lost and a similar amount was gained. The University of Maryland’s Global Forest dataset (Hansen et al. 2013) was used to contextualize the sacred forest land cover change results and establish discernable differences observed inside and outside the sacred forest boundary. Landsat data, which are the base data of the Global Forest dataset, do not have the detailed ability of the highresolution data to detect small changes, but rather provide the ability to analyze a larger area. Here, we analyzed the entire Volta region measuring the change in forest cover. Based on the Landsat data, forty-four percent of the Volta region, and 100% of the sacred forest, had a forest cover of greater than 20%. Within areas of forest cover categorized as greater than 20% forested, 4.7% of the Volta region experienced deforestation between 2000 and 2017. By contrast, during the same time period, only 0.8% of the sacred forest experienced deforestation. Based on the

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Fig. 7.3 Goviefe Todzi community warriors performing music and rituals in the sacred forest

Global Forest dataset, between 2000 and 2017, 0.3% of the sacred forest lost closed forest in 2005 and then lost 0.5% of open forest in 2015. The results demonstrate that forest cover is not lost at the same rapid pace within the sacred forest as it is in the surrounding region. The high-resolution imagery is able to capture small detailed changes which happen over the short period where closed forest becomes open and then closed again, while the Landsat data provide information of long-term changes over a larger area. In this case, there appears to be some small year-to-year variation in the Goviefe Todzi sacred forest, but over the long term, it appears to be relatively stable (Fig 7.3).

Conclusion The results of the research support the hypothesis that designation of land as sacred potentially plays a role in its ability to retain closed forest cover when compared with non-scared forest. The retention of closed

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forest cover indicates that the sacred forest is managed by the community in such a way that promotes conservation and limits degradative or extractive practices that would threaten the health of the forest. The research further indicates that these management strategies are upheld by the community not for the purpose of protecting biodiversity but specifically because of the biocultural traditions associated with the sacred natural site. It is reasonable to infer that other factors such as proximity to human settlements, the cultivating capability of the sacred land, and access to the area itself play a role in whether forest cover is lost within the sacred boundary. Research should be further pursued to include other identified sacred natural sites within Ghana, throughout the Volta region and beyond. Continued research could bring much needed attention to the importance of sacred forests in global biocultural conservation and lead to a better understanding of holistic forest management. The research also highlights the continued need to support local communities’ efforts in conserving sacred natural sites through collaborative and inclusive natural resources management frameworks such as CREMAs. As demonstrated by the Goviefe Todzi community, the core values of sacred landscape stewardship are deeply rooted in the identity of the people living proximate to the site. Therefore, community actors should by right play a central role in management of the biocultural asset.

Appendix History of the Goviefe Todzi Sacred Forest The following excerpt details the origins and legends associated with the Goviefe Todzi sacred forest according to Pascal Benson and Winfried Donkor from the Accelerated Rural Development Organization. Historians believe that the Ewes have their origin from ancient Ethiopia or Egypt. In an interview with Togbe Tsoble who is the Caretaker of the grove (fetish priest), he said they brought their deity with them from Sudan as they migrated. History also has it that the Ewes in Ghana migrated from the walled empire of Nortse in the Republic of Togo before finally settling at their current communities over four

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hundred years ago. The origin of the deity could not be ascertained but one would believe that it has been with them from the beginning of oral history. According to the people of Goviefe Todzi, though they are a small community, the deity protected them against other ethnic groups till they settled in their current home about four hundred years ago. At their present home in Goviefe Todzi, the community’s deity is kept on the nearby mountain for two main reasons. First, that it may be protected from theft in case there is an invasion by enemies. Also the deity can see enemies from afar to alert the community. Since the mountain was considered the home of the deity, no one was allowed to farm or settle around it creating the grove. Two main rituals are performed in association with the grove. The first is the annual rituals of pacification and renewal of allegiance to it. This is normally done in April. The second one is for a specific reason which is done when the occasion arises. These may include occasions of draught, inexplicable occurrences such as deaths or strange diseases, coronation of new Community leaders (such as chiefs and youth leaders who are commanders of the army) or warriors called Asafo, among others. The deity being a warrior, led to the defeat of the Ashantis during their notorious wars of conquest of the Gold Coast, present day Ghana. It is said that citizens of Goviefe both home and abroad who come under attack by murderers or armed robbers would either have a stranger save them or mysteriously vanish and appear at home. According to Togbe Tsoble, some soldiers come to seek protection from Togbe Weto when they are to embark on Peacekeeping Missions or when assigned to dangerous operations including ethnic wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone, or La Cote d’Ivoire. In times of severe drought, rituals are performed, and by close of day, there would be a heavy downpour of rain. Many other services are provided for individuals who seek help such as child birth or health issues, many related to spiritual attacks through pledges or vows. The various groves have names along the mountain range. The closest one to Togbe Weto where we visited is Weto Nani, and others are Sraha Nutsu, Tobge Klikeganoa, Gbegbeto and Mianor, Torvimaduvoe, Mianor, Gbogblotoe (believe to be the linguist of the gods), Dionor and Dayi. Taboos are strongly associated with the grove. For example,

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a woman in her menstruation period is not allowed to visit the site. If you had sexual intercourse the night before, you are prohibited from visiting it. Other restrictions are if you have ever taken a human life spiritually or physically outside of a war zone or aborted a pregnancy. If you disobeyed these rules, you would face the wrath of the deity and various consequences because the grove prohibits human sacrifices or blood.

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forest ecology & conservation (pp. 385–394). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Ntiamoa-Baidu, T. (2008). Indigenous beliefs and biodiversity conservation: The effectiveness of sacred groves, taboos and totems in Ghana for habitat and species conservation. Journal for the Study of Religious, Nature and Culture, 2(3), 309–326. Ormsby, A., & Edelman, C. (2010). Community-based ecotourism at Tafi Atome Monkey Sanctuary, a sacred natural site in Ghana. In B. Verschuuren, R. Wild, J. A. McNeely, & G. Oviedo (Eds.), Sacred natural sites: Conserving nature and culture (pp. 233–243). London, UK: Earthscan. Ortsin, G. (2015). Ecological and socio-cultural resilience in managing traditional sacred landscapes in the Coastal Savannah Ecosystem of Ghana. In K. Taylor, A. St. Clair, N. J. Mitchell (Eds.), Conserving cultural landscapes: Challenges and new directions (pp. 129–143). Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Oviedo, G., & Jeanrenaud, S. (2007). Protecting sacred sites of indigenous and traditional peoples. In Protected Areas and Spirituality: Proceedings of the First Workshop of the Delos Initiative. Gland and Barcelona: IUCN and l’abadia de montserrat Phillips, A., & World Conservation Union. (2002). Management guidelines for IUCN category V protected areas: Protected landscapes/seascapes (Vol. 9). Gland: IUCN–the World Conservation Union. Poreku, G. (2014). Sacred groves and biodiversity conservation in the Tolon district, northern region. Ghana: United Nations University Land Restoration Program. Stow, D., & Benza-Fiocco, M. (2016). The urban transition in Ghana and its relation to land cover and land use change (LCLUC) through analysis of multiscale and multi-temporal satellite image data. San Diego, CA: San Diego State University. Teye, J. K. (2008). Forest resource management in Ghana: An analysis of policy and institutions. Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Leeds, Leeds. UNESCO, MAB. (2003). The Importance of sacred natural sites for biodiversity conservation. In Proceedings of the international workshop held in Kuming and Xishuangbana biosphere reserve, people’s Republic of China, 17–20 February 2003. Paris: UNESCO-MAB Programme. Verschuuren, B. (2012). Integrating biocultural values in nature conservation: Perceptions of culturally significant sites and species in adaptive management. In Sacred species and sites: Advances in biocultural conservation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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8 Role of Faith-Based Social Groups in Promoting Sustainable Food Security in Nigeria Stephen Morse and Nora McNamara

Introduction Ensuring food security has become a central policy goal for many countries across the globe, especially now in times of political, economic and environmental uncertainty. As His Holiness Pope Francis has so eloquently pointed out: The earth’s resources are also being plundered because of short-sighted approaches to the economy, commerce and production. The loss of forests and woodlands entails the loss of species which may constitute extremely S. Morse (B) Centre for Environment and Sustainability, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK e-mail: [email protected] N. McNamara Missionary Sisters of the Holy Rosary, Dublin 5, Ireland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 S. E. Silvern and E. H. Davis (eds.), Religion, Sustainability, and Place, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7646-1_8

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important resources in the future, not only for food but also for curing disease and other uses. (Ch. 1:3, Encyclical letter Laudato si’: On Care for Our Common Home, His Holiness Pope Francis, June 2015)

This was confirmed by a recent report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystems Services (IPBES) published in May 2019. The report finds that biodiversity and ecosystem services faced an unprecedented crisis, which would have a major impact on the global economy, food security, development and collective security, and on many areas on which human life itself depended, such as agriculture, climate regulation, air and water quality, and pollination. (IPBES 2019, 2)

Since care of our common home has become a major challenge to humanity, a plethora of groups have taken practical steps to put their faith into action in ways relevant to the twenty-first century. Organizations hitherto engaged in health and education are applying the skills they have learnt to the environment by raising awareness of the need to conserve biodiversity because of its central role in the health and well-being of our society. These groups are fully integrated into wider communities which not only participate in conservation but have a new appreciation of meditation and mindfulness as the ‘Universal Story’ unfolds in all its wonder. One of the overriding concerns of The Second Vatican Council (1962 to 1965) was for the Catholic Church to be relevant in the situations where it found itself. It is no surprise that food security found a place in the new Church activities that emerged in the wake of this Council. Many Third World countries have large populations, comprised mostly of peasant farmers who lack capital for either the improvement or expansion of their farms or supplementary enterprises to augment farm income. These issues are exacerbated by rapid population growth leading to increased pressure on land, which is now causing soil and forest degradation. Catholic development agencies have tried to address this concern via the establishment of grassroots social groups in their places of work, and these have long been regarded as an important social capital to be

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considered within sustainable livelihoods (Morse and McNamara 2013). These provide vehicles for knowledge exchange, sharing of other capital (physical, financial, etc.), and sourcing support, care of the earth, advocacy and conflict resolution. Such groups often have much in common and exist side-by-side in villages, interacting on a regular basis (Rogers 1983; Bandiera and Rasul 2006). They typically have social connections that extend well beyond the village and are embedded within a much larger religious and secular set of communities. At the same time, their mission may be highly local to the village (Seibel 2004). However, the challenges in working with grassroots groups are often underestimated and span issues of identification, form(s) of engagement, representation, power and trust. This chapter will explore some insights gained by a Catholic development agency, the Diocesan Development Services (DDS), which has operated in the Catholic Diocese of Idah (Diocese) in Nigeria from 1970 to the time of writing. The chapter describes the establishment of a network of social groups in Igalaland, the name of the region occupied by the Igala people, where DDS operated. This network was utilized as the foundation for a Financial Services program comprising savings and micro-credit designed to support food security, especially crop production, storage, processing and nutrition. DDS successfully operated the Financial Service program for over 30 years (1970s to early 2000s) and helped tens of thousands of people. Indeed, the authors of this chapter published a book (McNamara and Morse 1998) setting out the basis for the Financial Service program and how it built upon existing indigenous rotational savings groups in Igalaland. The book was written in the late 1990s when the scheme was at its height, and had the evocative title ‘Financial Services: A case against sustainability’ which did raise eyebrows, especially as the 1990s were arguably the heyday of promoting Financial Services as a tool for helping the worlds’ poorest. But the title was prophetic. Nearly 50 years later, the fundamental issues the Financial Services program initiated by DDS in the 1970s was designed to address have certainly not gone away, but the program no longer exists. What caused the ultimate demise of such a successful intervention and what lessons were learned? The chapter will focus primarily on these questions

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and will aim at highlighting important lessons when working with grassroot groups, especially within the context of a faith-based agency. It is a candid ‘insider’ story of success, challenges encountered and ultimately a decision to discontinue the program in the changed milieu in which it found itself. The chapter will provide the context of the program, followed by a brief outline of its structure and function and what it aimed to achieve. Full details can be found in McNamara and Morse (1998) so only a summary is provided here. While the DDS Financial Services program had many novel aspects, it is necessary to show that experience within the wider context of Financial Services in development, especially between the 1970s and 1990s. This was when the program enjoyed its greatest success given the numbers that participated. Finally, the chapter will explore the more recent history of the Financial Services program from 2005 onward as it gradually declined. The chapter will also discuss the reasons for the decline and the eventual cancellation of what was once a highly successful intervention, and will explore lessons for both faith-based and other agencies.

Nigeria: The Giant of Africa When Nigeria gained independence from Britain in 1960, it was often referred to as the Giant of Africa. By the 1970s, it was estimated that 17% of Sub-Saharan Africans were Nigerian, and the 2019 population of Nigeria is approximately 200 million. Nigeria has experienced a number of economic ups and downs since 1960 (McNamara and Morse 1998). The discovery of petroleum oil in the southern states in the 1950s proved to be both a boon and a bane. While it meant riches for some, it resulted in the neglect of the indigenous agricultural sector. This was partly due to migration from rural areas to the cities, causing reduced availability of labor in rural areas, and an increase in imported cheap food which depressed prices of local produce. This happened because during the ‘oil economy’ of the 1970s and early 1980s, government policy was to keep the value of the local currency (Naira) high; this helped to increase

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imports and reduce exports of other non-oil-based commodities (McNamara and Morse 1998). Because of the overvalued Naira, commodity prices fell, and Nigerian farmers found it difficult, if not impossible, to get good prices for their produce; unsurprisingly production of staple crops fell during the 1970s (McNamara and Morse 1998). In 1986, a Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) was implemented via the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and this included the floatation of the Naira on international money markets. SAP had an immediate impact on the official rate of exchange; the US dollar was worth 5 Naira in 1987 but rose to 22 Naira in 1992 (McNamara and Morse 1998). In 2019, the US dollar was worth about 360 Naira. One of the key problems in the country has been the lack of effective government policies for the agricultural sector, especially for the vast majority of farmers who still operate at subsistence levels (Morse and McNamara 2013). While Nigeria has not experienced a famine since the Civil War (1967 to 1970), food security remains an important issue given the rapidly increasing population (estimated at 200 million at the time of writing) and high rate of urbanization (52% of the population currently live in urban areas; Morse and McNamara 2020).

Addressing Food Insecurity DDS was the brainchild of the Missionary Sisters of the Holy Rosary (MSHR), an Irish Missionary Congregation that has worked in health and education in the Catholic Diocese of Idah (herein referred to as the ‘Diocese’) since the 1950s. The Diocese is coextensive with Igalaland, where the predominant ethnic group is the Igala (Boston 1968; Okwoli 1972). Igalaland covers about 12,691 square kilometers. It is currently part of Kogi State and situated southeast of the Rivers Niger/Benue confluence (Fig. 8.1). Idah, the capital of Igalaland and its social and cultural center, lies on the eastern bank of the Niger River. In 2006, Idah had a reported population of under 80,000 people and is the seat of many government, social and Church institutions. While Igalaland has some sizable towns, some 90% or more out of a population of 1.5

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Fig. 8.1 Outline map of Nigeria showing the approximate location of Igalaland, the area within which the Diocesan Development Services (DDS) operated from the early 1970s

million live in rural areas where farming forms the mainstay for most livelihoods. Abuja is the current capital city of Nigeria, while Lagos is the old capital and current commercial center of the country. Idah is the main city, and cultural center, of Igalaland (shaded). Igalaland was on the front line of the Nigerian Civil War (1967 to 1970). This was tragic, especially for people living in the south of the region which bordered the front line. As a result, Igalaland as a whole inherited a legacy of poverty and food insecurity. To effectively engage in these concerns, the Bishop of Idah invited a full-time MSHR social scientist, one of the authors of this chapter, to help examine the situation in Igalaland. In this initial period of research, despite the postwar depression, a cohort of people of different backgrounds and experiences

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displayed a keen interest in discussing possible interventions. These were both local and foreign, lay (including government personnel) and clerical, male and female who had a deep knowledge and understanding of Igala society and its needs. They were willing to share their rich knowledge with the new development pioneer/leader and agreed to act as mentor and guide on a voluntary capacity, thus constituting a new social group in its own right. Based on the advice of this group, which took on the title of ‘Advisory Committee,’ an awareness program about ‘development’ and how it might help identify needs was undertaken in every parish in the diocese. The Advisory Committee saw the need to explain that development was different from the highly structured health and education services usually provided by the Church as development was more about ‘processes.’ It took time to establish a vision of what the possibilities were for improving the welfare of Igala society using an approach that was less authoritarian and more bottom-up; women, in particular, felt they were being heard. DDS was born out of that analysis as much needed to be done to help the Igala people escape from poverty and dependency. The gospel values provided the ethos that guided the creation of DDS and provided the prophetic voice which underpinned its activities. Perhaps the opening sentence of Gaudium and Spes (Vatican II 1963–65) set the tone for those willing and brave enough to take on the unknown: The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the people of this age, especially those who are poor and in any way afflicted, those too are the joys and hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the followers of Christ.

Inculcating a holistic approach was therefore vital, and combining the anthropological, cosmological and theological in an integrated manner was the ideal way forward. DDS reached out to all regardless of ethnicity or religion endeavoring to understand and respect the sacredness of the space to which we were called, and adopted the preferential option for the poor, those least able to help themselves. In this reaching out to all, DDS was guided by the principle set out in John 17:21: ‘that all of them

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may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.’ From its inception, DDS focussed on food security. It sought to build self-reliance and development on indigenous institutions, and this was a novel approach as most development agencies at the time, such as the World Bank, preferred to create new structures rather than build on the local; new structures can be created quickly and can be designed to focus more precisely on delivering program outputs (Morse and McNamara 2020). As DDS was integrated into the Diocesan framework, it could take a longer-term view and was not under pressure to produce results quickly; the guiding principle in development was to ‘make haste slowly’ or, put another way, ‘to walk with the people at their pace.’ DDS was also novel as a Church-based development agency in choosing an outreach approach rather than establishing formal structures such as schools and hospitals. When visitors to DDS asked to see ‘physical structures’ (i.e., buildings), they were taken aback when brought to villages to see crops in fields all owned and managed by those communities. But for other funders, the departure from the status quo was thought to be refreshing and a welcome change. It embraced those people who hereto had no opportunity to benefit from Church or government programs. This was a move toward being inclusive and in line with John 17:21.

Social Groups as Catalysts for Food Security When DDS was initiated in the early 1970s, indigenous self-help and governance groups which had existed in Africa for hundreds of years (Seibel 2004) were common throughout Igalaland. One such Igala social group is known as the Oja and comprises a weekly meeting of adult community members on an entirely voluntary basis to make decisions about governance in their community (McNamara and Morse 1998). The Oja can also have elements of indigenous Financial Service provision via a system of rotational contributions; a system often referred to as ‘informal’ Financial Service, while the ‘formal’ Financial Service systems like the commercial and community banks are regulated by the government. The Oja is similar to other Nigerian informal Financial

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Service institutions described by Eboh (1995) and Soyibo (1996b), and indeed, examples of indigenous Financial Service schemes are widespread throughout Africa (Jackelen and Rhyne 1991). Each member of the Oja makes a standard weekly contribution which is equal for all members who in turn receive an amount equal to the sum of all the savings for a week, less the cost of entertainment and refreshments for the day. Various other community responsibilities are discussed at Oja meetings such as the immediate needs of members who have suffered loss or bereavement. The economies of women and men remain separate in the Oja, allowing women to form their own groups and permitting them to dispose of their own income. In the early 1970s, the DDS Advisory Committee saw the rotational system inherent within the Oja as having potential for accumulating financial capital to improve food security. The focus at first was primarily on supporting crop production (the Igala are mostly arable farmers), but also included storage and processing (e.g., grinding mills). DDS engaged in many other programs which different communities had identified as important for food security, including water security, infrastructure, women’s programs and primary health care (especially training on nutrition) to name but four. Nonetheless, a lack of funds to support agriculture was clearly a major obstacle, and the introduction of a Financial Services program seemed essential. However, there were challenges involved in adapting the Oja into a Financial Services program that could provide a scale of funding suitable to support agriculture. Foremost among these was that everyone would require their money for planting at the same time and could not wait for their turn on a rotational basis. Another problem with the Oja was that written records were not always kept, and misunderstandings often resulted which could negatively impact on social cohesion. Thus, a compromise was required between using the existing Oja structure which was familiar to communities and a need to introduce adaptations such as the formal records of contributions. All of this was achieved by adapting the Oja contribution system to a savings scheme, and the new groups became known as Farmer Councils (FCs). Structures are highly important in Igala society, and this is reflected in the Oja (Fig. 8.2a). An Oja will typically comprise members from

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Fig. 8.2 (a and b) Comparison of the structure of the Oja, an indigenous group within Igala society, and Farmer Councils, established by the DDS (Note The Farmer Councils (FCs) typically exist at the village scale, grouped within a Zonal structure spanning a number of geographically proximate villages and having more than one FC. Both structures are hierarchical with elders (men and women) typically having the more senior positions)

a community which may comprise a number of social units. The Oja has an overall head (Onu Oja) and series of officials including treasurer (Imaji) and financial secretary (Omale). Each Oja will typically comprise a series of groups each headed by an ‘Oga Kekele.’ The groups may correspond to villages, ‘hamlets’ within a village or perhaps to a number of households whose members may share a relationship. The Farmer Councils were designed to mirror this structure as much as possible (Fig. 8.2b). A ‘Zone’ comprises a group of Framer Councils, and the ‘Zonal Chairman’ corresponds to the Onu Oja. At this level, the Zone has officials such as a treasurer and secretary. Each FC, typically comprising 10–25 members, is headed by its own chairman akin to the Oga Kekele in the Oja structure, and as with the Oja, each of the Farmer Councils may come from a single village, hamlet or group of households. Each Farmer Council was also asked to have its own treasurer and secretary to record financial contributions and meetings. As in the Oja, the choice of chairman and other officials in the Farmer Council structure was usually associated with age and this was not surprising since seniority is respected in the Igala hierarchical society and any system has to be fully cognizant of that reality and work with it. Being secretary often depended on a minimum level of literacy. Women chaired their own groups, but often invited a son or daughter to take minutes or

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to help with recording the contributions. There was little social differentiation within Farmer Councils as a relatively high level of economic homogeneity existed within and between members. Each member of a Farmer Council made an agreed financial contribution at their weekly meetings where the savings were collected and handed over to the treasurer for safe keeping. Withdrawal of savings commenced at the beginning of the following planting season. Records were designed to track members’ weekly contributions, and it was compulsory for members and treasurers to sign off on each payment. Each member was expected to attend weekly meetings, and strict fines were imposed for failure to attend. This was to ensure good communication as it was believed that sending a substitute (possibly a non-member of the Farmer Council) to meetings was no compensation for engagement, (a) Structure of the Oja (b) Structure of the Farmer Councils While the introduction of a savings scheme was an improvement, it was soon apparent that the sums saved needed to be augmented. Farmer Council members were happy to put money aside for farming, but unfortunately the amounts saved were meager compared with what was required for the growing season let alone for investments such as the purchase of equipment (e.g., grinding mill). The provision of credit was required, and the idea of a loan scheme surfaced. Loan contract forms were designed giving legal status to the agreement being entered upon by the Farmer Council and DDS. This contract was signed by the Farmer Council chairman on behalf of their members as a guarantee that repayments would be honored. Members were encouraged to refund in installments, and repayments could begin when best prices were available for their crops. Interest rates were minimal (simple interest at 1% per month) for loans and charged only on the outstanding balance. A token annual membership fee was charged to the Farmer Councils.

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The Financial Services Euphoria By the 1980s, when the Structural Adjustment Program was introduced in Nigeria, the DDS Farmer Council program had an estimated 40,000 signed-up members with many more said to benefit. However, the Farmer Council program was by no means the only nor indeed first such attempt to utilize Financial Services for development. Indeed, the introduction of Financial Service schemes as integral to development has a history dating back to the early 1900s (Adams and von Pischke 1992). The Post-World War II period saw a surge in the popularity of such schemes, particularly among development agencies. During the four decades following the war governments and donors spawned hundreds of small farmer credit programmes involving tens of billions of dollars. Adams and Von Pischke (1992, 1463)

The central tenet of Financial Services is based on the simple assumption that it is fundamentally a lack of money which prevents people from breaking the poverty trap, and access to funds would allow them to invest in enterprises that would enhance their livelihood (Johnson and Rogaly 1997). The popularity of such small-scale Financial Services schemes, most notably micro-credit, grew throughout the 1990s, a trend that was both reflected and helped by the publication of a number of seminal texts on the topic (Otero and Rhyne 1994; Hulme and Mosley 1996a, 1996b). Momentum grew throughout the 1990s, and in early 1997, a high-profile summit on Financial Services was held in Washington DC (the Microcredit Summit; Davis and Khosla 2007) at which a decision was made to greatly expand access to micro-credit (Slavin 1996). The target was to reach 100 million of the world’s poorest families, especially women, by 2005. At the time Financial Services was seen almost as a panacea, a ‘magic bullet’ to solve persistent problems of poverty at a stroke, and one quotation from the 1997 Microcredit Summit Documentation is provided below to illustrate the optimism and what could be achieved using this tool (emphases added by the authors):

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We believe that if we all work together this campaign will become one of the great new chapters in human history and will allow tens of millions of people to free themselves and their families from the vicious cycle of poverty. Hillary Clinton (February 1997). First Lady, United States

The 1997 Microcredit Summit was followed, almost annually, by a series of other high-profile summits focussed on Financial Services (Davis and Khosla 2007). However, recent reviews of its impact in development have provided a more sobering picture compared to what was claimed in those halcyon days of the 1990s (van Rooyen et al. 2012; Banerjee et al. 2015). From the outset, DDS in its Farmer Council program put much emphasis on savings hoping that an individual or group would be able to forgo credit if their savings were sufficient. The emphasis on savings in the Farmer Council program of the 1970s was unusual for its time, and indeed, it has often been noted that household savings is the forgotten element of Financial Service programs which tend to focus on credit (Vogel 1984; Jackelen and Rhyne 1991). There are a number of reasons for this lack of attention on savings (Robinson 1994). For example, it has been suggested that there is little demand for a savings scheme among the poor as by definition they have little money to save (Robinson 1994). A turning point for the greater emphasis on savings in Financial Services came with the Third UN International Symposium on the ‘Mobilization of Personal Savings in Developing Countries’ held in 1984 in Cameroon (Seibel 1989). Financial Services schemes that combine savings and credit provision began to be seen as an improvement on the older schemes that relied on continual cash top-ups from donors (Johnson and Rogaly 1997). However, in many cases the amount of savings accrued in any ‘reasonable’ time frame was simply not enough. DDS recognized this almost from the outset and was especially relevant when working with subsistence farmers growing crops of low economic value. Such a situation necessitated the introduction of a credit scheme although this too carried risk. As a compromise, DDS introduced a requirement that potential borrowers must first save money with the lender before a loan was

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granted and borrowers could not withdraw savings until loans were refunded. This approach is referred to as ‘forced savings’ or ‘required savings’ (Donald 1976) and has the advantage of providing the lender, such as DDS, with some collateral (Donald 1976; Johnson and Rogaly 1997) but also indicates the borrower is ‘serious’ about making best use of credit to enhance their livelihood. In the case of the DDS program, Farmer Councils could receive credit to the value of twice their savings; for example, a Farmer Council with Naira 100 in savings could borrow a maximum of Naira 200 as a loan. But what about the role of the formal Financial Services institutions such as banks in helping the poor? There are a number of reasons why banks have had little involvement in the supply of micro-credit to smallscale farmers and the rural poor (Thomas 1992). Firstly, there is risk involved as small-scale borrowers are difficult to assess for credit worthiness (Soyibo 1996a). Subsistence farming is a risky activity, often giving relatively low returns on investment, and farmers will have few, if any, assets that could act as collateral. Secondly, the cost of processing small loans is often regarded by banks as prohibitive (Yaron 1992; Soyibo 1996a). One option is to set the interest rate high enough to cover these costs (Yaron 1992), which puts a severe strain on poor households (Adams 1984; Adams and Von Pischke 1992). One of the initial drivers in the 1990s’ ‘wave of enthusiasm’ for Financial Services was an assumption that programs could be self-funded. The interest charged on loans by agencies such as DDS would help pay for Financial Services delivery and thus avoid or minimize dependency on continued external funding (Yaron 1992). But this can result in agencies targeting the better-off as they are best able to repay the loan with interest (Bennett and Cuevas 1996; Dichter 1996; Hulme and Mosley 1996a, 1996b; Schmidt and Zeitinger 1996). Indeed, more recent assessments of the impact of microcredit in relation to poverty reduction have often noted that it does not help the poorest in society (van Rooyen et al. 2012).

Pressure for Self-Reliance DDS began to have similar thoughts to those of van Rooyen et al. (2012) in their critique of the contribution of Financial Service programs to

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helping the poor much earlier than 2012. Nonetheless, it must first be stressed that the DDS Farmer Council program enjoyed much success as tens of thousands of farming families were helped. Farmer Council members viewed the project as a means of organizing a number of other projects, while DDS and other groups relied on them for getting messages to the wider community. A good example of this was with the HIV/AIDS programs in the 1980s where awareness and information on the epidemic was easily communicated and also where the members gave top-class advice as to how to get the message across to the wider community. However, as the organization grew, its voluntary aspect was replaced by full-time employees. Running costs gradually become prohibitive, and by the early 2000s, DDS began to face a number of both internal and external pressures that began to impinge negatively on the sustainability of the program: Internal pressures 1. Dishonest practices, temptation to misuse ‘group’ money. 2. Divergence of effort into other activities 3. Leadership External pressures 1. Impacts of the International Economic crisis in 2008 2. Changes in development agenda by aid agencies. Possible misuse and redirecting of savings and loans are always problems in Financial Services programs, and DDS, even as a faith-based organization, was no exception. DDS had worked for long enough in Nigeria to realize that where there is money, especially cash transactions, there is always the temptation to cheat the system regardless of how many or how robust the checks and balances are within that system. DDS had been conscious since its beginning that organizations are as strong as their weakest link and took serious action in mitigating these risks. The members of Farmer Councils were totally aware of these facts that formed the basis of many discussions at their meetings. At times of economic downturn, such as Structural Adjustment in the mid-1980s,

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the need for constant vigilance was especially paramount. Cash transactions meant money had to be brought to banks and often kept overnight, a risky undertaking as robberies became commonplace. Cheating of farmers would ultimately cause mistrust in DDS, and its management was forever cognizant of the need to be transparent and accountable. DDS records show that as early as 1984, it had begun the computerization of all Farmer Council savings and loan records having purchased a dedicated computer, an Osborne Executive (commercially released in 1982; Pournelle 1983), for this task. Although described by the manufacturer as being ‘portable,’ it was the size of a suitcase (Pournelle 1983). Bespoke software was developed by DDS to specifically record and calculate Farmer Council account transactions and balances. Once printed, the information was passed back to the Farmer Councils as statements of their account which they could check. As far as the authors are aware, this was one of the first attempts, if not the first, at computerization of Financial Service data for development purposes in faith-based groups in Sub-Saharan Africa. After years of external funding, DDS explored many means of becoming financially self-sustaining; something that was constantly raised and encouraged by donors. As noted earlier, development practitioners operating Financial Service programs designed to help the poorest in society were regularly being asked to manage them in such a way that all costs, including salaries, were fully covered (McNamara and Morse 1998; Rahman 1999). DDS was no different in this regard, and the costs of running the Farmer Council program increased as it had to hire appropriately qualified people to manage the scheme, pay for the required hardware (documents, vehicles, offices, computer, etc.) and auditors’ fees to audit its accounts as required by Nigerian law. A tension existed between the need to help the poor with food security and also help them become more self-reliant while at the same time ensuring that the Farmer Council program became financially sustainable (Rahman 1999). In the early 2000s, DDS introduced an initiative designed to help address financial sustainability based on the sale of drinking water from a borehole on the DDS farm. Known as the ‘Pure Water’ program, it involved the production of sachets of drinking water that were sold

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primarily around Idah town and nearby villages. The water was of superior quality and much in demand especially during the dry season. External expertise was sought to set it up as a business. Despite this, the new venture was not established strictly as a business and no one in authority seemed to realize that organizing and managing what had the potential to become a successful business needed a separate and independent management team to that of DDS which was specifically development oriented. Consequently, the ‘Pure Water’ program rapidly became a drain on staff (especially the accounts department) and other resources. The income fell short of the anticipated target mainly because of demand in distant villages which greatly increased transport costs. This was an example of what Augsburg and Fouillet (2010) refer to as ‘mission drift’ as the need for income generation begins to dominate the provision of Financial Services for the poor. A similar example can be found with the negative impact of a lottery scheme run by a development agency in Belize (Brown 1997). From 2002 onward, DDS witnessed a number of leadership changes, and in the authors’ experience, faith-based agencies were often not the best at processing and planning succession as decisions may not always be made in light of skill sets experiences and leadership qualities of successors. Leadership succession within the faith-based arena has received little attention in the literature with the notable exception of the education sector (Bush 2015; Williams and Morey 2018). While DDS initiated two studies to facilitate transition, the follow-up was disappointing with little dialogue or planning for unforeseen events or even anticipated problems. Over the 35 years of the Farmer Council program operating successfully in Igalaland, international donors who had supported DDS for many years changed their priorities many times, with a marked decline in support for agriculture especially in the 1990s. These donors moved more toward supporting projects which they saw as helping the environment, and DDS found this separation between agriculture and environment somewhat ironic as it had always considered these two as intrinsically interrelated. It had always seen the Farmer Council project as a part of a wider tapestry of integrated development that spanned nutrition, water provision and infrastructure to mention but a few. At the level of communities in Igalaland, all of these are interconnected,

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and DDS worked with that perspective from the outset with care of the environment at the core of every intervention. Many of the agricultural initiatives which DDS introduced or when it simply upgraded local practices at the dawn of the Farmer Council project in the 1970s, revolved around new crop varieties that did not need pesticide applications. It also promoted the production of leguminous crops (primarily cowpeas, groundnuts and pigeon pea) to help improve diets but also contributed to an increase in nitrogen in soils and thus avoid the need for artificial fertilizer (McNamara and Morse 1996). As a further example, soybean (a new crop in Igalaland) was introduced by DDS to the farmers primarily because of its value as a weaning food for children, something much appreciated by the women, but the incorporation of soybean plant residue into the soil also helped to improve soil quality (McNamara and Morse 1996). During the 1980s, DDS worked with IITA to help promote agroforestry systems, the growing of leguminous trees (e.g., Leucaena leucocephala) with crops to help enhance biodiversity and improve soil organic matter and nutrient content (McNamara and Morse 1996). The environment and food security went hand in hand for DDS, as indeed they must for sustainability (Morse et al. 2000). So it was something of an unpleasant surprise to witness such a marked switch in emphasis away from supporting projects based on food security toward those that some donors regarded as prioritizing the ‘environment’, with no clear sense of connection between these two, even though DDS tried hard to convince the donors otherwise. This was especially so as the 1990s saw the rise in importance of sustainable development following the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), commonly called the ‘Earth Summit,’ held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992. Perhaps the experience of DDS in this regard was a microcosm of a wider shift as the following ‘Earth Summit’, held in 2002 in Johannesburg, South Africe, saw a strong move from the developing world to emphasize the close relationship between poverty and the environment, something which some felt had been lost in the sustainable development agenda following the first summit. Given this context, it was no surprise that food security gradually crept back to donor agendas, especially in the light of increasing awareness of

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climate change and the negative impacts for livelihoods in the developing world. The 2008 international economic crash, occurring later than the problems mentioned above, also had a significant impact. The collapse of oil prices resulted in untold austerity as many lost their jobs. Hardships like those endured during Structural Adjustment Programs (early 1980s) were back. Aid agencies suffered as money became more difficult to source. However, a crisis is an opportunity for a new beginning which in the case of DDS was serendipitous. In the early 2000s, the Farmer Councils through their chairpersons, explained that their roles had become stressful to manage. Their concern was whether micro-credit as a development tool was becoming more of a hindrance than a help if the same procedures were maintained, a point that resonates with the comments of van Rooyen et al. (2012). They had thought the situation through and reminded DDS that its original intention was that each Farmer Council member would eventually save enough to be financially self-sufficient; it was time for members to finance their farming by saving more. Moreover, Farmer Council members were increasingly calling for help with specific agricultural problems, especially soil degradation. Hence, there was a growing demand among the Farmer Councils to gear change away from Financial Services into fostering research which involved farmers in addressing their needs. DDS began to seek funding and expertise to help with this. Such flexibility resonated well within MSHR, which had been instrumental in the creation of DDS in the early 1970s and had been partly responsible for its management ever since. MSHR saw the need to evolve the work of DDS toward taking care of the earth. For MSHR these same needs were expressed within a ‘Care of the Earth’ document, an important point that was stressed in its 2018 Chapter: The expression of our Charism and Missionary Spirituality is dynamic: …. constantly evolving in keeping with our response to the Gospel …. One of the growing urgent needs in our world is awareness of our call to care for the universe, our common home. (MSHR Chapter Document 2018, 31).

Working with farmers to help address specific issues that they faced took on many forms. One addressed the need to reintroduce native trees

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in Nigeria and Cameroon following an analysis of their uses and identification of the most threatened species (McNamara and Morse 2005; Ada and Claffey 2003). Another activity focussed on white yam (Dioscorea rotundata) which is an important staple and cash crop in Igalaland. It too was threatened as it suffered from constraints such as pests and diseases and a decline in soil fertility (Morse and McNamara 2013). For example, farmers were using pesticides to ‘dress’ their seed yams, but these could be detrimental to the environment as well as to the health of the farmers. DDS helped to develop a new approach to taking this problem that used much less pesticide in a more targeted way (Morse and McNamara 2013). The Farmer Council network enjoyed a new lease of life thanks to these programs, and the Financial Services program also morphed into supporting entrepreneurs. For example, white yam production is reliant on the availability of good quality (i.e., free of pests and diseases) planting material so DDS became instrumental in improving existing methods of seed yam production that had been widely promoted to farmers throughout Nigeria. But for a farmer to specialize in producing clean seed yams, they need training and financial capital. DDS began a program of identifying farmers who could become ‘entrepreneurs’ and worked with them to develop business plans for these enterprises. To some extent, this partly broke ranks with the historical emphasis of DDS on social groups as the focus moved toward individuals. Many Farmer Council members became actively involved and benefited greatly as yam is a crop that always gives a substantial financial return. At the time of writing, Farmer Councils continue to exist although the Financial Service program no longer operates in its original form. Compared with the period from 1970s to the 1990s, DDS is a fraction of its size, especially in terms of the number of employees. The ‘Pure Water’ program continues as an income stream for DDS but does not generate the income that was forecast in the business plans. As DDS transitioned into a more research-orientated phase requiring fewer staff, the need for core funding to support the Financial Service program diminished and was replaced by funding geared more toward addressing specific research issues. The lack of income generation from ‘Pure Water’ has therefore become less of an issue as indeed did its ‘drain’ on DDS resources.

