Van Huyssteen J.W. (editor) Encyclopedia of Science and Religion

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ECOLOGY,RELIGIOUS AND PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS

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Religious people have different names for this

larger and more inclusive whole. Jews, Christians,

and Muslims often speak of the integrated whole

as “the creation” and its ongoing development as

“continuing creation.” They say that creation in-

cludes the heavens as well as the Earth, that it has

invisible as well as visible dimensions, and that

humans are a part of, not apart from, this larger

whole. Some Jews, Christians, and Muslims believe

that the future of this whole is already determined

by God, quite apart from decisions made in the

present. Others believe that the future, at least of

the Earth, is not yet determined and depends on

present decisions. Religion, like science, has its de-

terminists and nondeterminists.

For many religious people, it is the smaller

ecosystems—the bioregions and their many forms

of life on planet Earth—that are of greatest imme-

diate concern. Environmental crises have prompted

their concerns. They have been forced to ask: In

what ways does my religion encourage or discour-

age healthy ways of (1) behaving toward, (2) think-

ing about, and (3) apprehending landscapes, life-

support systems, and other forms of life?

On this matter Buddhist environmentalism is

especially instructive. It does not speak of the uni-

verse as creation; rather it presents the universe as

a beginningless and endless series of cosmic

epochs. But Buddhist environmentalism points out

that a healthy religious approach to nature in-

cludes all three forms of response just named:

(1) moral conduct toward other living beings,

(2) intellectual understanding of the interconnect-

edness of all things, and (3) mindful awareness of

other living beings, on their own terms and for

their own sakes, without projection. It emphasizes

that mindful awareness can be nurtured, not sim-

ply by reading books about ecology, but by med-

itation and direct exposure to the palpable pres-

ences of the Earth.

Can science help religion?

As religious people face environmental crises, they

can simultaneously ask: How might insights and

information from the ecological sciences, and from

other forms of science as well, help my religion to

become more responsible and sensitive than it

might otherwise be? The response is twofold.

On the one hand, most religious people realize

that science provides relevant information that can

help people make wise decisions in terms of land

use, population, and pollution control. Addition-

ally, some appreciate ways in which science can

help humans better understand human continuities

with other forms of life, both genetically and evo-

lutionarily; better understand the interconnected

nature of the whole of reality, as is affirmed in

many Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian points of

view; and better understand that the Earth and cos-

mos are creative, containing potentialities for cre-

ative adaptation and renewal, even when things

seem hopeless. Finally, some ecologically minded

and religiously interested writers, Thomas Berry

and Ursula Goodenough, for example, propose

that science offers a common epic—the epic of

evolution—that can itself inspire a sense of pur-

pose and adventure, leading people to realize that

“the great work” of our time is to help create mu-

tually enhancing bonds between humans and the

rest of the Earth.

On the other hand, many ecologically minded

religious people simultaneously reject certain

forms of materialism and reductionism that are

characteristic of some but not all science. Particu-

larly problematic are those (1) that reduce galactic

and biological evolution to an amoral and pur-

poseless process devoid of intrinsic worth or any

capacity for divine guidance; (2) that insist that sci-

entific ways of knowing—and those alone—pro-

vide wisdom concerning nature; and (3) that re-

duce living wholes—animals who are subjects of

their own lives, for example—to mechanical

wholes devoid of subjectivity and creativity. These

rejections suggest that religious approaches to

ecology, particularly at the level of worldview, will

often differ from scientific approaches, even as

they learn from science.

Ecotheologies and ecophilosophies

As religious people face the environmental crises,

they are led to develop what are often called

ecotheologies or ecophilosophies. Typically these

theologies and philosophies explore the histories

of religious traditions for usable insights and prac-

tices, criticize those aspects of the past that seem

problematic rather than helpful, and develop new

ideas that build upon, but also move beyond, in-

herited ways of acting, thinking, and feeling.

The development of these perspectives has

been underway for several decades, but it has

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been catalyzed and brought into focus by work

done at the Center for the Study of World Religions

at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts,

in collaboration with the Center for Respect of Life

and Environment in Washington, D.C., and Buck-

nell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. From

May 1996 until July 1998, the Center for the Study

of World Religions hosted a series of ten confer-

ences, each involving scholars from the world’s re-

ligions, all of which “explored particular intellec-

tual and symbolic resources of a specific religious

tradition regarding views of nature, ritual practices,

and ethical constructs in relation to nature”

(Tucker). The scholarly anthologies produced by

these conferences offer a multivolume anthology

on world religions and ecology.

