Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future (review)

In the past few years, scholars of religion have begun to muse about the extent to which there is a developing environmentalist or "green" religion. In the latest (fifth) edition of his widely used college textbook Experiencing the World's Religions, for instance, Michael Molloy speculates about whether there is an emerging global green "super-religion." Of course, terms like that raise a host of questions, not least whether such terminology is in fact claiming a kind of ascendancy of environmentalism over traditional religions. And can one really speak of environmentalism or nature spirituality as a religion or religious tradition? In his new book Dark Green Religion, Bron Taylor, professor of Religion and Nature at the University of Florida, offers his survey of the history and contemporary influences of nature spirituality, and argues that contemporary environmentalism amounts to an emergent green religion.

JSR readers will be familiar with Taylor's work from his article in our journal on the origins and history of radical environmental thought, but the scope of Dark Green Religion is far wider. Here, Taylor begins by differentiating his terms, not only institutional "religion" from the more inwardly directed "spirituality," but also "green religion"—"which posits that environmentally friendly behavior is a religious obligation"—and "dark green religion"—"in which nature is sacred, has intrinsic value, and is therefore due reverent care" (10). His book focuses, then, not on how traditional religions incorporate ecological concerns, but on how we find today a growing "earth-based" global religious current that manifests itself in neopaganism as well as in a panoply of not overtly religious forms, including, Taylor holds, contemporary films, music, and art.

The primary significance of this book for readers interested in contemporary radicalism is, of course, the extent to which dark green religion or spirituality informs political activism. And indeed, Taylor discusses authors with whom readers of JSR will be familiar, such as the primitivist John Zerzan and the radical environmentalist Derrick Jensen, as well as many others, both prominent and lesser known. Taylor remarks that "there is a permeable border between radical environmental spirituality and that which appears in the wider environmental milieu" (92). He mentions Jensen's encouragement of radical illegal actions (in Endgame, blowing up dams), but quickly moves to much less incendiary figures like the writers associated with the magazine Orion. He concludes the chapter on "radical environmentalism" by asking rhetorically "how long is the shadow of dark green religion?" The next chapter is on the sunny side of life—"Surfing Spirituality"—implying the shadow is not very long at all.

The subtext of Dark Green Religion is expressed in the subtitle, Nature Spirituality and the Global Future. The title and the book implies that our collective global future is tied to the growth and success of environmental religion. As a result, the more activist kinds of radical environmentalism are subordinated to the more publicly palatable ones, and a group like Earth Liberation Front appears only once in the text. Of course, this makes sense because the book is primarily about nature religion, not about radical political activism. Still, JSR readers will not find here very much exploring of the radical activist "shadow" of dark green religion, and quite a bit on the sunnier subjects of surfing, films, music, and festive tribalesque gatherings. To what extent is there a movement across the permeable border between popular social manifestations like these and more radical kinds of environmentalist activism? Dark Green Religion does not demonstrate much interest in this kind of question.

Rather, Dark Green Religion is a significant contribution to literature on and of the phenomenon its author seeks to name and to define. And the book does describe an array of ecological impulses expressed in diverse global forms. That ecological awareness and activism are much more widespread than in the past is without doubt. That nature spirituality is to some extent waxing, I accept. Neopaganism and related new religions...