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Many of the Farmer Councils still exist, and anecdotal evidence suggests that they are valuable as vehicles for exchange of ideas and concerns; indeed, much of the research noted above takes place via the Farmer Councils. But such sharing of ideas and concerns that helps to inform the research interventions is not confined to Farmer Council members but to every person seeking this advice and knowledge; and this is very much in the spirit of DDS which even from its inception never regarded itself as being only there to help Farmer Council members. In this way, farmer-to-farmer training is taking place especially regarding improved seed yam which has become a major concern in Igalaland (Morse and McNamara 2013).

Conclusion The experiences gained during the life and rebirth of the Farmer Council program are rich and varied. Firstly, it is important to respect local structures and processes when working with social groups. The Farmer Council program succeeded because it was built on the traditional structures (Oja) already in place, but changes had to be introduced to help the development of trust between all concerned. It was very much an inclusive and ‘bottom-up’ approach, and the Farmer Council members trusted DDS. Their experience of being listened to and trusted as well as having promises kept gave them hope. Secondly, there can be unintended consequences which emerge from the very best of intentions. The history of the DDS Financial Services program is a good example of a scheme that was born out of a felt need and served to meet that need for many years before being phased out. It was always vulnerable because of its inability to generate enough income to cover all costs involved. This in turn raises a dilemma, especially for faith-based groups, about the extent to which such schemes should cover costs, given that they are working with the poorest in society. Ironically, well-meaning pressure from donors and others to make the Financial Services program more financially sustainable created many problems, not least of which was the significant negative impacts that arose from trying to get involved in income generating activities, and eventually it

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outlived its purpose. The pressures to make DDS financially sustainable were not in themselves the sole cause of the demise of the Financial Services format of the Farmer Council program, and the world moved on in so many ways during the 1990s and 2000s, but it was a significant factor. In the view of the authors, the other challenges encountered by DDS when running the Farmer Council program, such as theft, economic decline in Nigeria, change of focus from funders, etc., were all manageable. The shifts in donor focus during the 1990s were certainly somewhat baffling for DDS at the time; environment and food security go hand in hand and apparent moves by donors to emphasize projects focussed on ‘environment’ above all else was frustrating for DDS but not impossible to manage. While the emphasis on the environment during the 1990s by some of the major DDS donors was in many ways welcome, it avoided the interconnectivity between environment and livelihoods, especially for resource-poor farmers. But it was the increasing pressure on DDS to become financially sustainable that perhaps caused the biggest challenges. Indeed, it has to be said that the tension between the financial sustainability of DDS and the need for it to keep helping the poorest eventually became destabilizing. Sustainable development is, of course, much more than the financial sustainability of an organization such as DDS, but it seems there are always tensions in such organizations between having the resources (people, equipment, facilities, etc.) to help catalyze a sustainable change and having to pay for those resources from a source of income. Thirdly, there is the role of faith to consider. Although rooted in the Catholic Church, DDS was arguably not a faith-based group in the sense that it did not promote any religious viewpoint. Nonetheless, organizations such as DDS that are rooted in religious values seek to improve the material welfare of the poor, the motivation for which is inspired by its faith (Ayebome 2020). This raises questions about what is meant by the term ‘faith-based’; indeed, perhaps it could be argued that the Farmer Councils were ‘faith-based’ because they incorporated the spirit of the agency that brought them into being. Finally, any organization has to be open to renewal and be prepared to embrace big change. This is much easier said than done, of course,

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especially as there can be pressures to maintain the status quo. Successful succession planning is a part of this process but is not always something that faith-based groups are good at. The world moves on and the needs of people also change. DDS did take a leap into the unknown when it reinvented itself as an organization which sought to find answers to specific issues faced by farmers, and while the Financial Services program had ended by the early 2000s, the social structures and network remained in place and were a driver for that change. Thus, the Farmer Councils were more than just vehicles to aid in the ‘doing’ of Financial Services; they were influential social structures in their own right. This leads to the question as to whether the sustainability of DDS as an organization really matters. Here, the authors feel it is important to think in terms of ‘champions’: individual, groups, organizations willing to stand up for the Igala people within a complex and evolving federation of 200 million people having powerful and large ethnic groups, much larger numerically than the Igala and arguably influence in government, to help them find solutions to the challenges that they face. DDS was an important champion for Igala farming households for decades, and perhaps was one of the few such organizations, secular or religious, that could take on a role such as promoting food security. Fortunately, there are now many others who can provide such a voice, including a major university (Kogi State University) established in the geographical center of Igalaland in 1999. Maybe the time has come for DDS to reinvent itself yet again, and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 certainly provides such a challenge to all faith-based organizations.

References Ada, A. G., & Claffey, H. (2003). Trees of idomaland: Together with some useful shrubs, climbers and herbs. Otukpo, Nigeria: Dik Printers. https://www.mshr. org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Trees-of-Idomaland.pdf.

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Adams, D. W. (1984). Are the arguments for cheap agricultural credit sound? In D. W. Adams, D. H. Graham, & J. D. von Pischke (Eds.), Undermining rural development with cheap credit (pp. 65–77). Boulder, CO and London: Westview Press. Adams, D. W., & von Pischke, J. D. (1992). Microenterprise credit programs: Deja vu. World Development, 20 (10), 1463–1470. Augsburg, B., & Fouillet, C. (2010). Profit empowerment: The microfinance institution’s mission drift. Perspectives on Global Development and Technology, 9, 327–355. Ayebome, O. E. (2020). The humanitarian engagement of the Church in Nigeria: The example of the catholic diocese of idah. Hamburg, Germany: Lit Verlag. Bandiera, O., & Rasul, I. (2006). Social networks and technology adoption in Northern Mozambique. The Economic Journal, 116 (514), 869–902. Banerjee, A., Karlan, D., & Zinman, J. (2015). Six randomized evaluations of microcredit: Introduction and further steps. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 7 (1), 1–21. Bennett, L., & Cuevas, C. E. (1996). Sustainable banking with the poor. Journal of International Development, 8(2), 145–152. Boston, J. S. (1968). The Igala Kingdom. Ibadan: Oxford University Press. Brown, D. R. (1997). Sustainability is not about money! The case of the Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Development in Practice, 7 (2), 185– 189. Bush, T. (2015). Aspiring to leadership: Facilitators and barriers. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 43(6), 855–860. Davis, S., & Khosla, V. (2007). The Architecture of audacity: Assessing the impact of the microcredit summit campaign. Innovations, 2, 159–180. Dichter, T. (1996). Questioning the future of NGO’s in microfinance. Journal of International Development, 8(2), 259–269. Donald, G. (1976). Credit for small farmers in developing countries. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Eboh, E. C. (1995). Informal financial groups in rural Nigeria: Organisation, management and the implications for formal finance interventions. Journal of Rural Development, 14 (2), 137–149. Hulme, D., & Mosley, P. (1996a). Finance against poverty (Vol. 1). London and New York, NY: Routledge. Hulme, D., & Mosley, P. (1996b). Finance against poverty (Vol. 2). London and New York, NY: Routledge. Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). (2019). Report of the Plenary of the Intergovernmental

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Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services on the work of its seventh session (IPBES/7/10). New York, NY: United Nations. Jackelen, H. R., & Rhyne, E. (1991). Towards a more market-orientated approach to credit and savings for the poor. Small Enterprise Development, 2(4), 4–20. Johnson, S., & Rogaly, B. (1997). Microfinance and poverty reduction. Oxford: Oxfam. McNamara, N., & Morse, S. (1996). Developing on-farm research: The broad picture. Cork: On Stream Publications. McNamara, N., & Morse, S. (1998). Developing financial services: A case against sustainability. Cork, Ireland: On-Stream. McNamara, N., & Morse, S. (2005). Who brings trees brings life: People and trees in Igalaland . Cork, Ireland: On-Stream. Microcredit Summit Document. (1997). The documents from the Summit are available at https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000111669. Accessed 7 August 2019. Morse, S., McNamara, N., Acholo, M., & Okwoli, B. (2000). Visions of sustainability: Stakeholders, change and indicators. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Morse, S., & McNamara, N. (2013). Sustainable livelihood approach: A critical review of theory and practice. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. Morse, S., & McNamara, N. (2020). Social networks and food security in the urban fringe. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer Nature. MSHR. (2018). Document of the fifteenth general chapter of the missionary sisters of the Holy Rosary; July 2018. Okwoli, P. E. (1972). A short history of Igala. Matanmi and Sons: Illorin, Nigeria. Otero, M., & Rhyne, E. (Eds.). (1994). The new world of microenterprise finance. London: IT Publications. Pournelle J (1983). The Osborne executive and executive ii: Adam Osborne’s improved portable computers. Byte: The Small Systems Journal, 8(5), 38–44. Rahman, A. (1999). Micro-credit initiatives for equitable and sustainable development: Who pays? World Development, 27 (1), 67–82. Robinson, M. S. (1994). Savings mobilization and microenterprise finance: The Indonesian experience. In M. Otero & E. Rhyne (Eds.), The new world of microenterprise finance (pp. 27–54). London: IT Publications. Rogers, E. M. (1983). Diffusion of innovations (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Free Press of Glencoe.

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Schmidt, R. H., & Zeitinger, C.-P. (1996). Prospects, problems and potential of credit-granting NGO’s. Journal of International Development, 8(2), 241– 258. Seibel, H. D. (1989). Linking informal and formal financial institutions in Africa and Asia. In J. Levitsky (Ed.), Microenterprises in developing countries (pp. 97–118). London: Intermediate Technology Publications. Seibel, H. D. (2004). Microfinance in Nigeria: Origins, options and opportunities. Mimeo: University of Köln. Slavin, T. (1996). Fears grow over microcredit boom. Green Futures, 2, 13. Soyibo, A. (1996a). Financial linkage and development in Sub-Saharan Africa: The role of formal financial institutions in Nigeria. London: Overseas Development Institute. Soyibo, A. (1996b). Financial linkage and development in Sub-Saharan Africa: The informal financial sector in Nigeria. London: Overseas Development Institute. Thomas, J. J. (1992). The informal financial sector: How does it operate and who are the customers?. London: Overseas Development Institute. van Rooyen, C., Stewart, R., & de Wet, T. (2012). The Impact of microfinance in Sub-Saharan Africa: A systematic review of the evidence. World Development, 40 (11), 2249–2262. Vatican II. (1965). The Documents 1963–65. American press and associated press. http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/index. htm. Vogel, R. C. (1984). Savings mobilization: The forgotten half of rural finance. In D. W. Adams, D. H. Graham, & J. D. von Pischke (Eds.), Undermining rural development with cheap credit (pp. 248–265). Boulder, CO and London: Westview Press. Williams, P., & Morey, P. (2018). School leadership aspiration: Differences in perception of drivers and barriers across hierarchical levels. TEACH Journal of Christian Education, 12(1), Article 9. Yaron, J. (1992). Successful rural finance institutions. World Bank Discussion Paper no. 150, World Bank, Washington, DC.

9 Protecting Ethiopia’s Church Forests: The Disconnect Between Western Science and Local Knowledge Peter Klepeis

A multi-disciplinary literature celebrates religious-based conservation as an underappreciated example of forest protection. Often referred to as sacred groves or sacred forests, the protected sites exist worldwide because religious communities value them (e.g., Avtzis et al. 2018; Bhagwat and Rutte 2006; Sheridan and Nyamweru 2008; Verschuuren et al. 2010). An example receiving considerable attention in both scholarly and popular press is church forests. Thousands of church forests dot the landscape of northern Ethiopia, including some 8000 in the Amhara Regional State alone (Reynolds et al. 2015). While some church forests can be over 100 ha in size (Cardelús et al. 2017; Reynolds et al. 2015), generally, the forests are “numerous, small, and isolated”: A sample of 394 church forests from Ethiopia’s central and northern highlands found the average size to be 2 ha and separated roughly 2 km from one another (Aerts et al. 2016, 12). In South Gondar, an administrative zone within Amhara Regional State, the average size is a bit larger—roughly 5 ha P. Klepeis (B) Department of Geography, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 S. E. Silvern and E. H. Davis (eds.), Religion, Sustainability, and Place, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7646-1_9

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(Cardelús et al. 2013), with 93% of the forests less than 15 ha (Cardelús et al. 2017). Given that most forest cover in northern Ethiopia consists of non-native species, particularly Eucalyptus globulus, the church forests stand out because they contain a biodiverse mix of largely native species (Aerts et al. 2016; Nyssen et al. 2014) (Fig. 9.1). Each forest is protected by the community due to strong and long-established religious traditions. While the general pattern is wellknown—the Ethiopian Tewahido Orthodox Church (ETOC) values having forest surrounding its church buildings—the reasons and mechanisms by which the forests are protected only recently attracted academic interest. In addition to Binggeli et al. (2003), forest ecologist Alemayehu Wassie’s foundational work called international attention to church forests (Wassie 2002, 2007) and precipitated a flurry of scholarship. But important debates about the church forest phenomenon persist. To what degree are they remnants of a vast native forest? How have forest conditions changed through time, and are they in danger of disappearing? Why does the local community value the forest and take steps to protect it? And, in the face of pressures and potential factors in their degradation, what steps should be taken, and by whom, to bolster church forest protection? The chapter provides a synopsis of how the academic literature answers these questions, which sets up a discussion of how the received wisdom about church forests—that is, common assumptions or biases that western science and perspectives hold about African nature-society relationships (Leach and Mearns 1996)—does not match the evidence. While acknowledging their religious value for local people, scientists, NGOs, and governments hold great interest in protecting church forests because of their high biodiversity. In the last few decades, outsiders have started aggressively seeking to protect church forests and introduce a sustainability rationale to community members in the face of the potential “threats” of modernity; this effort occurs despite the fact that church forests are protected for religious reasons and not environmental ones (Kent and Orlowska 2018). Outside stakeholders and community members (i.e., the church congregation) may also differ in their views about development. Despite celebrating the notion of sustainable development—with the goal of

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Fig. 9.1 The church forests of the South Gondar Administrative Zone in northern Ethiopia (Ethiopian church forests: a socio-religious conservation model under change, Orlowska, I., and Klepeis, P., Journal of Eastern African Studies, 2018, 675, reprinted by permission of the publisher, Taylor & Francis Ltd., http:// www.tandfonline.com)

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maintaining or improving environmental, social, and economic conditions (IISD 2019; Kates et al. 2005)—scholarly discourse about church forests often perceives a disconnect between development and forest protection (e.g., Cardelús et al. 2012). In contrast, the church forest community members support material development both within the forest and the surrounding community (Orlowska and Klepeis 2018). Given the book’s celebration of multi-disciplinary perspectives on religion and environment, this chapter represents how a geographer interprets the relationship. Two core analytical perspectives, in particular, underpin the analysis: political ecology and the social construction of nature. Political ecology is “an approach to environmental issues that unites issues of ecology with a broadly defined political economy perspective” (Robbins et al. 2010, 271). In the context of socio-ecological change and differential power, the perspective is useful in interpreting the views of different stakeholders, assumptions about local knowledge, and the ways that particular groups “control the environment and its resources” (Robbins et al. 2010, 122). Complementing political ecology interpretations, the “social construction of nature” concept exposes ways in which people modify the environment materially as well as ways in which peoples’ understandings of nature differ, and why (Demeritt 2002). I review here the degree to which church forests have been modified materially, contrast how western science views the forests compared to local people, and raise questions about the role of outside actors in forest protection. The case allows me to contribute to a key theme of this edited book, which is the possible reframing of sacred spaces and ways in which discourse about sustainability may or may not be integrated into religious traditions. Published research on church forests is found primarily in natural science journals and the focus is largely on the ecological value of the forests, such as area of tree cover, species composition, and regenerative capacity. Social science research has emerged only recently, and there are calls for expanded understanding of the human dimensions of church forests (Aerts et al. 2016). A few studies use formal surveys of residents to characterize local knowledge (Amare et al. 2016; Wassie 2002; Reynolds et al. 2017), and some make generalized characterizations about why the

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forests are valued (e.g., Berhane-Selassie 2008; Lowman and Sinu 2017). Ethnographic research on church forests is rare, however. The dearth of ethnographic research is noteworthy given its important role in characterizing situated knowledge. Ethnography involves researchers using mixed methods, most prominently in-depth interviews and participant observation, to “immerse themselves in the setting that they are seeking to research” (Laurier et al. 2017). It is a critical approach when exploring subtleties in the meanings, cultural norms, experiences, practices, and “knowledges of particular peoples in particular places” (Laurier et al. 2017). Only two research teams (to my knowledge) have used ethnography to uncover how and why community members value church forests. First, Ruelle et al. (2017) employ an ethnobotanical approach. Second, between 2013 and 2016, and working with a multi-disciplinary team of collaborators,1 my colleagues and I conducted ethnographic fieldwork that included informal conversations, interviews, and semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders (e.g., priests, community residents, local government officials) as well as observation of socio-religious activities (Kent and Orlowska 2018; Klepeis et al. 2016; Orlowska and Klepeis 2018). Regardless of discipline or methodological approach, the main research foci within the scholarly literature relate to spatial and historical patterns of church forest cover and conditions, explanations of the reasons and mechanisms by which forests are protected, and if and how forest protection systems should change.

What Is the Ecological Significance of Church Forests? There is little debate about the answer to this question. The present extent of forests and their ecological conditions shows clearly that church forests are the most biodiverse places in northern Ethiopia, and they 1The Picker Interdisciplinary Science Institute at Colgate University and the US National Science Foundation (Grant # 1518501) funded a research team of ecologists, physical and human geographers, religion scholars, and historians. The work presented in this chapter draws on the empirical evidence generated by this multidisciplinary project.

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are rare (Aerts et al. 2016; Bongers et al. 2006; Cardelús et al. 2013; Reynolds et al. 2017; Wassie et al. 2010). They are relatively small and isolated with sharp, hard boundaries between the forests’ edges and adjacent range and agricultural land (Scull et al. 2017) (Fig. 9.2).

How Long Have Church Forests Existed, and Are They Remnants of a Vast Native Forest? The ETOC dates back to the fourth century (Ruelle et al. 2017), and the conventional wisdom is that church forests are hundreds of years old (although population growth has led to the establishment of new congregations, church buildings, and planted church forests largely consisting of non-native trees). But there is no clear evidence about the age of church forests in northern Ethiopia. Given the lack of significant native tree cover elsewhere, it is reasonable to assume that church forests are remnants of a large forest that is now dramatically depleted. But there is still considerable uncertainty because of a lack of spatially explicit historical data for the region (Scull et al. 2017), and the data that exist raise questions about the degree and timing of forest disturbance. Pollen records, aerial photographs, satellite imagery, ground-level repeat photography, and historical documents show temporal and spatial variability in the coverage of forest and other woody vegetation (Darbyshire et al. 2003; McCann 1997; Meire et al. 2013; Nyssen et al. 2014; Scull et al. 2017; Wøien 1995). Wøien (1995) and McCann (1997) both point out ways in which assertions in the published literature about dramatic decline in forest cover (see below) are not supported by a careful assessment of historical data: There are few reliable records with broad spatial coverage prior to the 1970s (roughly, the era when satellite imagery became widely available via outlets such as the Landsat program); the data that do exist are often flawed by inconsistencies in definition of regions or even what constitutes a forest; and political agendas, such as justifying particular

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Fig. 9.2 An aerial view of a 7.2 ha church forest in Ethiopia’s South Gondar Administrative Zone (reprinted by permission from Springer Nature: Springer, Human Ecology, Ethiopian Church Forests: A Hybrid Model of Protection, Klepeis et al. 2016, 720). The presence of two churches is rare, but becoming more common as wealthy benefactors donate funds to local communities. A mahabir is a subgroup of the church congregation, which celebrates a particular patron saint; they often gather to share a meal after church services in “mahabir houses.” School huts are affiliated with the church, and house boys being trained for the priesthood

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land management policies, benefit from a degradation narrative. Furthermore, there is strong evidence that community members have planted trees now and in the past. In their study of 15 church forests in the Debark District of Amhara Regional State, Ruelle et al. (2017, 6) find that “a considerable fraction of the species at each church have been planted.” They go on to say that “the church founders and subsequent generations of clergy and laity have been planting and replanting the trees in their forests, including the species considered the most important symbols of the church,” the indigenous trees tsid (African juniper, Juniperus procera) and weyra (African olive, Olea europaea) (Ruelle et al. 2017, 6). I discuss below the implications of positioning church forests within a degradation narrative. But from an empirical perspective, Reynolds et al. (2017, 358) provide an elegant synopsis of the debate: “…regardless of the history of church forest establishment, or whether church forests are remnants of native forest, natural regeneration of secondary forest, or even the result of human cultivation (i.e. ‘garden forests’), there is broad agreement that these forests now constitute unique ecosystems on the Ethiopian landscape.”

How Have Forest Conditions Changed Through Time, and Are They in Danger of Disappearing? Initial assessments of church forests pronounced that they were declining in area. For example, Wassie et al. (2010, 938) state: “While the highly fragmented Ethiopian Highland landscape is centuries old, the remaining church forest patches have been declining in area over recent decades.” In contrast to these earlier assertions, however, the first analysis of spatially explicit, longitudinal data (rare historical aerial photographs from the 1930s and 1960s as well as recent satellite imagery) shows that church forest area has largely persisted since the 1930s (Cardelús et al. 2017; Scull et al. 2017). They are remarkably resilient, in other words. But while spatial analysis refutes a simple degradation narrative of forest

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decline, remotely sensed imagery coupled with ground-level assessments show that forest conditions are changing in important ways. Between 1962 and 2012, in a 30,000 km2 swath of the South Gondar Administrative Zone, four out of 1022 church forests disappeared and for the remaining forests there was an average decrease in crown closure of almost 17% (Cardelús et al. 2017). In addition, the edge between church forest and the surrounding agrarian landscape is more stark now than it was in the 1930s, suggesting that the bushland (e.g., tall grasses and woody vegetation) and scattered trees that served as a buffer in the distant past are no longer there (Scull et al. 2017). Building on many earlier studies showing signs of disturbance (e.g., Aerts et al. 2016; Bongers et al. 2006), in a study of 44 church forests in South Gondar, Cardelús et al. (2019, 7) find that “more than half of the forest area showed human disturbance,” with buildings and clearings particularly important in preventing new seedling establishment and forest regrowth, although weeds and planting of both exotic and native species are also a factor. While a degradation narrative about forest area may not be appropriate, there is clear cause for concern about the vulnerability of church forests to disturbance. Myriad change dynamics are affecting church forest communities (Orlowska and Klepeis 2018). For example, improved infrastructure and road networks facilitate a thriving Eucalyptus economy in which churches participate, cattle regularly enter the forest, unsanctioned fuelwood collection occurs, corrugated iron, cement, and other outside materials are being used to build more elaborate graves and buildings to protect both burial sites and gatherings of church associations (referred to as mahabirs), new church buildings are being constructed, and norms guiding forest protection may be changing.

Why Does the Local Community Value the Forest and Take Steps to Protect It? No one disputes that religious-based traditions and institutions are the primary reason church forests exist. “It is neither private nor completely common land, but is managed as a collective ‘spiritual commons’ (Rutte

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2011) by the church for the benefit of church members” (Reynolds et al. 2017, 379) and to serve God. While supported by local, regional, and national authorities in both the ETOC and Ethiopian government, the church forest protection system is largely informal. It relies on strong norms of behavior and collective policing at the local level (Klepeis et al. 2016). There is a sacred geography to churches and the surrounding area (Klepeis et al. 2016). Within each church building is a replica of the Ark of the Covenant called the tabot ; the closer one is to the tabot, the more sacred the space. The trees themselves are not considered sacred, however. Instead, the community protects the forest because there are “religious beliefs and practices that maintain an inviolable zone of ritual purity around the tabot ” (Kent and Orlowska 2018, 25). The forest is, in essence, an extension of the church and provides respectful cover or shelter for the tabot . In addition to their religious value and as sites of ritual and religious practice, including serving as burial sites, church forests “advance the material well-being and social capital of the community by allowing social networks to develop and thrive” (Orlowska and Klepeis 2018, 674). Material use of the forest is allowed only to the degree that it benefits the church; collection of fuelwood, honey, traditional medicine, timber, or grasses, for example, is normally not allowed for personal benefit (Bongers et al. 2006). Instead, these materials are often sold as fundraising for the church (Klepeis et al. 2016; Reynolds et al. 2017). But more important than any material benefit, which also includes shelter for those in need, such as widows, church forests help maintain social capital. By hosting gatherings linked to church traditions as well as those occurring for secular reasons, “social capital is maintained as are values about the important role the forest plays in society” (Orlowska and Klepeis 2018, 676). A key area in which there remains debate about church forests is the rationale, norms, and knowledge on which traditions in the ETOC evolved. Is forest protection rooted in eco-theology (i.e., priests and members of the congregation protect the forests because of their ecological as well as religious benefits to the community) (Goodin et al. 2019) or is it the result of “accidental environmentalism” (Kent and Orlowska

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2018)? There is no doubt that some community members have extensive knowledge about forest flora and fauna. And certain species hold special value, such as trees that are particularly good for building furniture or tools (Ruelle et al. 2017). But the reasons the forests are protected are not rooted in concern about protecting what western science calls ecological services. Reynolds et al. (2017, 369) note that community members want a forest around the church because it beautifies the area as well as providing space for prayer and “building materials and other uses for the church.” Sacred grove and religion scholars, Kent and Orlowska (2018, 26), conclude: the primary significance of Ethiopian church forests for the people who manage them is not their biodiversity nor their ecological value; it is the fact that they shelter something of immeasurable value, the tabot , whose spiritual purity affords the community access to the divine. The conservation of the forests surrounding Ethiopian Orthodox churches is not the primary purpose of the web of beliefs and practices that safeguard the purity of the tabot, but an accidental by-product.

Why Is There Variability in Church Forest Conditions Today? Of the debates about church forests, the question about why some are well protected and others are not is the most vexing. Orlowska and Klepeis (2018) provide a detailed discussion of change dynamics affecting church forests; prominent examples are reviewed here. Explaining variability in forest conditions is critical because of how the explanation influences future approaches to conservation. For example, if one invokes a neo-Malthusian explanation—human population growth and an associated increase in land pressure, including the number of cattle, is leading to an intensification of pressure on forest resources— then policy responses will likely focus on isolating the forests from people and cattle as opposed to other driving forces of change. The published literature on the variability in church forest conditions is small, however, and there are no clear answers about which variables explain why some

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forests are degrading and others are not. At best, studies have generated hypotheses that require further investigation. A loose consensus in the literature focuses on four proximate change factors: government redistribution of church land to farmers; illegal encroachment by farmers and herders; unsanctioned fuelwood collection; and a boom in the Eucalyptus economy (e.g., Aerts et al. 2016; Bongers et al. 2006; Reynolds et al. 2017; Ruelle et al. 2017; Wassie et al. 2010). Human population pressure and a growing number of cattle are factors most commonly cited. For this reason, a preferred intervention by NGOs is to build large walls around church forests (e.g., Lowman and Sinu 2017; Kassahun and Bender 2019). Priests tend to agree to wallbuilding projects because it enhances the status of the church, prevents animals from disturbing graves, and in the context of land redistribution, demarcates church landholdings. NGOs want the walls because they prevent cattle from entering the forest and allow species richness and densities to increase (Woods et al. 2017; Wassie et al. 2009a, b). That said, when comparing churches with and without walls the seedling recruitment and diversity in those with walls “is still not high and most species are not represented” (Cardelús et al. 2017, 11). Cardelús et al. (2019, 7) test the hypothesis linking human disturbance to population density. They conclude that “disturbance was not significantly associated with forest size, distance to population center, elevation, or the presence of a wall.” Finding no variability related to population density or the presence of a wall, the authors invoke a logic similar to that expressed in the IPAT formulation [Impact (on environment or a natural resource) = Population × Affluence × Technology)]. They conjecture that disturbance may be similar across the landscape because of high demand for forest resources in “rural” areas (defined in the article as greater than 50 km from a population center) due to lack of access to basic needs, and high demand in population centers due to the larger population. Lambin et al. (2001, 266) note, however, that IPAT “is insufficiently sensitive to capture the diversity, variability and complexity of real-world situations” because it ignores how “individual and social responses follow from changing economic conditions, mediated by institutional factors.” In other words, less easily quantified

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variables may explain how church forests are used and protected rather than simple indicators of population and resource use. Social changes in northern Ethiopia seem to be affecting the longstanding institutions and norms of protection in church forest communities. Two of the most important changes are linked to broader economic opportunities and generational shifts. As wealth is being generated and access to materials such as concrete and corrugated iron become easier, congregations are honoring the church by investing in many types of infrastructure and “improvements.” For example, increasingly, concrete gravestones prevent reusing the burial site as per tradition, significant structures are being used to protect graves and gathering areas, and new churches (celebrating a second patron saint) are being built. Reynolds et al. (2017, 378) hypothesize “that an increase in private assets, landholdings, and woodlot ownership and use may have influenced social norms surrounding what communities see as acceptable church forest uses,” leading to an increase in forest disturbance. In addition to economic shifts, values and forms of religiosity are changing, and generational differences are emerging. “The importance and prestige attached to churches with old, dense natural forest consisting of native ‘wild’ trees is diminishing” (Orlowska and Klepeis 2018, 689). Young people now look to secular government for leadership and development opportunities to a greater degree than they do to local church authorities. The result seems to be a “declining sense of urgency surrounding natural forest conservation” among young people (Reynolds et al. 2017, 376). Political and violent unrest during the socialist Derg regime (1974– 1991) led to instances of fire and illegal cutting in some church forests. In addition, political shifts since the 1970s have affected land tenure—with land taken away from the church in many cases, which affects its income; previously, it was common for church land to be leased to farmers or used to grow crops for sale. Churches have responded to land reform by creating Eucalyptus plantations at the periphery of the church forest, both as sources of income and to delineate clearly the boundary between the church forest and surrounding agricultural land. Even without the push and assistance from NGOs some churches build walls to delineate the boundary.

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Subtle social changes are also operating in church forest communities. Reynolds et al. (2017, 376–377) identify variability in gender-based perceptions of church forests; surveys from 2002 show women to be “more likely to seek extractive benefits from church forests, and less likely to individually enforce church forest rules.” In addition, Newmann (2018) suggests that women seem to be less likely to enforce rules than men due to a desire to avoid tension, conflict, and gossip in the community. She also notes that while larger and denser church forests may be indicative of more prestige for the church, women often feel unsafe in such forests for fear of being attacked. A preference for open forests because of safety reasons may affect their willingness to enforce social norms of forest protection (i.e., forest disturbance may provide some benefits to them). A final example of social change affecting church forests communities relates to social capital. As noted above, church forests help maintain strong social capital due to the religious and other social traditions that take place there (Klepeis et al. 2016; Orlowska and Klepeis 2018). Wasserman (2018) concludes that church forest ecological conditions are better when the frequency with which people visit the forest for religious gatherings and other social events is relatively high. He also notes the importance of the frequency of interaction between the community and local government in explaining good ecological conditions. The assumption is that the more time people spend in the forest, building connections with community members and the forest itself, the greater the likelihood that people will value and protect it. The reason some church forest communities may not use the forest with as much frequency as others is not entirely clear, but seems to have something to do with an increasing secular orientation.

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In the Face of Potential Factors in Their Degradation, What Steps Should Be Taken, and by Whom, to Bolster Church Forest Protection? The arrival of the twenty-first century brought with it considerable attention to church forests. For example, in 2001, the Darwin Initiative (“a UK government grants scheme that helps to protect biodiversity and the natural environment through locally-based projects worldwide”) funded a three-year project seeking to promote “sustainable development through participatory conservation of the biodiversity of the forests preserved on sacred lands, and their establishment as a resource of value to alleviate local poverty” (Binggeli et al. 2003, 37; United Kingdom 2019). In 2009, with funding from the National Geographic Society, the Tree Foundation held workshops “to educate the bishops of Ethiopia” about nature protection and forest conservation and began their work to raise funds and build “conservation walls” around church forests, efforts that continue today (Tree Foundation 2011). Kassahun and Bender (2019) review how the Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU), a major German (NGO), began work on conservation and sustainable development in Ethiopia in 2006. Its financial and technical support was a key factor in the establishment of the Lake Tana Biosphere Reserve in 2015. And NABU began a project focusing specifically on church forests in 2013, with a goal to conserve and restore church forests “in order to preserve biodiversity and contribute to adaptation to climate change” (Kassahun and Bender 2019, 197). The “interventions” NABU champions include supporting efforts to regenerate forest species, expand the forest area, create buffer zones and ecological corridors, and establish stone walls. The Ethiopian government also promotes church forest conservation efforts. For example, it continues to sanction the ETOC’s control over church forest land, works to resolve land disputes, sends letters that implore local priests to protect the forests due to their cultural heritage, and provides free native tree seedlings (Klepeis et al. 2016; Orlowska and Klepeis 2018).

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As the number of projects seeking to protect church forests grows, however, there are calls to proceed with caution. Given the likelihood that church forest vulnerability is linked significantly to shifting norms within local communities, relying primarily on physical barriers to achieve conservation ignores key underlying causes of vulnerability. Efforts to educate local people about conservation may also prove problematic. Kent and Orlowska (2018) acknowledge the possibility that outsiders may cultivate a conservation ethic within local communities that bolsters church forest protection, but they worry that the traditional institutions and norms that have protected church forests for so long, such as taboos surrounding purity and violation of sacred spaces, will be undermined. Reynolds et al. (2017, 380) agree: “there is a risk that new institutions and incentives introduced to support conservation might inadvertently shift value away from preexisting religious institutions and norms.” Ideally, attempts to cultivate ecological values in the local population should be communicated “from an authority and tradition that they respect” rather than outside actors (Kent and Orlowska 2018, 688). And NGOs and other outside groups should recognize their relative power (in wealth, political influence, and the ability to frame the narrative) compared to poor, ETOC communities.

Degradation Narratives and Received Wisdom Recent coverage in three high profile, international outlets (Nature, National Geographic Society, and the New York Times) presents a simplified story about church forests. At best, the way the forests are characterized does not reflect the nuances of academic debate. At worst, the articles reflect the received wisdom oft-applied to Africa and associated with colonial science, a hegemonic scientific imaginary, and neo-Malthusian explanations of an environmental “crisis” (Leach and Mearns 1996). First, the journal Nature titles an article, “Ecologists are working with the nation’s Tewahedo churches to preserve these pockets of lush, wild habitat” (Abbott 2018). But the forests are socially constructed and

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people visit them daily; they are not wild. The article goes on to celebrate the way in which the Tree Foundation educates priests about the conservation value of the church forests and uses external funding to build walls around them. As I note below, the article perpetuates the notion that the church forests need to be saved by outsiders despite their long-term protection by local communities. The article puts forth quite plainly a neo-Malthusian interpretation of church forest vulnerability: “Much of the nation’s forestland has been sacrificed to agriculture to feed the country’s mushrooming population…just 5% of the country is now covered in forest, down from 45% in the early twentieth century” (Abbott 2018). Such estimates seem to be based on assumptions that almost half of the Ethiopian Highlands were forested in 1900, but there is no evidence for that estimate of forest cover. Wøien (1995, 501) notes that the extraordinarily high deforestation figures for the Ethiopian Highlands “are reproduced indiscriminately in many reports and papers without referring to their origins or to methodologies through which the data is obtained.” For example, Lowman and Sinu (2017, 689) state that “95 percent of northern Ethiopia’s landscape has been cleared for agriculture” but do not include any reference. Goodin et al. (2019, 21) state that the current “dry Afromontane forest fragments” in the northern highlands of Ethiopia “represents less than 5% of what used to exist, due to forest conversion ‘into farms and grazing lands over centuries’ (Bongers et al. 2006, 39).” But the cited source for both the forest cover change estimate and the change factors involved (i.e., Bongers et al. 2006) does not present a systematic assessment of forest cover, does not mention the number 5% at all, and does not analyze any data on land use change. It is unclear where the 5% estimate comes from. Indeed, as described above, there is evidence that the region may have had less forest cover in 1900 than it does today. Furthermore, population change is only one of many possible factors driving forest change, and there are numerous examples of improving land management in the context of growing human population in the northern Ethiopian Highlands (Meire et al. 2013; Nyssen et al. 2014) as well as in other parts of Africa (e.g., Tiffen and Mortimore 1992). A comparable scientific imaginary comes from the National Geographic Society (Borunda 2018): “Over the past century, nearly all of the native

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forests in the South Gondar province have disappeared, cleared to make way for wheat fields and grazing land—agricultural endeavors that support the region’s rapidly growing population.” The article then goes on to celebrate how the Tree Foundation is paying for “protective” walls “to save the less than five percent of forests that remain in northern Ethiopia.” Such degradation narratives have been used for centuries as a rationale for outsider involvement in African natural resource management (Leach and Mearns 1996). Indeed, Wøien (1995) links the use of an environmental degradation narrative in Ethiopia to conservation initiatives there in the 1980s, which were implemented without full collaboration with local people. The assumption is that local people are not effective managers of their own natural resources. The notion of a local knowledge gap occurs despite myriad examples across Africa of sophisticated adaptive land management by local people across diverse landscape and production systems (Leach and Mearns 1996). Third, an Op-Ed in the New York Times shows footage of beautiful church forests surrounded by a largely treeless landscape (Seifert 2019). The sub-title of the article is: “In Ethiopia, church forests are withstanding environmental destruction - but just barely.” Note that there is clear evidence that church forests have been resilient to “destruction” for, minimally, the last 80 years and probably for hundreds of years. And there is also evidence that local communities plant trees in the forests to help maintain them. The article goes on to invoke an even higher rate of deforestation than the more common 95% rate discussed above (“97 percent of Ethiopia’s primary forest was destroyed”). It then asserts that the church protects them for environmental reasons (“I was eager to meet people whose religion had some built-in practice of respecting trees and preserving biodiversity”), that science and religion have collaborated in their protection (“They [church forests] are proof that when faith and science make common cause on ecological issues, it results in a model that bears repeating,” and that outsiders should play a critical role in their protection (“We have the blueprint of life held in these tiny circles of faith, and that’s something to rejoice over and protect and expand with every resource we can muster”). The author assumes, erroneously, that locals protect forest for biodiversity reasons. And he ignores that

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the forests were being protected quite well long before NGOs started building walls around some of them in recent years. The issue of outside involvement is particularly important because not only do the three outlets exemplified here push for a strong role for outside actors to help protect the forest, scholars do the same. For example, Cardelús et al. (2012, 915) state that “Ethiopia faces a conservation crisis.” The value of the forests is characterized in terms of ecosystem services rather than the religious reasons local people protect them. While they call for multi-disciplinary collaboration with local people, the authors champion science over local knowledge of the forests; they argue that barriers need to be built around the perimeter right away despite little social science and no ethnography having been conducted at that point to understand the situated knowledge that led to forest protection in the first place. And they state that outsiders need to be “aggressive” in taking “immediate” action because of the “conservation crisis.” Despite long-standing critiques of the way crisis narratives are used to justify external intervention in Africa, it would seem the story is repeating itself in the case of church forests. Perhaps the most important of these critiques, a seminal book by Leach and Mearns (1996) exposes the “received wisdom” about African environment and society. The book uses examples from across the continent to highlight ways in which outsiders, whether they be colonists, scholars, or casual visitors to Africa, often adopt perspectives about nature-society relationships that are rooted in neo-Malthusian assumptions about the role population change plays in natural resource management. These assumptions are then used to justify policy responses, such as fire suppression, even if doing so reduces the capacity of local people to effectively manage resources and maintain land productivity (Fairhead and Leach 1996; Laris 2002). Swift (1996, 73) shows how environmental degradation narratives, such as desertification, are not necessarily rooted in scientific debates but, instead, represent “the competing claims of different political and bureaucratic constituencies.” And outsiders tend to see local people as the problem, not the solution. In the case of church forests, outside actors—the Ethiopian government, national and international NGOs, and the scientific community—promote an “ecological justification for church forest protection”

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centering primarily on biodiversity and climate change (Orlowska and Klepeis 2018, 687). For example, Goodin et al. (2019, 18) call for outside intervention in church forests so that the international community can benefit: “Government, international, and NGO support for conservation efforts should also continue and be furthered wherever possible; the retention of native biodiversity in these church forests is an invaluable global service, providing irreplaceable natural capital for the future of Africa.” While I champion the agency of local people—members of the church congregation have employed adaptive management to protect forests for hundreds of years, after all—the power to define the narrative about church forests is not with local communities. Indeed, the received wisdom of outsiders can be transferred to them. Even when shown historical photographs of a treeless landscape in the distant past, respondents in the Ethiopian Highlands maintain that there used to be a vast forest landscape in the time of their grandparents (Meire et al. 2013): Local people are being “educated” to perceive the landscape as degraded. In other words, outsider intervention may be modifying “indigenous knowledge” and norms of behavior in ways not understood.