Equally important is the work being done by

creative scholars from the thousands of small scale,

indigenous societies in the world, including Native

American, African, Aboriginal, and South Asian.

The religions of these peoples are indistinguish-

able from their cultures and there is much variation

among them. Still, it is generally recognized, by

scholars of classical religions and by representa-

tives of indigenous traditions themselves, that the

life-ways of indigenous peoples emphasize recip-

rocal relations between human beings and their

local bioregions in ways that are more typically ab-

sent from classical traditions. The Harvard series

included a conference on iIndigenous traditions,

highlighting ways in which, even as these peoples

offer no technological fixes for modern problems,

they nevertheless offer examples of “a loving ex-

perience of place” from which many can learn.

Also important to religion and ecology is the

work of philosophers around the world, some af-

filiated with religions and some not, who have si-

multaneously explored and criticized the past, and

simultaneously developed new perspectives em-

phasizing human embeddedness in the larger web

of life. Deep ecology and ecofeminist philosophies

are prime examples. While some versions of these

perspectives are philosophical rather than religious

if the word religion implies allegiance to a classical

religious tradition, all are religious in the sense that

they are interested in helping guide humans to-

ward sensitive ways of perceiving and responding

to nature.

All of these ecotheologies and ecophilosophies

have their distinctive features. Ecotheologies

emerging out of the Abrahamic traditions often

emphasize:

(1) that human beings are a part of, not apart

from, a larger evolving whole;

(2) that they are kin to fellow creatures on Earth;

(3) that the whole of creation, including Earth, is

embraced by a surrounding presence,

namely God, who cares about the whole of

creation and each living being within it;

(4) that God calls humans to embody alterna-

tives to the more greed-driven lifestyles of

consumer society;

(5) that God calls humans to be good stewards

of the Earth and compassionate participants

in the ongoing development of creation.

This compassionate participation involves

commitment to four values advocated by “The

Earth Charter”: respect and care for the community

of life; ecological integrity; social and economic

justice; and nonviolence, democracy, and peace.

Among the Abrahamic ecotheologies that

stress these five ways of thinking, process theology

is especially important for people interested in the

dialogue between religion and ecology; although it

is environmentalist in orientation, it draws deeply

from quantum theory, ecological biology, and evo-

lutionary biology. It is an especially science-based

form of contemporary ecotheology. It is also im-

portant because it wrestles with the reality of suf-

fering in creation, proposing that the God who

calls humans toward environmental responsibility

is a counter-entropic and influential lure within

creation, who is nevertheless not all-powerful in

the classical sense of having unilateral power.

From the perspective of process theology, the very

God who calls toward compassion is a God who

shares in the suffering of all creation and who is

impoverished by a reduction in the Earth’s biolog-

ical diversity. The Earth and the whole of the uni-

verse is God’s body.

Ecophilosophies emerging out of the various

East Asian and South Asian traditions do not em-

phasize the role of God, but rather ground their

commitments to a sustainable future in a deep

sense of interconnectedness that is likewise conso-

nant with many dimensions of science. To this em-

phasis on interconnectedness, they also add the

importance of mindfulness in the present moment

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and the importance of having a nongrasping ap-

proach to life that allows other living beings simply

“to be” without “being exploited.” Here nonattach-

ment does not mean nonappreciation, but rather

nongrasping, precisely so that other living beings

and the rest of nature can be appreciated on its

own terms, without being a mere “commodity” for

the consumer-driven mindset. With this emphasis

they add to the critique of consumerism likewise

offered by Abrahamic ecotheologians.

The deep ecology perspective and ecofeminist

orientations add distinctive but complementary em-

phases to the Abrahamic and Asian perspectives just

noted. Not unlike Buddhism, deep ecology empha-

sizes the notion of an ecological self whose inner

horizons transcend the illusion of a skin-encapsu-

lated ego and live from a deeper sense of kinship

with the whole. Ecofeminism adds that the very il-

lusion of a skin-encapsulated ego is often grounded

in patriarchal habits of thought and feeling.

In short, the environmental crisis stimulates a

great deal of work within religions and among

those interested in religiously based alternatives to

consumerist habits of thought and feeling. Some but

not all of this work is enriched by insights from the

sciences, even as some but not all is also critical of

certain dimensions of science, especially its reduc-

tionistic and more determinist strands. The dialogue

between religion and science involves a dialogue

with the Earth, with which both religion and science

are jointly and sometimes collaboratively engaged.

