Usurping “Religion” as a Means for Achieving Moral Authority in a Culture Seemingly Bent on Destroying the Environment

A recent court ruling in the UK underlines an unusual phenomenon that involves both religious expression and environmental resistance, a coupling which, according to some, is on the rise. Mr Justice Michael Burton, who ruled that Tim Nicholson, a sustainability manager for a large company, was wrongly dismissed because of his “green” views, granted him the same legal protection against discrimination for his environmental beliefs as that for a religious belief. In his decision, the judge wrote, “A belief in man-made climate change, and the alleged resulting moral imperatives, is capable if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations” (Hickman, 2009). These regulations, of course, are binding legislation in the UK. Obviously delighted by the decision, Nicholson described his “belief” to reporters as:

[A] philosophical belief based on my moral and ethical values underpinned by scientific evidence and that’s the distinction [with it being a religious belief] I think. The moral and ethical values are similar to those that are promoted and adopted by many of the world’s religions. (Hickman, 2009)

Consider another scenario. After having co-founded Greenpeace in 1972, Paul Watson left in 1977 to found the more aggressive Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which works to defend marine life and ecosystems from destructive human practices, such as whaling and seal pup hunting. Watson recounts an episode in rough seas when he failed to prevent the harpooning of one sperm whale. According to Watson:

The whale wavered and towered motionless above us. I looked up … into a massive eye the size of my fist – an eye that reflected back intelligence, an eye that spoke wordlessly of compassion, an eye that communicated that this whale could discriminate and understand what we had tried to do … (Quoted in Taylor, 2010: 98)

Watson is antagonistic to the world’s dominant religions, which he claims promote and justify the violence, bigotry and anthropocentrism that lead to such destructive practices. He has urged people to abandon these religions in favour of “a religion that incorporates all species and establishes nature as sacred and deserving of respect” (Quoted in Taylor, 2010).

What are we to make of these cases? Religion and environment scholar Bron Taylor believes that the environmentalism presented by both Nicholson and Watson is indeed a form of religion, a dark green religion, as he labels it in his recent book, Dark Green Religion: Nature, Spirituality and the Planetary Future (2010). Taylor argues that a growing array of individuals, like Nicholson, Watson, groups like Earth First!, and even surfers (the oceanic kind, not Internet fans), imbued with a sense of nature as being sacred and worthy of reverent care, are following a religion. While a case might be made that there are resemblances between environmentalism and religion, is it a religion? Both the UK judge and Taylor seem to be saying yes. ¹

My objective here, however, is not to determine whether Taylor, or the UK judge for that matter, is correct in his assumption. Delving into the thorny issue of defining religion is beyond the parameters of my contribution here. Suffice it to say that Taylor employs a Wittgensteinian notion of family resemblances to make his claim (Taylor, 2010: 1–3). Instead, I would like to take a different route. Recognizing that religion as a Western analytical category is not now and never has been neutral, ² and that defining environmentalism as religion, according to anthropologist Jonathan Benthall (2008: 8), is to exercise a form of power, I am far more interested in examining the reasons why Taylor et al. positively promote this phenomenon as a religion. Broadly put, the question at hand is this: apart from the legal protection such a label may provide environmentalists, what does this positive expression of a new religion of environmentalism suggest for a continued study of religion and resistance amidst an ecological crisis of unprecedented magnitude? Put another way, we might ask to what end is environmentalism being defined as a religion here?

To be sure, such an appellation is not new. The environmental agenda has already been labelled a religion by analysts and climate change deniers, but for the negative intention of discrediting their claims. ³ For Nicholson, Watson and Taylor, however, such an appellation is welcomed. I wish to argue that there is something more at play here than the quest for legal protection. ⁴ Viewed from the context of a broader environmental global movement that functions under the belief that our planet is verging upon environmental crisis, the classification of environmentalism as religion can be viewed as a strategy to usurp the power of the dominant established religions to define what it means to be human today. In this way, the use of the term “religion” becomes not so much a metaphor for the movement, or a clever tactic, but a persuasive means for achieving some form of moral authority in a dominant culture seemingly bent on destroying the environment.

There are a number of reasons for focusing on the work of Bron Taylor:

He has conducted extensive and thorough research into this very phenomenon.