Sacred Spaces and Sustainability My critique of the received wisdom about church forests does not mean that outsiders should not be involved. Despite strong historical community-based protection of them, new challenges are emerging. Given that adaptive management of sacred spaces around the world is the norm [they are evolving, dynamic socio-ecological systems (Dove et al. 2011; Kent 2013; Sheridan and Nyamweru 2008)], it is perfectly reasonable for communities to collaborate with outsiders and incorporate new information. But it should be in ways that are consistent with their values. The problem with the way outsiders approach church forests is that there is an inequitable power dynamic. The wall-building initiatives, for example, assume that there is a conservation crisis and immediate action is necessary. Outsiders arrive to convince locals to undertake the

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projects rather than facilitating a process of knowledge exchange and true collaboration on a range of possible forest protection strategies. Environmental goals are not part of the church forest socio-religious protection model and economic return from the forest goes directly to the church not the broader community. Thinking of sustainable development goals in the context of church forests does not seem to be a good fit. But sustainable development is also about process. Inclusive, transparent decision-making that allows for knowledge building is critical to effective natural resource management (Klepeis and Laris 2006). A one direction flow of information from experts to purportedly uninformed locals does not resonate with the kind of decision-making processes that sustainable development literature advocates. As Kent and Orlowska (2018, 26) note: “Interacting responsibly with the traditional managers of sacred sites, church forests in particular, begins with accurately and deeply understanding the norms and values that govern it.” Rather than having workshops with a top-down flow of information, knowledge-building about church forests requires discussing environment and development issues in the communities and uncovering ways to address the underlying causes of church forest vulnerability. And the process would need to recognize and empower voices in the community, such as those of women and young people, that are not well represented in the current discourse. If such a knowledge building process were to occur, a key point of contention would be the material goals of church forest communities, a goal that contrasts with the preservationist, neo-Malthusian mindset of most outside actors (although tree planting is often championed in addition to building walls). Sustainability discourse, writ large, ranges from celebrating local knowledge and practices to vilifying them: “local knowledge as a scapegoat for underdevelopment or as a panacea for sustainability” (Nygren 1999, 267). Popular press and scholarly publications on church forests seem to celebrate local knowledge, but the course of action being pursued (i.e., educating locals, aggressively pushing wall building, creating biosphere reserves that restrict certain behaviors, etc.) represents more vilification than celebration of local knowledge and practices. In other words, top-down initiatives dominate over those that encourage bottom-up solutions. If outsiders recognize the differential

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power in the relationship, both the weight given to scientific understanding of church forests in policymaking as well as the degree to which resource poor communities seek development opportunities, then it may be possible to make “environmental connections across difference” (Tsing 2005, x).

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10 Religion and Spirituality in Hungarian Eco-Villages Judit Farkas

Introduction Sustainability discourses and criticisms of modernization speak to spiritual and moral crises as well as ecological, economic and social ones. Beyond a green ideology, the inhabitants of Hungarian eco-villages are involved with a variety of other worldviews and groups related to the supernatural: with traditional religions, new religious communities, different kinds of spiritual movements and to groups that are committed to what their members consider to be traditional, ancient Hungarian culture alike. Each community is characterized by the presence of some elements of holistic attitude, nature faith and mainly eco-spirituality, i.e., a deeply felt sense of belonging to nature, attributing equal value to all living beings, and considering them to be mutually dependent on each other (see Taylor 2010a, b). J. Farkas (B) University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 S. E. Silvern and E. H. Davis (eds.), Religion, Sustainability, and Place, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7646-1_10

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I have been carrying out a cultural anthropological study of Hungarian eco-villages since 2007. Employing qualitative methods, my research focuses on the place of the eco-village movement within social movements, the foundations of their worldview and the latter’s effects on daily practices. In this paper, I discuss the role of religion, belief and spirituality in the life of Hungarian eco-villages. In the first half of the paper, I will introduce the most important aspects of the eco-village concept and give an overview of the belief elements that the literature summarily refers to as eco-spirituality, and that constitute an important part of contemporary ecological discourses and of eco-conscious lifestyles. Concentrating on the significance of reverence for nature and the supernatural in the creation of communal identity, I will attempt to outline how this relates to the other organizing principles of ecovillages. My goal is to show how this extraordinarily diverse, not in the least coherent but nonetheless exciting worldview, which can be seen as a typical example of contemporary integrative spirituality1 comes into being.

Eco-Villages The first eco-village initiatives appeared in Western Europe (Findhorn) and the United States (The Farm) in the 1970s, but the use of the eco-village concept itself only became widespread during the 1990s. The movement’s international network (Global Eco-village Network [GEN]) was founded in 1994. Beyond the common goals that bind them together, eco-villages are characterized by an extraordinary variability as the natural, climatic and socio-cultural backgrounds from which they hail are very different. From small villages to so-called inner-city ecovillages, from rain forests to deserts, today’s eco-villages can be found in a large array of places and on all continents (see www.gen.ecovillage.org, and Jackson and Svensson 2002; Taylor 2000).

1The concept of integrative spirituality religion is comprised of elements of official, folk and individual faith. See Bowman (2009).

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The majority of eco-villages are intentional communities: That is to say, they are communities brought into existence as a result of the conscious efforts of a smaller or larger group (on intentional communities see Van Schyndel Kasper 2008; Manzella 2010; Meijering 2006; Miller 1998; Shenker 1986; Todd 2013). In order to create settlements that fit into their natural surroundings, they employ nature-friendly techniques and lead an ecological lifestyle in all aspects of their lives (architecture, waste management, water treatment, husbandry, transportation, reduced consumption, voluntary simplicity). They aim to form self-sufficient, sustainable and autonomous communities. Discourses about community constitute an important theme of the movement; the desire for community, a kind of “communistic vision of everyday life,” is characteristic (Halfacree 2007, 134). Eco-village dwellers think the current conventional economy and society are endangering the Earth. The eco-village is a critique of those conventional processes (global economy, global power elite, consumer culture, ecological crises, degraded countryside, urbanization, modern slavery, etc.) to which they respond with a radical lifestyle experiment. They believe these destructive processes can be counterbalanced by smallscale, independent and community-based settlements, in a sustainable lifestyle that in the long run will protect the natural environment and ensure meaningful human life and well-being. The eco-village frees them from the reigning political and economic systems; it affords them a chance of survival in case of a collapse. Those who move to eco-villages are primarily middle class, well-educated urbanites critical of the system, whose change of residence is not motivated by economic but moral, cultural or ideological factors. Thus, on the one hand, life in an eco-village means preparation for a projected crisis situation, while at the same time it is also driven by a love of nature; a desire to protect and live in harmony with nature while living in the countryside in a community is just as important goals for them. As communities striving for autonomy, they consider various forms of resistance important if necessary, while also searching for workable alternatives in everyday life that can lead to the common good in a broader societal sense. The majority of eco-village dwellers wish to serve

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as examples: They define themselves as modeling a more livable, humane life. The Hungarian eco-village movement took off after the collapse of Communism at the beginning of the 1990s just as the Western movement began to come into its own. Earlier the Socialist-Communist regime attempted to suppress both religiosity and communal initiatives by fiat, therefore until the regime change there were very few such groups, and all were illegal. The founders of Hungarian ecovillages were, however, active participants of the underground, alternative social movements of the 1980s and kept up with similar developments in the West, including eco-communities (see Farkas 2017). By the time of the regime change, they were well acquainted with foreign examples and we find a Hungarian eco-village, Gy˝ur˝uf˝u, among the founders of GEN. The Hungarian eco-village movement is held together by the informal organization Magyar Él˝ofalu Hálózat (1999) [Hungarian Living-village Network] whose members include in 2020 the following communities: Galgafarm eco-village (Galgahévíz), Gömörsz˝ol˝os, Gy˝ur˝uf˝u, Krishna-Valley (Somogyvámos), MAGfalva (Monor), Máriahalom Bio-village, the Nyim Eco-community, Nagyszékely Community, Ormánság Foundation (Drávafok-Markóc), Szeri Ökotanyák Association (SZÖSZ, Ópusztaszer and vicinity), Natural Lifestyle Foundation (TEA, Agostyán), and Visnyeszéplak (see www.elofaluhalozat.hu). However, not all of them form a living community, there are some that function merely as an educational center: Gömörsz˝ol˝os, Máriahalom Bio-village, Ormánság Foundation, Natural Lifestyle Foundation). The population of the living eco-communities ranges from 10 to 150 persons, and a total of about 500 people live in settlements belonging to the Hungarian network today. The goals of Hungarian eco-villages do not differ significantly from those of the international movement but—as elsewhere—they have to be adjusted to their geographical, economic and social context. It is also characteristic of eco-village dwellers that they are urban, middle-class intellectuals, who chose this lifestyle according to sustainability criteria. The diversity of eco-villages referred to above is typical for the Hungarian subset as well: Villages based on the most state-of-the-art alternative technology (Galgafarm), phasing out high tech to the greatest

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possible extent (Krishna Valley, Visnyeszéplak) and combining the two (Gy˝ur˝uf˝u) can all be found among them. There are communities that tend toward isolation and others that are entirely open. Some of them were implemented as greenfield projects (Galgafarm, Krishna Valley), and there were initiatives which tried to convert an existing and functional rural settlement into an eco-village (Gömörsz˝ol˝os). However, most Hungarian eco-villages were set up in the place of a formerly existing but later abandoned village site (Gy˝ur˝uf˝u), or in and around villages in socially and economically backward positions (Krishna Valley, Visnyeszéplak), because these villages were relatively isolated and their natural environment was more or less intact. With SZÖSZ a new type of settlement, the (eco) farmsteads were put on the Hungarian map (Fig. 10.1). Administratively the majority of the Hungarian communities belong to one of the nearby settlements, without administrative autonomy. In some cases, they are in a rather unique position: In the case of Visnyeszéplak and the two rather micro-settlements with which it constitutes an administrative unit the village mayor is a member of the eco-village

Fig. 10.1

Map of Hungarian eco-villages

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community; Krishna-Valley delegates as many as three members to the self-government of their village, Somogyvámos; Gy˝ur˝uf˝u belongs to the nearby Ibafa village, but has its own administrative sub-unit. The inhabitants of Hungarian eco-villages sustain themselves in a variety of ways. Those who cannot realize the ideal of gaining their livelihood locally commute to outside workplaces (teachers, nurses, social workers) or work from a home office (mostly working in information technology). Among those who ensure a living locally we find those engaged with the hospitality industry, those living from agricultural activity and those who engage in some kind of independent enterprise (teachers, printers, translators, psychologists). In addition, some maintain themselves with casual labor (gardening, construction, etc.). There are some children in all of the eco-villages, although their numbers vary greatly. The largest number of children can be found Krishna-Valley and Visnyeszéplak: Among the 120 inhabitants of Krishna-Valley there are about 40 children, while of the 150 inhabitants of Visnyeszéplak we find about 70 children. However, it is rare for such a community to have an independent school. Visnyeszéplak did have a primary school until very recently, which, however, due to administrative reasons ceased to exist. Krishna-Valley is the only one where there is both a kindergarten and a primary school, and they are currently working on creating a high-school. In addition, the Hungarian Hare Krishna community has its own college, which has a unit in the village offering correspondence courses. In the rest of the eco-villages, there are 3–10 children going to school in neighboring settlements (where they are either driven by their car-pooling parents or by a school-bus) or else they are being home-schooled. Eco-village dwellers exercise a variety of forms of cooperation, including economic cooperation, exchange of produce, tools and labor, joint celebrations of feasts and other shared activities, car-pooling, etc. In Hungarian eco-villages, communal property is not a common characteristic, although joint economic activities are carried out on privately owned land (Fig. 10.2).

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Eco-house, Gyur ˝ uf ˝ u˝ eco-village, Hungary, 2009

Radical Rural Locality—Place and Eco-Villages New social movements enter the focus of contemporary space and place studies due to their special ways of interpreting locality (see Castells 1997; Escobar 2001). These studies of place, space and culture (the socalled spatial turn in sociology, cultural anthropology and geography) look at space as the result of human activity, social practices and communication flows (see Castells 1997; Harvey 2000; Sassen 1994; Soja 1990). A significant part of new social movements can be characterized by the attempt to protect the area (Escobar 2001; Horlings 2015), and to regain control over the place (Castells 1997). Many of them relate to the land and the countryside and the phenomenon of radical rural spatiality, as Keith Halfacree calls it. He defines this as follows: “The radical rural locality identified revolves around environmentally embedded, decentralised and relatively self-sufficient and self-reliant living patterns”

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(Halfacree 2007, 132). The best expression of radical rural space (or radical rural locality) is what is known as low impact development (LID), but other more specific activities that inscribe the locality belong here as well. One of these include: “alternative” back-to-the-land migration, permaculture and other forms of agricultural production, sustainable forestry, such strongly place-based practices as locally produced and consumed goods. With regard to eco-villages. Halfacree observed of eco-villages that ‘in the radical rural representation there is a strong ‘community’ discourse, a communistic vision of everyday life’ (Halfacree 2007, 132) is particularly important, as it envisions a landscape which is lived in and worked upon by humans who are integral to their environment (see Halfacree 2001, 2003a, b, 2006, 2007); who possess an ecological self-conception (see Castells 1997; Devall 1995)‚ and who as a rule have ecocentric beliefs (Halfacree 2007, 135). Eco-villages are the best examples of radical rural locality (see my case study in Farkas 2016), and eco-spirituality is an integral part of this.

Ecology and Religion In the majority of eco-villages, besides scientific theories, environmental philosophy and ideologies aiming for social change, spirituality also appears in some form. A variety of religious institutional forms, spiritual trends and a wide spectrum of types of religiosity can be found in the midst of these communities. During the second half of the twentieth century, religious institutions and communities increasingly employed religious and ecological discourses in calling for environmental protection. One of the early manifestations of this was the Assisi Declaration (1986 Assisi) that came into being with the assistance of the WWF (World Wildlife Fund) when the five world religions formulated their message about the relationship of nature and humans, which later other religions joined, too. Prior to this, in 1979 Pope John Paul II declared Saint Francis of Assisi to be the heavenly patron of “those who promote ecology” and called upon the faithful to follow the example of the Saint and respect nature. Pope Francis is well-known for his ecological commitment and in his

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encyclical (2015) entitled Laudato si he called for an integral ecology and ecological conversions. Churches are important to ecological discourse, according to some thinkers, because religious teachings and churches already exist, bring together a very large number of people, and through their organization and infrastructure they can offer a stable foundation for environmental action. They only need to convey the message of responsibility for our environment, show its basis in the religion and highlight the connection to ecology. Thus religion has been “discovered” as one of the solutions to and strategies for the resolution of the ecological crisis. For ecologically-minded Christians, nature constitutes part of the divine. Accordingly, the exploitation and destruction of the planet are considered to be sins against God and environment-friendly behavior becomes a religious duty. (See among others Bron Taylor’s 2010 study Introducing Religion and Dark Green Religion. On the relationship of Abrahamic religions and the ecological crisis and the debates around it see: Taylor 2010b; White 1967; Livingstone 1994; Kay 1988.) In Hungary too, an increasing number of mostly grassroots initiatives follow this trend: Various churches organize conferences and workshops on the ecology, or propose spiritual exercises for Christian nature conservators applying a Christian interpretation to ecology (see Domaniczky and Kuslits 2020). Nature-centered spirituality is much more elusive because it cannot be tied to a religion, yet it is increasingly present in environmentalist thinking (see Taylor 2010b). The concept of eco-spirituality comes nearest to summing up this worldview, at the core of which is a deeply felt sense of belonging to nature, the notion that all beings are equally valuable and mutually interdependent. Eco-spirituality is often characterized by pantheism and a holistic attitude. Some of its adherents do not consider humanity to be the apex of creation, but rather one among many of its actors; humanity is said to be in a mutual relationship with all other creatures (ecocentric environmental ethics). Others accept a special role for humans, but see it not as power but as responsibility (anthropocentric ethics). Both approaches lead to a very strong sense of responsibility in individuals, and a focus on everyday practices. The most notable manifestation of these is the Gaia hypothesis, which surmises that the Earth is a living entity (Lovelock 1979; Litfin 2005) as well

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as radical theories and trends of environmental philosophy, such as for example deep ecology (Naess 1989; Drengson and Devall 2010) or social ecology (Bookchin 1996). Eco-spirituality—according to Bron Taylor— is mostly characteristic of diverse spiritual movements, but followers of traditional religions often also incorporate this kind of ethic into their worldview (Taylor 2010a, b). We often find eco-spirituality among the set of movements for which the umbrella term environmentalist is used. Finally, I must explain my interchangeable use of religion, faith and spirituality in the paper. Authors dealing with religiosity often emphasize that in contemporary discourses individuals reflecting on their religiosity often speak about spirituality rather than about religion and most emphasize the difference between the two. They identify spirituality with personal experience and personal growth, with a more thorough understanding of the world and the individual’s place in it, while they regard religion as institutionalized, overly ritualized and impersonal (Taylor 2010a, 1). Among my Hungarian interlocutors, a preference for the word faith was noticeable, several of them called my attention to the difference, that it was not religion, but common faith that could hold together the community.

Religion, Faith and Spirituality in Hungarian Eco-Villages Some Hungarian eco-villages are attached to a particular religion, even to a particular Church, but their majority do not define or regulate the religious commitment of new members but rather treat it as a personal matter. At the same time, even if a given community declares itself nonreligious but nonetheless leans in a certain religio-spiritual direction this quickly becomes clear to those interested in joining and defines the circle of those moving in. Beyond a clear religious stance, all communities are characterized by eco-spirituality, a holistic eco-spirituality and some level of nature-belief. There are two settlements among Hungarian eco-villages in which a particular religion/church—and the cultural model associated with

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it—is dominant: These are Krishna-Valley (Krishna-consciousness) and Visnyeszéplak (Catholicism). Krishna-Valley came into being primarily through organized Hungarian adherents of the Church of Krishna-devotees. It is a religiously homogeneous community (only Krishna-believers can move into the village) and the everyday functioning of the community is determined by religion. Their worldview contains numerous green elements, such as their conception of the soul, reverence for the Earth and all living beings, and the principle of doing no harm; they consider nature to be part of God so its protection therefore is a religious duty (see Farkas 2009, 2019). One inhabitant of Krishna-Valley explained: “Krishna in the spiritual world lives in an eco-village. Environment-friendly means that you live with Krishna in a Krishna-conscious way” (R.N. 2009). The village was founded in the early 1990s using principles of the founding Indian guru A. C. Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada of the Western Krishna-conscious Church (International Society for Krishna Consciousness, ISKCON). The majority of these principles (environmentally sound methods of agriculture, reduced consumption, frugal lifestyle, selfsufficiency) match current discourses on sustainability. Krishna-Valley adopted “eco-villagehood” language at the beginning of the 2000s and from then on they consciously continued to strengthen the eco-village aspects of the village (renewable sources of energy, the use of alternative technologies, etc.). This eco-village aspect has had an important place in the public relations of Krishna-Valley in recent decades. My fieldwork indicates that Krishna consciousness continues to take precedence over explicit environmental ethics. On the one hand, it is not even clear to all inhabitants of the Valley that there is a connection between their religion and environmental consciousness, or how they should imagine nature as part of Krishna and how eco-consciousness is related to their village being called an eco-village. For them their lifestyle is simply following the norms of their religion. On the other hand, even for those who comprehend these connections, the primary factor is religion; the interpretative framework of their ecological lifestyle (and its communication) and the cohesive force of the community derive from their religion:

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It is not because the chemicals go into the carrot that we eat and poisons [sic] us that we don’t use chemicals in agriculture. It is because for us the Earth is Bhúmidevi [Goddess of Earth], a person, and water and air are also persons whom we do not want to rape. Bhaktas [Hare Krishnas] are Krishna-conscious and not environmental activists. (A.S. 2009)

Krishna-devotees think that a simply ecologically conscious attitude is not enough for sustainability and they regard their holy scriptures— which they also interpret as a “users’ manual” for life—as expressing an ecologically conscious lifestyle: A fully realized ecologically conscious lifestyle is impossible to maintain without a theo-centric worldview. The latter produces the partnership entered into with Planet Earth. The ecological viewpoint need not be and cannot be treated separately from the guidelines of the supreme expert on creation. God’s guidelines regarding our planet are eco-centric from the beginning. (A. d. 2009)

In contrast, Visnyeszéplak is characterized by an acknowledged adherence to Catholicism (the largest denomination in Hungary) since being founded in the 1990s. Religion was essential to the traditional peasant lifestyle which was to be emulated. According to this interpretation, peasants in the past lived in harmony with both nature and God. As this idea was formulated by one of its theoreticians: “If the peasant kneads the bread, and scratches the ear of the pig with love and good feeling, an extraordinary invisible force permeates the food (life): a sea of tastes. God.” (Excerpt from an interview with Gábor Géczy, founder of Magfalva, 2006, http://magtar.hu/oldal/magfalva, 14 July 2017.) It is characteristic of several Hungarian eco-villages that they regard traditional peasant culture as an example of an ecologically sustainable lifestyle, but attachment to a particular church is not as evident elsewhere as in the case of Visnyeszéplak. The worldview of the inhabitants was dominated by the Catholic faith and they practiced the quotidian and festive rites of the Catholic church (prayer several times a day, the blessing of food, observing the feasts of the Catholic ritual year, Sunday

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mass once a month celebrated by the priest of the neighboring village2 etc.). After 2000, several families belonging to other Christian denominations (Adventist, Pentecostal, Protestant) moved to the settlement. There are also differences in forms of belonging to the same denomination depending on the degree to which they practice their religion and whether they follow its prescriptions and rites within or outside the church framework. Both denominational differences and differences of interpretation can lead to tensions among the villagers. A long-standing debate in the community is also due to a religious question: Lacking a church building in the settlement they use the communal house for church services. Furthermore, this same building also serves as the school, as a venue for community events, and on the occasion of larger events, it can also provide accommodation for guests. In the 2000s, the need for building their own church arose. But while the Catholics were thinking of a structure with a nave, the “ancient Hungarian” constituency, which by then had become quite strong, was in favor of a circular structure which they imagined as an ecumenical sacred space. At the time, this story reverberated in eco-village circles. Research conducted in 2017 revealed that the debate has left its mark on the community (Nagybán 2017) and the church remains unbuilt. In the majority of Hungarian eco-villages, we cannot speak of such a great degree of adherence to a given religion as in the case of KrishnaValley and Visnyeszéplak. In the other settlements, religious belonging is a more or less personal matter. Religious-spiritual conviction may still be an important motivating factor in an individual’s choice to move to an eco-village (viz. the protection of nature is a religious duty). However, the communities themselves have come into being according to ecological principles, as emphasized in their PR communications (Galgafarm ecovillage, Gy˝ur˝uf˝u, Nyim Eco-Community). In these eco-villages, a green ideology and a certain level of eco-spirituality are fundamental. People are not explicitly called upon to subscribe to these views; it is the presence of green ideology that attracts them to the community in the first place. In such communities, the inhabitants belong to a variety of denominations and their religious practices are diverse: There are some who practice their religion along with those of their neighbors with whom 2 Like

many other small settlements in Hungary, Visnyeszéplak does not have its own priest.

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they share a denomination, others who live their religion individually within the family, and others who attend church in a nearby village and form their religious network with their fellow congregants there. And there are many who can be classified as “religious after their own fashion,” a category describing people who do not practice their religion within a Church framework, but follow a religious practice that fits with their individual interpretation and rhythm of life. This is not surprising since eco-spirituality itself can stem from several different religions (see Taylor 1995). Such diversity characterizes the Nagyszékely eco-community where one of the members of the community averred that the cause of the cohesiveness of the community was precisely that they did not keep track of each other’s religiosity. Here is for example the question of religion, religious tolerance. Nobody is a bigoted Catholic, nobody forces his religion on the other. Many do not have an explicit religion, only faith. This is also similar, this also brings people together that we can count on each other in this question, because we know that there is no tension between us. (B.G. 2009)

He did not consider himself to belong to any organized religion, and his attitude exemplified one of the possible types of religiosity that we can find in Hungarian eco-villages: You can be happy about [a good harvest] and can give thanks to the creator, I don’t know, to whomever you wish, or anything. Or, or, if it is not a belief in God, you don’t need that, it is not important, then Mother Earth, Gaia, or the sanctity of life, or anything, ecological philosophy can also be behind it that is devoid of God. As far as I am concerned, that is possible. But what is important is some kind of conscious spirituality, higher notions that leads you. (B.G. 2009)

Similarly, at Gy˝ur˝uf˝u we do not find a particular religion but rather some kind of common faith according to one of the inhabitants of the ecovillage. He considers the presence of elements of nature-faith (“Genius loci, the spirit of the place, the spirit of nature and in some sense even the spirit of the people of Gy˝ur˝uf˝u of old.” K.I. 2009) to be characteristic of

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the village. “An atheist will quickly depart from here” remarked the same person arguing that even though we cannot talk about a well-defined religion in the case of Gy˝ur˝uf˝u, the palpable spirituality that is present will turn away those who are leery of that. Another type of religiosity in eco-villages is exemplified by another member of the Nagyszékely community. He has a more definite belief in God, but he too emphasizes that it is not a common religion or a perfectly identical belief system but rather finding common points of reference that would bring progress to the community: It is not enough that we trust each other, you also have to believe in a higher force. I could say now that we should believe in God, or in a superior being, who leads us, whom we must listen to, or whom we can listen to. We [J.A. and his wife] also believe in something like this, that somebody above guides our steps. But I would not say that this would be so strong, that we would want to [go] in the same direction, but rather we would like to find some common points of reference, this is the better way to put it. (J.A. 2009)

In addition to the above, another special form of spirituality appears in those villages that do not have a religiously dominant community. This belief system is often closely connected to a strongly idealized, but in reality newly reconstructed idea of folk culture and peasant life world, that regards ideal human existence as an entity that is constantly in harmony with the supernatural and with nature, and thus is continually in a sacred state. This type of religiosity is characterized by a strong Hungarian identity, reinforced by alternative theories of the sacredness of Hungarianness as well as a distinctive, spiritual understanding of Christianity and frequently an anti-Church attitude. And finally, in each of the eco-villages best known to me I have found individuals who were attached to established Churches and adhered to an environmentally conscious understanding of religion. As we saw in an earlier quote (“..it is […] not even religion, but the joint practice of faith that can hold together a community very very much.” K.E. 2009) the Nagyszékely woman who emphasized the importance of faith also attended church at the same time and thought that the idea of love stemming from

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her Catholic faith was very important. In her interpretation, her religion demands an ecological lifestyle that protects the created world and cooperates with it. The latter example—eco-villagers who practice their religion in a community outside their eco-community—deserves special attention. It seems that this form of practicing religion can be a link between the eco-community and members of the nearby community that hosts them. Through these relationships, the locals can gain information about the eco-villagers who often seem to them to be alien, strange or even sect members. In my experience, the above-mentioned Nagyszékely woman is by far the best known among the locals. Another Catholic couple, who moved into the Galgafarm eco-village in the Summer of 2010, consciously attempted to make use of their relationships acquired through religion: As they did not find a suitable social circle in the ecovillage (which at the time only had a few permanent resident families) and because they could not practice their religion with anyone among their fellow eco-villagers, they began to attend church in the nearby village, Galgahévíz, and participate actively in the life of the congregation there. They found out very early on the many mistaken views circulated among their neighbors in Galgahévíz. They also sensed that perhaps due to their active religious participation the locals began to regard them with increasing trust. As a result, they decided to accept the role of mediator and attempt to bring the two sides closer to each other. This meant dispelling false views, establishing mutual trust as well as providing information about the ecological principles of the eco-village. These religion-based relationships can—in any one of the villages—play an important role and may help bring the eco-village and the host village closer together. One of the dominant features of eco-spirituality characteristic of Hungarian eco-villages is nature faith (see Farkas 2018). Several features of this are considered by the social scientific literature to belong to the sphere of neo-paganism or native faith. The terms native faith, native tradition, ancient Hungarian tradition, the legacy of our ancestors are the most frequently used both in social scientific and everyday usage. (On these conceptual questions and the differing Western and Central-Eastern European terminologies see Farkas 2018; Ivakhiv 2005.)

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We do not find a unified nature faith and associated practices when studying Hungarian eco-villages. However, the characteristic plurality and bricolage can also be found here. Practices connected to NeoPaganism/nature faith/ancient faith tend to appear primarily at the individual level, associated with particular persons within a given ecovillage, or perhaps among smaller groups of individuals. But here too we find the influence of innumerable trends, and individuals have such diverse religious views that it is very difficult to generalize.3 Since the basis of the eco-village concept is living in harmony with nature this leads directly not only to reverence for nature but also to a distinctive understanding of nature, a characteristic vision that is not unique to eco-villages; however, it is present in all of them. This conceptualization of nature also moves on a very broad scale: While at one end we can place those who simply feel at one with nature, declaring all living beings of equal value, at the other end would stand those who revere independent entities in various parts of nature and communicate with them in various ways. An important component of nature faith is that it plugs humans into the macrocosm. Aspirations for this are clearly exemplified when ecovillagers draw parallels between the Earth and humans, and project the two onto each other. This parallelism between microcosm and macrocosm goes beyond establishing the fact of the distinctive relationship of humans and the Earth, rather, it points to humanity’s responsibility for the Earth and for the sins it committed against the Earth as well as to the duties stemming from these sins. In this context, the ecological crisis is interpreted as part of a broader, global crisis. The only solution is to return to one’s own traditions, and to the local lifestyle, to when people lived in harmony with nature (Ivakhiv 2005, 219−220). In the Hungarian eco-village movement, this connection also means an attachment to the traditional peasant lifestyle; in certain ecovillages, traditional peasant ecological knowledge is an important point 3 One

important reason for not finding a unified nature faith in Hungarian eco-villages is to be found in how they conceptualize nature: There are two dominant understandings of nature in these communities. For some, nature is an ethos, while for others it is an autonomous entity that is more or less independent of human society. For more detail on these questions, see: Aitamurto and Simpson (2013), Farkas (2018), Ivakhiv (2005).

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of reference for constructing a sustainable society and relation with the environment. This is also a well-known, general phenomenon in the East-Central European region: “the peasant is an incarnation of the ‘noble savage’ who is simple in the very best of senses: self-sufficient, unpretentious, trustworthy, guileless, and above all, completely authentic” (Simpson and Filip 2013, 29). The principle of systems thinking also takes it for granted that the living and the dead to be found on Earth constitute a complex system—including the Earth as an independent entity. Thus, in the nature faith of eco-villagers particular local features of nature (certain features of the landscape or of plants), the energies to be found in nature and the rites that can somehow tie in with the latter play an important role, they help the relationship of humans and nature: Humans receive the support of nature, and they help the Earth and nature with their rituals. These rites can be the well-worn rituals of Hungarian folk customs (such as throwing buckets of water at girls at Easter), or employing rituals or other rites, thought to be from native cultures or from Ancient Hungarians (e.g., the shaman holds up the child to the four elements). Eco-villagers attribute great importance to these rites in the functioning of human community as well.

The Role of Faith Above I gave an overview some of the types of religiosity that we find in Hungarian eco-villages, emphasizing that these were only some, admittedly the most common, examples from the broad canvas of religious views and that even these types—given that individuals shape their own worldview—are in constant flux. The last examples help us transition to another important question, namely how eco-villagers understand the role and function of religion in their communities. It is striking that the two largest (approximately 150 residents) and most prosperous eco-villages—the only ones with waiting lists—Krishna-Valley and Visnyeszéplak also show strong religious commitment. This is important because eco-villagers often regard a common faith as a necessary basis for a well-functioning community;

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they often attribute the success of these two villages to faith. The prosperity and attractiveness of the two eco-villages are in reality due to other factors as well—e.g., mostly economic organizational and leadership factors—but in the interpretation of their success, religiosity always has an important place. I witnessed a scene in summer 2010 at Németbánya which is repeated at almost every eco-village summer reunion: A young man belonging to an evolving eco-community asked for advice from the experienced members of the eco-village movement on how to create a community. Members of the Gy˝ur˝uf˝u, Visnyeszéplak, Krishna-Valley and Agostyán eco-village (who have been the pioneers of the eco-village movement, founders of the first eco-villages and are the acknowledged leaders of the movement) tried to provide some guidelines. In the course of this, they soon arrived at the importance of a common faith. Surprisingly these leaders did not hail from religiously-dominated villages, but leaders from other villages who pointed to them (the representative of Krishna-Valley and Visnyeszéplak) saying: “they are the largest, the strongest.” This too shows the importance of religion, of faith. Those called upon agreed that without a common faith it won’t work or at least it is much more difficult. The representative of Krishna-Valley added that it need not be a village with Krishna consciousness that will work well; the model they worked out could be followed based on another religion. One can often find similar reactions to expressions of the desire to found eco-villages on listservs associated with eco-villages: I have misgivings about artificially created communities. I have seen many, I have seen many fall apart, or I merely heard their stories. I think some kind of spiritual basis, let’s say a common religion, may make it work because it regulates behavior, customs, it defines common feasts and events. (V. S. 2010)

And similarly, in numerous conversations and interviews we can hear the opinion that environmental consciousness, green ideology in themselves are not enough for the successful functioning of a community. Most often they cite the perceived lack of success of Gy˝ur˝uf˝u—which

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otherwise is an emblematic actor in the Hungarian eco-village movement. According to this view, Gy˝ur˝uf˝u has not reached the goals it had set for itself at the beginning, because those living there do not have the kind of attachment that a very strong, and especially common belief system would provide. The counterexamples are always Krishna-Valley and Visnyeszéplak. Thus, even in those eco-villages where the religious-spiritual worldview is primarily a private matter they are aware of the power of a common faith in identity- and community-formation. This is also demonstrated by the fact that some of the inhabitants often try to imbue village events with some kind of spiritual content, or that they attempt to experience their own faith at the level of the community, drawing together those members who profess similar beliefs or those who are in limbo. In the community of Galgafarm, which has been evolving since 2008, there are several instructive examples of this. The eco-village has the distinction that its members had not known (or barely knew) each other earlier, and the village has been in the planning process for a long time (20 years) but has only become a reality in recent years. In the process of forming the community, they tried to find some common denominators in the realm of ideology and faith. The following is quite characteristic of this process: In the summer of 2008, the artists of a sculptors’ colony made various wooden sculptures for Galgafarm (a belfry, the image of a peasant man and a woman, etc.). Among these was a statue representing Saint Francis. When I first saw the carving, the paint was still drying on it and it had no inscription. The ecovillager who accompanied me said they had a dilemma regarding the statue’s name, anticipating problems with the term “saint.” Eventually, they chose to inscribe “Brother Francis” on the statue, lest somebody’s religious sensibility should be hurt. Thus, Saint Francis—the patron of those who promote ecology—gained legitimacy as Brother Francis in the religiously very diverse eco-village. This caution in naming the statue indicates that in heterogeneous communities, tensions can come to the surface through religious issues. Where religion legitimates the existence of the community, its social institutions and its hierarchy and where everyday life is regulated by strict religious norms, conflicts might arise that are not related to religion

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(Krishna-Valley). At the same time, even in Visnyeszéplak, considered to be the most religious among the eco-villages, one of the sources of conflict is related to religion (the shape of the desired church building). Eco-villagers attribute such great importance to the identity-forming and community-organizing force of a common faith because—as I stated above and as they themselves are aware—eco-villages are intentional communities, where many different people arrive from many different directions. In the relatively new (15–25 year old) communities no tradition has come into being that is capable of generating a common worldview maintaining and legitimating people’s common experience about the world across generations, and of ensuring the smooth functioning of everyday life. If group goals and individual inclinations are not in harmony in such an intentional community, to which the members arrive with a great variety of patterns of socialization, it is very difficult to accomplish the goals of the community. Despite the overall similarity of the ideological foundation and the striving for an ecological lifestyle, as well as the sincere desire for creating a community, the differences in the details can stand in the way of realizing the goals. We can find examples for this among both types of communities: those that are explicitly religious and those whose members follow individual paths of religiosity. The contradiction between accepting religious diversity and holding to a common system of beliefs poses a serious challenge. In several places they strive for tolerance, for acceptance and integration of religiousspiritual differences while they are fully aware that the functioning of the community is greatly aided by common beliefs, a common religion. They attribute a significant role to the supernatural (see above “you also have to believe in a higher force. I could say now that we should believe in God, or in a superior being, who leads us, whom we must listen to, or whom we can listen to.” J.A. 2009); furthermore, they are well aware that in creating a common language, another language that has long been in existence, the language of common faith or religion that is understood more or less similarly by everyone, can be of great help. This important contradiction is a continuing preoccupation of the inhabitants of ecovillages which keeps everyday life in constant flux. As a new, active and religious inhabitant moves in he or she may bring new vitality to those parts of communal life that are bound to the practice of religion (singing

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psalms, making music jointly, religious events for children, revival of religious festive customs), and may rearrange/reorganize social networks within the community, only to abandon it as the enthusiasm wanes until the next wave.