See also ANIMAL RIGHTS; BUDDHISM; CHINESE

RELIGIONS, CONFUCIANISM AND SCIENCE IN CHINA;

HINESE RELIGIONS, DAOISM AND SCIENCE IN

CHINA; DEEP ECOLOGY; ECOFEMINISM; ECOLOGY;

COLOGY, ETHICS OF; ECOLOGY, SCIENCE OF;

COTHEOLOGY; GAIA HYPOTHESIS; FEMINISMS AND

SCIENCE; FEMINIST COSMOLOGY; FEMINIST

THEOLOGY; PROCESS THOUGHT; WOMANIST

THEOLOGY

Bibliography

The Earth Charter Initiative. “The Earth Charter.” Available

from http://www.earthcharter.org.

Tucker, Mary Evelyn. “Culminating Conferences on Ecol-

ogy.” Center for the Study of World Religions. Avail-

able from http://www.hds.harvard.edu/cswr/

publications/5-2eco.htm.

JAY MCDANIEL

ECOLOGY,SCIENCE OF

Ecology is the study of the relationships of organ-

isms with other organisms and with their physical

environment. Ecology also includes study of the

structure and functions of natural systems. The

word ecology was first used in 1866 by the German

biologist Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), who based it

on the Greek words oikos, meaning “household,”

and logos, meaning “study.” Though modern ecol-

ogy is less than a hundred years old as a science,

it has quickly diversified into a number of subdis-

ciplines, each with different concepts and research

methods. Some subdisciplines can be described by

organism (plant ecology, animal ecology) or by

habitat (terrestrial ecology, marine ecology). Other

forms of ecology reflect applied use of the science,

as in restoration ecology or agroecology. In this

entry, ecology will be described in terms of the

scale and orientation of the scientists working on

ecological questions. Common to all ecological

perspectives are the role of evolution and historical

change, the impacts of human activities on organ-

isms and environments, and the use of models to

represent complex interactions.

Approaches to ecology

There are six predominant approaches to ecology.

Some of the earliest work has been done by

community ecologists who study patterns and

processes in groups of species, asking questions

about species diversity and complexity. A commu-

nity can be defined in several ways: as the resi-

dents of a localized place, the historical presence of

species in an area, a collection of co-existing pop-

ulations, or as the collective interactions of species

members moving through a place. Community

ecology focuses on species relationships and abun-

dance in specific places such as a desert wash, a

peat bog, or a sandy beach. Typical research ex-

amines patterns of change over time such as plant

succession after a fire. Scientists also study species

distribution according to soil and climate condi-

tions, and strategies used to cope with these con-

ditions. Analytical methods include gradient analy-

sis, diversity mapping, and computer modeling.

Population ecologists examine how and why

the size of populations changes over time and

place. They consider environmental factors such

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as temperature and rainfall as well as biological in-

teractions such as predation. Growth rate, density,

rate of reproduction, and mortality are key to un-

derstanding population flux. Population models

show such things as changes in age classes over

time or variability in predator-prey cycles. Factors

of population regulation are important in manag-

ing game harvests and agricultural pests, as well as

protecting endangered species. Population ecolo-

gists rely on field data, experimental studies, and

computer modeling to chart population dynamics.

Behavioral ecologists focus on adaptive behav-

iors in animals that have been successful in sur-

vival and reproduction. Unlike community and

population ecology, which address broad groups

of organisms, behavioral ecology looks at the indi-

vidual and how its behaviors have evolved to serve

the individual’s fitness. Life history strategies re-

flect the tradeoffs animals make between survival

and reproduction. Drawing on field observations

as well as experimental tests, behavioral ecologists

use cost-benefit models and game theory to pro-

pose explanations for animal behaviors. How an

animal forages for food, chooses a mate, or raises

its young reveal something about the ecological

contexts in which the species has evolved.

Physiological ecologists look at the biochemical

constraints that define whether an organism sur-

vives or not. Variation in environmental factors

such as habitat temperature, nutrient availability,

and light level can be optimal or stressful,

depending on an individual’s tolerance. Below

freezing, sensitive plant cells can burst; starved for

oxygen, fish in a polluted lake can die. Ther-

moregulation and other mechanisms of homeosta-

sis help stabilize organisms in response to chang-

ing abiotic conditions. To describe the dimensions

of a species’s ecological niche, physiological ecol-

ogists measure metabolic chemistry, energy use,

and rates of growth. Radiotelemetry instruments

are used to collect data on heart rate, body tem-

perature, and environmental conditions from such

animals as deep-diving whales or far-ranging

wolves. In the related field of ecotoxicology, sci-

entists track the impacts of human-made chemi-

cals such as DDT and dioxin.

