Faith in Nature: Environmentalism as Religious Quest

Foreword: Searching for the God in All Things

foreword Searching for the God in All Things William Cronon is environmentalism a religion? Even to ask the question may seem outlandish. Those who follow more traditional faiths may think it nearly heretical to identify religious tendencies in an intellectual and political movement that is often so materialist and anti-metaphysical in its impulses. To worship the earth and its creatures instead of a transcendent deity might seem the very antithesis of religion. Looked at from this perspective,environmentalismmightmoreappropriatelybelabeledaform of atheism, and surely many of its followers would be quite content with that label. Indeed, at least a few environmentalists will undoubtedly be disturbed by the suggestion that concern about pollution or biodiversity or global climate change might be anything other than purely rational. What could be more practical or worldly than caring about the survival of our earthly home? Why would religion have anything to do with that? And yet environmentalism does share certain common characteristics with the human belief systems and institutions that we typically label with the word religion. It oªers a complex series of moral imperatives for ethical action, and judges human conduct accordingly. The source of these imperatives may not appear quite so metaphysical as in other religious traditions, but it in fact derives from the whole of creation as the font not just of ethical direction but of spiritual insight. The revelation of seeing humanlifeandtheuniversewhole,intheirfullinterconnectedcomplexity, can evoke powerful passions and convictions ranging from the mystical to the missionary. Certain landscapes—usually the wildest and most natural ones—are celebrated as sacred, and the emotions they inspire are akin xi to those we associate with the godhead in other faith traditions. Much environmental writing is openly prophetic, oªering predictions of future disaster as a platform for critiquing the moral failings of our lives in the present. Leave out the element of divine inspiration, and the rhetorical parallels to biblical prophecy in the Hebrew and Christian traditions are often quite striking. Maybe most important, environmentalism is unusual among political movements in oªering practical moral guidance about virtually every aspect of daily life, so that followers are often drawn into a realm of mindfulness and meditative attentiveness that at least potentially touches every personal choice and action. Environmentalism, in short, grapples with ultimate questions at every scale of human existence, from the cosmic to the quotidian, from the apocalyptic to the mundane. More than most other human endeavors, this is precisely what religions aspire to do. Thomas Dunlap’s Faith in Nature: Environmentalism as Religious Quest is an extended meditation on these convergences between environmentalism and other religious traditions. Because some potential readers of thisbookmayinitiallybesurprisedby—orevenresistantto—itscoreclaim that our understanding of environmentalism can be substantially enriched by exploring its religious aspects, it may be even more helpful than usual to know something about why this particular author was drawn to this particular project in the first place. Readers should know that Tom Dunlap is among the leading environmental historians and historians of science in the United States. He has made substantial contributions to our understanding of environmental thought and politics, starting with his pioneering book DDT: Scientists, Citizens, and Public Policy and ranging outward from there to such disparate topics as the history of American predator control and the comparative history of nature writing in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Originally trained as a chemist, he has a rigorous understanding of science and appreciates its vital importance to environmental thought. He writes as someone who cares enormously about environmental issues, and who has the technical skills to explore them in their full complexity. But Tom Dunlap is also a devout practicing Catholic who believes that the insights of religious revelation need not be necessarily at odds with Foreword xii the insights of scientific investigation (including Darwinian evolution). As he explains in the opening section of Faith in Nature, he grew up in theWhiteMountainsof NewHampshireasthechildof parentswhotaught him science and religion in equal measure. A passionate birdwatcher from anearlyage,hespenthisboyhoodhikingtrailsthatcarriedhimeverdeeper into the wonders of a natural world that has been every bit as much a source of ultimate meaning in his life as it has been for so many others of us who call ourselves environmentalists. Because he was initially drawn to a scientific career before eventually making his way to the history of science and environmental history, he found himself pursuing a long personal quest to discover how his religious faith and his science might inform each other. Although...