Conclusion Bron Taylor calls the “greening” of traditional religions green religion: religious environmental consciousness, the fundamental ethical view according to which environmentally conscious behavior is a religious duty. He also distinguishes and designates as dark green religion the view whose main thesis is that nature itself is sacred and therefore its protection is necessary. Animism, Pantheism, Paganism and Neopagan movements and the so-called nature religions (as well as traditional ecological knowledge that is considered closely related to them), the New Age Movement and certain new religious movements can be classified here. My experiences in Hungarian eco-villages show that in practice the two, i.e., green and dark green religiosity, can only be separated with great difficulty if at all. In the accounts and reflections of eco-villagers and at the level of everyday life, we are dealing with a complex phenomenon, which it is nearly impossible to categorize neatly and to provide generalizing definitions about. In Hungarian eco-villages, reverence for nature is manifested in beliefs and practices that are interpreted as nature faith, in religiosity tied in with traditional denominations, in new religious movements or in the type called religious after their own fashion. Each spiritual form of commitment articulates its own natureinterpretation, its relationship to nature and the duties following from this, that is to say: the protection of nature, the environmentally friendly practice of everyday life. While being attached to a particular religion offers an elaborate interpretative framework (see Krishna-consciousness in Krishna-Valley) in the majority of eco-villages we find a malleable, worldview full of bricolage into which certain components of nature faith, local tradition as well as beliefs considered to be ancient are integrated. As current research on religion points out, no religiosity

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is homogeneous, the official, folk and individual components together make up everything that is the religion of some people (see Bowman 2009) and this is especially true for the diverse spirituality of Hungarian eco-villages: This is not necessarily a coherent or consistent worldview but rather the fitting together of a variety of religious-cultural components in which attachment to nature and ecological thinking are manifested somehow. Eco-villagers are generally characterized by strong awareness: They reflect on global problems and express their opinions on current social issues (consumer society, globalization, centralization, environmental, economic, ethical crises, alienation, etc.). Their lifestyle is also a critique of the society, based on a distinctive approach providing an interpretation of the world that differs from that of the mainstream. Eco-spirituality, an ethical relationship to the natural environment, is a fundamental part of this attitude. This approach is not exclusive to eco-villagers; however, we can encounter it in worldviews radically different from theirs. This puts the eco-village discourse into a wider context, so the conclusions we draw from the eco-village phenomenon may be of interest to the broader society. The view that in addition to the three dimensions of sustainability (ecology, economy, society) a fourth one: Spirituality is indispensable to the maintenance of balance is becoming increasingly dominant in sustainability discourses. The spiritual aspect opens up a new dimension in the ecological way of life while also providing its legitimation. The importance of the spiritual aspect in Hungarian eco-villages is quite clear. Certain basic tenets are evident to all, but beyond this these communities are characterized by religious-spiritual diversity. They consider this diversity to be an important value, but recognize that it can also lead to conflicts. The most important lesson to be drawn from this is that focusing on the common elements and the common goal[s] of the worldview makes the differences manageable while the common worldview serves as an important resource for the functioning of eco-communities.

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Farkas, J. (2019). “The body has no soul, the soul has a body”: The concept of soul and nature in the Hungarian Krishna Valley ecovillage. In É. Pócs (Ed.), Body, soul, spirits and supernatural communication (pp. 34–53). Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Halfacree, K. (2001). Going ‘back-to-the-land’ again: Extending the scope of counterurbanisation. Espace, Populations, Societes, 19 (1–2), 161–170. Halfacree, K. (2003a). A place for ‘nature’? New radicalism’s rural contribution. In Rural Geography Research Group/Commission de Ge´ographie Rurale (Eds.), Innovations in rural areas, CERAMAC 22 (pp. 51–65). ClermontFerrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal. Halfacree, K. (2003b). Landscapes of rurality: Rural others=other rurals. In I. Roberston & P. Richards (Eds.), Studying cultural landscapes (pp. 141–169). London: Arnold. Halfacree, K. (2006). From dropping out to leading on? British countercultural back-to-the-land in a changing rurality. Progress in Human Geography, 3, 309–336. Halfacree, K. (2007). Trial by space for a ‘radical rural’: Introducing alternative localities, representations and lives. Journal of Rural Studies, 23, 125–141. Harvey, D. (2000). Spaces of hope. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Horlings, L. G. (2015). Values in place: A value-oriented approach toward sustainable place-shaping. Regional Studies, Regional Science, 2(1), 257–274. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21681376.2015.1014062. Ivakhiv, A. (2005). Nature and ethnicity in East European Paganism: An environmental ethic of the religious right? Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies, 8(2), 194−225. Jackson, H., & Svensson, K. (Eds.). (2002). Ecovillage living: Restoring the earth and her people. Cambridge: Green Books. Kay, J. (1988). Concepts of nature in the Hebrew Bible. Environmental Ethics, 10 (4), 309–327. Litfin, K. (2005). Gaia theory: Intimations for global environmental politics. In P. Dauvergne (Ed.), Handbook of environmental politics (pp. 500–518). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. Livingstone, D. N. (1994). The historical roots of our ecological crisis: A reassessment. Fides et Historia, 26, 38–55. Lovelock, J. (1979). Gaia: A new look at life on earth. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Manzella, J. C. (2010). Common purse, uncommon future: The long, strange trip of communes and other intentional communities. Westport, CT: Praeger.

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Other Online Sources http://www.elofaluhalozat.hu. Accessed 28 Jan 2020. http://gen.ecovillage.org. Accessed 28 Jan 2020.

11 Resource Nationalism and Spiritual Pathways to Sustainability in Kyrgyzstan Vincent Artman

Concern for the relationship between human societies and the natural environment has been a feature of various nationalisms since the Romantic era. Anthony Smith has suggested that, for early nationalist thinkers, nature and its “poetic spaces” were not merely the backdrop against which the drama of national history played out, but were in fact inseparable from that history and from the moral fiber of the national community itself: This nature and these spaces are quite specific; they constitute the historic home of the people, the sacred repository of their memories. They have their own historical poetry, for those whose spirits are attuned to them. The homeland is not just the setting of the national drama, but a major protagonist, and its natural features take on historical significance for the people. So lakes, mountains, rivers and valleys can all be turned into

V. Artman (B) Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 S. E. Silvern and E. H. Davis (eds.), Religion, Sustainability, and Place, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7646-1_11

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symbols of popular virtues and “authentic” national experience. (1991, 65–66)

A nation’s destiny, in many respects, was believed to be bound up not only with the physical territory upon which it resided, but with such poetic spaces as well. The primordialist explanations that depicted the nation as a timeless organism, unchanged in its fundamental essence and organically connected with a particular homeland, and which formed the basis for early theories of nationalism, have long since been abandoned in favor of constructivist accounts that emphasize the “imagined” or “invented” character of nations (Anderson 2006; Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). Land and territory, however, remain among the touchstones of the national imagination (Kaiser 1994; Murphy 2010). As Ed Schatz explains: An environmental discourse that idealizes the natural, the organic and human ties to the soil parallels the nationalist assumption that nations are natural and primordial communities located in specific territorial homelands. The links between blood, land and community become difficult to miss. ‘Heartland’, ‘fatherland’, and ‘motherland’ are merely the most semiotically explicit terms within an entire discourse that conflates the human body, human communities, and the lands they inhabit. (Schatz 1999, 138)

The phenomenon of “resource nationalism,” for example, can be said to be concerned with more than merely questions regarding the control and distribution of the natural resources within a particular state (though it may be that as well). Just as importantly, “resource nationalism may…be understood in terms of collective belonging expressed through the idiom of natural resources” (Koch and Perrault 2018, 611–612). The natural environment, in other words, is “another location in the struggle for the construction of and control over a national political memory” (Sinha et al. 1997, 90). In an essay entitled “Geographical Work around the Boundaries of Climate Change,” the geographer Mike Hulme writes that it is necessary

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to “reclaim climate from the natural sciences and to treat it unambiguously as a manifestation of both Nature and Culture, to assert that the idea of climate can only be understood when its physical dimensions are allowed to be interpreted by their cultural meanings” (Hulme 2007, 5). This is undoubtedly correct, and Hulme notes that it is necessary for political ecology to account for “multiple ethnicities, networks, and nation-states,” to devote its attention to “the multitudinous ways in which climate and culture are connected in places that have a history and in places that have a future” (ibid., 7). Such a project must consider religion’s role in shaping culturally (and politically) grounded interpretations of climate change—and indeed of ecological concerns as a whole—in particular local or national contexts. And yet a substantial proportion of the literature on nationalist discourses on the environment has either downplayed the role of religion or simply ignored it altogether. While some researchers have taken these sorts of questions seriously—Mawdsley’s work (2005, 2006) on how Hindu nationalists have mobilized ecology, for example—in many cases engagement with religion is limited to simply pointing out that religious principles might include vague references to “respecting nature” or noting how nationalists “sacralize” the natural environment. This lacuna is remarkable, considering the profound role that religion has historically played in different nationalisms (Artman 2019; Smith 2003; van der Veer 1994; van der Veer and Lehmann 1999) and in ecological discourses (Berkes 2008; Hart 2017; Jenkins et al. 2017). Fully redressing this situation, of course, is well beyond the scope and purview of this chapter. Rather, in keeping with the aims of this volume, the chapter will explore the imbrications of religion, ecology, and nationalism with an eye toward demonstrating how the intersection of religion and nationalism might work to constitute a form of normative praxis vis-à-vis issues related to ecological sustainability. The primary focus of the chapter will be on Central Asia, where concerns for the environment are often located at the confluence of numerous countervailing currents: the legacies of Soviet industrialization; the pressures of “transition” and subsequent integration into the neoliberal global economy; the exigencies of state consolidation; religious revival; and the contested nature of nation-building itself. The purpose for this is twofold: first, to

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broaden the focus of scholars interested in questions of religion and political ecology to a region of the world that is often overlooked; and second, to make clear that global environmental challenges, including climate change, but also issues stemming from integration into the neoliberal world economy, are being addressed by strategies that mobilize religious and nationalist discourses in unique and locally-grounded ways. The chapter will begin by briefly describing the origins of environmentalism in the Soviet Union, which, even prior to the USSR’s collapse in 1991, was connected in interesting ways with nationalist movements in different Soviet republics. The chapter will then turn its attention to post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan, where concern for the environment often collides with the need to exploit natural resources and develop the economy. As we will see, protests against gold mining operations in Kyrgyzstan do not merely revolve around concerns about foreign ownership of resources, but also around degradation of a natural environment that many Kyrgyz feel an intense national connection to. Finally, the chapter will turn its attention to the phenomenon of sacred sites around Lake Issyk-Kul. The veneration of these sacred sites is not only connected with particular religiously inflected understandings of Kyrgyz national identity, but the etiquette surrounding them also contributes to an ethic of sustainability that, directly and indirectly, contributes to the preservation of the natural environment.

Environmental Nationalism in the Soviet Union Throughout much of the Soviet period, environmental protection was not a major concern for the state; this was no less the case in Central Asia than anywhere else in the Soviet Union. Water pollution and severe declines in air quality were the predictable results of heavy industrialization, while intensification of agriculture and the overuse of chemical fertilizers led to soil salinization and groundwater contamination (Bichel et al. 2011, 265–266). The development of a cotton monoculture in the heavily populated Ferghana Valley and elsewhere has contributed to the destruction of native ecosystems and widespread desertification,

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including that of the Aral Sea, whose almost total disappearance is one of the great environmental catastrophes of the last century (Micklin 2007; Weinthal 2004). Meanwhile, nuclear testing in parts of what is now Kazakhstan has led to increased rates of thyroid disease, genetic defects, and various cancers in those areas (Bauer et al. 2013; Werner and Purvis-Roberts 2006). In spite of all of this, by 1988 environmental protection had become “an increasingly vital component of Soviet economic policy,” a shift that was driven by growing awareness among Soviet planners that environmental degradation posed a serious threat to the already-struggling Soviet economy. Moreover, as Ter-Ghazaryan and Heinen point out, despite the major shortcomings in the Soviet approach to environmental protection the USSR also had a remarkable network of nature reserves, called zapovedniki, which was intended to facilitate scientific research and ecosystem protection though near-total bans on virtually all human usage of protected areas (2006, 11). By 1990, the zapovedniki comprised fully 0.5% of the Soviet Union’s total land area and were “generally successful…considered perhaps the best system of strict nature reserves worldwide” (Ter-Ghazaryan and Heinen 2006, 12). Official concerns about the environment were mirrored by apprehension among a “broad spectrum of societal actors, ranging from the cultural intelligentsia to ordinary citizens concerned about public health and the destruction of the beauty of the natural environment” (Darst 1988, 223). Thus, although “the Communist Party’s monopoly over the public realm” (Dawson 1996, 13) meant that, until the late-1980s “civil society” did not officially exist outside of the ambit of the state (Smith et al. 2018, 5), “nature protection was used to stake out an independent sphere where activists, whether students, scientists, or writers, could engage in self-initiated civic activity” (Weiner 1999, 446).1 For instance, in the 1970s official proposals to divert “Siberian water” to Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, which were facing serious water shortages, 1 Importantly,

however, Julia Obertreis reminds us that, for the most part, Soviet environmentalism was not a “broad based movement” and was instead “elitist and formal,” largely being consigned to “academic and specialized journals in which representatives of different disciplines introduced new ideas such as an ecological thinking or an understanding of environmental problems as global problem” (2018, 127).

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were subject to sustained criticism by members of the Soviet scientific community; in the 1980s, with the advent of perestroika and glasnost ’, they were joined by a coalition of writers, journalists, and scholars (Obertreis 2018, 124–126). Notably, during the glasnost’ era concerns about the environment frequently became linked with nationalist politics, both among ethnic Russians and non-Russian minorities. In Armenia, for example, largescale industrial pollution, the depletion of Lake Sevan, and widespread protests against the 1976 construction of a nuclear power plant in an earthquake zone emerged as loci of consolidated nationalist resistance to Soviet rule in the late-1980s. Ultimately, the agenda of the Armenian environmental movement in 1988 changed from including partial elements of politic…into a completely political program starting with secession [of the Armenian enclave of NagornoKarabakh] from Azerbaijan and trying to establish a separate state after Moscow’s rejection of the Armenian demands. (Geukjian 2007, 258)

The Armenian case was not an exception. As one observer remarked at the time, “almost all the nationalist and ethnic stirrings that have occurred since Mikhail Gorbachev came to power have originated within the environmental movement. Environmentalists often have been in the forefront of what have become nationalist and even separatist factions in the republics” (Goldman 1992, 511).2 For the most part, however, informal Soviet nature protection movements remained a relatively marginal force, and events in the perestroika and glasnost ’ era rendered them “anachronistic” after 1986 (Weiner 1999, 431). With the exception, perhaps, of the Chernobyl disaster, deepening economic crisis, halting democratization, and the metastasizing of anti-Soviet nationalisms largely eclipsed environmental questions until after the dramatic collapse of the Soviet Union itself.

2 Interestingly,

the anti-nuclear “Nevada-Semipalatinsk Movement” in Kazakhstan, which by 1989 had millions of supporters, did not take on a nationalist character, but instead adopted a broader internationalist orientation (Schatz 1999; Werner and Purvis-Roberts 2006).

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Resource Nationalism and Ecological Sustainability in Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan States in post-Soviet Central Asia are “still discovering the magnitude of their ecological situation, largely because many problems were hidden from the average Soviet citizen.” Unfortunately, efforts to address these issues have been hampered by the simple fact that their governments are largely unequipped to tackle the problems they face. As in the Soviet era, environmental regulations are frequently inadequate, and official corruption often means that compliance is spotty at best. Indeed, these states sometimes “lack the administrative capacity and financial resources even to carry out basic tracking and cataloguing of their environmental problems” (Weinthal 2004, 247). At times, efforts to preserve the environment are almost entirely absent. So while former Uzbek President Islam Karimov cited desertification, soil salinization, toxic waste, overreliance on cotton, erosion, toxic pollution and radioactive contamination, diminishing sources of drinkable water, and the death of the Aral Sea as among the most pressing issues facing his country at the turn of the twenty-first century (1998, 67–81), his government did virtually nothing to address any of these problems—and indeed in many instances exacerbated them. Furthermore, transition to a market economy and the demands of global neoliberalism have exerted serious pressure on these states to engage in development schemes, including constructing hydroelectric dams, intensifying and expanding the cultivation of cotton, developing hydrocarbon reserves, and engaging in mining activities, that have seriously detrimental impacts on the natural environment. Kyrgyzstan, a small country of 6 million, provides a clear case study. Like neighboring Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan’s physical geography is characterized by its mountainous terrain and steep, river-carved valleys, which for centuries facilitated the transhumant grazing that formed the basis of the pre-industrial nomadic way of life. During the Soviet period, Kyrgyzstan remained largely agricultural, though mining and industry became increasingly important sectors of the economy. As was the case with other Central Asian states, the Soviet collapse severely impacted the Kyrgyzstani economy. Natural resources like water and energy, as well as infrastructure like railways and roads, now crossed international borders

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between states that had previously been invisible internal boundaries between Soviet republics. Moreover, with the collapse of the centrally planned Soviet economy, markets for goods produced in Kyrgyzstan evaporated, along with suppliers of raw materials from other parts of the former USSR (Fig. 11.1). It was in this context that Kyrgyzstan’s mining industry began to assume its contemporary importance to the country’s economy, which, unlike Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, or Uzbekistan lacks other high-value export commodities like oil, natural gas, or cotton. The Kumtor gold mine, which is wholly owned by Centerra Gold, a Canadian mining firm, in 2014 “accounted for 15% of the budget revenues, 15% of the country’s GDP and over half of its industrial output and export revenues, constituting Kyrgyzstan’s main source of wealth” (Fumagalli 2015, 2). Kyrgyzstan’s own state-owned mining firm, Kyrgyzaltyn, simply owns

Fig. 11.1

Map of Kyrgyz Republic

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shares in Centerra. Considering Kyrgyzstan’s lack of a large manufacturing base or other lucrative industries, such as hydrocarbon extraction, the continued operation of Kumtor is vital to Kyrgyzstan’s development. However, the Kumtor Gold Mine, one of Kyrgyzstan’s most important economic resources, which is in the Issyk Kul Oblast, has been at the center of several environmental and corruption scandals (Ashakeeva and Sindelar 2013; Jusupjan 1998; RFE/RL Kyrgyz Service 2013; Trilling 2014). Protests over the ownership and operation of Kumtor (and other mines in Kyrgyzstan) are connected with a particular form of resource nationalism (Doolot and Heathershaw 2015, 103), and these protests have sometimes escalated into violence. According to Matteo Fumagalli, many of the disputes revolve around the ownership of the mine and the profits that derive from it. Specifically the contentious issues range from the identity of the company that owns the mine, the split of the shares between the foreign mining company and the state-owned Kyrgyz one, the profits…as well as the various taxes and social contributions that the company that owns the mine has to pay to the regional development fund, and the taxes that are contributed to the state’s coffers. (7)

According to the Chairman of Kyrgyzaltyn, nationalist discontent over the ownership and disposal of Kyrgyzstan’s mineral resources are driven by the Kyrgyz public’s failure to appreciate the realities of integration into the global economic system: “People don’t fully understand the consequences of this [resource nationalist] movement. They also don’t understand how investment is important in the mining industry. Even though Kyrgyzstan is a market economy, the mentality of people is not there yet” (quoted in Gullette and Kalybekova 2014, 19). Natalie Koch and Tom Perrault, however, argue that resource nationalism should be understood in a more expansive way, not merely concerned with questions about ownership and distribution of resources, but also with questions of collective identity, belonging, and territoriality: “a geopolitical discourse about sovereignty, the state, and territory, as well as the rights and privileges of citizenship, national identity, and the values a group assigns to resources like oil, gas and minerals” (2018,

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612). Significantly, Kumtor is “the only open pit mine in the world operating on glaciers” (Wooden 2017, 169), and evidence has mounted that the mine had severely detrimental impacts on the “fragile mountain ecosystem” in which it is located (Varshalomidze 2014). For example, the dumping of rock waste onto sensitive glaciers and accidents like the May 1998 spillage of cyanide into the Barskoon River (Cleven and van Bruggen 2000), which flows into Lake Issyk-Kul, have provoked outrage from local residents and from Kyrgyz environmental activists more generally. The result has been a series of anti-mining protests, work stoppages, and demands that the government act more decisively to protect the environment around Kumtor and Lake Issyk-Kul, among other things. Such responses, of course, are themselves expressions of resource nationalism, albeit ones that contest the predominantly economic concerns described above and instead prioritize questions of justice and ecological sustainability. As we will see, however, environmental concerns related to Kumtor (and, as we will see, Lake Issyk-Kul) have important connotations not only vis-à-vis resource nationalism (as conceptualized by Koch and Perrault), but also with broader Kyrgyz nationalist discourses. At the core of this ideology is a narrative of Kyrgyz history emphasizing the nation’s connection to the bounded territory and natural environment of modern Kyrgyzstan: The most valuable legacy of the Kyrgyz people… is the sacred land of Ala-Too, which we received from our ancestors. Our ancestors left to present and future generations the wholesomeness and royalty of these fine mountains, the Lake Issyk Kul – a magnificent pearl that has no equal in the world today, fertile valleys, and sparkling mountain streams and rivers. On this ancient land, in the twentieth century, the Kyrgyz people created their own national state. The destiny of so precious a property is in our hands. (Akaev 2003, 8)3

3 It

is interesting to note that Amanda Wooden has found that 57% of survey respondents in Kyrgyzstan “value nature normatively and make moral considerations when asked for reasons about solving environmental problems.” The most common reasons respondents provided were “responsibility to our children and future generations” (36.47%) and “stewardship of nature” (20.33%) (Wooden 2013, 332). Although Wooden does not explicitly connect these responses

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Former President Askar Akaev, also extolled “harmony with nature” as one of the “Seven Lessons of Manas.” As the name suggests, the “Seven Lessons of Manas” were derived from the oral epic Manas, which Akaev argued demonstrated a historical basis for modern Kyrgyz statehood, and which was supposed to provide framework and substance for an ideology of Kyrgyz nationalism (Artman 2016, 136–144). According to Akaev, The nomadic civilization promoted, for the first time in the history of mankind, a cautious and reverential attitude toward Mother Nature. Since childhood, a nomad was taught to live in harmony with nature…By embracing this philosophy, the Kyrgyz people could pass onto their descendants the land of Ala-Too [Kyrgyzstan] in its enriched beauty. (2003, 284)

Environmental concerns voiced by anti-mining protesters at Kumtor, then, should be understood in the context of a Kyrgyz nationalist discourse that explicitly valorizes the natural environment, which is “seen not as separate from human society and activity, but is described by some [Kyrygz] as ‘part of us,’ and thus also part of national identity and patriotism narratives” (Wooden 2017, 179).

Religion, Ecology, Nationalism We have already discussed the informal environmentalist groups that emerged outside of the purview of the state during the late Soviet period. In addition to providing fertile ground for the cultivation of nascent nationalist movements, these groups also occasionally intersected with the post-glasnost’ religious revival in the Soviet Union in fascinating ways. For example, Douglas Weiner has noted that in the RSFSR, where there existed quite vocal resistance to river diversion plans, some members of the Russian environmental movement came to understand their ecological concerns as being intimately bound up with religious and national identity. Such activists were “attracted by the symbolism of to nationalist ideologies, it is worth pointing out that they have echoes of the importance of “harmony with nature” in the Seven Lessons of Manas.

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hydropower and dam projects as violent, alien, modernist, technological intrusions that needed to be expunged…Nationalist environmentalists envisioned the rehabilitation of Russian culture—especially rural culture—and morality, and the restoration of monasteries and churches” (Weiner 1999, 430). In this case, arguably, religion was only obliquely connected to ecological concerns, insofar as religious revival was understood as being part of a broader contestation of the terms of Soviet modernity and a concomitant valorization of Russian national identity, which is clearly bound up with Orthodox Christianity. Contemporary Kyrgyzstan, however, provides a clearer example of how religion, ecology, and nationalism often become intertwined. As we have seen, certain nationalist discourses in Kyrgyzstan describe a close connection with nature as being fundamental to Kyrgyz culture. According to Gulnara Aitpaeva, the Director of the Aigine Cultural Research Institute, whose mission includes the preservation of Kyrgyzstan’s cultural legacy and natural environment: “The Kyrgyz people have a saying ‘El menen jer kindiktesh’ which means ‘The people and the earth are connected by an umbilical cord’” (Aitpaeva and Egemberdieva 2009, 85). This connection, moreover, is conceived of not only as primordial in the nationalist sense, but sacred. Thus, on the occasion of a UNESCO symposium held in Kyrgyzstan in 2004, the celebrated Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aitmatov declared that there is a kind of sacrality in the fact that we have gathered at Lake IssykKul. So, here we are, on the shores of the crystal-clean, deep-water blue, mountainous sea, which is initially under the protection of the Heavens according to the legends…Here, on the Issyk-Kul shores, our ancestors practiced their rites, praying and addressing the Heavens, the Spirits and the Celestial God Tengri to give them force to survive, to be inspired, to protect people from invasions, to live in harmony with the environment and in peace with neighbors. (2005, 77–78)

As noted elsewhere (Koch and Perrault 2018, 618), belief in the “sacrality” of national territory is a common feature of resource nationalism. It is important to recognize, however, that such beliefs are not necessarily consigned to the domains of the purely abstract or rhetorical: They can also be located in embodied relationships between human beings and the

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natural environment. Thus, for many Kyrgyz, the natural world is intimately connected with notions of kyrgyzchylyk, which is often translated as “Kyrgyzness,” and which, “in the broadest sense…is a set of knowledge, traditions, and modes of thinking that are intrinsic to the Kyrgyz” (Aitpaeva 2013, 154). Kyrgyzchylyk, moreover, is a fundamentally spiritual concept: “the different spheres and areas of kyrgyzchylyk [including medicine, astronomy, ecology, etc.] are united by such general features as the presence of an ‘OTHER’—divine, spiritual, supernatural forces in human life and organic interrelation with the natural world” (Aitpaeva 2013, 155). One of the primary focal points in this cosmology is Lake Issyk-Kul. Water and mountains figure heavily in discourses of kyrgyzchylyk, and Issyk-Kul, whose name means “warm lake,”4 holds a particularly special place in the Kyrgyz national imaginary. It is viewed by many as not only as the cradle of Kyrgyz culture, but also an important locus of Kyrgyz spiritual traditions. Due to its economic, ecological, and scientific significance, much of the area surrounding Issyk-Kul has been designated either as “protected” or as a zapovednik (nature reserve) since the late-1940s. Although the effectiveness of this designation during much of the Soviet period was questionable (the State Fishing Enterprise, for example, was able to fish freely on the lake), designation as a zapovednik theoretically banned all human exploitation of lands so classified: Humans were viewed “as nature-disturbing factors and…excluded from the area” (Schmidt 2011, 74). It was only in the mid-1970s that state-led conservation efforts around Issyk-Kul became defined in explicitly conservationist terms (Ter-Ghazaryan and Heinen 2006, 14–15). The Issyk-Kul Nature Reserve outlived the Soviet state that created it. In fact, the Kyrgyz government reconstituted it as the Issyk-Kul Biosphere Reserve, whose mandate includes: “a) biocultural conservation, b) promotion of sustainable use of resources and c) ecological education and monitoring” (Samakov 2015, 42). Matthias Schmidt, therefore, has argued that 4 Issyk

Kul is replenished in part by hot springs, and so does not freeze over during the cold Kyrgyz winters.

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the Issyk-Kul BR…enlarges not only the spatial extent but also the scope of Soviet protection concepts. Humans are explicitly seen as part of the natural and cultural landscape, and its main goals cover not only the conservation of landscapes and cultural sites but also the sustainable economic development of the area. (2011, 74)

However, environmental damage associated with tourism around IssykKul, the degradation resulting from agriculture, particularly over-grazing, ongoing pollution of the lake and its surrounding environment stemming from the aforementioned mineral resource exploitation at Kumtor, as well as a “slow-motion ecological catastrophe” caused by an oil plume spreading from a defunct Soviet-era petroleum facility (Kalybekova 2013), have sparked outrage. This anger has, in turn, led to demands that the government do more to protect the lake and surrounding areas. State efforts, however, have been haphazard and often ineffective, hampered by inefficient (or flouted) regulation, corruption, and concerns about balancing environmental sustainability with economic development. A different approach to the preservation of the natural environment around Lake Issyk-Kul has focused on the possibilities contained within “traditional ecological knowledge systems” (Berkes 2008). While Fikret Berkes cautions against falling into the trap of romanticizing the “ecologically noble savage” (Buege 1996), he nevertheless argues that political ecology also cannot afford to ignore traditional ecological knowledge (Berkes 2008, 254–258). After all, he argues, such knowledge is necessarily political. It is, moreover, frequently bound up with religious or spiritual worldviews, and recent years have seen an increased awareness of religion’s relevance to discourses surrounding environmentalism, sustainability, and biodiversity (Bergmann 2009, 2017; Davidov 2015): “visible space as a perceived lived space is composed of invisible dynamic elements which affect the health, well-being and life quality of a human community” (Bergmann 2009, 11). This is certainly the case in Kyrgyzstan, where traditional ecological knowledge is associated, through the concept of kyrgyzchylyk, not only with religion, but also with national identity. Kyrgyzchylyk, in turn, is itself connected with an array of practices focused on Kyrgyzstan’s “sacred geography” of mazars, or sacred sites. As

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we will see, cultural practices, ethnic norms, and concern for the natural environment become intertwined in sacred sites. Much like the spiritually inflected “Anastasia” movement in Russia, which Veronica Davidov has argued has contributed to the formation of a “particular kind of ecological personhood that integrates deep nationalism, distrust of the post-Soviet state, and conservative family values, through the medium of nature and prescribed forms of human–nature relations and practices” (2015, 3), the veneration of mazars can be understood as both a means of contributing to the preservation of local ecosystems as well as of fashioning a specific form of Kyrgyz national and spiritual subjectivity through its relationship with the natural environment and the transcendent, which is grounded in that environment. In the words of one pilgrim, “When one worships mazars s/he worships not sacred sites but at the same time s/he worships the place where s/he was born” (quoted in Aitpaeva et al. 2007, 134). The word mazar itself is taken from Arabic, and typically refers to “an object of pilgrimage—often the grave of a Muslim saint.” However, “[o]ver time, the word came to be used to designate any place with a sacred character,” and may also refer to “rocks and mountains which are connected to the names of the prophets, of the mashaykhs (saints or pious monks) and of the kojo shaykhs (master guardians) with a goal to make certain wishes, to ask for salvation from sins, and to pray” (Inogamova 2009, 268). Other mazars, meanwhile, are connected with national history and myth, or are natural places revered for their sacred character (Aitpaeva 2013). In Kyrgyzstan, many mazars, such as the memorial sites at Manas Ordo and Ata Beyit, are explicitly imbricated with nationalist and statist discourses as well, while the mazar complexes surrounding Lake Issyk-Kul—and indeed the lake itself—are connected with more abstract discourses about what it means to be Kyrgyz (Artman 2016). Mazars are thus in many respects integral to a holistic understanding of environmental sustainability in Kyrgyzstan, despite the fact that they do not fit neatly within traditional “scientific” conceptions of ecology. As Aibek Samakov has argued, “[f ]ormal conservation strategies mostly appeal to resource users’ reason by emphasizing rational incentives for preserving the environment. For example, formal conservation uses the

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notions of ecosystem health, species’ instrumental value, food-chains, and costs and benefits of conservation” (2015, 110). By contrast, the ecological practices at sacred sites are grounded in ethical and normative arguments that weave together nature, religion, culture, and community: “According to traditional beliefs, the social, economic, and personal well-being of community members is directly related to protection of sacred sites. The more people care about sacred sites, the more sacred sites bestow ‘kut ’ [well-being] on the local community” (Samakov 2015, 107). Samakov and Berkes (2017) have thus argued that sacred sites constitute a kind of “spiritual commons.” Crucially, the normative values embedded in sacred sites are also embodied in the venerative practices associated with them. Pilgrims visiting mazars, for example, are expected to abide by a number of informal rules that are intended to help preserve both the sacred character of the mazar as well as its natural environment: [O]ne of the main rules of visiting sacred sites is to “keep the sacred site clean and take care of sacred places as far as opportunities permit.” There are also strict taboos such as prohibition for “polluting and littering a sacred site” and “causing damage to a sacred site’s biophysical elements (e.g., cutting the branches of the trees, bushes).” Similar to sacred sites in other parts of the world…violations of rules and taboos are believed to have negative consequences (such as illness, misfortune or death) for the violator. (Samakov 2015, 68)

Other rules prohibit removing anything (stones, plants, etc.) from sacred sites, smoking, drinking, engaging in sexual activity, urinating or defecating, uttering profanities, or discharging firearms. Women are prohibited from visiting while on their menstrual cycle or with uncovered heads. Many mazars also have guardians, whose job it is to serve as guides for pilgrims visiting the sacred sites and as caretakers for the site itself, and pilgrims are expected to donate some money to help support the guardian, if possible (Aitpaeva et al. 2007, 125; Kalkanbekov and Samakov 2017, 127). As Samakov and Berkes note, moreover, “violation of rules or negligence towards sacred sites by pilgrims can lead to…a particular sacred site losing its sacredness” (2017, 435). The ethic of

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care and responsibility surrounding sacred spaces has thus led some to describe mazars as “sentient” and “charismatic,” as “entities with qualities of personhood,” with whom people can enter into a “personalized relationship” (Feaux de la Croix 2011, 110–111), which contributes to the sense that such spaces should be preserved and respected. Although rooted in religious and nationalist discourses emphasizing the people’s spiritual connection to the land, the material significance of the practices associated with mazar veneration should not be underestimated. Although mazars are typically modest in terms of their overall size, Kalkanbekov and Samakov nevertheless point out that “[s]acred sites in the Ysyk-Köl Biosphere Reserve (YKBR) are biologically and geologically diverse, and include various species of trees and bushes, bodies of water (springs, ponds, glaciers, and lakes), rock formations (cliffs, mountains, hills), and indeed entire ecosystems” (2017, 128–129). The rules of etiquette and propriety associated with mazar visitation thus promote, both directly and indirectly, to the conservation of sacred spaces, and thus to the preservation of the YKBR as a whole: if a sacred site consists of few trees and springs, these biophysical elements as well as anything located in this area is revered and conserved by the local people. That means that those trees would not be cut down, domestic livestock would not graze there and any living being…would not be harmed on and around sacred sites…This illustrates how the notion of sacredness leads to conservation by preventing direct exploitation of the biophysical resources on the site and promoting use of this site for cultural and spiritual practices. The latter is regulated by informal rules…and can be seen as ‘conservation-through-use’. (Samakov and Berkes 2017, 432–433)

Mazar veneration is bound up with both spiritual concerns and notions of Kyrgyz national identity. As such, it may form the basis of a normative praxis that can contribute materially to localized ecological sustainability. Despite all of this, however, “sacred sites are overlooked in formal conservation strategies within the YKBR” (Samakov 2015, 72), and their potential for contributing to sustainability on a wider scale has yet to be

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explored (to say nothing of exploited). Samakov points out, for example, that the state is not very well equipped, institutionally or philosophically, to work with “local spiritual, cultural or religious institutions, including sacred sites and their guardians” in conservation and sustainability strategies (Samakov 2015, 72). Compounding this problem is the fact that various ministries and departments in the government (state, regional, and local) are responsible for different things (i.e., water, forests, mineral resources, etc.), while endemic corruption of state institutions blunts whatever effectiveness they might have (Schmidt 2011, 75–76). Topdown environmental sustainability initiatives in Kyrgyzstan have thus been haphazard and of questionable effectiveness. Samakov has suggested that institutional approaches to sustainability and community-based, efforts grounded in sacred spaces are not necessarily mutually exclusive in their aims, and could in fact complement one another (2015, 106). At the same time, however, he concedes that there is some risk associated with bringing sacred sites into the purview of the state: “Legal recognition (and thus government involvement) of sacred sites can undermine practices that constitute the strength of community conserved areas,” by taking decision-making power out of the hands of local communities (Samakov 2015, 105).