Ecosystem ecology along with landscape ecol-

ogy, is one of the most recent subdisciplines to

emerge in the science of ecology. The goal of

ecosystem ecology is to understand the movement

of energy and matter as they circulate through or-

ganisms and the environment. Studies of nutrient

cycling in an ecosystem ask questions about flow

patterns, seasonal variation, and biological produc-

tivity. As human activities accelerate the degrada-

tion of ecosystem functions, increasing attention

has been focused on ecosystem resilience and sus-

tainability. Many ecosystem level questions origi-

nate in the field, with information integrated into

sophisticated models using statistical analyses and

flow diagrams. Both restoration of damaged ecosys-

tems and clean-up of toxic contaminants draw on

the knowledge base of ecosystem ecology.

Landscape ecology examines even broader

scale patterns of environmental change. Land-

scape-level studies focus on mosaics of habitat

patches to understand causes and consequences

of long-term historical change. Clearcutting or for-

est fires, for example, set up ecological dynamics

that can change the shape of the landscape in

many ways. Likewise, changes in climate or the

Earth’s surface through mountain-building or ero-

sion affect species composition and habitat distri-

bution. Aerial photographs are used to collect

broad-scale information which is then stored in

computerized geographic information systems

(GIS). Landscape ecologists engage land manage-

ment issues of patch viability and habitat connec-

tivity, using complex maps and models to com-

pare the impacts of different land-use policies.

Conclusion

Ecological theories have changed significantly over

the last century as ecologists ask different ques-

tions and use different tools to gather and process

information. From traditional natural history obser-

vation to complex modern computer modeling,

ecology has made enormous advances. Ideas of

nature have likewise changed and influenced the

development and application of ecological theo-

ries. Earlier views of climax communities as the in-

evitable outcome of competition have been re-

placed with more dynamic views of nature. The

role of human agents in ecosystem change has be-

come more widely included in ecological analysis.

While much early research was oriented to man-

agement and production goals, modern ecologists

are motivated by the desire to protect and restore

biological diversity and ecosystem health. As

human population and consumption continue to

impact the environment, the science of ecology

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will have a critical role to play in leading the way

toward a sustainable future.

See also A

NIMAL RIGHTS;DEEP ECOLOGY;ECOFEMINISM;

COLOGY,ETHICS OF;ECOLOGY,RELIGIOUS AND

PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS;ECOTHEOLOGY;GAIA

YPOTHESIS;FEMINISMS AND SCIENCE;FEMINIST

COSMOLOGY;FEMINIST THEOLOGY;WOMANIST

THEOLOGY

Bibliography

Dodson, Stanley I.; Allen, Timothy F.H.; Carpenter,

Stephen R.; et al. Ecology. New York: Oxford Univer-

sity Press, 1998.

Forman, Richard T. T., and Godron, Michael. Landscape

Ecology. New York: Wiley, 1986.

Jordan, William R, III; Gilpin, Michael E.; and Aber, John

D. Restoration Ecology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge

University Press, 1987.

Meffe, Gary K., and Carroll, C. Ronald, eds. Principles of

Conservation Ecology, 2nd edition. Sunderland, Mass.:

Sinauer Associates, 1997.

Miller, G. Tyler, Jr. Living in the Environment. Belmont,

Calif.: Wadsworth, 1990.

Noss, Reed F., and Cooperrider, Allen Y. Saving Nature’s

Legacy. Washington D.C.: Island, 1994.

Smith, Robert L., and Smith, Thomas M. Elements of Ecol-

ogy, 4th edition. Menlo Park, Calif.: Addison-Wesley,

1998.

Soule, Michael, ed. Conservation Biology. Sunderland,

Mass.: Sinauer Associates, 1986.

STEPHANIE KAZA

ECONOMICS

The field of economics encompasses the study of

how natural resources are drawn from nature and

processed by human activity to become value-

added products for consumption or commodities

for exchange; the study of how complex services

are developed by coordinating human activities so

that particular services can be rationally provided,

bought, or sold; and the study of how the resulting

resources are allocated, and how the costs and

benefits of these processes are calculated.

Highly specialized subdisciplines of this vast

field developed after the Industrial Revolution, the

rise to social dominance of the modern business

corporation, the sharp debates between capitalist

and socialist theories during the nineteenth and

twentieth centuries, and the increased globaliza-

tion of the contemporary world. Econometrics

seeks to measure actual processes and their conse-

quences in a delimited institutional range—a fam-

ily, firm, nation, industry, or segment of the popu-

lation such as a race or a class. Regression analysis

seeks to develop models that can interpret the rel-

ative effects of a variable or a set of variables.