I do not think I need to make a case that religions traditionally have guarded the role of defining what it means to be human. ⁶ What appears distinctive today, as argued by Buddhist scholar David R. Loy (2003: 67), is that religions have not been vigorously fulfilling their responsibility in this regard, setting their sights instead on past problems and outmoded perspectives. Taylor takes this point even further and points out that most adherents of dark green religion believe that religion – in most cases, Christianity – has acted as an obstacle to the envisioned harmony humans are seeking with nature (2010: 165). Taylor posits that the main obstacle for mainstream religions is their inability to firmly ground themselves in an evolutionary ecological worldview (2010: 221). Taylor stresses giving religious institutions a “run for their money,” or better yet, turning to a new sensible religion that is “rationally defensible as well as socially powerful enough to save us from our least-sensible selves” (2010: 222). Watson wishes us to abandon dominant religions and Nicholson echoes this frustration with established religions when he underlines that his religion “is grounded in overwhelming scientific evidence and it’s the combination of that scientific evidence with the moral and ethical imperative to do something about it that is distinct from a[n established] religion” (Hickman, 2009). Notice what we are hearing: Taylor, Watson and Nicholson are not against religion per se, just against those religions not grounded in “overwhelming scientific evidence,” or as Taylor would say, an “evolutionary ecological worldview.”

Thus, it is not surprising that they welcome their form of environmentalism as religion. With such a classification, I argue, they acquire the social and normative power not afforded to mere activism. As sociologist Christian Smith reminds us, religion not only attempts to tell us what ultimately is (something arguably science can do), but it also “aspires to tell us what, therefore, should be, how people must live, how the world ought to operate” (1996: 10). This is powerful. With this authority, as Smith suggests, our present assigned role as humans today, which many pundits believe is to “buy and consume” as dictated by powerful market economic forces, is challenged by alternative and authoritative worldviews (Loy, 2003; Stalsett, 2004: 171–174).

In the end, Taylor et al. are defining environmentalism as religion, at least in part, to exercise a form of power. Defining environmentalism as religion assigns to green activists the possibility of a potent authority otherwise unavailable to them. In doing so, I suggest that they have made a judgment not only against the prevailing economic and political powers that have advanced environmental degradation, but against the established religions for their failure to define, at least satisfactorily, what it means to be human today.

I have a few points and caveats to underline by way of conclusion. First of all, I do not suggest my conclusions apply to all environmentalists. I have used Nicholson and Watson as exemplars of a cadre of environmentalists who, along with Bron Taylor as the most vocal and articulate proponent, are seeking power when – if the recent UN Conferences on Climate Change are any indication – such power appears increasingly elusive. But these are not the only stories. Many other examples, several mentioned in Taylor’s book, could be cited. Consider Julia “Butterfly” Hill, for example. On 10 December 1997, Hill climbed a roughly 1500-year-old giant redwood tree, affectionately known as “Luna,” to prevent it from being cut down by loggers. After almost 2 years of living up in the tree, through much hardship, but not without the support of Earth First! environmental activists, she won her battle and the tree was saved. Throughout her 738-day sojourn in the tree, Hill often saw loggers cut down the nearby trees; she said that she would often cry during those moments and hug the tree, telling Luna “that she was sorry” (quoted in Taylor, 2010: 94). As a testament to Hill’s resoundingly animistic beliefs, she said to one reporter that as she cried, she would find herself becoming covered by sap that poured out from all parts of the tree’s body. She concluded by saying: “And I realized, ‘Oh my God, you’re crying too’” (quoted in Taylor, 2010: 94). In her blogs, Hill says she has no affinity to mainstream religions. Although she finds them wanting in their approach to defining the role of the human, she is far less aggressive toward religions. In this case, I would apply the same conclusion but without the verb “usurp.” In Hill’s case, it is not so much that she wishes to appropriate the power of the dominant established religions to define what it means to be human today, but that she wishes to offer a forceful alternative.

Second, although I have not approached the issue of defining religion in regards to environmentalism here, I believe the task before us is to do just that. I refer to Benson Saler (1993: 259), whose approach to defining religion Taylor incorporates in his own book. Saler cautions us that our need to define something as religion is like classifying a stripe-less tiger. We do so because we fear the potential danger ahead: simply put, if it indeed turns out to be a tiger, we want to know, so as to avoid being eaten by it. In a similar fashion, I think we should know whether environment as a religion is a tiger. Although Taylor posits that dark green religion could spur a reverence for life, he also believes it is not out of the question that dark green religion could lead to violence, which is one of the reasons for his labelling it “dark.” ⁷

In the case here, the potential danger I would like to highlight is throwing out the baby with the bath water. Without denying or condoning the sloth-like movement with which religions, on the whole, have addressed environmental concerns, to seemingly give up on them (as Taylor et al. have done) overlooks the fact that some 85 percent of the world’s population, as Stephen Scharper puts it, “reads reality through a religious lens” (2006: 48). Circumventing them means we potentially lose out on their positive fruits, such as the Hindu notion of limits, known as rta in the cosmological order or as dharma in the moral order, or the Judeo-Christian notion of justice. Shunning established religions and forming a new “sensible” one might solve some problems but it could also create others.