Conclusion This chapter has examined the imbrications of religion and nationalism with the question of ecological sustainability, which remains an underexplored topic in the geographical and political ecology literatures. The chapter began with an overview of environmentalism in the Soviet period, which during the glasnost ’ era was often connected with nascent nationalist movements in the USSR. The chapter then turned toward the issue of resource nationalism in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan. Following Koch’s and Perrault’s (2018), this chapter understood resource nationalism as an expansive concept that encompasses not only nationalist displeasure over important national resources being owned by foreign powers, but also the cultural and political meanings those resources are often imbued with. Thus, the protests

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over gold mining operations at Kumtor can be viewed as being as much about the despoliation of the natural environment, with which many Kyrgyz people feel an intense, culturally mediated relationship, as it was about anger over Canadian ownership of the country’s most important mineral resources. The importance of culture to questions of political ecology was explored further in the context of kyrgyzchylyk and the etiquette surrounding the veneration of mazars in the Lake Issyk-Kul Biosphere Reserve. The cosmology and the practices associated with this phenomenon are substantially more nuanced and complex than the abstract “sacralization” of national territory. As we saw, religion, sustainability, and national identity in Kyrgyzstan are connected with a normative praxis that contributes in direct and indirect ways to the preservation of the environment through the rules and ethics surrounding the veneration of mazars. Many of these guidelines, such as prohibitions on drinking alcohol or engaging in sexual intercourse, do not specifically pertain to the environment at all. Other rules, such as those forbidding the destruction of wildlife or taking things out of sacred sites, have a clearer impact on local ecology. In all cases, however, the purpose of such rules is to preserve the spiritual integrity of mazars and to foster an ethic of preservation and care toward the physical environment (built and natural) around such sites. Failure to abide by this ethic may have grave consequences indeed: If the natural environment is one venue in which conceptions of national identity and belonging are contested and constructed, then the degradation of that environment impacts not only the sacrality of the land itself, but also health of the nation as a whole: Sickness and misfortune befall those who desecrate sacred sites. Significantly, the nationalist resonance of kyrgyzchylyk and its connection with religious belief and environmental preservation discussed here is in many respects directly at odds with traditional conceptions of resource nationalism and state-sanctioned development projects like the exploitation of mineral resources at Kumtor. This fact points not only to the frequently elided polyvocality of nationalism, but also to the necessity for political ecology to take religion seriously as an object of study. Further areas where research is necessary include the fraught interface of

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state laws and institutions with informal, community-based initiatives, the efficacy and scalability of what are often very localized environmental preservation efforts, and the reluctance to take seriously methods and practices that do not fit neatly within scientific paradigms. Furthermore, the culture surrounding kyrgyzchylyk provides but one perspective on how religion, ecology, and nationalism might interact: Research must also be conducted on configurations of this nexus in different religious and national contexts.

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12 Grounded in Community: Christianity and Environmental Engagement in Scotland Alice Hague

Religious traditions and faith-based actors are not new to involvement in public debates on issues of social and economic concern. The abolition of slavery in the UK is arguably an eighteenth-century example of what today would be recognized as faith-based activism (Brown 2006). More recent examples include the development of the fair-trade movement through organizations such as Traidcraft (Clarke et al. 2007) and the campaigns in the late 1990s and early 2000s for debt relief (Jubilee 2000 and the Make Poverty History campaigns), which gathered support from faith-based communities and a wide range of national and international development organizations (Pettifor 2006; Sireau 2009). Even despite the continuing decline of religion (and particularly Christianity) in the UK, illustrated by falling membership (Scottish Government 2018) and accusations of irrelevance with contemporary society (Woodhead 2014), faith communities continue to play a part in UK civic society. In particular, religions are increasingly seen by government as A. Hague (B) The James Hutton Institute, Aberdeen, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 S. E. Silvern and E. H. Davis (eds.), Religion, Sustainability, and Place, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7646-1_12

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storehouses of resources (people, networks, buildings) with a role to play in response to social issues (Cloke et al. 2013; Dinham and Lowndes 2009). In the UK, much of this activity has included taking a proactive role in addressing issues such as homelessness, inner-city deprivation, and supporting refugees (see e.g. Beaumont and Cloke 2012). Increasingly, faith-based organizations, churches, and Christian denominations are active in issues of environmental concern. At an international level, Christian organizations have been engaging in questions of environmental sustainability since the 1970s and 1980s. Hallman (1997, 131) argues that the World Council of Churches (WCC) was discussing the concept of sustainability as early as 1974, over a decade before sustainable development was brought to public attention with the publication of the Brundtland Commission Report (WCED 1987). In the USA, a report from the United Church of Christ (UCC 1987) is widely acknowledged as an important milestone in the work of the environmental justice movement, drawing attention to the impact of toxic waste sites in the USA on poor, predominantly African-American communities (Agyeman et al. 2016; Moody 2002). High-level engagement in public policy debates about environmental sustainability continue to receive public attention: The Pope’s “green” encyclical “Laudato si’: On Care for Our Common Home” (Francis 2015) received a substantial amount of coverage in the western media (e.g. Stanley 2015; Sullivan 2015) while the World Council of Churches (WCC 2019) issued a statement calling for theological reflection and action from local churches in response to the recent IPBES (Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) report (IPBES 2019) on biodiversity and ecosystem services which highlighted an unprecedented decline of nature and accelerating rates of species extinction across the globe. In the UK, faith-based organizations are also engaging in climate change and environmental issues, as the economic and social impacts of climate change and environmental harm are increasingly recognized. Relief and development agencies with strong ties to local church communities such as Christian Aid, Tear Fund, and CAFOD, which have direct experience of the effects of climate change in countries in which they work, have expanded their focus to include political activism on climate issues (Saunders 2008), and brought the message of the impacts of

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climate change back to local congregations. The major UK denominations have joined the climate debate,1 and participate in coalitions such as The Climate Coalition and Stop Climate Chaos Scotland alongside secular environmental organizations.2 Additionally, grassroots Christians are creating and getting involved in organizations such as Green Christian, Operation Noah, and Christian Climate Action (“the Christian arm of Extinction Rebellion” according to its Twitter handle). These organizations aim to encourage church members who are keen to integrate their environmental engagement with their lives and faith practices, and to be a ground-level movement calling on denominations and wider society to take more substantial action on climate change. Other organizations such as EcoCongregation Scotland (in Scotland) and EcoChurch (in England and Wales) aim to support engagement in practical action on environmental issues at the level of local Christian churches and congregations. It is this level of engagement which my study addresses: how are local faith communities, in the form of the local church or parish, responding and contributing to a more environmentally and sociallysustainable society? In this chapter, I explore the local congregation as a site of action for community-based environmental action. I describe a study undertaken in Edinburgh, Scotland, studying how three small, urban congregations engage in environmental and sustainability actions. Based on participant observation and interviews undertaken from 2014 to 2016, I investigate how the environmental challenges of the twentyfirst century are understood through a lens of Christian theology and practice. I identify how Christians draw on their religious traditions to express their concerns about environmental issues, and how churchgoers 1The Church of England has diocesan (regional) environmental officers and a major campaign “Shrinking the Footprint,” which aims to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050, and 42% by 2020 (www.churchcare.co.uk/shrinking-the-footprint). The Church of Scotland has an appointed Climate Change Officer (https://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/speak_out/caring_for_ creation/addressing_climate_change) and the UK’s Methodist, United Reformed and Baptist churches have a joint campaign on environmental issues, including lobbying on energy and climate issues (www.jointpublicissues.org.uk/issues/environment). The Catholic Church in Scotland issued “The Environment: A Scottish Catholic Study Guide” in March 2011. All Web sites accessed 08 November 2019. 2The Climate Coalition (www.theclimatecoalition.org) is a UK-wide network of organizations; Stop Climate Chaos Scotland (www.stopclimatechaos.org) is the equivalent Scottish network.

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give meaning to actions they take through their congregations, which are firmly grounded in their community of place.

Religion and Ecology There has been significant academic interest in the relationships between religion and environmentalism since the late 1960s, when historian Lynn White Jr published an article in Science (White 1967), “The historical roots of our ecologic crisis.” This article began a conversation about the relationship between religion (specifically, Christianity) and environmentalism that continues to this day (LeVasseur and Peterson 2017; Konisky 2018; Taylor et al. 2016; Whitney 2015). A substantial area of academic research subsequently developed around the question of whether White’s critiques of the Christian faith were empirically accurate. Much of this research has been undertaken in North America, frequently based on surveys seeking to identify causal links between Christianity, environmental attitudes, and behaviors. Results have been mixed: Some research identifies a relationship between religion (or religiosity, often determined by assessment of an individual’s own religious identification, or factors such as frequency of church attendance) and lack of an environmental ethic (e.g. Arbuckle and Konisky 2015; Carlisle and Clark 2017; Konisky 2018; Biel and Nilsson 2005; Schultz et al. 2000). Other studies report a positive relationship between religion and environmentalism (e.g. Kanagy and Willits 1993; Macias and Williams 2016; Sherkat and Ellison 2007), while other studies report inconclusive results (Clements 2012; Clements et al. 2014; Hayes and Marangudakis 2001; Kilburn 2014; Peifer et al. 2016; Djupe and Hunt 2009). As Taylor et al. (2016) explain in detail, early studies focused on empirical investigations of White’s thesis, while more recent attention increasingly asks whether the world’s religions are becoming more environmentally-aware, the “greening of religion” hypothesis (Taylor 2011, 2016). While these studies provide useful insights about the connections of religious beliefs and environmental attitudes, qualitative studies of specific cases offer another type of knowledge about the role of religious traditions in communities working for environmental

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sustainability. Indeed, Djupe and Gilbert (2009) assert that the individualized nature of survey responses is distinct from the social context in which Western expressions of religion are experienced: the congregation. Of a small number of studies that have investigated how environmental sustainability is practiced at the community level, three of the most in-depth examples (McFarland Taylor 2007; Vonk 2011; Shattuck 2016) each use longer-term ethnographic research methods to understand what McFarland Taylor (2007, xi) calls “religion on the ground.” Both McFarland Taylor and Vonk however focus exclusively on religious communities that are distinct from the everyday experience of most people of faith: McFarland Taylor (2007) focuses on Catholic religious orders in the USA, while Vonk (2011) investigates what drives environmental sustainability in Catholic religious orders (Benedictine and Franciscan), and distinctive communities (Amish and Hutterite). Only Shattuck’s (2016) study of US faith communities addresses the locallygrounded, congregational level empirically (including Jewish, Christian, and Universalist communities), although one-third of her case studies are still monastic sites. Studying the social context of the local church—the congregation of people that gathers in a specific place—is important for understanding the practices of a community and how social and physical connections contribute to those practices. In addition to studies of individuals and communities, scholars have sought to identify how action for environmental sustainability is understood within the context of the Christian faith. Kearns outlined three “ethics” for understanding such engagement. Firstly, “Christian stewardship,” grounded in the teaching of Genesis 1:26–28, where God gives humans “dominion” over the earth, and is now interpreted as an instruction for humans “to be good stewards and to take care of ” the earth (Kearns 1996, 58). “Stewardship” is often presented in faith traditions as “creation care” (e.g. Bouma-Prediger 2010). A second ethic, ecojustice, focuses on connecting environmental issues with more traditional concerns for social justice in the church such as concern for poor or marginalized communities. A third ethic, creation spirituality, reflects the “awe-inspiring story of the evolution of the universe” (Kearns 1996, 60), and seeks an ecocentric approach to understanding creation as a whole, and removing an understanding of humans as somehow distinct from

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the natural world. These themes have subsequently been expanded and developed (see e.g. Jenkins 2008; Beyer 2011; Jenkins et al. 2018), with significant overlap across topics, and considerable depth of discussion encapsulated within each category.

Research Method and Context My research adopted a qualitative, ethnographic approach that examines the lived experience of Christian community in the UK, to study how congregations are responding to the challenges of increasing climate change and environmental destruction, and consider how belief systems and religious traditions are being interpreted and utilized to create a new space for environmental action in local communities. This study involved twelve months of participant observation (DeWalt and DeWalt 2002) with three church communities in a major city in Scotland. In adopting this research approach, my concern was to know and understand the everyday, lived experience of the local congregation from the perspective of the participants (Berg and Lune 2012), and thus gain an in-depth understanding of the experience and practices of environmental engagement by faith groups as they are experienced by most people— through participation in a locally-grounded community of place: the local church. The three churches in this study were all located in an urban area, but with contextual differences (denomination; size; location within the city). The first church has a stable weekly attendance of about sixty people, most of whom are retired, and is situated slightly outside the city center in a residential area. The second church is a city-center church with a diverse population including students and a large number of people of working age, and an approximate weekly attendance of 250. The third church is a family-oriented church on the outskirts of the city, with an approximate weekly attendance of 150. The churches in this study are all members of an organization called EcoCongregation Scotland, an ecumenical organization that supports churches in their environmental activity. As such, the churches with

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which I interacted are already engaging and seeking to understand, articulate, and practice links between their religious traditions and environmental/sustainability issues, including climate change. Over the course of the research, I participated in ninety-seven distinct events varying in length from an hour to a whole day, from October 2014 to February 2016. These events included weekly worship services, public events, church meetings, social events, discussion groups, and children’s holiday clubs, as well as regional and national workshops and conferences of EcoCongregation Scotland. I undertook informal interviews with ten key participants, and held numerous other conversations over coffee and during events with additional people. I also gathered 275 documents such as newsletters, posters, and flyers for analysis through the course of my research (Fig. 12.1).

Linking Religious Traditions and Environmental Sustainability Justice In each of the churches studied, concern for justice was the strongest driver of environmental engagement. As I introduced myself as someone doing research about churches and the environment, people would most often make a reference to the fair-trade movement, whether through telling me they used fairly-traded tea and coffee in the church or at home, or pointing to the volunteers selling fair-trade goods in the church hall along with a rhetorical question along the lines of “ah – so this kind of thing is right up your street then?” On one occasion, the Sunday morning service addressed current events about refugees fleeing war in Syria. The sermon had an unusual style, written as a letter to an Old Testament prophet, Amos, and making parallels to the context addressed in the book of Amos written thousands of years ago and the current political situation. The call to action during this sermon was clear— Christians who claim to care about people suffering must stand up and speak out on such issues. There was no mention of environmental issues or climate change during the service, yet another key contact commented

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Fig. 12.1 EcoCongregation Scotland, an ecumenical membership organization for churches engaging in environmental activity

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afterward that it was the “kind of stuff you are interested in – social justice, fair trade and the like.” At a different church, one churchgoer outlined their thoughts that environmental issues needed to “capture the imagination” of churchgoers, which, in their words “means helping poor people.” Concern for justice is widely recognized as one of the principal motivations for faith-based engagement in environmental issues (e.g. Conradie 2017; Kearns 1996, 2012; Veldman et al. 2014). Kearns (1996) adopts the language of “eco-justice” but participants in my study preferred to integrate environmental concerns within a broader and more familiar theological framework of “social justice.” Indeed, a number of participants expressly wanted to avoid the prefix of “eco-” for any of their actions, for fear of being seen by others (both within and outside of the church) as “an ecowarrior.” By linking social justice, fair trade, and environmental concerns, participants were integrating their understanding about the role of sustainability issues within their religious traditions, and thereby giving meaning to environmental issues within the practices of their faith. Support for fair-trade goods is often included within understandings of sustainable consumption (e.g. Clarke et al. 2007; Middlemiss 2010; Pepper et al. 2011), and is included with government understandings of pro-environmental behaviors and sustainable lifestyles (DEFRA 2008, 2011). Supporting fair trade has strong links with concerns for justice, particularly with regard to calls for a more just system for international trade, and concern for the pay and conditions of producers in developing countries (Moore 2004). It is also seen by some people as “a way of distributing resources to the poor” (Bretherton 2010, 176).

Stewardship and Creation Care As with earlier studies (e.g. Kearns 2012), another driver for engagement was a sense of “stewardship of God’s creation” or “creation care.” Although “creation” was often used by participants to provide a theological framework of understanding for the natural environment, a small

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number of participants were hesitant to adopt the language of “creation” due to reservations about being misunderstood by people as holding “creationist” views of a literal seven-day creation (to which they do not subscribe). Yet many participants embraced the language of “care for creation” or “stewardship” as an understanding of how to integrate environmental concerns within their theological traditions (although “stewardship” often had links with “financial stewardship” as well). During a short presentation to their congregation, one participant introduced their church’s involvement in EcoCongregation Scotland as “trying to get churches to think about the environment a bit more; trying to get people to care for creation.” Another church outlined the key theological drivers of their environmental work as “caring for creation and stewardship of our resources” and outlined how their participation in a city-wide “Open Doors” event (an annual event to encourage people to visit buildings that are not usually accessible to the general public) included raising awareness of their environmental activities and showcasing the success of their recently-installed solar panels in a way that “helped us gain greater depth in the understanding of environmental care as part of discipleship among our members.” On another occasion, as I was helping clear away chairs after the church service, I observed a member of the congregation whom I had not yet met approach one of my key research contacts with a copy of the Green Bible (2008) in their hands. I made my way over to join the conversation, as this excerpt from my field notes illustrates: ‘Have you seen it?’ he asked her, ‘I would love to get this … I’d buy them for the whole church if I could afford it.’ She responded that she was not aware of the Green Bible but was intrigued to have a look. Frank talked excitedly about the book’s introduction and how every passage that refers to the environment, ‘even this week with the rivers,’ is highlighted in green [referring to the passage read during the service]. ‘It shows you how the environment is everywhere in the Bible.’… He went on to explain how it is ‘part of who we are to care for all of God’s world.’

The language of “caring for creation” is frequently used by organizations working to encourage churches and Christians to give greater

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“Green Group” notice board located in church entrance

weight to environmental issues, including in the literature of EcoCongregation Scotland, and in the printed materials of relief and development

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charities with close links to churches. The “creation care” ethic places a strong emphasis on the role of the individual action on environmental issues as part of what it means to practice the Christian faith and live a moral life. Creation care has been emphasized repeatedly in literature aimed at clergy and churchgoers (see e.g. Hosenfeld 2009; McDuff 2012) and strongly embraced by church and denominational leaders (Kim 2016; URC 2016; Wilkinson 2012). Van Wieren (2013, 25) describes how “the fundamental idea that the earth is sacred in some sense and therefore worthy of reverent respect and care pervades Christian environmental thought” is a basic principle on which Christian environmental ethicists agree. Although earlier research has found that many church members do not recognize the messages coming from church leadership structures about environmental engagement (DeLashmutt 2011), it was a recognizable and useful concept for the participants in this study who took on board the encouragement from within their religious tradition to “care for creation” and reflect on what that means for their own everyday behaviors (Fig. 12.2).

Creation Spirituality Creation spirituality was also part of the churches’ environmental engagement. Throughout my research, it became clear that the concept of creation spirituality included both participants understanding the natural world as a place where people can feel “close to God,” and a way in which congregations can integrate environmental awareness within the traditional practices of their faith. Each of the churches in this study used images depicting the natural world within their worship services to provide a backdrop for reflection or prayer, for example. These images and words were used to provoke a sense of awe and wonder of nature, understood and described as God’s creation. Additionally, within weekly worship services, Bible passages, hymns, and prayers emphasized how God “brings life to all that is” (as quoted in one prayer). Some examples from one of the churches in this study are included below:

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Thank you for the abundance of creation; may we walk in your steps with footprints that heal, not damage; as an act of devotion of worship to the one who’s made it, not as an act of self-preservation… (congregational prayer, 1 February 2015) Lord of creation, the world is yours; you have made the earth and all that grows and flourishes. The waters and seas and the rivers that flow; the air, the sky, the clouds and the winds; in chaos and in calm; in storm and in tranquillity, we praise you… (opening prayer, 8 February 2015) In earth and ocean – your hands we see In bird and fish – your hands we see In tree and flower – your hands we see In insect and animal – your hands we see In each of us – your hands we see. (opening ‘Call to worship’, 4 October 2015)

The strong sense of creation spirituality was recognizable through the use of phrases such as “our sense of wonder” about God’s creation, and language that draws attention to images of the natural environment. Yet environmental illustrations were also invoked in wider theological teaching, particularly in the context of sermons, where the image of dormant seeds waiting for water was used to illustrate a sermon about the authority of Jesus, and a patch of snowdrops emerging after the winter was used as a metaphor to evoke a sense of hope. Worship services are the primary gathering point for a Christian community. As a space of learning about the Christian life, worship services are where a Christian identity is developed, and where a congregation’s identity is publicly expressed. The rituals of the worship service, including music (Caccamo 2007), prayer (Fuist 2015), and words (Day 2014), all play a part in expressing a community’s beliefs (Rambo 1993). Christian communities have consistently used songs, hymns, words, and images to as part of their worship and liturgy to learn about and share the story of their faith, from the oldest hymns alluded to in the New Testament itself (Smith 2009), to the hymns used by the US Civil Rights’ movement (Smith 1996).

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The incorporation of words, hymns, and images that encourage a sense of awe and wonder of God’s creation as part of regular worship services also demonstrates how environmental theology is built into the traditions and culture of community life. This integration has been highlighted by scholars (Haluza-DeLay 2008; Conradie et al. 2014; Smith 2009) as crucial for normalizing environmental ethics within faith communities.

Grounded in Community The churches in this study are located in different parts of the city. Two are “parish churches,” congregations with a defined parish boundary which outlines the physical area allocated to churches by the denominational governance structures. In the city-center church, the majority of regular attendees gather from across the city (i.e. many travel from beyond the “parish boundary”) whereas participants at the churches further out of the center mostly lived within a relatively short distance of the church (less than 2 km away). In conversation with churchgoers, they expressed a “sense of place” for their community, both as a church, and within the neighborhood in which the churches are located. In the academic literature of congregational studies, an ethnographic research approach to church congregations investigates congregations as one of many local organizations (Jenkins 1999, 2004), emphasizing the place of the church within the social context of which it forms part. The ethnographic approach I adopted in this research similarly enabled me to understand the churches within their social context (their neighborhoods) and to gain knowledge of how the churches’ environmental engagement enabled church members to reach out beyond the walls of their church building and contribute to their local community. In doing so, participants were integrating environmental concerns and actions within their traditions of serving their local community such as supporting a local homelessness charity, serving at a foodbank, or visiting the local hospice. In the summer of 2015, one of the churches in my study was in a “vacancy,” the period of time after one pastor has left and before a new long-term replacement has been appointed. As part of the recruitment

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process, the church council prepared a document presenting the church to prospective candidates and outlining the type of candidate they were seeking for the position. The opening paragraph states: Our aim is for our church to be the heart of our community. Within a small parish (geographically, the smallest in the city) we see ourselves as a local hub, with a congregational ministry of hosting. Our size is our strength – there is a real neighborliness in the area that we feel marks us out. (WPC 2015, 2)

This statement indicates the high value that the congregation puts on the importance of place in its identity: Phrases such as “a local hub,” “a ministry of hosting,” and “neighborliness” illustrate this value. Well-established within the fields of human geography and cultural studies (e.g. Cresswell 2015; Rose 1995), the importance of place has also been studied with regard to environmentalism and the sacred (Northcott 2015; Palmer 2012) and environmental engagement by and in churches (Clifton-Soderstrom 2009; Seifert and Shaw 2013). This church expresses its desire to serve its neighboring community through its ongoing interactions with schools, local care facilities, and other community-based organizations. This is articulated in written communications such as newsletters, and is visible from the myriad of posters and event notices displayed in the corridors around the church hall. More recently, as the congregation was becoming more aware of climate change within their own context (a desire to install solar panels and improve the energy efficiency of their building), their participation in environmental issues came with a desire to engage with their local community and use resources within the church to support environmental activities. A government funding scheme for community energy efficiency improvements enabled them to improve their Victorian-era church building, and also resulted in congregation members developing a community engagement program to raise awareness of sustainability issues. Activities included an energy day held in the church hall and attended by over 100 people and an Open Gardens event hosted in the gardens of community members (not necessarily churchgoers) who were growing food, with the aim of inspiring others to take up gardening or to try something new

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with their gardens. Reflecting on their activities, research participants’ comments revealed the importance they placed on being grounded in their communities: we … did not really realise …the wonderful support which would come freely from our local community and the knowledge that we were a very small part of a huge swell of concern and effort to “do something” about climate change (WCC 2015, 46) Heather herself was amazed by how many people had come – and expressed a little bit of apprehension about simply opening her doors and letting anyone in: ‘We’ve had all sorts, some are from the church, others are neighbors, but others are people who I don’t know at all. It’s a bit odd really… but that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Bringing people together, people getting to know each other.” (fieldnotes, May 2015, Open Gardens event) It’s been the most fulfilling, happy thing I’ve been involved with. I’ve got to meet so many local people… (interview, Margaret, April 2015)

Comments of this type indicate that it is not explicit environmental issues that are most prominent in people’s reflections on events: there was a strong emphasis on the importance of the local community and of being grounded in the community of place. Interviewees recounted the “success” of their activities in terms of links within the community, rather than any environmental outcomes or measurements. Research participants found that environmental activities created an opportunity for engagement through a common interest in environmental issues, and thereby contributed to the congregation’s aims of “serving the community, reaching out to people in need” (WPC 2015, 2), as articulated in their promotional materials. The environmental activities created a greater sense of contributing to the local community, and meant that churchgoers felt that they became better integrated with their local area, as they commented in a report: “Extra opportunities for the coming together of church members and neighbors has enhanced the positive role that the church plays in the area…” (WCC 2015, 49).

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Another of the research participants who became involved through attending a “Green Group” film night at her church wanted to “do something environmental” as she described it. Alongside discussion of possible outdoor community walks and environmentally-themed presentations in the church, Sarah was keen to contribute to the local neighborhood. In the first instance, this meant planting and maintaining a small garden at the front of the church building on a busy and dense city center street. Encouraged by this, Sarah saw an opportunity to further engage with local residents by developing an initiative called “Greening our Street.” She contacted the local council for permission to develop a wildflower patch on an area of recreational parkland nearby. Sarah’s initiative came from her desire to practice the traditions of her faith in serving the local community by enhancing the natural environment and contributing to a better sense of place. In doing so, she managed to create a community initiative that has engaged local residents and more recently, led to a small community garden being established on the parkland, a place the community now describes as somewhere “where birds and bees, and local residents, can thrive.” One of the churches in this study had recently fitted solar panels to their roof, a decision based on both pragmatic factors (reducing energy bills) and environmental ones (reducing carbon emissions). Both factors were explained in detail at the decisive church meeting, not least because the initial financial outlay would be higher should the congregation opt for a larger set of solar panels that would also have a greater impact on reducing carbon emissions. They made the decision to go ahead, with one elderly churchgoer commenting to the pastor “I know I’m not going to be here to see this... but this is the best thing for the future.” In the everyday life of the church, little attention is paid to the solar panels, as the pastor stated “You forget really that they’re there most of the time,” yet they form an important part of the expression of the church’s environmental action within their neighborhood. The congregation organized a “switching-on” event attended by neighbors, councillors, and the local newspaper, and invited members of the local community to “see” how the solar panels worked as part of an Open Doors environment day at their church.

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Conclusion The churches in this study are clearly only a very small part of a wider picture of society wrestling with the challenges of global environmental change and how to live well in a way that can create a socially and environmentally sustainable society. But they offer insights about how everyday religious traditions are being interpreted to give meaning and impetus to taking action on environmental issues in the public sphere. Each of the churches in this study has followed a different strategy to integrate sustainability within the practices of their religion, and sought to link their concerns for environmental issues with their commitments to serve and be present in their local communities. Being grounded in the communities of place in which they are located, churchgoers in this study found new ways to engage with their neighborhoods through environmental issues. Members of the churches found ways to understand the environmental challenges of the twentyfirst century through linking environmental concerns with the everyday practices of their congregational life and traditions of their faith. By calling on religious traditions of social justice, by understanding the call to care for God’s creation, and by integrating contemporary environmental concerns within the rituals and spiritual practices of their worship services, participants were able to see issues of environmental degradation and climate change through the lens of their faith traditions. In doing so, participants responded by using those traditions as an impetus for action, seeking to put the teachings of their faith into practice (Bass 2010), and integrating environmental issues in how they serve their neighbors. Through creating events, taking opportunities to enhance the natural environment, and showcasing their investment in solar panels among many other actions, each of these church congregations has chosen to try and put words into action, and demonstrate ways in which environmental issues are important parts of their faith traditions that lead to action within their local communities.

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Acknowledgments The research in this chapter was undertaken while the author was at the University of Edinburgh. This research was supported by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council Grant number AH/K005456/1.

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13 Christian Ideas Influencing US Food Movements Edward H. Davis

Introduction In order to industrialize the US food system, capitalists uprooted farming, and disconnected it from places. Aided by local, state, and federal governments, corporations and financiers eliminated the small family farm as a significant part of the food economy, and convinced most consumers that food is just another factory product whose origin is irrelevant. The average store-bought food item has traveled thousands of miles. The consequences of this disconnect are vast: Modern industrial farms destroy local soils and ecosystems, contribute to climate disruption, and bankrupt rural communities. This is not environmentally, socially, or economically sustainable. But reformers have resisted those forces, and there have been improvements. For example, US laws now protect children and farmer workers E. H. Davis (B) Emory & Henry College, Emory, VA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 S. E. Silvern and E. H. Davis (eds.), Religion, Sustainability, and Place, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7646-1_13

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from levels of exploitation and pesticide exposure that were once standard. Some farmlands have been restored to health, and food safety laws constrain corporations from the worst levels of deceit and misinformation. From where did these improvements come? Credit must go to an assortment of nineteenth- and twentieth-century reformers, but they did not act alone. They needed both ideas and organization in order to mobilize resources, so awareness could be raised, and discontent amplified (McCarthy and Zald 1977). Most reformers are local, and forgotten by posterity, particularly if they are poor and/or women and/or people of color. But their ideas live on, often under new terminology, and continue to support the drive to make the US food system sustainable (there is one new term). And many of these ideas are linked to the faith of the culture in which they arose. And as we shall see, the importance of place would eventually become essential to these reforms. This chapter is about the ideas of food movement leaders who linked Christianity to sustainability since the late 1700s. I consider leaders in five movements: food safety, vegetarianism, organic farming, food justice, and the local food movement. These leaders have included health advocates (fighting corporations whose practices and products harm people), organic farmers and their advocates (fighting pesticides and fertilizer dependence), vegetarians (fighting the meat industry), farm owners (fighting corporate control of farms), and farm worker organizers (resisting exploitation by owners). In some ways, their ideas have been radical, standing up to the globalized industrial food system. I will discuss these movements, leaders and their ideas in turn (for a broader survey of US food movements, see Pirog et al. 2014).

Food Safety The food safety movement occurs in fits and starts through American history, for various reasons: (a) in response to news reports of food poisonings, health crises, and other similar events, (b) as various related groups organize and campaign for public awareness, and also (c) as

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state and federal governments respond to consumer pressures (Goodwin 1999). It has been pressed forward by hundreds of reformers. The cultural origins of these reformers are Jewish and Christian. Purity and safety were prime concerns for both early Jewish and early Christian writers. Much to the chagrin of the Pharisees, of course, Jesus famously declared all foods ritually clean: “For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body” (NIV, Mark 7:19). But as with many ideas, that one has been debated ever since: Throughout Christian church history, notions of food purity have often been prominent: A wholesome person partakes only of wholesome things (Haydu and Skotnicki 2016). Harriet Beecher Stowe and her sister Catherine Beecher wrote in the 1869 best-seller, The American Woman’s Home, that purity was essential in home cooking, and based this on the Christian principle that the body is a temple (Beecher and Stowe 2002). This book and subsequent editions became a leading source of discussions about American domestic life in the latter half of the 1800s. Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin made her famous as a moral reformer, and later she and her sister Catherine would become active defenders of women’s rights. The connection of women’s and African-American’s rights to questions of food purity made sense to them because of their Judeo-Christian roots: The body is a temple, no matter the gender or color, and should be treated as such. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), mostly remembered as focused on alcohol, also took up the cause. Their 1890s campaign for “pure food” (Goodwin 1999) would have greater longterm impact than their prohibition campaign. WCTU’s leader Frances Willard was not only a declared Christian Socialist, but a vegetarian, who campaigned for women’s suffrage and a healthy food system. Willard believed God made women to be equal to men, and called feminists into her reform campaigns. Willard and the WCTU were behind the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which created a regulatory framework for purity in the US food system. That campaign was aided greatly by the publication of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle in 1905, which exposed the dangerous consequences of corporate greed in the meat industry. While he was a socialist and not

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a Christian, Sinclair identified as a moral reformer, and credited his Episcopalian upbringing for his moral passion (Goodwin 1999). Henry Heinz was another food reformer who applied Christian ideas. Through his prepared-foods company, Heinz would improve both workers’ safety and food purity. He was motivated explicitly by the notion of religious purity learned from his Lutheran mother (Petrick 2011). He was a devout Lutheran, but also a capitalist who built a global commercial empire by exploiting images of purity (Domosh 2003). Nonetheless his ideas about purity had Christian origins (Petrick 2011), contributing to the broader food safety movement we see today. One flaw in “purity” framing is its individualist consumerism: Consumers are disciplined to see themselves (especially domesticated women) as responsible, through their purchases, for any improvements in the food system (Barnett et al. 2005). Bobrow-Strain (2008) shows that over time the food purity movement is now more organized by industrialism. This original impetus to reform the food system toward justice, twisted as it became, had a root in a striving for health for all. This food purity movement is now led largely by secular writers like Marion Nestle (2007), but in its beginnings it was led largely by reform-minded Christians, many of whom were women simultaneously fighting for equality. Their Christian notion of the body as a temple was critical to their motivation. As a result, many such reformers were also inspired by another food movement: vegetarianism.

Vegetarianism The vegetarian movement was essentially a Christian reform movement which began in Great Britain in the late 1700s and reached the United States in the 1830s (Whorton 1994). It was led by health advocates like Sylvester Graham and John Harvey Kellogg, who saw meatless diets as a path to godliness and an improvement for society. There were also a few Protestants calling for animal welfare protection at the time (Watson 2014). Christianity was the source of the vegetarian movement for it was a social and spiritual cause—not a fad limited to individualistic notions of

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personal health. One major preacher in support of vegetarianism, Mary Gove Nichols (1810–1884), considered it a Christian moral crusade: avoiding meat would make us “worthy workers in the Lord’s Vineyard” (Blake 1962, 228). Although she mixed her philosophy with pseudoscience (almost every reformer did back then), she was certain her reform efforts (like Graham’s) were for both individual salvation and a moral society. She advocated for women’s rights and saw the two issues as connected: If women were better educated, and nourished on a proper vegetarian diet, they could raise their status to equality with men (Noever 1991). This nineteenth-century movement had its roots in Jewish and Christian asceticism. The Bible proclaims that before “the fall” Adam and Eve ate no meat, giving credence to the (minority) idea that meat-eating is not God’s idea of perfection (Rapport 2009). The ascetic tradition sets as its goal perfection in purity, to set an example for others. A New Testament line says: “Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. . . . It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother or sister to fall” (NIV, Romans 14:19–21). In Medieval Europe, meat avoidance was a standard part of fasting. Jesus had clearly assumed fasting was proper (he said “When you fast…” [Matthew 6:16 NIV]), so many saw year-round meat avoidance as a path to holiness (Iacobbo and Iacobbo 2004). From there, many Christians (although a minority) concluded that avoiding meat at all times was proper (Frayne 2016). So in the 1800s vegetarianism was adopted by fervent Christians in a variety of denominations, including Seventh Day Adventists. The American Vegetarian Society was in fact founded and led by Christian reformers (Whorton 1994). Even outside of any denomination, vegetarian advocates typically framed their writings around notions of Christian reform (Shprintzen 2013). For example, Dr. Martin Luther Holbrook published numerous popular books, including Eating for Strength (1888), which called for vegetarian and fruitarian diets. His writings apply Christian ideas in support of his argument. In the twentieth century, the vegetarian movement would broaden to include many people of different faiths and people outside any organized religion. It also increased its focus on animal welfare (Frayne 2016).

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Albert Schweitzer (1949) helped to broaden the movement, but there were many others: The United States was urbanizing and industrial meat production was expanding. As Frayne (2016) points out, the rise of an ethical concern for animals—derived from ancient Jewish and Christian respect for God’s creatures—gradually entered the food movements through these vegetarian channels. Even if few adopted a vegetarian practice, it became a commonplace that abuse of animals in the livestock industry was immoral (Frayne 2016). Indeed, concern for all nonhuman creatures would grow throughout the twentieth century (Kline 1997). A major Christian writer of fiction and nonfiction, C.S. Lewis, was unequivocal in his message that God’s creatures were deserving of human care and protection (Linzey 1998). This new attitude was buttressed by the rise of ecology through the popular writings of Aldo Leopold (1949) and Rachel Carson (1962). The concern for even wild insects would be out of concern for the ecosystems on which humans depend, but also partly a concern for our fellow creatures. So the vegetarian movement would have a moral impact on the food system. Frances Moore Lappé’s Diet for a Small Planet (2011) was the first popular book to expose the global damage caused by the meat industry. It also highlighted the moral issue of animal welfare, and inspired the modern vegetarian movement. Although Lappé was raised Unitarian, she does not profess any faith today. She does speak passionately about the need for a new recognition of the “oneness of all living things” (Lappé 2015). This is called “spiritual naturalism,” and it is not uncommon among scientists and others who do not call themselves Christians (Taylor 2010). Indeed many reform movements begun by and still inspired by older Christian ideas carry on, like stages in the life of a butterfly, such that later forms are quite different from earlier ones. Nelson (2014) argues that Calvinism is the implicit foundation for a wide range of American reform movements, and that the characteristics of these reform leader’s practices are religious in all but name. In other words, a food reformer engages in “religious” work and belief without explicit recognition of the religious sources of their ideas. When a vegetarian writes about protecting our fellow creatures because we are all one family, this is “an

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[implicit] quest to deepen, renew, or tap into the most profound insights of traditional religion” (Taylor 2001, 176). An example is John Robbins’ best-selling Diet for a New America (2001), which defends vegetarianism for reasons of animal welfare, personal health, and social benefits. He never explicitly appeals to people on the grounds of his Jewish upbringing. Nelson (2014) says those passionate beliefs and practices express an “implicit religion.” That the vegetarian food movement is rooted in Judeo-Christian thinking is hardly recognized by most people today, yet the original ideas direct the discourse nonetheless.