Other subdisciplines focus on policy-making and

are intended to bring desired social results. Macro-

economics, for example, focuses on tax or other

governmental policies that aim to enhance devel-

opment or public services, reduce poverty or in-

equality, or control behaviors that damage the

common welfare (crime, environmental damage,

drug abuse, child pornography, health or safety,

etc.). Microeconomics seeks to enhance the effi-

ciency, productivity, profitability, and viability of

companies that operate in various markets. Labor

economics, which often engages in advocacy, stud-

ies both political and business policies from the

standpoint of their effects on employees and work-

ers’ unions. Despite their differences in focus, ex-

perts in all economic subdisciplines agree that

without a sound economic infrastructure, societies

falter and people suffer.

History

Economic activity has always been a part of human

existence. Hunting, gathering, and cooking have

taken place since humans first appeared. Produc-

tion by craftsworkers to supply goods for trade and

for merchants has been present in all of recorded

history. Early theories of economic life date back to

discussions about farmers and peddlers in the

Arthashastra, an Indian treatise on governance

from about the third century

B.C.E. The concept of

shangye (commercial occupation) in early Confu-

cian texts sought to spell out the relationships of

economic actors to political and social life. Eco-

nomic theories also turn up in ancient Greek writ-

ings. Plato (c. 428–347

B.C.E.) saw the foundation

of The Republic as rooted in economic life (Book

2), and in Politics Aristotle (384–322

B.C.E.) devel-

oped the idea of the “management of the house-

hold” (oikonomia) and applied it to the polis.

Moreover, economic issues were taken up by

religious prophets and moral philosophers in all

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known cultures, and in the West the blend of bib-

lical themes and Greek philosophy has decisively

shaped the social and ethical perceptions of eco-

nomic life and policy. That is so despite the fact

that economics in its modern mode has sought to

differentiate itself from these social, ethical, and

spiritual philosophies. Indeed, it has become a

truly autonomous science on the model of the nat-

ural sciences since, at least, the French physiocrats

and the English post-mercantilist economists from

Adam Smith (1723–1790) through the utilitarians to

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) and the Ger-

man socialists and the Austrian libertarians. It is

these modern Western sets of perspectives and de-

bates that have most shaped what is today under-

stood as the discipline of economics.

Economics as a discipline, for all its achieve-

ments, is not identical to economic life. The heirs

of Adam Smith, and those of Karl Marx

(1818–1883) or Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992), have

developed refined theories that describe how the

“rational choices” of persons, families, classes, gov-

ernments, businesses, or market mechanisms (such

as a stock exchange, employment and wage rates,

or a futures market) typically manifest themselves,

although economists know that they are working

with abstract models. The great advantage of such

models is that they can be developed and applied

in many concrete circumstances by ruling out idio-

syncratic and extrinsic contingencies that may also

influence decisions or policies but are not directly

economic factors. The best economic theories not

only have a mathematical and philosophical mark

of elegance, they also have a high degree of relia-

bility when applied to specific questions and ad-

justed to specific contexts.

These models work best in an environment

that shares a common society, a common culture,

and, since they deeply influence the perceptions

and expectations of persons and communities,

something of a common set of religious convic-

tions. That is because the “conditionalities” of be-

havior, what strict economic theory considers to

be idiosyncratic or extrinsic contingency, are dif-

ferent where divergent cultural, social, or religious

convictions shape morality in distinctive ways. It is

true that no one wants to be cheated and that steal-

ing or exploitation is recognized as wrong in every

culture, even if it occurs. And it is true that people

seek the well-being of the persons or groups that

are most important to them in all sorts of social,

cultural, or religious conditions. But it is also the

case that a polygamous tribal person, for example,

or a Hindu caste member, a dedicated leader of an

Islamic brotherhood, or a Buddhist nun will have

different senses of what constitutes the well-being

of persons and groups. It is, thus, not at all sur-

prising that the banking systems in different parts

of the world are operationally different, that cor-

porations are formed in distinctive ways and led

with diverse understandings of the proper role of

leadership, and that workers variously evaluate

their obligations to firm, family, nation, political

ideology, and faith.

Basic disputes and issues

The attempts to account for these contextual dif-

ferences are among the key subjects of cultural

studies, the sociology of religion, and comparative

religious ethics to the extent that these fields bear

on economic matters; the issues are paralleled by

political, legal, and aesthetic studies. In the West,

John Locke (1632–1704) and Thomas Hobbes

(1588–1679) can be considered exemplars of a pri-

mal disagreement about how economic life works

in society. For Locke, persons have a right to their

“proprium,” that property that they appropriate

from nature by honest labor and that is necessary

both for their individual existence and for the sup-

port of their family. On these bases, people form a

civil society with others and construct a political

society for the protection of their own and others’

well-being. They are aided in this effort by the fact

that all persons can, in some measure, recognize

the “self-evident truths” of a universal moral law,

guaranteed both by reason and by Christian scrip-

ture. If the political society does not work, or vio-

lates the moral law, the people have a right to alter

it to restore their economic and social well-being.

