This week, religious scholar Mary Evelyn Tucker unpacks the entanglement of religion and ecology from an academic perspective. She and Nate discuss what the roots of environmental ethics in religions all over the world look like and how they’ve been evolving in the face of a climate and biodiversity crisis. Could we learn and leverage the uniting power of religion to help us organize and mobilize against impending global crises?
Mary Evelyn is a Senior Lecturer and Research Scholar at Yale University where she has appointments in the School of Forestry and the Environment as well as the Divinity School and the Department of Religious Studies, with a specialty in Asian religions. She teaches in the joint MA program in Religion and Ecology and directs the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale University. Her concern for the growing environmental crisis, especially in Asia, led her to co-organize a series of ten conferences on World Religions and Ecology at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard, which were highly successful.
Find out more, and show notes: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/40-mary-evelyn-tucker
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Heck yeah, Thursday is Nate day!
Forgive me needing to edit, but after this theology conversation I am reminded of a philosophy favorite from José Ortega y Gasse, "I am I in my circumstance". We are not just in our environment, it is us throughout.
Allan Watts over 50 years ago said 'We are enacting a ghastly version of the old testament line that all the mountains shall be laid low and the valleys exulted…'. A favorite, Joseph Campbell near end of his life around 1988. Last episode with Bill Moyers https://youtu.be/smzgBlfE16A
Read free Mohamad Musman book "Philosophy of Future of Artificial Intelligence" Who are WE
A dialogue with Nate and Alex Epstein would be an interesting contrast to Mary E. Tucker.
I'm sleepless about these things too.
I can give a personal anecdote. When I was a young adult, I asked the pastor of my Houston church why we had air conditioning in our church building when so many people around the world hadn't yet heard about Jesus. Wouldn't it be better to spend our tithes on missions? He looked at me like I was crazy.
In hindsight, most "believers" just want to be comfortable in their lives and don't really care about others– despite giving lip service about love/ righteousness/ mercy and justice. People are selfish unless they have been enlightened (oneness with everything, ego death). Probably only 1% of the population is truly enlightened. Esoteric (gnostic) sects went underground– despite having a better worldview than Christianity– because of persecution from the Church. The majority won, and countless wars/ wealth inequality/ colonialism followed. As a collective, humanity reaped what it sowed.
As a deconvert, I can tell you what most evangelicals are like: they are not going to change their theology to eat less meat, have fewer kids or stop driving SUVs. They will insist that God wants to "bless" them with prosperity. They will insist that their faith means that they don't have to change anything about how they live ("faith alone" for salvation).
In other words, religion is part of the problem. It justifies destroying the world because God can just create a new one! Earth does not matter compared to heaven.
I understand the passion for creating a better theology to improve society. It is a difficult task. Developing the theology itself is quite easy, but getting people to actually change their behavior/ worldview is not so easy. I hate to say it, but this interview feels too academic and idealistic (not practical) for the big changes we will need. Let's not forget there are still plenty of Christians who think the world is only 6,000 years old (I used to be one of them).
The Luthern religious denomination does not care in the least about Mother Earth.
Organised religion will be the eventual death of this world.
"We did some reinterpreting". If you start reinterpreting and messing with existing translations you can make any text say anything you want. Religions are much more controlled by the current politics of the power structures in place, rather than any foundational texts or even ancient interpretive traditions (which just get reinterpreted for today anyway).
Many, many Christians in positions of political and economic power today interpret "dominion" in the sense of ownership and total freedom to use, in any way we want. God will simply give us more if we are devoted enough. Stewardship and conservation are, ironically enough, not typically of much concern to these so-called conservatives!
I believe that there are stories of Buddhist who set an example of their commitment to truth by setting fire and killing themselves. That level of protest may be the only way to take power into ones own hands. We are all cogs in the wheel and can't get off this ride by any other means.