Spiritual ecology is an emerging field in religion, conservation, and academia that proposes that there is a spiritual facet to all issues related to conservation, environmentalism, and earth stewardship. Proponents of spiritual ecology assert a need for contemporary nature conservation work to include spiritual elements and for contemporary religion and spirituality to include awareness of and engagement in ecological issues.
Introduction Contributors in the field of spiritual ecology contend there are spiritual elements at the root of environmental issues. Those working in the arena of spiritual ecology further suggest that there is a critical need to recognize and address the spiritual dynamics at the root of environmental degradation.
The field is largely emerging through three individual streams of formal study and activity: science and academia, religion and spirituality, and ecological sustainability.
Despite the disparate arenas of study and practice, the principles of spiritual ecology are simple: In order to resolve such environmental issues as depletion of species, global warming, and over-consumption, humanity must examine and reassess our underlying attitudes and beliefs about the earth, and our spiritual responsibilities toward the planet.This theme is developed further in the work of Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Sandra Ingerman, Joanna Macy, David Abram, Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim: http://fore.research.yale.edu, Leslie Sponsel: http://spiritualecology.info, and others. U.S. advisor on climate change, James Gustave Speth, said:
Thus, it is argued, ecological renewal and sustainability necessarily depends upon spiritual awareness and an attitude of responsibility. Spiritual ecologists concur that this includes both the recognition of creation as sacred and behaviors that honor that sacredness.
Recent written and spoken contributions of Pope Francis, particularly his May 2015 Encyclical, Laudato si', as well as unprecedented involvement of faith leaders at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in ParisVidal, John. "Religious leaders step up pressure for action on climate change", The Guardian, December 4, 2015. reflect a growing popularity of this emerging view. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated on December 4, 2015, that
History Spiritual ecologists have identified the Scientific Revolution—beginning the 16th century, and continuing through the Age of Enlightenment to the Industrial Revolution—as contributing to a critical shift in human understanding with reverberating effects on the environment. The radical expansion of collective consciousness into the era of rational science included a collective change from experiencing nature as a living, spiritual presence to a utilitarian means to an end.Mary Evelyn Tucker, "Complete Interview", Global Oneness Project video. See also: Worldviews & Ecology: Religion, Philosophy, and the Environment, Mary Evelyn Tucker and John A. Grim (eds.), and the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology.
During the modern age, reason became valued over faith, tradition, and revelation. Industrialized society replaced agricultural societies and the old ways of relating to seasons and cycles. Furthermore, it is argued that the growing predominance of a global, mechanized and commercialized worldview, a collective sense of the sacred was severed and replaced with an insatiable drive for scientific progress and material prosperity without any sense of limits or responsibility.
Some in spiritual ecology argue that a pervasive patriarchal competitive world-view, and a monotheistic religious orientation towards a transcendent divinity, is largely responsible for destructive attitudes about the earth, body, and the sacred nature of creation.See Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, The Return of the Feminine and the World Soul, ch. 3, "Patriarchal Deities and the Repression of the Feminine". Thus, many identify the wisdom of indigenous cultures, for whom the physical world is still regarded as sacred, as holding a key to our current ecological predicament.
Spiritual ecology is a response to the values and socio-political structures of recent centuries with their trajectory away from intimacy with the earth and its sacred essence. It has been forming and developing as an intellectual and practice-oriented discipline for nearly a century.See Leslie E. Sponsel, Spiritual Ecology: A Quiet Revolution, chapter III, "Branches", pages 69–83 and specifically chapter 12, "Supernovas".
Spiritual ecology includes a vast array of people and practices that intertwine spiritual and environmental experience and understanding. Additionally, within the tradition itself resides a deep, developing spiritual vision of a collective human/earth/divine evolution that is expanding consciousness beyond the dualities of human/other, human/earth, heaven/earth, mind/body. This belongs to the contemporary movement that recognizes the unity and interrelationship, or "interbeing", the interconnectedness of all of that is creation.
Spiritual visionaries carrying this thread include Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) who founded the spiritual movement of anthroposophy, and described a "co-evolution of spirituality and nature"Leslie E. Sponsel, Spiritual Ecology: A Quiet Revolution, page 66. and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), a French Jesuit and paleontologist who spoke of a transition in collective awareness toward a consciousness of the divinity within every particle of life, even the most dense mineral. This shift includes the necessary dissolution of divisions between fields of study as mentioned above. "Science, philosophy and religion are bound to converge as they draw nearer to the whole", said Teilhard.Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, page 30.