For Hobbes, perpetual conflict over scarce re-

sources could not be resolved by either reason or

religion, and thus a sovereign had to impose a col-

lective order by force. Politics must control eco-

nomics, and no rebellion was allowed. The obvi-

ous and brutal conflicts of interests, ideologies, and

religions demanded state power so that economic

well-being could be obtained beyond the natural

state of war. In this paradigmatic dispute, one finds

not only the question of the relationship of the bee

to the hive in economic life, but the issue of the

relative priority of civil society to political society

as determinants of economic existence.

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A second set of disputes can be seen in the

controversies of those who follow Georg Wilhelm

Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) and those who follow

his disputatious disciple, Marx. Hegel held that

spiritual or mental (geistliche) realities fundamen-

tally shape material realities in a decisive dialectic.

Marx, famously turning Hegel on his head, argued

that it was not “superstructural” factors that shaped

“substructural” factors, but rather the material real-

ities of life that determined human consciousness.

Any correlation between religious orientation and

economic life was an effect of economic forces that

evoked the religious sighs of the people, while

those who had control of the means of production

perpetuated these dreams to control the workers.

These theories combine in mixed ways. A ver-

sion of the materialist view can be found among

various contemporary disciples of Charles Darwin

(1809–1882). Some of them, including the Nobel

Prize winning economist Gary Becker (1930– ),

hold to an “evolutionary psychology” in which in-

dividuals make “rational choices” about not only

business matters but also about whom to marry

and whether to have children on the basis of their

calculation of material interests. A collectivist view

of economic behavior is set forth by Edward O.

Wilson (1929– ) in his sociobiological theories; this

view sees religion as an illusory cultural by-prod-

uct of collective material and instinctual dynamics.

More influential in the understanding of the re-

lationship of religion and economic life is the work

of Max Weber (1864–1920). His five volumes on

the Sociology of Religion and his three volumes on

Economy and Society, written early in the twenti-

eth century, argued that different religions have

distinct effects on economic (and political) life and

on various classes and occupational groups in so-

ciety. Weber saw not only that the late medieval

Roman Catholic faith had an economically positive

influence in the emerging free cities of northern

Europe in the very early stages of modernity, but

that the Protestant ethic gave impetus to the for-

mation of what is now known as the break with

traditional, feudal economies and the development

of modern capitalist industries. Weber’s arguments

were doubted during the harsh realities of the

Great Depression (which saw greater use of Marx-

ist theory and the rise of Fascism), and were often

ignored after World War II when Keynes’s eco-

nomic theories came to ascendancy, but Weber’s

work regained attention after the collapse of the

Soviet Union in the early 1990s and the resurgence

of religion all over the world. Today, few econo-

mists think that Weber’s treatments of India and

China were fully adequate, and questions about

aspects of his views of Catholicism, Protestantism,

and Islam are manifold. Yet, it is widely held that

the questions he raised and the methods of inves-

tigation he developed are among the most defini-

tive for the ongoing discussions between religion

and economic life.

In a postmodern age, the predicted certainties

of inevitable secularization that seemed beyond

dispute, of a purely scientific view of reality that

could provide firm foundations for progressive

public policy, clear-minded corporate decision-

making and personal rational choices without illu-

sion, and the end of both ideology and religious

myth seem positively silly. Indeed, it turns out that

a deep convergence of inter-contextual reasonabil-

ity and moral conviction, not equally available in

all religions, are critical for the economic well-

being of persons and peoples. The body of con-

temporary literature that points in this direction is

found in a host of Weber-influenced studies that

document the interactions of religion and eco-

nomic life, and point out that the basic assump-

tions behind contemporary secular economic the-

ory are, in fact, echoes of religious convictions that

are well, but not fully, masked.

See also CULTURE, ORIGINS OF; MATERIALISM;

ORALITY

Bibliography

Berger, Peter. The Capitalist Revolution: Fifty Propositions

about Prosperity, Equality, and Liberty. New York:

Basic Books, 1986.

Harrison, Lawrence E., and Huntington, Samuel P., eds.

Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress.

New York: Basic Books, 2000.

Küng, Hans. A Global Ethic for Global Politics and Eco-

nomics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Landis, David S. The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why

Some are So Rich and Some So Poor. New York: Nor-

ton, 1997.