Organic Farming The organic food movement began in the 1930s, in response to the rise of chemical fertilizer and pesticides. Yet the reformers who have led this movement stand on the shoulders of centuries of prophetic writings about soil: its poor management has been decried since ancient times. Perhaps the first organic farming book was Liberty Hyde Bailey’s The Holy Earth: The Birth of a New Land Ethic, published in 1915. He did not use the word “organic” and did not argue against chemical pesticides (they were rare at that time) but he makes a case for land stewardship as a moral obligation, based on the claim that soil health is the basis of community health (Bailey 1915/2015). He was one of the first to explicitly argue that the Book of Genesis had been interpreted incorrectly—that humanity was not granted “dominion” over the Earth in any normal sense of that word. He argued that the new science of evolution showed that while we could take from the planet, we were responsible for any damage to the creation (Morgan and Peters 2006). As a nationally known agricultural expert, Bailey did not explicitly reference Christian theology, but used Christian ideas to adapt the new biology to an ethic of respect toward creation. Bailey was not the only scientist whose ideas were Christian and scientific. British agriculturalist Albert Howard traveled to India in the 1930s with plans to help their agricultural sector, but concluded that Indian peasants could teach him more. He found that although there were

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regions of severe rural poverty, there were many successful rural Indian communities thriving through proper management of soil and other local farm resources. In the 1940s, his work was being read around the world (Howard 2011; Barton 2001). He campaigned for organic farming as a health issue: Thanks to his influence, the Church of England named “respect for the earth” as a major component of its Christian Strategy report of 1941 (Howard 2011, 25). The report’s author, Rev. V.A. Demant, stated the problem in uncompromising terms. “The earth upon which we live,” he said, “is being drained of its power to support plant, animal and human life, by the breaking of its vital reproductive cycle under the spur of capitalist aggressiveness” (quoted in van Dyke 2010, 127). Howard’s books would inspire many organic farmers in the United States. Arthur Raper’s novel Tenants of the Almighty (1943), about poor farmers in Georgia, was a widely-read analysis of the exploitation of both people and land. He was raised as a Moravian Christian, became a Methodist, studied racism, and published an influential expose on lynching. Based on decades of living among farmers in Georgia, he demonstrates—through fiction—that the soil in a place, like humanity, requires a spiritual understanding. Rachel Carson (1962) changed US agriculture by exposing the dangers which pesticides can pose to our ecosystem. She held a masters in biology, which provided a credential to get her work published, but her biographers argue that she became an environmentalist because of her Presbyterianism: She translated her youthful passion for serving God (she was raised as a strict Calvinist) into serving all of God’s creation (Stoll 2015). Overall then, organic farming has integrated both a Christian ethic and ecology into modern views of our food system. Once scientific thinking was widely applied, food movements could begin to call up questions about justice and injustice. Such questions had been seen as separate from other food movements, but that was now changing.

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Food Justice The food justice movement, like the purity movement, has progressed largely in response to reported cases of abuse and exploitation. Of course there have been millions of exploited farmworkers through history, and those workers have resisted in a myriad of ways, sometimes with success. Christians (white and black) were at the heart of the abolition movement in the United States (many Christians also opposed abolition). In the 1770s, Quaker preacher and writer John Woolman organized a boycott of the cane sugar being sold in America at the time because it was made with enslaved labor (Woolman 1994, 298). In 1867, Oliver Kelley founded the Grange movement, which fought the large railroad owners to get fair prices from farmers; this was a farm justice movement with a Christian emphasis (Barns 1967). Both Woolman and Kelley were considered radicals but their ideas would eventually help reform our food system. The best-known organizer of US farmworkers is Cesar Chavez (1927– 1993). He and less-known Dolores Huerta not only built a union for farmworkers (the United Farm Workers [UFM]) but organized the largest farmworker strike in US history. Chavez is credited with the passage in 1975 of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which gave farmers the right to unionize (Ferriss et al. 1998). Central to his work was a Christian rhetoric. He was not only a practicing Catholic but used theological rhetoric in his speeches; in a widely-read speech about a grape boycott in 1989 (Chavez Foundation n.d.), he said: Our cause goes on in hundreds of distant places. It multiplies among thousands and then millions of caring people who heed through a multitude of simple deeds the commandment set out in the book of the Prophet Micah, in the Old Testament: “What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” Thank you. And boycott grapes.

More recently, Christians have campaigned for higher wages for tomato harvesters in Florida. The highly-publicized 1997–1998 hunger strike against Taco Bell by the Council of Immokalee Workers in Florida

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succeeded in part because of intervention by the United Church of Christ and the Catholic Church (CIW 2017). In fact, churches had fought for farm worker justice since the late 1800s. One such force was the work of agrarian reformers within the churches. By the 1920s, the industrialization of agriculture was moving through rural America like a mechanical reaper, with thousands of farms being foreclosed or sold every year (Berry 1977). The loss of livelihoods in rural communities was felt by congregations and out of this came the “Country Life” and “Rural Life” movements among Protestant churches (Lowe 2016). These movements were actually initiated mostly by urban churches, but they saw that agrarian society was suffering from industrialization (Swanson 1977). An important food justice strategy is the fair trade movement. Since the 1970s, many organizations have promoted ethical consumerism through information about the treatment of overseas farmworkers and small farm owners (Fridell 2004). The goals of fair trade include a living wage for the producers, gender equality, and training opportunities An example is SERRV, begun by the Church of the Brethren in 1949, to expand markets and achieve better prices for craftspeople in impoverished places (SERRV 2018). One of the largest fair trade organizations, their sales revenue for 2018 was over $10 million, while partnering with over 7000 producers in 25 countries. Although the Church of the Brethren was the first to establish a fair trade campaign, there are now more groups involved (Fridell 2004). Numerous church bodies in the United States and around the world sponsor fair trade campaigns. Examples are: a. Lutheran World Relief, the United Methodist Committee on Relief, the United Churches of Christ, and the Baptist Fair Trade Project sponsor Equal Exchange Coffee, a worker-owned coop partnering with Central American coffee farmers; b. Catholic Relief Services supports Divine Chocolate, a farmer-owned fair trade company in Ghana; c. The Presbyterian Border Ministry sponsors a fair trade coffee cooperative in Mexico called Justo Cafe, supporting coffee farmers in Chiapas

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and a coffee roaster in Sonora, by the US border, for import to the United States Fair trade is not perfect, for it does not alter the commodity relation between producer and consumer, so it does little to diminish the power of the market to discipline these farmers (Fridell 2007). Still, Barnett et al. (2005) show that a fair trade campaign begun by Christians in the UK is more than individualistic consumption: It builds ethical relationships at a distance. Barnett et al. note that geographers and other social scientists have long discounted the power of such ethical relationships, assuming that distance constrains ethical concern. Instead, the authors argue that fair trade campaigns create a time-space site that is “ripe for the enlisting of ordinary consumers into broader projects of social change” (2005, 39). Food justice ideas are related to earlier hunger relief work. An early example is the Kensington Soup Society, established by Methodists in Philadelphia in 1844 (Milano 2009). As urbanization spread in the late 1800s, charity toward the hungry in cities expanded (Smidt 2009). The scale of this today is large: 25% of all nonprofit organizations in the United States are religious congregations, and about 40% of those either host a food pantry or cooperate with others (Smidt 2009). Some pantries do more than provide free canned food or cooked meals; some teach clients to garden and provide seed or plants. But few focus on reform. As Koch (2019) argues, food charity can delay and even preclude improvement in food security. Christian institutions such as Feeding America are steered away from food justice campaigns that might limit the profits of their major donors (Fisher and Jayaraman 2018). Still, some Christian hunger groups work to change policies. An example is the HOPE Collaborative in Oakland, California (HOPE Collaborative 2019). This nonprofit lobbies for policies to give impoverished neighborhoods better access to healthy food. They successfully sponsored a city tax on soda, the revenue from which now supports school health programs and school gardens. In a number of US cities, food deserts are recognized and church groups are fighting to address them (see Chu 2017). Darriel Harris, an African-American preacher in Baltimore, has organized for food justice through his churches since

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2015, and leads the Black Church Food Security Network (Biron 2018). This Christian group raises awareness about food justice issues, pressing for better food policies rather than charity. The ideas of food justice can be carried by many who are not religious, but the idea has its roots in Christian theology. Several Christian ideas frame reformers’ actions in the nineteenth century, often explicitly: following Jesus means a. b. c. d.

treating your body as a temple, living simply so others may simply live, loving all of God’s creation, and working for justice for those who are marginalized.

These ideas have often been buried under the capitalist culture of the United States. Yet they have also inspired the food movements described above: the food safety, vegetarian, organic, and food justice movements. The fifth food movement is different; it has ancient Biblical roots, but its main trunk was established in the 1970s.

Local Food Movement as the Integration of Other Movements The local food movement (sometimes called the “locavore” movement) is a unique combination of the four food movements above. It has been growing for decades but could not have existed before the 1960s, since it depends on the mixing of those older movements and takes a direction energized by the climate protection movement. In what follows I draw out the significance of what has been called the turn toward “the local.” Story et al. (2009) offer a standard definition of a sustainable food system: one that “provides healthy food to meet current food needs while maintaining healthy ecosystems that can also provide food for generations to come, with minimal negative impact to the environment; encourages local production and distribution infrastructures; makes nutritious food available, accessible, and affordable to all ; is humane and just, protecting farmers and other workers, consumers, and communities.”

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This definition clearly combines earlier food movements, but not the emphasis on place. Place is now a critical part of sustainability discourse (see Northcott 2015). How did this happen? We may credit agrarianism, a commitment to raising the status of the farmer and farm life. The primary force for agrarianism has been Kentucky poet/farmer Wendell Berry. His works of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, beginning with the best-selling The Unsettling of America (1977), have made him an icon in the sustainable food movement. And place is central to his thinking: He argues that most of the best food and farm solutions will be developed in and by local communities, although we must also reform national policies. Understanding the “place” of each farm or community is central to its success; our future is not in abstract attachment to “Earth” but in bodily connection to the particular land that feeds the people (Berry 1979). Berry, raised as a Christian, criticizes mainstream American Christianity for selling out to consumerism and industrialism. He sees creation being destroyed by big corporations and big government, by controlling the land and its people from a distance. He argues for a land ethic centered on Biblical teachings about the link between humanity and creation. Berry writes (1979, 271) that the key to all creation care starts with the fact that God retains ownership—it is not given permanently. According to Deuteronomy 10:14 (NIV): “To the LORD your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth, and all that is in it.” God did not deed the land to humans. In fact, God declares “…you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers” (Leviticus 25:23 NIV). And the purpose of Christian stewardship is to partner with God in restoring the land: “the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God” Romans 8:21 (NIV). Berry’s essay on a Biblical stand for ecological agriculture, “The Gift of Good Land,” was first published in the Sierra Club’s national magazine in 1979, and has been widely read ever since. One of Berry’s criticisms of American culture is picked up by critics of the locavore movement: as consumer culture for the privileged (Blankenship and Hayes-Conroy 2017). Since pleasure and independence are enhanced by growing your own vegetables, or buying local organic food at a specialty shop, such a consumer can feel pious without recognizing

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the impossibility of poor Americans replicating that lifestyle. Hartman (2013) and Wilson (2013) argue that the “alternative food” and “local food” movements do not generally challenge the industrialized food system because they do not problematize the capitalist order. Hartman calls for Christians to go beyond buying local, to take political action such as boycotts. Like Hartman, Nabhan (2017) and Brent et al. (2015) recognize these flaws in the food system. They both argue that food sovereignty (local control of food systems) is needed to help overcome those limitations. Nabhan is a scientist and author of a number of food books which link his faith to his science; here he describes the open table of Christian communion (Nabhan 2017): This is not a supper club for the elite or the saved. It is not just about humankind, either. It is about bonding with the land, sea, and atmosphere that remain necessary for our health and our nourishment, just as much as it is about the farmworker, food service worker, fisher, vintner, and farmer who bring us our daily sustenance. Whenever I partake of this sacrament, I try to imagine myself in solidarity with hundreds of millions of others who dared to break bread together and sup from the same cup in defiance of the forces seeking to divide us. In that sense, the Eucharist was not originally meant as an esoteric, restricted practice performed by Christians to bond only with other Christians, but to join hands with all of humanity and to join paws, wings, and fins with all species, no matter what other expressions of faith (or lack of them) may be among us.

Radical eucharistic ideas like this have been echoed by a network of Catholic sisters. A number of Catholic religious orders are raising their own food as a spiritual practice that restores the creation (Taylor 2007); these communities of nuns call themselves “Sisters of Earth.” Sister Mary Ryan, one of the sisters, says this is no leap toward nature-worship, and not a change from traditional Catholic teaching: “We see the protection of the earth as inseparable from the protection of the poor” (Mesman 2016). They are now widely recognized as inspirations to Christian communities elsewhere.

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Christian theologians like Thomas Berry have been harsh critics of conventional environmentalism as far too shallow, and have called for an ecologically just food system (Berry 2009). Wendell Berry, in The Unsettling of America (1977), clarifies this problem: The concept of country, homeland, dwelling place becomes simplified as “the environment” … We have given up the understanding – dropped it out of our language and so out of our thought – that we and our country create one another, depend on one another, are literally part of one another; that our land passes in and out of our bodies just as our bodies pass in and out of our land; that as we and our land are part of one another, so all who are living as neighbors here, human and plant and animal, are part of one another, and so cannot possibly flourish alone; that, therefore, our culture must be our response to our place, our culture and our place are images of each other and inseparable from each other, and so neither can be better than the other. (22)

Bilbro (2015), a supporter of Berry’s Christian agrarianism, says the ground for this thinking was laid by the Puritans. The writings of Puritan Cotton Mather portrayed all creation as a temple, and considered its study as a way to glorify God. Thoreau would go further, seeing God’s presence in the natural world. Bilbro also shows that (the) theology of the Disciples of Christ prepared (John) Muir to understand nature as an agent of egalitarian, unifying, and primitive redemption. During his formative thousand-mile walk, he based his criticisms of selfish anthropocentric attitudes on his belief that the universe was made for God, not man. (Bilbro 2015, 98)

Bilbro notes that Thoreau and Muir come out of a Calvinist/Puritan heritage. They used that “creation-as-temple” notion, each in their own way, to offer a new and powerful ethic. They anticipated the twentiethcentury work of Berry, whose theology “demands care for the entire created community” (Bilbro 2015). This body of work has indeed expanded in recent decades through the work of influential writers like Annie Dillard, Rosemary Radford Ruether, and Norman Wirzba. Wirzba is a theologian who argues (2019)

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that the Hebrew prophets witnessed agricultural systems becoming centralized and unjust, thus destroying the covenant between the people and the land. The Judeo-Christian message for sustainability, as Wirzba interprets it, is about place: Faith communities are called to wholenessin-place (Wirzba 2019). Food, Wirzba says, is one of the most physically “present” aspects of being a Christian. as seen in the power of holy communion. Eating is our bodily experience of God’s creation. This matches the argument of Episcopal priest Nurya Love Parish (2015): “If we eat mindlessly, we are disconnected from God. However, if we eat with gratitude, conviviality, and humility in the face of God’s gift of abundance, then we are experiencing a divine union with God.” Similarly, Davis (2009) argues for agrarianism as the most authentic application of Biblical scripture regarding the land. Creation is not separate from humanity, and food is the proof of that, as shown in Jewish and Christian thought about sacrifice: All death and all life are united in the soil, and the Creator asks us to join in restoring the Creation through our unselfish caring for that soil. Engel (2011) goes further, arguing that Christianity and democracy have grown together toward justice and recognition of the challenge of sustainability, so that “eco-theology” influenced by the pluralist ideas of “deep ecology” can be the common ground for a liberation of all members of the world community. Place meets science and faith through sustainability. The wide-ranging sustainable food movement today is joined by many denominations, practiced by churches in every state (see Peters 2006). What follows are just a few examples of churches directly working within the sustainable food movement 1. Mennonite churches have networked to support a mixture of green initiatives, including the broad goals of the modern food movement. That network now includes 63 Mennonite churches around the United States. See mennocreationcare.org. 2. The Alliance of Baptists is a communion of churches founded in 1987 as a breakaway from Southern Baptists, numbering some 140 congregations and 4500 members. They are committed as a body to

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supporting sustainable food systems, with a focus on addressing food injustice and climate change Gardner (2015). 3. Several dozen Methodist churches in North Carolina are in a coordinated food campaign led by their bishop, which focuses on food justice and community gardens (Bahnson 2009). 4. There are now numerous Christian agrarian blogs and campaigns, which go beyond issues of food justice to include sustainability. An example is The Keep and Till , an online magazine sponsored by the United Church of Christ (Chamelin 2017). The strength of the agrarian approach to our food system is that it is radically integrative, the way we may now see intersectionality as essential to understanding many social issues. Ecologists may have helped us recognize the power of geography, but it is also Christian (and by extension Jewish) thinking that says being placed is necessary for stewardship to work.

Conclusion What does a food movement look like for ordinary people facing the challenges of daily living? Hite et al. (2017) carried out an ethnographic study of community gardens in low-income, African-American areas of Tallahassee, Florida. Through communal growing of vegetables as their children played around them, local residents constructed their own informal and invisible “sanctuary” in their community garden. This is place-making where sustainability is practiced in spite of—or perhaps because of—racial and class barriers. In this case, explicit reference to organized religion was not reported in this article, but had the AfricanAmerican women who organized the garden been asked, would they have mentioned their faith? Based on what we have seen, a careful study of many sustainable places currently being made in the United States will, I believe, often turn up either (a) spiritual practices and/or beliefs with explicit religious roots, most likely Christian, connecting community health to a grounded place, or (b) practices and beliefs with implicit (perhaps unconscious) religious roots. The latter is more common with

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secularization, but still carries with it particular Christian ideas about food and place. Most American Christians have yet to join these five food movements: Instead they live as ordinary consumers participating unquestioningly in the industrial food system. They are victims of an ideology that suppresses these radical reform ideas. The typical church leader is likely no different. So this unsustainable food system continues, contributing to mass extinction, community decline, and a devastating climate crisis. But this chapter has spotlighted some prophets, past and present, whose stance was or is outside the mainstream. How do they make a difference? As with all social movements, usually a crisis is needed to spark real change. Already there are more vegetarians than ever in the United States, and organic farming is at an all time high. Perhaps all the movements, converging around place, ecological science, and some old but radical Christian ideas, will keep pressing the United States closer to sustainability.

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Nestle, M. (2007). Safe food: The politics of food safety. Berkeley: University of California Press. Noever, J. H. (1991). Passionate rebel: The life of Mary Gove Nichols, 1810– 1884. Norman: University of Oklahoma. Northcott, M. S. (2015). Place, ecology, and the sacred: The moral geography of sustainable communities. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Parish, N. L. (2015). Yes there is a Christian food movement. http://christianfoo dmovement.org/2015/03/30/yes-there-is-a-christian-food-movement/. Peters, R. T. (2006). Supporting community farming. In P. K. Brubaker, R. T. Peters, & L. A. Stivers (Eds.), Justice in a global economy: Strategies for home, community, and world . Westminster John Knox: Louisville, KY. Petrick, G. M. (2011). ‘Purity as life’: H.J. Heinz, religious sentiment, and the beginning of the industrial diet. History and Technology, 27 (10), 37–64. Pirog, R., Miller, C., Way, L., Hazekamp, C., & Kim, E. (2014). The local food movement: Setting the stage for good food. MSU Center for Regional Food Systems. https://www.canr.msu.edu/foodsystems/uploads/files/local_food_m ovement.pdf. Accessed 5 June 2019. Raper, A. F. (1943). Tenants of the almighty. New York: Macmillan. Rapport, J. (2009). Eating for unity: Vegetarianism in the early Unity School of Christianity. Gastronomica, 9 (2), 35–44. Robbins, J. (2001). The food revolution: How your diet can help save your life and the world . Berkeley, CA: Conari Press. Schweitzer, A. (1949). The philosophy of civilization, translated by C.T. Campion. New York: Macmillan. SERRV. (2018). Annual report 2018. https://s3.amazonaws.com/cdn.serrv. org/downloads/AnnualReports/Annual%20Report%202018.pdf. Accessed 9 November 2019. Shprintzen, A. (2013). The vegetarian crusade: The rise of an American reform movement. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina. Smidt, C. E. (2009). The social service activities of religious congregations in America. Review of Faith and International Affairs, 7, 47–54. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/15570274.2009.9523405. Stoll, M. R. (2015). Inherit the holy mountain: Religion and the rise of American environmentalism. New York: Oxford University Press. Story, M., Hamm, M. W., & Wallinga, D. (2009). Food systems and public health: linkages to achieve healthier diets and healthier communities. Journal of Hunger Environment and Nutrition, 4, 219–224. Swanson, M. (1977). The “country life movement” and the American churches. Church History, 46 (3), 358–359. https://doi.org/10.2307/3164133.

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14 The Jewish Food Movement: A Sustainable and Just Vision for Place, Identity, and Environment Steven E. Silvern

Introduction The last twenty-five years have witnessed growing interest among farmers, scholars, policy makers, and segments of the public in creating and supporting sustainable food systems. This interest has coalesced into what some call the sustainable food movement, the alternative food movement, or simply “the food movement.” This food movement is a multi-faceted critique of the industrialized and globalized food system; the large-scale, fossil-fuel dependent, mono-cultural, longdistance system of production, transportation, processing, and distribution of food. The food movement is not, however, merely a critique, it also promotes and creates alternative, sustainable food production and consumption geographies. The movement has fostered real places where diverse forms of food production, processing, and distribution are taking place, including farmers’ markets, cooperative retail food stores, S. E. Silvern (B) Salem State University, Salem, MA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 S. E. Silvern and E. H. Davis (eds.), Religion, Sustainability, and Place, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7646-1_14

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small-scale organic and local farms, and grass-fed animal husbandry. The “ethical” consumer buys local, seasonally sourced, and preferably organically grown produce and grass-fed and free-range animals (Chase and Grubinger 2014; Lyson 2004; Pollan 2006; Schlosser 2002; Winne 2008). In this chapter, my aim is to explore the engagement of the American Jewish community with this sustainable food movement. Emerging primarily out of modern non-orthodox Jewish religious movements— the Reform, Reconstructionist, and Renewal movements—this chapter focuses upon the organization, discourse, and geographical imagination of what is referred to as “the Jewish Food Movement” (hereafter JFM). The JFM shares much of the secular environmentalist, and agroecological world view of scholars and thinkers, such as Wendell Berry, Michael Pollan, and others (Berry 1977; Pollan 2006; Shiva 2014), who are critical of the industrial food system and strive to re-imagine and construct a locally based, bio-diverse, and socially just food system. And yet, the JFM and the Jews who participate in its various organizations and activities—as consumers, farmers, educators, and activists—are also engaged in the construction of a particularistic ethno-religious Jewish sustainability discourse. This discourse differs from environmental sustainability discourses in that it is rooted in Jewish religious teachings and texts, and links the renewal and continuity of Jewish ethno-religious identity with sustainability of the environment and the food system. My focus is not on explicating the origins and meanings (often debated) of the environmental concepts contained in foundational Jewish religious written texts such as the Torah (Five Books of Moses), Prophets and Writings, Talmud, rabbinic literature, and Kabbalah, but on how the environmental and agrarian teachings embedded in these texts—the “tradition”—are mobilized or deployed by the JFM to provide a religious, perhaps even sacred grounding for the promotion of environmentally sustainable and just food practices and places. While recent research has described the basic contours of this Jewish sustainability discourse (LeVasseur 2017; Most 2015), this chapter takes a somewhat different perspective, emphasizing that this Jewish approach to sustainable food systems is also a discourse about the sustainability of the American Jewish community and that geography (space and place)

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is central to this discursive formation. Like other environmental movements, the JFM views the health of land and human life as inextricably connected. This is not merely a bio-physical view about how healthy land creates or supports healthy people. For the JFM and the larger Jewish community, there is a long-standing concern about assimilation and the survival and continuity of the Jewish community in North America (Magid 2013; Wertheimer 2018). The JFM sustainable food discourse is simultaneously about sustaining the American Jewish community. It is about Jews engaging with, learning about, and creatively putting into practice traditional Jewish religious teachings concerning agriculture and the environment in the form of community farms, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), and advocacy in the political arena for more socially just and sustainable food policies at the local, national, and global scales. The discourse of Jewish ethno-religious and environmental sustainability is tied to particular places or “topographies” and multiple spatial scales (Silvern 2018). Often explicit, but more often assumed, the Jewish Food Movement engages in a spatial practice, creating and engaging with real and imagined Jewish geographies as it promotes a particular vision for Jewish renewal and sustainable agri-food systems. While the local and community scales are central to the JFM’s geographic vision, as exemplified by Jewish farms, CSA, and other local food community work, their vision extends its scale of concern to the nation and the global. While this multi-scalar spatialized vision of Jewish care for both community and planet is shaped by Jewish religious texts and secular environmental thought, it is also informed and made symbolically meaningful by connecting to the historical narrative of the Jewish diaspora. The JFM’s geographical imagination is constructed in relation to the sacralized homeland of the Jewish people in the land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael), the experiences of immigrant ancestors and their homelands in Eastern Europe, while at the same time investing new meanings for home in the localized environment of farms and community gardens in the United States.

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The Alternative Food Movement Food activists, scholars, and critics of the current food system seek to create a new food culture and food economy; one that does not accept the industrial “fast food,” production system and instead promotes one that is local, seasonal, and based on an ecosystem approach to managing pests and maintaining soil fertility. The goal of the sustainable food movement is to change how and where food is produced and shift consumer tastes from excessive meat consumption and hyper-processed food to plant-based, whole foods. Food, according to this discourse, should be produced organically or according to ecological principles— minimizing chemical pesticides, fertilizers, and other fossil fuel inputs. The ideal sustainable food system has, by definition, an ideal geography; localized, consisting of small-scale rural and urban farms, community gardens, Community Supported Agriculture and Community Supported Fisheries (subscription or food share programs), and farmers’ markets. It will directly connect farmer and consumer, enhance local economies, and reduce food miles (Nabhan 2002; Kneafsey 2008; McClenachan et al. 2014).

Sustainable Food Spaces: Spaces for Jewish Renewal As to be expected the food movement has its share of critics. Some, writing from a critical political ecology and political-economy perspective view the movement as not radical enough, neither addressing world hunger nor going far enough to challenge the capitalist and corporate interests that sustain and profit from the existing industrial food system. They see corporations coopting and profiting from the food movement through premiums attached to local/organic foods. Who can afford these organic and “whole” foods? Critics see the food movement as creating greater socio-economic inequality and not solving the problem of food injustice: the problem of access to whole food (i.e., food deserts) or solving the labor exploitation associated with the industrial food system. The food movement is accused of being white and middle-class. Rather

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than promote “ethical consumption,” critics, such as political ecologist Julie Guthman (2011), see the need to challenge underlying capitalist logic of the food system and the government policies that maintain it. Eric Schlosser (2002, 275), author of Fast Food Nation, writes: “The food movement needs to become part of a larger movement with a broader vision – a movement that opposes unchecked corporate power, that demands not only healthy food but also a living wage and a safe workplace for every American.” Others argue that the “local” does not necessarily equate with social justice. Guthman (2011, 150), for example, is skeptical that “proximity” actually “makes farmers pay their workers more, makes food more affordable, makes profits stay in the region….” While the industrial food system remains dominant, and problems of access to affordable fresh food and injustice in the production of food remain, it seems imprudent to dismiss out-of-hand the changes brought about by the sustainable food movement. Without the food movement’s vision and its many innovative small-scale sustainable farms and foodbased enterprises that have developed over the last twenty-five years, there would be little change in public awareness about the problems of industrial food production and little understanding of the economic and social benefits of supporting local-based food initiatives. Borrowing from economic geographers Gibson-Graham (2006), I view the food movement as creating a “geography of possibility.” The growth of local farms, CSAs, farmers’ markets, technical assistance programs to help “new” immigrants start farms, and the effort to promote diverse forms of innercity food production, are important and necessary changes in creating a sustainable localized food system. Representing spaces of possibility, these initiatives open up, rather than close doors, for progressive social and environmental change in the food system, including the JFM. Some geographers (Wilson 2013) conceptualize this geography of possibilities as an autonomous, rather than as an alternative geography (the term alternative seen as creating a problematic binary). The notion of an autonomous space implies that the capitalist food economy is not a totalizing structure and that there are places for disengaging from capitalism to “build new forms of social and economic relationships and identities” (Wilson 2013, 720). In this project, I explore the

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usefulness of this concept for understanding the Jewish Food Movement; for understanding how the minority, diaspora American Jewish community is participating in creating “diverse economic spaces” of food production and consumption. These are, however, not only economic spaces, but spaces of diverse, ethno-religious expression, renewal, and community building. For American Jews, participation with sustainable food practices, through synagogue gardens and community farms, ecosummer camps, outdoor retreats, CSA, and local farms, creates places of possibility for Jewish belonging, identity, renewal, and creativity while supporting environmentally and economically sustainable farms and gardens.

American Jewish Farming and Post-Earth Day American Jewish Environmentalism To better understand the Jewish Food Movement, we need to briefly situate this early twenty-first-century movement in the earlier Jewish Farm and back-to-the-land movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and in the post-Earth Day, modern Jewish environmental movement (of writers and organizations) of the last quarter of the twentieth century. In her book Back to the Land , historian Dona Brown sees late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Jewish farming in America as part of a larger “back to land movement” in the United States. Tracing its roots to Russia (and the emergent Zionist movement), she sees Jewish back-to-the-land sentiment as “part of a process of reinventing Jewish culture….” The Jewish farm movement was never large, with approximately 40 farming colonies and 16,000 Jews spread across the northeast and into the Mid-West by the 1930s. Sharing elements of Zionist discourse on land and farming, the Jewish farm movement was a “producerist” ideology that promoted self-sufficiency and sought to demonstrate that Jews, in spite of the urban and ghetto stereotype, could work and farm the land. Returning to the land, Jews would jettison their “ghetto heritage” and the result would be a transformation of Jewish culture—a new Jew (Brown 2011, 48–49). The notion of connecting to the land and agriculture as a means of self and cultural regeneration is an

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important thread that continues to shape the contemporary Jewish farm, food, and environmental movement. The more immediate social and intellectual context for the contemporary Jewish Food Movement is the so-called Judaism and ecology movement of the 1980s and 1990s that had its roots in the left-wing anti-war, social justice, and environmental activism of the 1960s and early 1970s. Rabbis, community leaders, scholars, and Jewish activists were also drawn into exploring ecological ideas in the Jewish tradition as they became involved in the secular environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s. While environmental concerns gained traction in the larger world, Jewish thinkers, scholars, and activists looked to the Jewish tradition to find solutions to the political, economic, environmental, and spiritual problems of the twentieth century and renew American Judaism in the face of assimilationist pressures. Many were part of the Jewish Renewal movement that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s and were influenced by the writings and teachings of Jewish religious scholars and thinkers such as Abraham Joshua Heschel, Mordechai Kaplan, and Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. Today, the Renewal Movement is pluralistic and “transdenominational” drawing its inspiration and ideas from the biblical prophets and Jewish mysticism (Hahn Tapper 2016, 159) as well as “values associated with the 1960s or New Age spiritual countercultures” (Seidenberg 2005, 910). According to ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, the Movement’s “umbrella organization,” Jewish Renewal is the “ongoing creative project of a generation of Jews who are seeking to renew Judaism and bring its spiritual and ethical vitality into our lives and communities, and at the same time embrace a global vision of the role of all human beings and spiritual paths in the transformation of life on this precious planet” (quoted in Hahn Tapper 2016, 158). Thus, Renewal “envisions a contemporary Judaism that is joyous, creative, spiritually rich, socially progressive, and earth-aware. This vision arises out of our search for a renewed personal connection to the God of our ancestors and the legacy of our tradition, in service of our higher dreams for the future of our world” (ALEPH 2020). Working from outside of orthodox Judaism and the Reform and Conservative denominations, the Renewal Movement was very much “instrumental in putting ecological

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awareness on the map of Jewish consciousness” (Tirosh-Samuelson 2002, 2006, 52). The individuals who galvanized the Renewal Movement and the emerging Jewish environment movement turned to biblical passages and Jewish religious laws which deal with the land, food, and farming to construct a Jewish environmental ethic. They used the “ancient” texts sources for the basis for the modern Jewish stewardship of the environment; rules against destroying nature, regulating agriculture, proper treatment of animals, food purity, fallowing of fields, providing for the poor, etc. Many were responding to Lynn White’s famous 1967 essay, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis” in the journal Science, which claimed that the Judeo-Christian tradition was one of the root causes of the modern environmental crisis. Ellen Bernstein, one of the founders of the first Jewish environmental organization in the United States, Shomrei Adamah (Keepers of the Earth) in 1988, wrote in counterpoint to the White essay that “Judaism was rich in spirit and wisdom concerning humanity’s relationship with nature.” The goal of the Shomrei Adamah was to raise environmental interest and consciousness within the Jewish community, especially for those who had disengaged from and “abandoned Judaism” because their Jewish education left them “spiritually empty and resentful.” In the introduction to her edited book Ecology and the Jewish Spirit: Where Nature and the Sacred Meet, she wrote that the “Jewish creation story, Jewish law, the cycle of the holidays, prayers and mitzvoth” all “reflect a reverence for land” and the basis for a “viable practice of stewardship.” Much of the focus of this groundbreaking Jewish organization was on environmental education rooted in Jewish tradition, integrating Jewish holidays and the Jewish calendar with environmentalism, and organizing outdoor/wilderness excursions as a means to re-connect American Jews with Judaism (Bernstein 1998, 11). Rabbi Arthur Waskow, founder of the Shalom Center, was another early advocate for Jewish environmentalism, calling for “an intergenerational, international movement with the goal of protecting the web of life on earth” (Waskow 1993 in Lerner 1994, 336). His published works, including the 1982 book Seasons of Our Joy, the co-edited book Trees, Earth and Torah (2000), and the edited collection Torah and the Earth

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(2001), are seen as important publications of this period that focused on Judaism and ecology. Waskow is often cited as being responsible for popularizing the idea of “eco-kosher” as a tool for enlarging the scope of Kashrut or kosher laws about prohibitions on the eating and treatment of animals to encompass environmental and social justice. Waskow made the connection between protecting the environment and the poor and weak in society. (Tirosh-Samuelson 2006). Similar to Waskow, Michael Lerner, in his 1994 book, Jewish Renewal: A Path to Healing and Transformation, questioned “whether food that has been grown in ecologically destructive ways, or food that has been harvested by underpaid farmworker or has been produced by companies that are exploiting their workers or by companies that are destroying the environment, can really be considered kosher” (Lerner 1994, 340–341).

The Jewish Food Movement It is fair to suggest that the JFM emerged at the turn of the twentyfirst century out of the Jewish Ecology and Renewal movements and concerns with national and global socio-economic and environmental problems and the impact of assimilation upon American Jewish identity. Both movements remain important in shaping the JFM, emphasizing a spiritually rich, progressive social justice, and environmentally oriented Judaism. The JFM was also shaped by the scholars, authors, and activists of the broader sustainable food movement who by the late 1990s and early 2000s were advocating for changes in the industrial food system.

Actors and Organization The JFM is an informal network of actors, organizations, institutions, and philanthropists stretching across the United States. The actors in the network include Jewish farms, CSAs, and community-based farms and gardens associated with synagogues, Jewish Day schools, Jewish summer camps, and college Hillels (Jewish campus organizations). The common element across the network is the promotion of immersive educational

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experiences rooted in the Jewish religious tradition. Thus, the teachings in the various programs described below focus upon how agriculture was (and can be) central to Jewish religious rituals, holidays, and the calendar; how the Torah and other religious texts and teachings provide core concepts and practices for Jewish environmental stewardship and social justice. Such teachings and experiences are intended to provide a Jewish framework for the ethical consumption of food, the spiritual, and ethical basis for organic farming, permaculture, and animal husbandry, and foster understanding of Jewish spirituality, Jewish ritual practices, and Jewish identity.

Hazon: Hub of the JFM The hub and perhaps driving force behind the network of Jewish food movement organizations is New York-based Hazon. A non-profit founded in 2000 by Nigel Savage, Hazon’s stated mission expresses both the particularistic and universal vision of the JFM: “Help us create healthier and more sustainable communities in the Jewish world and beyond.” Hazon provides grant funding, organizational leadership, and support for a number of affiliated Jewish sustainable food and environmental organizations such as, small-scale farms, as well as synagogues and Jewish community centers across the United States. Hazon, through its two programs areas, the Adamah Farming Fellowship and Teva, and its partner organizations (see below), such as Urban Adamah, the former Jewish Farm School, and Eden Village Camp, emphasizes Jewish-centered “immersive” and experiential farming and environmental education as the key to developing a new consciousness of sustainability that brings together ethical food consumption sustainable food production, protection of the local and global environment, and renewal of Jewish life. These organizations, farms, and camps function not only as showplaces for sustainable living, but as places for community building through celebrations of the Sabbath and other religious holidays. The assumption is, according to Nigel Savage, that an immersive program “influences individual Jewish growth and

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leads to increased Jewish involvement.” Hazon employs multiple “methods” for supporting the JFM including: fundraising bike rides across the United States, regionally (i.e., in New York and California) and in Israel; Tuv Ha’Aretz (Good for/From the Land) a Jewish CSA program that connects synagogues and Jewish community centers with local CSA farms; an annual multi-day food conferences (at Isabella Freedman Retreat Center); a sustainable food tour to Israel held in conjunction with the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership in Tel Aviv; curricula, sourcebooks, and other educational resources for teaching on topics of food, farming, and the environmental; policy advocacy at the federal and international level; and a Seal of Sustainability Program which recognizes and encourages the efforts of synagogues and other Jewish organizations in reducing their environmental footprint (Hazon 2020a). In 2014 Hazon merged with the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center in 2014. The Center, located in northwest Connecticut, has become a “home” for Hazon, a rural site which hosts its annual sustainable food conference, retreats, and Jewish holiday observances throughout the year, as well as other spiritual and community activities. According to Hazon, “Our goal is that people who come to Isabella Freedman deepen their Jewish identities; experience the connection between inherited Jewish wisdom, food, climate, and the natural world; and become linked with others who care about creating a more sustainable Jewish community and world” (Hazon 2020b). Isabella Freedman is also home to two Hazon-run programs: Teva and Adamah Farming. Teva, originally founded in 1994 (before they merged with Hazon) provides immersive and experiential outdoor and nature education to children ages 2–17 from Jewish day schools, synagogues, camps, and other youth groups. Since becoming a Hazon-run program it has added food sustainability to its curriculum. The Adamah Farm Fellowship, also located at Isabella Freedman, is a three-month residential fellowship program for adults in their 20s and 30s to learn organic farming, permaculture design, value-added food processing, and animal husbandry focused on goats and chickens. Fellows form a community and work a ten-acre organic farm that provides farm-to-table produce and Kosher processed foods (i.e., pickling) to the Retreat Center. Many

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of the alumni from the Fellowship have moved on to create or be involved in other Jewish community farming enterprises (Hazon 2020a).