Thomas Berry (1914–2009), the American Passionist priest known a 'geologian', has been one of the most influential figures in this developing movement, with his stress on returning to a sense of wonder and reverence for the natural world. He shared and furthered many of Teilhard de Chardin's views, including the understanding that humanity is not at the center of the universe, but integrated into a divine whole with its own evolutionary path. This view compels a re-thinking of the earth/human relationship: "The present urgency is to begin thinking within the context of the whole planet, the integral earth community with all its human and other-than-human components."Thomas Berry, The Great Work, page 105.
Leaders in Buddhism including the Engaged Buddhism movement, historically identify a need to return to a sense ones innate inborn nature that is part of the Earth.Confino, Jo. "Beyond environment: falling back in love with Mother Earth", The Guardian, Feb. 2010. Joanna Macy describes a collective shift – referred to as the "Great Turning" – taking humanity into a new consciousness in which the earth is not experienced as separate. Sufi teacher Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee similarly grounds his spiritual ecology work in the context of a collective evolutionary expansion towards oneness, bringing us all toward an experience of earth and humanity – all life – as interdependent. In the vision and experience of oneness, the term "spiritual ecology" becomes, itself, redundant. What is earth-sustaining is spiritual; that which is spiritual honors a sacred earth.
An important element in the work of these contemporary teachers is the call for humanity's full acceptance of responsibility for what we have done – physically and spiritually – to the earth. Only through accepting responsibility will healing and transformation occur.Also see the video Taking Spiritual Responsibility for the Planet with Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, and Engaged Buddhism
Including the need for a spiritual response to the environmental crisis, Charles, Prince of Wales in his 2010 book Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World, writes: "A specifically mechanistic science has only recently assumed a position of such authority in the world... (and) not only has it prevented us from considering the world philosophically any more, our predominantly mechanistic way of looking at the world has also excluded our spiritual relationship with Nature. Any such concerns get short shrift in the mainstream debate about what we do to the Earth."Charles HRH The Prince of Wales. Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World, chapter 1, pages 10–11. Prince Charles, who has promoted environmental awareness since the 1980s,Gayathri, Amrutha. "Prince Charles Warns of 'Sixth Extinction Event', Asks People to Cut Down on Consumption", International Business Times, September 9, 2011. continues:
In May 2015 Pope Francis's Encyclical, "Laudato Si': On Care for our Common Home", endorsed the need for a spiritual and moral response to our environmental crisis, and thus implicitly brings the subject of spiritual ecology to the forefront of our present ecological debate. This encyclical recognizes that "The ecological crisis is essentially a spiritual problem",'Metropolitan John Zizioulas: Laudato Si' give Orthodox 'great joy'", Vatican Radio, June 16, 2015. in line with the ideas of this developing field. American environmentalist, author, and journalist Bill McKibben who has written extensively on the impact of global warming, says that Pope Francis has "brought the full weight of the spiritual order to bear on the global threat posed by climate change, and in so doing joined its power with the scientific order".McKibben, Bill. "Pope Francis: The Cry of the Earth", New York Review of Books, NYDaily, June 18, 2015.
Scientist, environmentalist, and a leader in sustainable ecology David Suzuki also expresses the importance of including the sacred in addressing the ecological crisis:
A Catholic nun interviewed by Sarah MacFarland Taylor, author of the 2009 book, Green Sisters: Spiritual Ecology, articulates this perspective of unity: "There is no division between planting new fields and prayer."See Harvard University Press, Interview with Sarah McFarland Taylor on the HUP Podcast.
Indigenous wisdom Many in the field of spiritual ecology agree that a distinct stream of experience threading throughout history that has at its heart a lived understanding of the principles, values and attitudes of spiritual ecology: indigenous wisdom. The term "indigenous" in this context refers to that which is native, original, and resident to a place, more specifically to societies who share and preserve ways of knowing the world in relationship to the land.John Grim, "Recovering Religious Ecology with Indigenous Traditions", available online at: Indigenous Traditions and Ecology, Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology. For many Native traditions, the earth is the central spiritual context.Mary Evelyn Tucker and John A. Grim (eds.), Worldviews & Ecology: Religion, Philosophy, and the Environment, page 11. This principle condition reflects an attitude and way of being in the world that is rooted in land and embedded in place.Tu Wei-Ming, "Beyond Enlightenment Mentality", published in Worldviews & Ecology: Religion, Philosophy, and the Environment, Mary Evelyn Tucker and John A. Grim (eds.), page 27. Spiritual ecology directs us to look to revered holders of these traditions in order to understand the source of our current ecological and spiritual crisis and find guidance to move into a state of balance.
Features of many indigenous teachings include life as a continual act of prayer and thanksgiving, knowledge and symbiotic relationship with an animate nature, and being aware of one's actions on future generations. Such understanding necessarily implies a mutuality and reciprocity between people, earth and the cosmos.