Nelson, Robert H. Economics as Religion: From Samuel-

son to Chicago and Beyond. University Park: Pennsyl-

vania State University Press, 2001.

Sen, Amartya. Development as Freedom. New York: An-

chor, 1999.

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Stackhouse, Max L.; McCann, Dennis P.; Roels, Shirley J.,

eds. On Moral Business: Classical and Contemporary

Resources for Ethics in Economic Life. Grand Rapids,

Mich: Eerdmans, 1995.

Stackhouse, Max L., with Peter Paris, eds. God and Global-

ization, Vol. 1: Religion and the Powers of the Common

Life. Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 2000

Stackhouse, Max L, with Don S. Browning, eds. God and

Globalization, Vol. 2: The Spirit and the Modern Au-

thorities. Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International,

2001

Stackhouse, Max L., with Diane B. Obenchain, eds. God

and Globalization, Vol. 3: Christ and the Dominions

of Civilization. Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press Interna-

tional, 2002.

Weber, Max. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpre-

tive Sociology, trans. Ephraim Fischoff and others,

eds. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. Berkeley: Uni-

versity of California Press, 1978.

Weber, Max. Sociology of Religion, trans. Ephraim Fischoff.

Boston: Beacon Press, 1993.

MAX L. STACKHOUSE

ECOTHEOLOGY

The term ecotheology came into prominence in the

late twentieth century, mainly in Christian circles, in

association with the emergent scientific field of

ecology. Ecotheology describes theological dis-

course that highlights the whole “household” of

God’s creation, especially the world of nature, as an

interrelated system (eco is from the Greek word for

household, oikos). Ecotheology arose in response to

the widespread acknowledgment that an environ-

mental crisis of immense proportions was threaten-

ing the future of human life on the earth. Ecotheol-

ogy also arose in response to what has been called

“the ecological complaint” against Christianity.

The ecological complaint

Some scholars and critics maintain that the Christ-

ian faith helped set the stage for the global envi-

ronmental crisis by instructing generations of be-

lievers that God transcends nature, that humans

likewise transcend nature, and that nature there-

fore has meaning in the Christian schema only as

an instrument for God’s purposes with humans.

The signature Christian teaching in this respect was

the theology of human dominion over nature (also

called stewardship), a theology that encouraged

manipulation, even exploitation, of nature for the

sake of human purposes. According to these schol-

ars and critics, Christianity is unavoidably anthro-

pocentric, no longer relevant to the ecological

world, and even, in a sense, spiritually dangerous.

The historical truth, however, is more complex,

as a review of Christian theology since 1500 will

show. While the emergence of ecotheology is rel-

atively recent, its historic roots in the Christian the-

ology of nature are deep. Christians have held a

variety of views about nature, all of them rooted in

widely divergent socioeconomic and cultural situ-

ations. A nuanced understanding of Christian atti-

tudes to nature must address those differing con-

texts as well as the explicit theological teachings

themselves.

A critical case is the Christian understanding of

human dominion over nature. The meanings of

this teaching varied substantially from one period

to another. From about 1500 to 1750, human do-

minion was understood in terms of survival in the

midst of a threatening world. Much economic life

in those times was carried on at a subsistence

level, highly dependent on the precarious cycles

of small-scale agriculture. Except for the most

wealthy, the vast majority of the people had to

struggle, with minimal aid from technology and

with pervasive dependence on farm animals, such

as oxen, in order to hack out agricultural spaces

from the primeval forests, where threatening pred-

ators, such as wolves, roamed freely, and where a

sustainable level of agricultural productivity was

highly uncertain. Moreover, although many people

lived in the same buildings with their farm ani-

mals, which were part of their domestic world,

their attitudes toward wild animals tended to be

negative, especially within the ranks of the

wealthy, who sometimes fostered a hunting culture

predicated on delight in killing.

In this socioeconomic context, the biblical idea

of human dominion over the earth would have

been read and enacted in terms of a life-and-death

struggle with the vicissitudes of nature. After the

mid eighteenth century, towns and cities emerged

in significant numbers in Europe, and human do-

minion over nature was no longer interpreted in

the context of an agricultural struggle for survival,

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but more in terms of an increasingly crowded

urbanized world that was predicated on the

exploitation of nature, a world that sometimes

prompted a romantic nostalgia for the remembered

beauties and purities of life in the country. Human

dominion over nature came to be viewed by some

believers as a problem, rather than as a self-evident

mandate in the quest for survival.