Other Actors and Organizations in the JFM While Hazon is the national face of the JFM, there are other key actors and organizations in the JFM including but not limited to: • Urban Adamah, a two-acre urban community farm located in Berkeley, CA that was started in 2010. It offers educational workshops, after school programs, young adult fellowships, celebration of Shabbat and religious holidays (Urban Adamah 2020). • Jewish Farm School founded in 2006 in Philadelphia and ceased operating in the Fall of 2019. The School trained Jewish farmers and educators, offered alternative spring breaks for university students; educational curriculum for school teachers; and so-called Shtetl skills workshops on farming and food processing (Jewish Farm School 2020). • Eden Village (East and West), Eden Village East is a co-ed, summer camp, located about 50 miles north of New York City. Started in 2006, the camp is a spiritually infused pluralistic Jewish camp that incorporates Jewish ritual and prayer with learning about Jewish relationships with food, nature, community, and social justice. Eden Village West, located seventy miles north of San Francisco in Sonoma County, opened in 2018 (Eden Village 2020). • Jewish Farm Network started in 2017 in order to facilitate sharing of best practices and provide mutual support among Jewish farmers (Jewish Farm Network 2020). • Jewish Community Farming Field Building Initiative (JCF -FBI) formed in 2016 and consists of 13 Jewish community farms spread across the United States. The goal is “to promote environmental sustainability and food justice, foster opportunities for meaningful spiritual engagement and personal growth, and strengthen Jewish life” (JCF-FBI 2020).

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A Jewish-Sustainability Discourse What does it mean to farm “Jewishly” and to use Jewish values when working the land? What does it mean for a consumer or producer to participate in and support a sustainable food system in a Jewish way according to the JFM? In examining the active work and discourse of the JFM, we see it integrating and placing two discourses in conversation with one another: the critical political and environmental discourse of the sustainable food movement and the agricultural and ethical discourse of the Jewish religious tradition. In practice, this integration occurs on the land when Jewish farmers are tilling the soil, growing crops, and raising animals as well as in the educational and community settings of Jewish community farms and fellowships, Jewish schools, synagogues, summer camps, and retreat centers discussed above. In 2016, Nigel Savage spoke of how the JFM challenged the Jewish community to commit to this learning and transformative process of integration. He said: “What we at Hazon are asking Jewish institutions to do is to have not merely a kashrut policy (Kosher food – foods that are prohibited or permitted according to Jewish religious law) but a food policy” (Tikkun 2016). While noting the “industrialized food industry which is doing all sorts of damage to the world: treating animals with cruelty, depleting soil quality, contributing to global warming by transporting foods over enormous distances,” he challenges Jews to learn about Jewish agricultural values, reflect on their mindless consumerism, and work toward creating a place-based sustainable food system: Where does our food come from? How do we grow it, transport it, package it? Do we eat the flesh of animals? If so, which ones, and how did they live, and how did they die? Do we bless our food, and if so in what way? Do we cook our own food, eat with our families, or at school, or at work, or in a restaurant? How do rhythms of eating connect us or separate us from other people? Does what and how we eat influence our sense of Jewishness in the world? Does being Jewish influence the ethics of our eating? How do we treat those who have less – much much less – than we do? (Savage and Hanau 2012, 108)

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Thus, like the larger food movement, the JFM asks questions about how the industrial food system produces, processes, and distributes food and how and why this system is unsustainable and it provides answers from the Jewish tradition’s agricultural and ethical teachings. By combining the traditional with the modern the JFM sees the possibility of creating an environmental and socially sustainable food system. It calls for Jews to recognize and embrace their own tradition as a source of ecological wisdom; thus the recently formed Jewish Farmers Network calls Jews to embrace their tradition as a means of return to a “landbased life” and to mobilize “Jewish agricultural wisdom to build a more just and regenerative food system for all” (JFN 2020). According to this Jewish informed sustainability discourse, one needs to be “rooted” and “steeped in Jewish tradition,” in order to be Jewishly, and thus more sustainably, connected to the land. It is the tradition (Torah, Talmud, rabbinical teachings), including the religious dietary rules that constitute Kashrut, that will guide one to becoming a more ethical food consumerism and an ethical farmer. Nigel Savage emphasizes the importance of “the tradition,” stating: And let’s all of us – as individuals, as families, and as leaders within our institutions – let’s lean into Jewish tradition; let’s listen to this ancient (and difficult) wisdom; and let’s strive to push ourselves to think more honestly and act more clearly in feeling obligated in different ways, to work for a better world for all. (Savage 2020).

Leaning “into tradition” means taking seriously the core teaching and values of Judaism to shape what one eats and one’s relationship to the food system. Urban Adamah in Berkeley, CA articulates the “core Jewish values” of a Jewish sustainable food ethic are “ahava (love), chesed (kindness), and tzedek (justice)” and they “guide all of our programs and activities.” Additionally, they “put ancient Jewish laws of bal tashchit (wise resource use), pe’ah (leaving the corners of the field for those who are food insecure), and tza’ar ba’alei chayim (treating animals with kindness) into practice within the context of the environmental and social realities of the 21st century” (Urban Adamah 2020). In addition, the core values are integrated at all the JFM sites with the study

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of the “Hebrew” or Jewish calendar, marked by religious holidays such as Passover, T’sh B’aav, Shavuot, and Sukkot, that are rooted in the agro-ecological seasonality of the Middle East. Much of the work of the JFM focuses on active learning, reading, studying, and enactment of these core traditional values along with observance of the Sabbath (Shabbat) and the possibility of the shmita or Sabbatical year (see below). For Jewish farmers/producers, immersion in a community of Jewish learning and study of the core values becomes the basis for knowing how to care for the land, the soil, the plants, and the animals on the farm and how to extend care to the community of friends and neighbors in the Jewish and non-Jewish community; in other words, how to farm sustainably in a Jewish way. Adamah, Urban Adamah, the former Jewish Farm School, and the new Jewish Farming Network have been teaching and training future Jewish farmers in the Jewish agriculture tradition and its core values. Over the last three years, this push for Jewish farming has resulted in the establishment of the Jewish Farming Network (JFN) and the Jewish Community Farming Field Building Initiative (JCF-FBI). The former held its first national conference of Jewish Farmers at the Pearlstone Center outside Baltimore, MD in the Spring of 2020, entitled: Cultivating Culture: A Gathering of Jewish Farmers. Like other conferences, it was an opportunity for networking and sharing best practices. The latter organization is working to establish farms and community gardens on “land that had been taken for granted – the lawns and empty fields surrounding our legacy Jewish institutions” with the goal of creating “hundreds of acres of regenerative and just food production across the country, at retreat centers, summer camps, synagogues, and day schools” (JCF-FBI 2020) The JFM represents much more than embrace of the text-based exploration of Jewish core values and teachings—“the tradition”—but necessarily seeks to connect text and core values to the action, to the work of creating food producing places. The embrace of tradition in this way connects present-day Jewish farmers with the older Jewish farm movements. The aim is to create a producer, homesteading Jewish cultural-based agricultural economy; to train and create Jewish farmers rooted in Jewish tradition to farm Jewishly, albeit within the frame of the local, small scale, and organic farms of the larger food movement.

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Connecting, becoming immersed in, and practicing the Jewish agricultural tradition is not only seen as a way to create more sustainable and productive Jewish farms, but also as a way for Jews to deepen and renew their Jewish ethno-religious identity. The thread of identity renewal runs throughout the vision and mission statements of the JFM, particularly in the experiential learning program goals of summer camps (Eden Village), Jewish community farms (see JCF-FBI 2020), and farmer training programs (Adamah farms). For example, in the most recent vision and mission document, Hazon emphasizes that its first core principle is to provide “Vibrant experiential education that renews Jewish life.” Reflecting its roots in the Renewal Movement, Hazon states that its goal is to “strengthen Jewish life.” Hazon wants people to participate in Jewish experiences that shift their understanding of what it means to be Jewish. (Hazon 2020c). For all the sites in the JFM, a core goal is to deepen participants’ connection to Jewish life and promote a positive sense of Jewish identity through immersive experiences and engagement with Judaism’s environmental and agricultural wisdom traditions rather than through traditional forms of American Jewish education (i.e., Hebrew School) or through participation in ritual activities in a synagogue. Nati Passow, co-founder and former director of the Jewish Farm School, noted that hands-on educational experience could have a powerful influence in promoting Jewish identity: “A lot of our impact on the Jewish community is on a personal level. We’ve had participants who had experiences with Judaism that weren’t so great. One thing we’ve been able to do is present Judaism to them in a way that is new, even though we draw on older traditions. We make connections for them that they didn’t know existed” (Futterman 2018). Similarly, one Adamah Farm Fellow reflected on how his experience transformed his identity: At Adamah, I lived in a warm and intentional Jewish community for the first time, I engaged in regular prayer for the first time, I discussed social and communal and even political issues through a Jewish lens. Through Adamah, I became more solid in and proud of my Jewish identity; it became meaningful and real to me in a new way. I could not have my current

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Jewish life and home and commitment without that experience. (Hazon 2019, my emphasis)

Moreover, the results from two recent mixed-methods surveys of participants in Jewish outdoor, farming, and environmental education programs—such as Jewish Farm School, Adamah, Abundance Farm, and Eden Village Camp—found that these programs reinforced a positive Jewish identity and re-connected participants with their Jewish community. The Seeds of Opportunity: A National Study of Immersive Jewish Outdoor, Food, and Environmental Education (JOFEE) Report found that immersive Jewish educational programs on farming and environment “provided a meaningful place for disengaged or alienated Jews to reconnect Jewishly” (Hazon 2014). The Jewish Community Farm and Field Initiative 2018 survey of participants echoed this finding noting that 65% of survey respondents felt “more inspired to be active in Jewish life because of their JCF experience” (JCF-FBI 2020, 16). Thus, participating in JFM activities not only increased understandings of the Jewish agricultural tradition and sustainable farming practices, but also, as one respondent noted, it positively shifted their self-understanding and comfort with their Jewishness: “My Jewish community farming experience made me feel more comfortable expressing my Jewish self to others and even to myself ” (JCF-FBI 2020, 13).

From Sustainability to Food Justice: Shmita The JFM sustainability discourse extends beyond Jewish identity renewal, ethical consumerism and the promotion of small-scale Jewish community farms, to tackle the problem of injustice in the food system. Hazon acknowledges the critique of food justice advocates concerning the overall “whiteness” and conservative nature of the mainstream food movement: “We have to acknowledge the need to go beyond purchasing a CSA share or growing your own garden to assure that our food system is producing food that is ‘fit to eat.’ We must continue to address issues from seed to table, and we must continue to develop innovative and impactful ways to deeply engage with others working toward systemic

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change” (Hazon 2015, 10). The concepts of justice that inform contemporary Jewish approaches to social and food justice include: Tzedek (broad idea of justice), Tikkun Olam (repairing the world), and Chesed (acts of loving-kindness). It also includes teachings from the Torah such as “You were once a stranger” in the land (Exodus 23: 9) and “Justice, justice, you shall pursue” (Deuteronomy 16: 20), which together form a part of the moral and social justice framework within the Jewish tradition, a framework that serves as a guide to food justice work for more equal distribution of land, eliminating food insecurity and struggle against labor exploitation in the food system. One of the practices and teachings from the Jewish tradition seen as a pathway to greater food justice and circulating within the JFM network is the shmita or sabbatical year, a year of rest for the land. While Michael Lerner, Arthur Waskow, and others drew attention to shmita in the 1990s (Lerner 1994), it has only been more widely discussed in the American Jewish community since 2008 when Hazon and allied groups organized the Shmita Project. Shmita literally means “release,” but is often translated as sabbatical. The biblical direction to observe the shmita comes from the book of Exodus (also see Leviticus 23:22 and 25: 2–7): And six years you shall sow your land and gather its produce; and the seventh: you shall let it lie fallow and leave it, and your people’s indigent will eat, and what they leave the animal of the field will eat. You shall do this to your vineyard, to your olives. (Friedman 2001, Exodus 23: 10–11)

Thus every seven years during the “sabbatical” year land is to be left fallow, debts are to be forgiven, and other arrangements are made to “ensure the maintenance of an equitable, just, and healthy society” (Hazon 2016). Shmita, according to Jewish tradition, is only applicable to the land of Israel, and even in Israel today it is not practiced by non-religious Jews “engaged in agriculture” (Krone 2015, 309). In the years leading up to 2014, the last shmita year, there was much discussion about challenges of implementing the shmita in the United States: “It has been literally thousands of years since the collective Jewish community has had the opportunity to experiment with the shmita tradition in such a practical way, and to step such into personal and direct

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relationship with this profound tradition” (Hazon 2016). One reason for the attractiveness of the shmita for the JFM may be what Jeremy Benstein (2006, 189) calls its “revolutionary” and “radical egalitarian thrust.” He notes not only was shmita a year off for the land, but a “year-long sabbatical for most of the populace” thus potentially reducing consumption and the environmental footprint of a society. Furthermore, it was socially and economically radical because it released and forgave all loans and debts. Hoping to generate community-wide education and discussion of the shmita, Hazon developed the Shmita Project and in 2012 published the Shmita Sourcebook (Deutscher et al. 2014). The Sourcebook contains biblical texts and other readings to educate the reader about shmita as well how to create a Sabbatical Food System. This section, on the Sabbatical Food System, discusses topics such as Land Stewardship, Perennial/Wild Harvest, Eating Local and Seasonally, Animal Care, and Community and Economic Resiliency. The implementation of shmita is tremendously challenging, if not impossible in contemporary America. Yet it is the vision of caring for both the land and one’s fellow humans, that has made shmita a compelling idea for the JFM. Many community farms in the JFM have implemented practices in the spirit of shmita. Most Jewish community farms will designate portions of their farms to lie fallow and donate food to local food banks. At Adamah they leave 1/7th of the land in cover crop, donate 1/7th of produce grown to nearby communities and plant more land in perennial crops (Hazon 2020d) and leave a plot of land unfenced so anyone can come and harvest what they need (Blake 2019) (Fig. 14.1).

Geographical Imagination of the JFM: Scales of Concern While the discourse of the JFM is filled with language about Jewish identity, food, justice, and the environment, what about place or the autonomous space for material (farming) and cultural (identity) production discussed earlier? How is the movement imagining and fostering places of care and concern where a sustainable food system can take root and grow? I would suggest that the JFM is creating a multi-scalar

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Fig. 14.1

Shmita principles on sign at Abundance Farm, Northampton, MA

Jewish geography of concern—a topography of care—than spans from the local, to the national and the global scale. At the local scale, the multiple local nodes of the JFM network, such as Urban Adamah, Eden Village, synagogue community farms, and gardens on campus Hillels, are places of possibility for Jewish renewal and a sustainable food system. Reflecting on how such “public” spaces open up the “frame of Jewishness,” Nigel Savage writes: “Each of these places bears the possibility, not only of touching people’s lives in profound ways, but also of creating bubbles in space and time that enable new expressions of Jewish life to evolve” (Savage 2013). As places where one can express and experience Jewishness and Jewish agri-food traditions, they are places of diverse economic and Jewish ethno-religious cultural production. These places deepen the connections to the local, reinforcing for American Jews that the United States, not Israel, is homeland. While such place-making may be an expression of Jewish ethno-religious practices and world view, the concerns of the Jewish community with sustaining people and planet extend beyond the local Jewish community, to the larger, non-Jewish (local) community of which the JFM is a part. An example of this

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extension of care is how Jewish farms and community gardens, such as Adamah and Abundance Farm (Northampton, MA), collaborate with and donate food to local community food banks and survival centers to ensure the food security of everyone in the community (Fig. 14.2). Urban Adamah (Berkeley, CA) geographically situates itself as a node in both a local and regional network of Jewish community and care: “Our impact is local – thousands consider Urban Adamah their cultural and spiritual home; regional – individuals as far north as Napa and as far south as Los Gatos participate in our programs” (Urban Adamah 2020). But, the scale of concern and impact for Urban Adamah and other programs that train Jewish farmers (Adamah and The Jewish Farm School) expands outwards to the scale of the nation; “our fellows take the skills and confidence they gain from their experience with them and become positive agents of change in cities around the country, inside and outside the Jewish world.” At the top of the JFM organizational hierarchy, Hazon clearly has shaped the JFM as a national scale movement through its financial and

Fig. 14.2

Abundance Farm, Northampton, Massachusetts

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programmatic support of Jewish outdoor, farming, and environmental education. But, Hazon’s scale of concern extends into the non-Jewish community. This extended notion of community is expressed in the most recent primary vision and mission statement of Hazon: “Together we are building a Jewish movement that strengthens Jewish life and contributes to a more environmentally sustainable world for all” (Hazon 2020c). Thus, for Hazon, this has meant supporting not only a national network of Jewish farmers, but also advocating for federal agricultural policies (Farm Bill) that will promote sustainable and local agriculture. Hazon’s scale of concern extends to the global scale. The lead sentence in its mission statement reflects this larger spatial concern: “We are in a global environmental crisis. Jewish tradition compels us to respond.” Of course, the most pressing global environmental issue is climate change. Hazon declared this coming year 2020–2021 as one of Environmental Teshuva (return or repentance) and displayed this message on four video billboards in New York’s Times Square during the celebration of the Jewish New Year to press home to the Jewish and larger community the need for individual change and political solutions to mitigate the global climate crisis (Hazon 2020e). As part of this effort, Hazon recently helped to organize the Jewish Youth Climate Movement to provide Jewish teens a platform for their climate change political activism (Jewish Youth Climate Movement 2020). Hazon has fought global climate change since its inception; working to organize and mobilize the Jewish community to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions (see Hazon Seal of Sustainability), participate in climate action and protest marches (New York 2014 and Washington, DC 2017), and push for legislation to mitigate climate change. In this effort it has worked with other Jewish organizations, including the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life and the Jewish Climate Action Network. At the international scale, Hazon’s Executive Director Nigel Savage participated along with other faith groups in the Summit for Conscience for the Climate (in Paris) that preceded the 2015 U.N. Paris Climate Accord. He presented a Jewish perspective on the climate crisis and the need for sustainable solutions (Savage 2015). Finally, the critique of the industrial food system, especially its contribution to global climate change, continues to be a major part of the

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JFM’s activism and educational efforts. Hazon recently published a discussion guide to Jonathan Safran-Foer’s best-selling book, We Are the Weather: Saving the World Begins at Breakfast, as part of its effort to make the Jewish community aware of how diet, and especially meat consumption, substantially contributes to the carbon emissions coming from industrial agriculture. Hazon and the JFM challenge the community to shift to a greater whole foods and plant-based diet in order to reduce its climate emissions (Hazon 2020f).

Conclusions In this chapter, I situate the emergence and growth of the JFM in the context of Jewish environmentalism and the larger non-Jewish food movement. The JFM has evolved over the last twenty years into a network of actors and associations whose focus is to create experiential Jewish, sustainable food/environmental programs in order to “strengthen Jewish life in America.” The JFM participates in place-creation by supporting Jewish community-based farms and gardens and as part of its effort to re-connect Jews with their tradition and to create a more just and sustainable food system. As Yi-Fu Tuan (1977) argued, place is not merely a site for economic production but a center of meaning. In the case of the Jewish food movement, particular localities—be they farms, community gardens—become meaningful and through Jewish agricultural practices, in some ways sacred. They are not merely productive sites—places of food production—but sites of Jewish cultural production. The JFM’s geographical imagination, however, extends beyond the localism of the Jewish community and the parochialism of place. As I have worked to demonstrate, the JFM has constructed a geography of concern that exists on multiple scales from the local to the national and the global. It is both particular, in its rootedness in Jewish tradition and seeking local solutions, and universal in its concern for justice and support for all peoples and non-human living things; seeking solutions that are not parochial and bound to particular places but extend outward from the local to embrace the planet as a whole. This multiscalar geography of care is filled with economic and cultural possibility

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not only for its cosmopolitan perspective, but also for its shift from the anthropocentric mindset to a biocentric mindset recognizing the interconnectedness of all living people and living things. This chapter has provided a glimpse into the organization and discourse of the Jewish food and environmental movement as it is playing out in the United States. It raises the question of how this movement is unfolding for that half of the global Jewish community that lives in the State of Israel. There the story is perhaps more complex and certainly different given the historical development of Zionism as a Jewish nationalist ideology that is rooted in a return to the “land” (Gurevitch and Aran 1994). Zionism became central for the construction of Israeli identity and the idea of the “new Jew” (Almog 2000). Not surprisingly there is an environmental and food movement well underway in Israel with the current support of the Heschel Sustainability Center in Tel Aviv, the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, and others (Tal et al. 2013). Foodism and concern with organic and sustainable food are part of the food and sustainability discourse within Israel. As in the United States, CSAs are part of the small-scale Israeli food and agricultural landscape. While a number of studies have appeared in recent years examining the links between cuisine and Israeli national identity (Avieli 2018; Raviv 2015), few examine the intersection of religion, nationalism, place, and sustainable agriculture within Israel. Future study and research is needed to assess how ideas from the sustainable food movement, especially related to local and organic farming, have been adopted by the Israeli settler movement on the West Bank and used, along with the religious Zionist narratives of returning to “the land,” to legitimize agricultural settlements (farms and vineyards) and naturalize the Israeli settlement movements claims to territory of the West Bank as homeland. Acknowledgments Acknowledgments: An earlier version of this chapter was presented at a National Endowment for the Humanities Seminar on Environmental Justice held at Bentley University, Waltham, MA in the spring of 2016. Many thanks to Joni Seager and all the participants of the Seminar for their constructive comments and feedback. I am especially grateful to Donna Baron for her careful reading and editing of this paper and for all her love and support.

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15 A Womanist and Interfaith Response to Climate Change Faith B. Harris and Kendyl Crawley Crawford

Introduction It began with theft; we must never forget that the land was being taken and the animals captured and killed at monstrous rates and the plants and landscapes were being altered irreversibly over decade after decade and century after century. Peoples in the colonized world were being forced to think themselves in disoriented ways, away from the land, away from the animals, and into racial encasements forced to isolate their bodies This chapter is dedicated to the Rev. Robert Dilday whose sudden passing has devastated the Virginia climate justice community. Let us live out our faith by following his powerful example of compassion.

F. B. Harris (B) Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology, Virginia Union University, Richmond, VA, USA K. C. Crawford Virginia Interfaith Power & Light, Richmond, VA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 S. E. Silvern and E. H. Davis (eds.), Religion, Sustainability, and Place, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7646-1_15

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from the land now turned to private property. Christians forced them to do this and imagined this was the right thing to do because this is how we saw things – isolated bodies and privatized land. (Jennings 2018)

This quotation frames the past 500 years as environmental genocide, beginning with European Christian colonization of the world, leading to contemporary global corporatization. The colonizing project of Europe has been critiqued justly and consistently by women, black, brown and indigenious scholars beginning with the introduction of Black, Latinx, Feminist and Womanist liberation theologies over the past five decades. Religious scholars from James Cone, Juan Luis Segunda, Rosemary Radford Ruether, to Maria Asasi Diaz have contributed to the task of liberating religious and ethical narratives from colonialist imaginations. “My assignment as a womanist liberation ethicist is to debunk, unmask, and disentangle the historically conditioned value judgments and power relations that undergird the particularities of race, sex, and class oppression” (Cannon 1987, 165). These quotes do not represent a new critique of colonization, but they provide a holistic vision for why and how the entire world is currently locked in a fossil fuel-burning death spiral. These quotes point toward the seemingly insurmountable challenge faced by those who advocate for a just world to convince governments, corporations, faith communities and individuals to forge a new course toward conservation, mitigation, sustainability, resilience and equity. Our current climate crisis is the result of an odd mixture of enlightenment arrogance and European Christian imperialism born with Constantine in 322 A.D. and accelerated by the 500-year race to subjugate and possess the world for Christ and the benefit of gold. These quests led to the resulting industrial, technological, information and now artificial intelligence revolutions. This period is rightly titled the Anthropocene as Jennings (2018) describes the decades and centuries of “theft and monstrous killing” of the creatures causing “irreversible devastation” supported by the “queen of theological maladies,” a distorted doctrine of creation. The privatization of land as property and severing of peoples from the land was imagined by Christians as“the right thing to do”(Jennings 2018). This mixture of theology with the lust for wealth

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and power led European Christians to claim superiority of their biology, history and culture, governance, language and economics over all the brown and black peoples of the world (Jennings 2010). Many of these indigenous peoples believed themselves to be part of a grand relational system which included the land, its creatures, rivers, vegetation, soil, sky and creator (Jennings 2018). The land and all creatures had value in and of themselves. The Earth was not a grab bag filled with trinkets to be possessed, rather they and the Earth communed. Yet to the colonial mind, this vision was and is primitive ignorance. This clash of moral vision led to racialized slavery and genocide, the displacement and distress of the indigenous communities (Jennings 2018). According to Copeland (2010), the colonialist’s impulse, fueled by greed and the false belief in their religious and biological superiority, remains operative today in the globalized economy. This imperial impulse shapes contemporary corporate interests in the fossil fuel industry; an insatiable quest for profit is enmeshed with a materialized and racialized vision of the Earth and its creatures (Copeland 2010). “The bodies of the indigenous people were the first to be sacrificed, eliminated, and contained; then the body of the Earth was raped and mastered” (Copeland 2010, 65). Copeland (2010) employs an ecowomanist lens, noting that certain human bodies, women’s bodies, brown and black bodies along with the Earth and its resources are exploited, privatized, possessed, raped and erased, through both historic colonization and contemporary corporatization. Jennings (2018) notes this is supported by a perverted theology of creation. An alternative theology of creation consistent with a renewed moral vision, derived from the wisdoms of many faiths, is an important mission for Virginia Interfaith Power & Light (VAIPL). A theology that values humans, animals, plants, water, air and soil as communal partners in life is critically important as a balance to science or data-based approaches to the problem. Local organizing and advocacy has the unique opportunity to establish deep commitments and relationships with and for individuals, faith groups and organizations on the ground. As an interfaith nonprofit, VAIPL is privileged to draw from the many faith traditions represented in a steering committee inclusive of

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Catholic, Muslim, Buddhist, Eastern Orthodox, Methodist, Unitarian Universalist, and Longhouse. Much of this moral insight prescribes the importance of building, expanding and sustaining community as diverse people of faith. Two examples suggest how traditions represented among the steering committee influence VAIPL’s work. First is a traditional East African coffee ceremony called “buna,” introduced by a steering committee member for the 2019 Earth Day celebration. The ceremony is a common practice among Ethiopians and maintained by expatriates around the world. It consists of roasting, grinding and brewing coffee beans to share with family and neighbors while engaging in conversation. It is a ceremony performed by women: “The coffee gathering provides important opportunities for women to communicate with Allah (God ), saints, and each other. Interactions during buna involve greeting, honoring, respecting the elders, praying, sharing stories, and sustenance” (Yedes et al. 2004, 675). Buna reinforces the value of community to enhance the quality of life and the critical role of women in reinforcing community ties. The ceremony for the VAIPL Earth Day celebration helped attendees understand how the climate crisis impacts communities globally, since coffee crops in certain parts of the world are at risk due to the impact of rising temperatures (Iscaro 2014). A second way VAIPL benefits from the diversity of faith traditions is expressed in the Unitarian Universalist’s 6th and 7th principles, “The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all,” and “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part” (Unitarian Universalist Association 2020, para. 8). The principles and the ceremony help VAIPL demonstrate an interfaith ideal that respects and supports the diverse traditions of its constituents and provides resources for creative moral imagining. Community sustainability is affirmed as a goal by researchers in the struggle for environmental justice. Melanie Barron (2017) identifies memory and place as undergirding values for communities experiencing remediation. She cites the value of memory and place as a missing component in the EPA’s efforts to remediate polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other pollutants in Anniston, Alabama. Community members experienced deep dissatisfaction with the EPA’s sterile, clinical, robotic approach to the loss of community. The remediation

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process became another experience of environmental violence to the community’s sense of wholeness (Barron 2017). As with the case in Anniston, the people VAIPL is called upon to serve and who work with VAIPL are mostly black, brown, elderly, poor and women. These are the Virginians most vulnerable to the impacts of severe weather events, rising sea levels, drought, soil and water contamination and who live along newly proposed fossil fuel infrastructure. Virginia’s activists are addressing specific cases of this today. VAIPL is unique among nonprofit grassroots organizations as it prioritizes a systemic vision for its engagement with communities in Virginia, refusing to disconnect and disorient contextual, historical and moral reasoning from practical organizing for environmental justice. This exploration investigates organizational values as well as the challenges and successes achieved by VAIPL. The goal of this chapter is to share lessons learned with similar organizations that are faith-based or seeking to center environmental justice with a moral framework. It also seeks to document the faith-based paradigm shift toward sustainability in Virginia as demonstrated through VAIPL’s goals and projects.

Case Study: Virginia Interfaith Power & Light Interfaith Power & Light (IPL) was born in 2000 with a mission to bring together all faith communities in a nationwide religious response to climate change, through energy conservation, energy efficiency and renewable energy (Interfaith Power & Light 2020). IPL sprouted out of an 1998 effort among Episcopal churches to collaboratively purchase renewable energy (Interfaith Power & Light 2020). VAIPL was originally founded as the Virginia affiliate of IPL in 2004 (Virginia Interfaith Power & Light 2014). VAIPL had early organizing success, but by 2012, it had lost its leadership and was waning in influence, separating at that time from the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy (VICPP). The current director and the chair were part of the relaunch in 2015 and recognized the unique perspective brought to the organization by the leadership of

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African American women. Each brought interests, passions and experiences to the task of rewriting VAIPL’s story. The authors have been direct witnesses of many of these developments. After the relaunch, the authors were able to observe VAIPL make the strategic decision to focus on climate and environmental justice and hence communities of color, low-income communities and frontline communities because they face disproportionately environmental burdens. The first year was difficult, with a number of original steering committee resignations, a miniscule operating budget and cumbersome mission and vision statements. The largely volunteer and limited part-time leadership found themselves subject to the agenda of the mainstream environmental nonprofit community rather than focusing on faith communities it sought to serve. One of the early tasks of the relaunch was to rewrite the mission and vision statements to reflect the new realities of the climate crisis in Virginia and the moral questions it raises. Being a faith-based organization, the steering committee felt it important to work to ensure that no population is left behind in the climate adaptation and a clean energy transition. The mission was clarified to express this commitment to justice in 2018. VAIPL’s new mission is to, “as people of faith, collaborate to grow healthy communities and advance climate justice through education, advocacy, and worship” (Virginia Interfaith Power & Light 2014, para. 3). The mission is currently fulfilled by encouraging state-level advocacy for equitable climate action, collaborating with grassroots climate organizations, planning events and training and mobilizing members of faith communities on the foundations of organizing and the theology of “creation care.” Creation care is the religious concept of humanity’s responsibility to be a caretaker of the Earth and all living creatures in response to the Creator’s call. The term surfaced within Evangelical circles during the late 1970s with personalities like Cal DeWitt of Calvin College among others (Frame 1996). VAIPL stands with communities resisting fossil fuel infrastructure, educates people of faith and conscience, encourages advocacy and aims to develop leadership on environmental justice issues. VAIPL participates in statewide climate and

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environmental justice planning and mobilization and provides regular digital communication to supporters. As observed, the organization believes that building power in localities through diverse grassroots climate leadership and holding state-level decision-makers accountable for equitable climate action will result in just policies. VAIPL’s leadership believes in winning real improvements for people’s lives, engaging those directly affected in planning and implementing strategies for a better world so that the powerful can no longer ignore them. VAIPL is a small organization and in December 2018 merged with the VICPP. VAIPL is led by a steering committee of faith leaders and advocates. The current steering committee as of January 2020 is 70% women and 50% women of color. According to Green 2.0 NGO Diversity Data (2018), for the year 2018, the average environmental nongovernmental organization (NGO) board was 40% female and only 21% people of color. According to the same report, in 2018, the senior staff of the average environmental NGO was only 21% people of color. The current chair and the director of VAIPL are both black women. VAIPL has over 4000 supporters across Virginia and has engaged approximately 420 faith communities and congregations. The organization aims to broaden its influence to serve faith communities across Virginia. Current areas of focus are Central, Southside, Shenandoah Valley and Hampton Roads. VAIPL recently expanded into the Southside area of Virginia, an area that contains few environmental organizers yet some of the largest black populations in the state, in the cities of Petersburg, Emporia, Danville, South Boston and Martinsville. Recent events in Virginia remind us of the deep racial context that VAIPL must navigate. In 2017, the city of Charlottesville experienced the “Unite the Right Rally” during which white supremacists and neo-Nazis rallied and a woman counter-protester was murdered. Racism has a long and painful history in Virginia: 2019 was the 400-year anniversary of the 1619 arrival of the first enslaved Africans in America, landing in what is now Hampton, Virginia. The VAIPL headquarters is in Richmond, VA, which was once the capital of the Confederacy. The office is located in a historic area known as “Shockoe Bottom,” nicknamed the “Devil’s Half

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Acre,” as it was home to one of the largest slave trading centers in the country (Edwards and Wilayto 2015). The continued devaluation of people of color in Virginia is seen through the proposed placement of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) compressor station in the historic African American freedmen community of Union Hill in Buckingham County. VAIPL has stood with this community and worked to garner statewide faith community opposition to the placement of this facility. VAIPL has worked with the Union Hill community, amplifying their call to faith communities of the danger posed by pipeline construction. The work includes generating public comments to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality opposing the placement of the compressor station, recruiting attendees to public hearings, organizing a prayer vigil, financially supporting community-led initiatives and coordinating a joint strategy.

Values: Constructing a New Theology The climate crisis in the United States has been framed as an economic challenge and a personal inconvenience. To mitigate the impact of greenhouse gases means in the minds of many Americans a sacrifice, a curtailing of personal freedoms, lack of easy access and painful change to their way of life (Irfan et al. 2019). They intuitively recognize that to make meaningful inroads against the climate trajectory requires systemic changes to economies, production of goods, food systems and consumer habits. For many, this is too risky and drastic. This convenience framing elevates the idea that Americans will be deprived by a loss of the material goods they love—gas-burning engines, single-use plastics—rather than focusing on the positive possibilities for an equitable economy as outlined in the Green New Deal (Irfan et al. 2019). The convenience framing minimizes the reality of climate change: half the world’s species set for extinction, enormous swaths of the Earth made uninhabitable for humans, failed food systems, massive migrations, mass starvation, wildfires, coastal flooding, severe storms, the spread of tropical diseases and then civil unrest and wars resulting from all these conditions (Wallace-Wells 2019). The world’s governments are unprepared to

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protect their citizens from these events. People on the margins will experience the burden of these realities more severely. The climate crisis is forcing moral questions: who deserves to earn a living, play, have peace and simply live on planet Earth? Therefore, advocacy organizations and scientists alike recognize the necessity of engaging religious communities and religious values to garner the critical mass necessary to create and implement policies that will build equity and resilience into our society. In order to transform the world’s economies, we must not shrink from the task of rethinking the ideologies which created these conditions in the first place. Given the statistics recently published by Yale’s Center for Climate Change Communications suggesting that 70% of Americans self-identify as Christians and are among those most skeptical of climate science, resistant to transitioning from fossil fuels and moving away from factory farming, it is critical for activists to address the religious imagination (Leiserowitz et al. 2019). To transition to a socially and environmentally sustainable economy based on renewables, climate advocates must have as their essential goal to influence a critical mass of these Americans to join the global movement. The task is most certainly a moral one. It is imperative to reshape the current religious narratives among religious communities from the colonialist view of Earth as a commodity. VAIPL seeks to engage with various faith communities, learning from their leadership, listening to and employing their sacred rhetoric as resources for its work for the Earth and the life it sustains. VAIPL has prioritized cultivating a religiously diverse steering committee and staff to authentically and organically create a moral vision on climate. Drawing from the wisdom of these traditions, VAIPL has identified several values critical for a new moral vision. First, VAIPL leadership adopted the Jemez Principles (Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice 1996) which define democratic processes of justice, mutuality, transparent governance from the bottom up, inclusion and the agency of community participants. Second, VAIPL leans into the Principles of Environmental Justice developed by delegates to the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in October 1991. The values behind the principles are:

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• admitting the creatureliness of human life; • no nationality or cultural group is superior to any other, and therefore, a respect for and appreciation for the beauty, intellect, creativity, cultural contributions of all peoples is a moral good; • all individual life forms are interconnected and interdependent with all other life forms; therefore • all life has value in itself without consideration for its monetary/service to humans (freedom for all living creatures and the Earth itself without domination and or exploitation). VAIPL’s advocacy work has evolved organically based on the above values through its efforts to seek common ground with the various world religious traditions including Muslim, African and Native American indigenous traditions, Buddhist, Christian (Catholic and Protestant), Pagan and others. Although the majority of VAIPL’s work is with the Christian community, the organization seeks to have a board and staff representative of different traditions and aims to draw from the wisdom of a diversity of sacred texts, stories and concepts from many communities when developing educational resources, engaging the public and making strategic decisions. The values VAIPL has curated echo the indigenous worldview encountered first by colonists in places such as Africa, the Caribbean and North and South America. Indigenous religious traditions demonstrate shared meaning with the land, animals and rivers, sky and landmarks. They identified with the land and remained connected to their ancestors and future generations through their relationship with the land. This sensibility may serve as a model for a moral vision of the environment which supports a radical restructuring of political and corporate systems. Land and water are life. The Earth is a living system with value not simply for what it produces, but for how it sustains life. This is witnessed in the biblical mandates in the Hebrew Bible’s Sabbath laws (Brueggemann 2014). On the seventh day, the Israelites were to rest— their servants, their animals and the land were to be given rest. The mandate for all to rest—all creatures and land—indicates the Creator’s concern for quality of life as well as equality. Humans, whether served or servant, were not singled out as superior or more deserving of rest than

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animals, plants and soil. Affirming the needs and values of all life, it also confirms the interdependence and relational nature of life. The people of faith were to rest to acknowledge the goodness of God’s provision, to reconnect to community, to put in balance the communal relationships among servant, householder, animals and the land (Brueggemann 2014). The Sabbath day rest flattened hierarchies and made equal the status of all who lived on the land. What VAIPL has found organically as a result of engagement with non-Christian traditions is this same reverence for life and creation found in the Sabbath mandate. Verily, in the creation of the heavens, and the earth and in the succession of night and day there are indeed messages for all who are endowed with insight.—Qu’ ran 3:19 0. This passage from the Qu’ran exalts creation. The messages creation has to tell are found in the succession of night and day. One who does not rest and who does not allow rest for servants, animals and land will most likely miss the provided insight. Common among many indigenous traditions globally is a deep profound recognition of and identification with land, what Melanie Harris (2017) names as “ecomemory”: Ecomemory refers to the collective and individual memory of the earth and relationship to and with the earth. It can be a collective set of values that guide the earth commitments of an entire community or a singular story that reflects themes or values about the environment and one’s connection to the earth. In many cases, ecomemory is passed down through different generations and considered part of family and communal legacy and intellectual heritage…Living close to nature black folks were able to cultivate a spirit of wonder and reverence for life. (Harris 2017, 28)

Rethinking the doctrine of creation suggests humility on the part of Christians and a recognition that conventional doctrine is a malady fueling the climate crisis. Rethinking the creation doctrine provides contemporary societies a glorious opportunity to re-engage with creation and remedy the inequities in current systems while reviving community ties, gaining new wisdom and restoring balance. A reverential appreciation that humans too are created beings is where restoration might begin.

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Through the colonizing project, Christian Europeans had lost a sense of their own creatureliness—that they too were part of creation. They identified with the role of arbiter, definer and owner of creation’s goods in the name of the church. This European or white supremacy must be dismantled and abandoned. What is called for in an equitable vision of creation and the environment is to revere and acknowledge the following features: the creation or environment as a good for its own sake, the interconnectedness and interdependence of all peoples and all life as one community, and democracy and equity in social and economic systems. Rethinking our common moral values is a critical aspect of VAIPL’s work and the organization attempts to practice and share this vision among the communities it serves and the government and corporations it challenges.

Challenges Faced The values of VAIPL are helping the organization to navigate through a number of challenges. One of the largest impacting the work of the organization is the broader cultural context in which their activism is taking place. The current political discourse in the United States is hyper-partisan marked by tribalism and seemingly irreconcilable ideas. Unfortunately, the issue of the environment and especially that of climate change has become polarized.

Misinformation, Rejection of Science and Politicization Starting in the 1980s, fossil fuel interests began a misinformation campaign focused on “reposition[ing] global warming as theory (not fact)” (Mulvey and Shulman 2015, 20), although the science on the matter had and continues to be clear. Fossil fuel companies have known that their products were harming the planet and have intentionally spread misinformation, much like the tobacco industry. Their campaign was extremely effective in confusing the public and swaying conservative

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politicians and has resulted today in a president of the United States who believes that climate change is a hoax. In addition to politicians, powerful faith leaders like Rev. Jerry Falwell Jr. and Pat Robertson have rejected climate science. Many white Evangelical Christians on the conservative right are dismissive of global warming. Many Evangelicals believe that the Bible instructs them to be skeptical of climate change; books like The Gospel of Climate Skepticism: Why Evangelical Christians Oppose Action on Climate Change show that their culture and social world reinforces this skepticism and anti-environment attitude (Veldman 2019). Rev. Richard Cizik, the longest-serving current member of the VAIPL Steering Committee and one of the founders of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, was forced to resign from his position at the National Association of Evangelicals because of his beliefs on same-sex unions and has been criticized from within the evangelical community for his creation care ministry and environmentalism (Gross 2010). The media has often portrayed the climate change issue as a matter of opinion—one with two sides rather than being a scientific fact about as undeniable as the theory of gravity. Public perception is therefore that there is widespread disagreement among experts in climate science when in reality there has been largely consensus. Thankfully, in 2020, it seems that a larger majority in the United States finally accepts anthropogenic climate change as scientific fact (Leiserowitz et al. 2019), although it is apparent that there are many climate obstructionists still blocking needed action.

Urgency of the Climate Crisis At this point, people across the world and right here in Virginia are being impacted (sea level rise, just transition for coal communities, disproportionate asthma rates for communities of color, etc.) as climate change is increasing their suffering and we watch it unfold on the news. So these difficulties must be addressed: families in Southwest Virginia need opportunities to transition from coal mining jobs; families in two corridors across Virginia are having land seized for unneeded pipelines; and

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in Southeastern Virginia sea level rise is causing flooding as severe as that found in any coastal zone in the country (Boon et al. 2018).

Viewing Climate Change as a Moral Issue Although the call to stewardship is a central tenet of most faiths, oftentimes VAIPL’s work is characterized as political. Reframing the issue from being thought of as a purely political one to a moral issue with deeply intertwined justice ramifications is a challenge that the organization confronts almost daily. In response to the politicized framing of climate change during this hyper-partisan time, VAIPL is working to change the view that dichotomies exist between concepts such as the environment and the economy, and between nature and people. A strong economy is portrayed as only coming at the expense of the environment, and humans are portrayed as being removed and completely separate from nature. Instead, VAIPL is working to grow the understanding that these divisions are not inevitable, that we create them. Humans are indeed part of nature and the only limit between environment and strong economy is imagination. Strong decoupling trends between carbon emissions and economic growth are evident in developed countries showing that both are possible at the same time (Wu et al. 2018). Even so, VAIPL argues that the current paradigm of endless economic growth is unsustainable and needs to be reevaluated.

Connecting Public Policy and Charity The 2018 United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report concluded that as a globe, we would need to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, and to achieve that goal, our emissions levels would need to drop before 2030 (down approximately 45%) (IPCC 2018). VAIPL has come to the conclusion that the fastest way to a solution to the climate crisis is to hold our decision-makers accountable on

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this issue through advocacy, lifting up the moral responsibility to act, and to the death and suffering caused by inaction. However, after faith communities realize the importance of caring for the Earth as a faithheld principle, VAIPL often has difficulty in mobilizing them to talk to decision-makers because of cultural barriers and views of this particular type of action being outside of the wheelhouse of faith communities. VAIPL makes the case that when people of faith are called to care for creation, a key aspect of that is advocating for sustainable solutions and challenging the policies that pollute and historically have brought destruction. These are the same policies that have created the problems of suffering and injustice that we are currently witnessing through the climate crisis. This call is uncomfortable for congregations as facing the reality of the climate crisis requires bravery to: • Assess the global magnitude, interconnectedness and scale of the issue, • Seek out information beyond what is presented by the media on the topic, • Elevate the suffering of poor communities, which can require addressing the negative consequences of capitalism, • Elevate the suffering of communities of color, which can require addressing the roots of white supremacy, and • Oppose respected, well-funded and powerful fossil fuel interests and their political ties. The interplay between the last three challenges is powerful as it requires that systemic issues be defined, recognized and addressed, such as the polluter-industrial complex, which is the systematic overlapping interest of political leaders and industry to weaken environmental, workplace and consumer protections, resulting in the intensifying of the ecological crisis around the world (Faber 2009).

Standing up to Powerful Polluters Challenging the polluter-industrial complex is another obstacle faced by VAIPL. For instance, in Virginia the ties between Dominion Energy, the

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largest utility monopoly in the state, and politicians have been close. As was found in a 2018 report by Food & Water Watch: Over the past 20 years Dominion has been the biggest corporate campaign donor in Virginia, with its political action committee (PAC) and employees pouring more than $10 million in contributions to Virginia candidates, campaigns and causes from 1998 to 2018. The generosity is bipartisan: 86 percent of Virginia legislators have received Dominion campaign cash. (Food and Water Watch 2018, para. 2)

The power held by polluters makes navigating every step of the political landscape difficult from initially getting the attention of decision-makers to recognize that there even is a problem to how that issue is ultimately addressed or swept under the rug.

Organizational Sustainability Another grave challenge for the organization is fundraising and organizational sustainability in the environmental justice space. Once VAIPL was relaunched, it seeked to work on the issue of environmental justice in solidarity with impacted communities. The movement for environmental justice is currently one of the most underfunded popular social movements (Faber and McCarthy 2005). “In the face of growing public awareness and outcry about the centuries-long injustices experienced by African Americans, Native Americans, new immigrants, and other marginalized groups” (Wolff et al. 2016, 42), the environmental justice movement mobilizes against the polluter-industrial complex’s corporate abuses of marginalized people’s lives, health and safety produced in its rush toward deregulation and privatization to boost earnings (Faber 2009). Within the environmental justice movement, “leaders emerged from groups of concerned citizens (many of them women) who see their families, homes, and communities threatened by some type of polluting industry or government policy” (Bullard 1993, 8). Differentiating them from the traditional environmental movement, these activists seek to integrate environmental concerns into broader societal needs having

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achieved mixed success (Pellow and Brulle 2005). The leadership of VAIPL, following this tradition, has witnessed threats in their own communities, such as the devastation from Hurricane Katrina in a community of color, and was seeking to address these threats and prevent them from repeating by raising community awareness and mobilizing the faith community into action. VAIPL also has had to face the reality that power is on the side of the foundation community. Historically, foundations have neglected environmental justice activists, who are often people of color and/or come from low-income communities. Resources are vital to successful movements and organizations. Further complicating the acquisition of resources is the struggle of the environmental justice movement to diversify funding streams and to build financial support from their own communities (Faber and McCarthy 2005). Diversified revenue streams containing fundraising events, corporate sponsors, multiple grants, major donors, monthly giving programs, online and mail appeals to donors bolster organizations. In the environmental justice community, it is important to keep in mind that a marginalized status means an inherent lack of financial resources complicating the building of a community donor base. This issue around fundraising, longevity and stability was one of the driving factors that led to VAIPL merging with VICPP at the end of 2018. In addition to negotiating the historical power held by foundations, VAIPL has also navigated the mainstream environmental community, which historically has lacked people of color and still holds significant influence when considering the grassroots base, political connections and resources, such as funds, technical expertise and staff. Coalition relationships must be carefully maintained to ensure that VAIPL’s comparatively small amount of capacity is not disproportionately directed and used to achieve the goals of other organizations, most of whom do not have a faith-centered approach and are not led by women of color. For example, coalitions can pull a small organization away from its mission, and yet such coalitions are critical to maintaining ties in hopes of greater funding.

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Intersectionality of Leadership’s Identity When Melanie Harris, author of Ecowomanism: African American Women and Earth-Honoring Faiths, discusses the lens of womanism, she explains that “the focus is on the beauty and complexity of black women’s lives and the depth of sheer wisdom that comes from black women who daily maneuver and survive shifting oppressive systems” (Harris 2017, 115). For the black women leaders of VAIPL, the intersectional nature and sustained struggle against systemic oppression is inherent to the work of caring for the Earth, they are coiled together. A challenge for VAIPL is that this is not understood by the mainstream, the truth that for women of color simply caring for themselves and their loved ones is political because of the historical theft of respect, agency and power. Racism and sexism, not only in the environmental nonprofit sector but within faith communities, must constantly be navigated and dismantled. Microaggressions experienced by the authors emphasize the importance of this womanist frame. As experienced by the authors, at times being the only person of color in the room with a natural hairstyle can lead to awkward situations. Additionally, a key audience of VAIPL is Protestant pastors where questions about women’s leadership roles in theological and ministry practices remain a challenge. The environment is feminized (Harris 2017), and this reality often directly impacts access to male-led congregations and opportunities to gain serious interest. As documented by Harris (2017), “The critical deconstructive analysis featured in ecowomanist thought reveals the systemic nature of parallel oppressions that black women and the earth face” (p. 18). Also revealed is the counterbalance of the ‘“agency producing and activist’ oriented recognition of solidarity between women of African descent and the earth” (Harris 2017, 18).

Successes Achieved Despite the challenges outlined, VAIPL has achieved a number of successes, such as elevating the importance of building community,

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caring for the planet as an act of worship, recognizing the centrality of race and working to elevate non-Christian perspectives. The urgent scientific projections of the timescale to limit carbon pollution globally and the colonialist impulse fueled by greed are overwhelming topics to face, much less to actively dismantle. VAIPL has conscientiously worked in the climate movement to center hope. Because a significant proportion of Virginians is feeling climate anxiety, the role of faith is critically important. The authors believe that it must be faith and hope that continue to motivate action. Without the centrality of those two values, the organization fears apathy, and pessimism may stall much needed efforts to take on the issue. Through events such as prayer vigils, group meditations and small group community discussions, VAIPL has made space to elevate a spiritual connection and call to action for activists in the environmental and climate movements to encourage one another. To stop the erasure and exploitation of communities and creatures alike, one must reaffirm the inherent value of all of creation and rejoice in diversity. One important way of doing this is by building community, especially through in-person meetings and on-the-ground conversations, such as in-person training. VAIPL also has been successful in uplifting a broader interpretation of the call to worship. To worship is to express adoration and reverence. It is impossible to show deep love and respect to anything while at the same time destroying that very thing. VAIPL sees the Earth as being a sacred gift and thus it being a duty growing out of love to care for it. Many faith traditions uphold a similar sacred duty of stewardship. Creation Care calendars for Lent and Ramadan are one of the ways that VAIPL is encouraging a reinterpretation of what it means to be an active participant in our faith. VAIPL has also been able to partner with a local seminary at a historically black college or university (HBCU), the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology at Virginia Union University, to collaborate in creating a summer-intensive as well as a full semester-long course centering the relationship between creation care, justice, theological underpinnings and the importance of civic engagement. To date, the

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courses have trained over 30 current and future clergy and faith leaders in the region. Also in collaboration with the seminary VAIPL helped organize and host a Creation Care conference where more than 200 participants took part over three days. The conference introduced matriculating students and alumni to local and national scientists, activists and organizations working to develop and adopt sustainability and resilience for vulnerable communities. Initiatives like Climate in the Pulpits, which VAIPL has worked on with local partner organizations, have encouraged faith communities to raise climate change as a part of their weekly sermon or other worship activities such as Bible studies. Over 70 Virginia congregations representing multiple faiths participated in the very first statewide Climate in the Pulpits in November 2019. The program reached over 4000 people in 34 cities. VAIPL counts its work with the people of Union Hill and the wider Buckingham community as successful though the fight continues to stop the needless construction of the ACP and the planned fracked-gas compressor station in the heart of their neighborhood. As publicized by Fjord (2018), this project’s close proximity of dangerous fossil fuel infrastructure to residents’ homes threatens the erasure of the community, including a historic black church and unmarked slave burial grounds. Success is measured by the opportunities VAIPL has had with Buckingham residents to listen to and amplify their voices, to learn and practice organizing strategies through shared planning of events and to assist with the community’s engagement with stakeholders such as legal representation, legislators, funders and corporate lobbyists. A way in which VAIPL endeavored to amplify the voice of the community was in the summer of 2018. VAIPL recruited faith leaders from across the state to tour the community, to talk to the residents and to take action in support. As a result, VAIPL (2018) released a report based on the delegation recommendations that brought additional media attention. VAIPL understands that the community makes decisions for itself, and organizationally, VAIPL is ready to support their efforts as they request and help meet their future goals as the organization is able.

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One significantly successful event VAIPL planned with Buckingham Union Hill residents was an interfaith prayer vigil, Stand with Union Hill Concert of Prayer, scheduled for the evening before the Air Pollution Quality Board air permit hearing for the proposed compressor station (Martin 2018). This was the last permit needed by Dominion Energy for permission to build the oversized capacity compressor station in the middle of the pristine African American residential community of Union Hill. Residents were wary and weary of the process having witnessed two board members who seemingly sided with them replaced by the governor a few short weeks earlier before this final decision was to be made. As observed by the authors, VAIPL called upon its network of interfaith clergy leaders to offer prayers, words, song and comfort to and for Union Hill residents. Buddhist, Sikh, Muslim, Jewish, Episcopal, Baptist, Methodist and Unitarian Universalist leaders as well as lay persons both agnostic and atheist participated. Union Hill residents gave witness to their ancestral struggle for dignity and humanity in the aftermath of chattel slavery. They told stories of their enslaved ancestors who after emancipation had earned enough money to purchase land to build modest homes and farms and to leave a legacy for their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. Members recited the names of over 50 enslaved people who had been buried in Union Hill whose memory had been archived at the University of Virginia since just after the Civil War. Current residents whose homes were closest to the proposed construction site shared their stories of decades of hard work, saving money, following all the social norms now retired and deserving of respite, but faced with complete destruction of their communal way of life. The Concert of Prayer attracted one hundred people of all faiths. They came to pray, sing and give comfort to the residents of Buckingham. The event ended in the early hours of the morning Figs. 15.1 and 15.2. Unfortunately, the air permit was eventually granted by the air board and the residents rebuffed, but their expressions of gratitude for the worship and support of that evening were what many said sustained them and inspired them to continue to challenge the construction. These

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Fig. 15.1

Union Hill community members share their stories

opportunities to worship and share as one interconnected humanity demonstrate the values VAIPL embraces. The high stakes of fossil fuel resistance struggles are highlighted here. Oftentimes, communities must not only battle pollution of the environment threatening their health and safety, but also fight erasure from memory and an assault on spiritual resiliency and community cohesion.

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Interfaith leaders offer prayers on behalf of the Union Hill community

Conclusion Since its relaunch in 2015, VAIPL has recognized race as being central to addressing climate and environmental justice in Virginia and more broadly in the United States. In order to address the centrality of race in the climate crisis, one must entertain a deep analysis of how we as a global community came to devalue the Earth and the life it sustains. Womanist analysis requires a commitment to debunk, dismantle and disentangle the religious meta-narratives fostered by Christian colonialism. This focus has been vital to the organization’s success as white supremacy

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derived from European imperialism is one of the foundations of the United States and is at the root of many different oppressions, including the disproportionate placement of environmental burdens in communities of color. Since VAIPL has merged with VICPP, VICPP has added racial justice advocacy to its mission. VAIPL continues to give regular workshops on environmental racism to faith communities. VAIPL continues to attract volunteers and members of diverse traditions, and it works to elevate non-Christian faith perspectives in an effort to remind its supporters that we share the world with many different types of people and we should aim to build community by flourishing together. By valuing difference, diversity and an interfaith perspective, the organization pushes back against dominance of a singular narrative as to why there is a moral call to care for the Earth. This chapter seeks to document the faith-based paradigm shift toward sustainability in Virginia as demonstrated through VAIPL goals and collaborative projects. The authors have experienced a growing awareness of a moral framing of environmental issues in Virginia in the past several years. Increasingly, mainstream environmental organizations are partnering with VAIPL to elevate the moral call and to diversify their coalition. Requests to write joint op-eds, speak at conferences, join councils and working groups to collaborate more fully are received regularly. VAIPL’s future is not yet clear. Barring some serendipitous events, funding and capacity will remain challenges in the near future. The merger with VICPP is just a year in, and staffing remains problematic due to budget constraints and availability of committed candidates. The leadership of VAIPL is in a unique position as women of color and faith to encourage and hold accountable a deeper reflection on environmental and climate justice among our partners in the climate movement. We take this unique role with great sobriety and humility and remain as committed as ever to do our part to challenge, comfort, advocate and strategize to realize VAIPL’s mission and vision of an interfaith community united in climate justice.

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NGO Diversity Data. (2018). Green 2.0. https://www.diversegreen.org/wp-con tent/uploads/2019/01/NGOs_30Jan2018.pdf. Accessed 20 October 2019. Pellow, D. N., & Brulle, R. (2005). Power, justice, and the environment: Toward critical environmental justice studies. In D. N. Pellow & R. Brulle (Eds.), Power, justice, and the environment: A critical appraisal of the environmental justice movement (pp. 1–22). Cambridge, MA: MIT. Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice. (1996). Jemez principles for democratic organizing. https://www.ejnet.org/ej/jemez.pdf. Accessed 20 Oct 2019. Unitarian Universalist Association. (2020, April 19). The Seven Principles. https://www.uua.org/beliefs/what-we-believe/principles. United Nations Human Rights Council. (2019). Climate change and poverty: Report of the special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/RegularSessions/ Session41/Documents/A_HRC_41_39.docx. Veldman, R. G. (2019). The gospel of climate skepticism why evangelical Christians oppose action on climate change. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Virginia Interfaith Power & Light. (2014). Virginia Interfaith Power & Light. https://vaipl.org/. Virginia Interfaith Power & Light. (2018). Our air, our lives: Religious fact-finding delegation to Buckingham county report. https://vaipl.org/wp-con tent/uploads/2018/08/Our-Air-Our-Lives-Religious-Fact-Finding-Delega tion-to-Buckingham-County-Report-08-16-2018.pdf. Walker, A. (1983). In search of our mothers’ gardens: Womanist prose. New York: Harvest Books. Wallace-Wells, D. (2019). The uninhabitable Earth: Life after warming. New York: Crown Publishing Group. Wolff, T., Minkler, M., Wolfe, S. M., Berkowitz, B., Bowen, L., Butterfoss, F. D., Christens, B. D., Francisco, V. T., Himmelman, A. T., & Lee, K. S. (2016). Collaborating for equity and justice: Moving beyond collective impact (Rep.). https://charterforcompassion.org/images/menus/commun ities/pdfs/2304_Wolff-Jan-NPQ-with-credits.pdf. Accessed 27 July 2018. Wu, Y., Zhu, Q., & Zhu, B. (2018). Decoupling analysis of world economic growth and CO2 emissions: A study comparing developed and developing countries. Journal of Cleaner Production, 190, 94–103. https://doi.org/10. 1016/j.jclepro.2018.04.139. Yedes, J., Clamons, R., & Osman, A. (2004). Buna: Oromo women gathering for coffee. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 33(6), 675–703.

Index

A

Accelerated Rural Development Organization (ARDO) 149–151, 154, 159, 161, 166 Adamah 50, 341, 343, 345, 347 African nature-society relationships 200 agency 7, 78, 101, 104, 109, 127, 140, 175, 176, 180, 189, 194, 218, 363, 372 agent ontology 98, 101, 103–105, 113, 117 agrarianism 315, 317, 318 akua 35 ALEPH 333 Alliance of Baptists 318 American Indian Movement 101 ancient Hungarian tradition 240 animal rights 23, 78 animist 20, 34

Anthropocene 2, 46, 56, 356 anthropocentric 6, 99, 233, 317, 350 aquifer depletion 138 Aral Sea 257, 259 Ascended Masters 131–133 assimilation 329, 335 Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) 362, 374

B

balance 23, 24, 28, 30, 36, 37, 133, 134, 156, 183, 187, 188, 247, 357, 365 baobab tree 154 Baptist 279, 375 Berry, Wendell 10, 312, 315, 317, 328 betweenness of place 86

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 S. E. Silvern and E. H. Davis (eds.), Religion, Sustainability, and Place, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7646-1

383

384

Index

biocentric 350 biocultural valuation 156 biodiversity 152, 166, 174, 190, 200, 209, 213, 216, 218, 266, 278 Black Church Food Security Network 314 body as a temple 10, 306, 314 bottled water 123, 128, 139 Buddhist 10, 17, 18, 25, 30–32, 358, 364, 375 buna ceremony 358

C

Calvinism 308 Canaan 7, 43–45, 47–49 Caponera, Dante 71, 72, 77, 78, 91, 94 Catholic Diocese of Idah 175, 177 Catholicism 235, 236 Celestial God Tengri 264 channeled texts 131 Christian Climate Action 279 church forests 9, 199–220 Church of the Brethren 312 City of Ten Thousand Buddhas 17, 30 Climate in the Pulpits 374 colonialist 11, 54, 356, 357, 363, 373 colonial science 214 community of place 280, 282, 292 community religion 20–22, 25, 26, 28 Community Resource Management Area (CREMA) 155, 166

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) 329–332, 335, 337, 343, 350 Congregationalist 27 conservation 9, 150, 156, 157, 166, 174, 201, 209, 211, 213–216, 218, 265, 267–270, 356 consumerism 10, 306, 312, 315, 339, 340, 343 convenience 362 cosmic mountain 128, 130 Council of Immokalee Workers 311 covenant 45–48, 51, 53, 55–57, 63, 208, 318 creation care 281, 285, 288, 315, 360, 367, 373, 374 creation from a droplet 86 creationist 286 creation spirituality 281, 288, 289

D

dark green religion 246 Darwin Initiative 213 deforestation 8, 158, 159, 164, 215, 216 degradation narrative 206, 207, 216, 217 deities 19, 103, 107, 153, 154, 166–168 Deloria, Vine 7, 97–99, 101–109, 112, 113, 116–119 development 3, 8, 15, 18, 19, 32, 78, 93, 94, 99, 118, 123, 129, 155, 156, 158, 159, 162, 174–176, 179, 180, 184, 185, 187–191, 193, 194, 200, 202, 211, 213, 219, 220, 228, 256,

Index

259, 261, 266, 271, 277, 278, 287, 350, 360 Diocesan Development Services (DDS) 175–181, 183, 185–195 dominion 281, 309, 370 Dominion Energy 369, 375 drought 44, 71, 82, 126, 137, 154, 167, 359

385

Ethiopia 166, 199–201, 203, 204, 211, 213, 215–217 Ethiopian Tewahido Orthodox Church (ETOC) 200, 204, 208, 213, 214 ethnographic 2, 9, 10, 82, 203, 281, 282, 290, 319 ethno-religious identity 328, 342 ethos 179, 241 Eucalyptus economy 207, 210 European Christian imperialism 356

E

ecocentric 6, 232, 233, 281 eco-community 228, 238, 240, 243, 247 EcoCongregation Scotland 279, 282–284, 286, 287 eco-justice 281, 285 ecological lifestyle 227, 235, 240, 245 ecologies of being 23 ecomemory 365 eco-spirituality 225, 226, 233, 234, 237, 238, 240, 247 ecosystem of light, song and prayer 62 eco-theology 7, 42, 208, 318 eco-village 9, 225–232, 234–247 eco-villagehood 235 ecowomanist 357, 372 Eightfold Path 30 energy conservation 359 Environmental Impact Report (EIR) 128, 129, 136, 138–141, 143 environmental justice 10, 27, 100, 278, 350, 358–360, 363, 370, 371, 377 Episcopal churches 359 Esoteric Ascensionists 131, 143

F

fair trade 277, 283, 285, 312, 313 Farmer Council (FC) 181–195 feminism/feminist 305, 356 fetish god 154 fetish shrine 153 Financial Services 175, 176, 180, 181, 184–189, 191–195 financial sustainability 188, 194 fire 85, 112, 114, 128, 133, 155, 160, 161, 211, 217 First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit 363 five lay precepts 17, 30 food insecurity 178, 344 food justice 10, 304, 312–314, 319, 338, 343, 344 food safety 10, 304, 306, 314 forest protection 199, 202, 203, 207, 208, 212, 217, 219

G

Gateway Neighborhood Association (GNA) 128, 137, 139

386

Index

genius loci 238 geography 2, 5, 16, 18–21, 208, 231, 259, 291, 319, 327–331, 346, 349 geography of concern 5, 349 geography of possibility 331 Ghana 8, 149, 151–163, 166, 167, 312 glasnost 258, 263, 270 gold mining 256, 271 governance 155, 180, 290, 357, 363 Green Bible 286 Green Christian 279 Green Group 287, 293 greening of religion hypothesis 280 Greening Our Street 293

H

habitat fragmentation 155 hadiths 71, 72, 76, 77, 82, 92 Hare Krishna 9, 16, 230, 236 harmony 22, 24, 30, 36, 142, 227, 236, 239, 241, 245, 263 Hasidism 61 Hawai‘i 18 Hawaiian religion 35 Hazon 336–339, 342–345, 347–349 healing-kahuna 18 hierophany 107 high resolution imagery 159, 162, 164, 165 Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis 334 homeland 27, 105, 117, 142, 253, 254, 317, 329, 346, 350

I

I AM 132–134, 136 identity 10, 152, 157, 166, 226, 239, 244, 245, 261, 289, 291, 332, 335–337, 342, 343, 345, 350 Igala 175, 177, 179–182, 195 imagery 72, 84, 93, 151, 159, 163, 204, 206, 207 imaginary 4, 265 implicit religion 309 indigeneity 46, 49, 53, 55, 57, 62, 63 indigenous 4, 7, 20, 26, 27, 33, 41, 42, 46–58, 60–63, 97, 98, 100, 103, 104, 108, 110, 112, 113, 117–119, 131, 142, 175, 176, 180, 181, 206, 357, 364, 365 indigenous Israelite wisdom 63 indigenousness 7, 42, 54–56, 62, 63 industrialism 306, 315 ineffable 25, 26, 29, 33 intentional communities 9, 227, 245 interconnectedness 37, 106, 350, 366, 369 interfaith 9, 10, 357, 358, 375, 378 interfaith prayer vigil 375 intersectionality 319 IPAT 210 Israel 7, 42, 49, 53–55, 57, 58, 61, 63, 84, 85, 329, 337, 344, 350 Issyk-Kul 256, 262, 264–267, 271 IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas 153

J

Jemez Principles 363

Index

Jewish 7, 9, 10, 16, 26, 42, 47, 48, 52–60, 62, 63, 84, 281, 305, 307–309, 318, 319, 328, 329, 332–344, 346–350, 375 Jewish community farm 338, 339, 342, 343, 345 Jewish Farmers Network 340 Jewish Farm School 336, 338, 341–343, 347 Jewish Food Movement (JFM) 10, 328, 329, 331–333, 335–347, 349 joint practice of faith 239 Judaism 6, 7, 10, 26, 41, 42, 47, 48, 50, 53, 55, 57, 58, 62, 63, 333–335, 340, 342

K

Kabbalah 59–61, 328 Kabbalist 30, 59–61 kapu 34, 35 keyword approach 76 kojo shaykhs 267 Kpalevorgu 154 Kumtor 260–263, 266, 271 Kumulipo 34 kut 268 Kyrgyz 9, 256, 261–265, 267, 271 kyrgyzchylyk 265, 266, 271, 272 Kyrgyzstan 9, 256, 259–264, 266, 267, 270, 271

L

land cover classification 162 landscape imagery 85 Laudato si 174, 233, 278

387

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Neighborhood Development (LEED ND) 99 life-force 125 life-giving 86, 90 living energy 102, 103, 107 locavore 314, 315 logging 155, 161 Longhouse 358 Lummi 7, 114, 116

M

macrocosm 241 Magfalva 228, 236 Malshegu Sacred Grove 154 Manas 263 mashaykhs 267 matter-energy 102, 104, 105, 119 mazars 266–269, 271 metaphysics 60, 98, 99, 101, 108, 118, 119, 125 Methodist 279, 310, 313, 319, 358, 375 microcredit 184, 186 Missionary Sisters of the Holy Rosary (MSHR) 177, 178, 191 modernity 1, 8, 28, 58, 264 moisture 85, 86 Moku-ahupua‘a 35 more-than-human world 42, 61, 62 Mt. Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center 129, 136, 138 Muhammad 71, 77, 79, 89, 92 Muslim 7, 10, 29, 49, 56, 72, 76–78, 83, 84, 92–94, 267, 358, 364, 375

388

Index

N

national identity 49, 256, 261, 263, 264, 266, 269, 271, 350 nationalism 9, 253–255, 258, 264, 267, 270–272, 350 native faith 240 Native Gathering Garden 110, 111, 113, 117, 119 native tradition 240 Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU) 213 nature faith 225, 240–242, 246 neo-Malthusian 209, 214, 215, 217, 219 neo-Paganism 240, 241 New Age 131, 132, 333 New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good 367 Nigeria 8, 175–178, 184, 187, 192, 194 noble savage 242, 266 nuclear testing 257

O

oil economy 176 Oja 180–183, 193 Operation Noah 279 oral history 154, 167 oral tradition 22, 23 Orthodox Christianity 264

peasants 4, 28, 174, 236, 239, 241, 244, 309 place 4–11, 23, 25, 28, 30, 32, 33, 44, 46, 48, 50, 52, 53, 62, 71, 72, 75, 76, 79, 81, 84, 85, 89, 93, 97–100, 102–110, 112, 113, 115–119, 124–126, 129, 141, 143, 153, 157, 174, 193, 195, 203, 212, 217, 226, 229, 231, 234, 235, 237, 238, 241, 243, 245, 255, 265, 267, 281, 288, 290, 291, 293, 294, 303, 304, 310–312, 315, 318–320, 327–329, 331, 332, 336, 341, 343, 345, 346, 349, 350, 358, 363, 364, 366 place as relationship 102, 109, 117 place as sanctuary 105 places of repair 7, 97, 100, 108–110, 115, 116, 118 planning 18, 78, 99, 123, 127, 150, 189, 195, 244, 360, 361, 374 political ecology 202, 255, 256, 266, 270, 271, 330 polyvocality 271 Pope Francis 15, 173, 174, 232 Portland, Oregon 7, 109–111 poverty 27, 178, 179, 184, 186, 190, 213, 310 preservationist 128, 219 Promised Land 57 purity 76, 90, 125, 133–135, 141, 208, 209, 214, 305–307, 311, 334

P

Palestine 42, 48, 53, 54, 56, 60, 61 Panther Meadows 126, 127, 129, 130

Q

Quaker 16, 311

Index

Qur’an 7, 25, 71, 72, 75–77, 79–84, 86, 89–94

R

radical rural spatiality 231 rain 23, 24, 43–45, 47, 51, 55, 79, 82–85, 87–90, 167, 226 received wisdom 200, 214, 217, 218 reciprocity 101, 108–110, 117, 119 religion as methodology 29, 30 religion as practice 4, 7, 16, 17, 26, 28, 54, 208, 237, 238 religion on the ground 281 religious-based conservation 199 religious tolerance 238 Renewal Movement 10, 328, 333–335, 342 reserve 8, 157, 159, 219, 257, 259, 265 resource nationalism 9, 254, 261, 262, 264, 270, 271 restoration 264, 365 roots 4, 10, 62, 83, 280, 305–307, 314, 319, 332–334, 342, 369, 378

S

sabbatical 45, 47, 341, 344, 345 sacred boundary 166 sacred mountain 43, 124, 128, 131 sacred spring 8, 126 Saint Francis 232, 244 Saint Germain 132 salvation 24, 25, 80, 267, 307 scale of concern 329, 347, 348 scientific imaginary 214, 215 selfishness 24, 30

389

selflessness 29, 31, 33 sense of place 5, 6, 290, 293 settler 53, 56, 57, 97, 100, 104, 113, 116, 350 settler colonialism 5, 42, 53, 54, 100, 117 Shabbat 45, 338, 341 Shasta Springs 135, 136 Shmitah 45 significant biocultural area 153 Sikh 375 sin 15, 22, 26, 50, 90, 106, 233, 241 Sisters of Earth 316 social capital 174, 208, 212 social justice 3, 27, 100, 281, 285, 294, 331, 333, 335, 336, 338, 344 soil quality 190, 339 solar panels 286, 291, 293, 294 space 7, 54, 81, 101, 105, 106, 109, 110, 113, 116, 202, 208, 209, 214, 218, 231, 237, 254, 266, 269, 270, 282, 289, 313, 328, 331, 332, 345, 346, 370, 373 spatiality 231 spiritual commons 207, 268 spiritual tourism 8, 128, 136, 137, 141, 143 stewardship 132, 166, 281, 286, 309, 315, 319, 334, 336, 368, 373 stranger 45, 49, 50, 52, 53, 56, 57, 112, 114, 167, 315, 344 Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) 177, 184, 191 Sufi 30, 72, 75, 79–81, 90, 92 Sufi spirituality of water 80 Sukkot 47, 55, 341

390

Index

sunnah 71, 77, 79 sustainability 2–7, 9, 10, 24, 26, 28, 35, 42, 45, 47, 58, 59, 72, 76, 80, 83, 86–89, 91–93, 139, 187, 190, 195, 200, 202, 228, 235, 236, 247, 255, 256, 262, 266, 267, 269–271, 278, 279, 281, 285, 291, 294, 304, 318–320, 328, 329, 336, 337, 356, 358, 359, 370, 374, 378 sustainability discourse 3, 219, 225, 247, 315, 328, 340, 343, 350 sustainable urbanism 97, 99, 100, 108, 109, 117–119 T

Tabot 208, 209 Talmud 328, 340 timber industry 158 Torah 43, 44, 46–49, 51, 52, 54, 56, 58–60, 62, 328, 336, 340, 344 totem pole journey 114–117 trust 175, 193, 239, 240 U

unconditioned state of being 29 Union Hill 362, 374–377 Unitarian Universalist 358, 375 United Farm Workers (UFM) 311 United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 368 universalizing religion 20, 25–30

vegetarianism 304, 306, 307, 309 Virginia Interfaith Power & Light (VAIPL) 10, 357–378 Volta Region 149–151, 161, 163, 164, 166

W

water activism 124, 125, 127, 136 water-environment-society relations 85 Water Flows Free (WFF) 128, 137, 138 Water is Life 126, 130, 141 water karma 125 water law 7, 71, 72, 76–79, 90–94 water management 71, 77–79, 81, 92 water quality 72, 78, 79, 137, 141 water supply 72, 76, 141 We Advocate Thorough Environmental Review (W.A.T.E.R) 128, 129, 138–141 Welcoming the Camas 109, 118 Western bias 19 Winnemem Wintu 8, 125–130, 132, 138, 140, 142, 143 womanist 10, 356, 372, 377

Y

yam 192, 193 yogi 30

Z V

Vancouver, Washington 114, 115

zapovednik 265 Zionist 53–55, 332, 350