By the beginning of the twentieth century,

trends of massive urbanization and industrializa-

tion, constantly expanding applications of earth-

shaking technologies, especially in mining and

agriculture, and concomitant pollution of the land,

sea, and air in virtually every region of the planet

had increased to the breaking point. Issues of

human survival on the earth began to emerge,

heightened by a growing awareness of the related

problems of global poverty, exhaustion of nonre-

newable natural resources, and enormous popula-

tion growth. This global crisis, in turn, posed un-

precedented questions to Christian communities

around the world. The Christian teaching of human

dominion over the earth came under attack, both

by believers and by critics hostile to the Christian

tradition, because it seemed to symbolize much

that was wrong with the way humans had chosen

to live on the earth. By the end of the twentieth

century, the theme of human dominion over na-

ture had become, in the eyes of many, a scandal.

On the other hand, the same theme continued to

be affirmed by a few leading Christian theologians

and by numerous prominent Christian public pol-

icy-makers, who wrote and acted as if the world

needed nothing more than business-as-usual.

Such were the major socioeconomic contexts

to which Christian theologians responded, con-

sciously or unconsciously. Significantly, these

trends were made possible by the burgeoning nat-

ural sciences, above all by the mechanistic science

championed by Isaac Newton at the turn of the

eighteenth century and by the evolutionary science

advocated by Charles Darwin during the nine-

teenth century. Theology was buffeted by these

cultural forces, too, especially by Darwinism,

which sent tidal waves of anti-religious sentiment

coursing through the intellectual world of the

times. On the other hand, many theologians

thought of their work not as responding to ques-

tions raised by socioeconomic or cultural trends,

but as a creative exposition of the whole body of

traditional Christian teachings, according to the tra-

dition’s own norms.

The world of nature and Protestantism

Self-conscious theological reflection about the

world of nature was most prominently launched

by the two major Protestant reformers of the six-

teenth century—Martin Luther and John Calvin—

who gave voice to a rich theology of nature. “In

every part of the world, in heaven and on earth,”

Calvin wrote in his Institutes, God “has written and

as it were engraven the glory of his power, good-

ness, wisdom and eternity . . . For the little singing

birds sang of God, the animals acclaimed him, the

elements feared and the mountains resounded with

him, the river and springs threw glances toward

him, the grasses and the flowers smiled.” Calvin

even suggested that when humans contemplate the

wonders of God in nature “we should not merely

run them over cursorily, and, so to speak, with the

fleeting glance, but we should ponder them at

length, turn them over in our mind seriously and

faithfully, and recollect them repeatedly.”

Luther had a similar view of the glories of God

in the whole creation and of creation’s marvels. “If

you truly understood a grain of wheat,” he once

wrote, “you would die of wonder.” In his com-

mentary on Genesis, Luther imagined Adam and

Eve before the fall enjoying a common table with

the animals. In the same spirit, both reformers

thought theocentrically about human interactions

with nature: God and his righteousness will set

very real limits for the reaches of human pride and

arrogance. The created world belonged first and

foremost to the Creator and humans were man-

dated by God to exercise dominion over the earth.

But that dominion was understood to be a restora-

tion of Adam’s and Eve’s lives as caretakers or gar-

deners, not as a license for exploitation.

Further, both Calvin and Luther affirmed the

immediacy of God in nature. For them, God was

not detached from the world, far above in some

spiritualized heaven. On the contrary, as Luther

often said, God is “in, with, and under” the whole

created world. This view of nature as divinely

given and divinely charged came to its completion

in their the reformers’ teachings about “last things”

(eschatology). Both theologians strongly empha-

sized the traditional Christian teaching about the

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resurrection of the body. Both also projected a

view of the end of the world as a cosmic consum-

mation, the coming of the “new heavens and new

earth” announced in biblical traditions. Nature

itself would be “saved” and consummated at the

very end.

Fatefully, however, the issues that preoccupied

Luther and Calvin had to do not with God and na-

ture, but with God and human salvation. Their the-

ologies, accordingly, took on an anthropocentric

character. “Justification by grace through faith

alone” was the theological teaching that most oc-

cupied their attention. Furthermore, Calvin ac-

cented the responsibility of Christians to change

the world for the better, teaching that the world

was the arena for righteous work and faith-driven

social transformation.

The theological heirs of Luther and Calvin, es-

pecially in the nineteenth century and thereafter,

took the reformers’ measured anthropocentrism as

a given, but tended to leave behind the reformers’

rich teaching about God and the natural world. As

a result, Christian theology became more exclu-

sively anthropocentric. There were many reasons

for this marked shift of emphasis, not the least of

them being the rise of Newtonian mechanistic sci-

ence and Darwinian evolutionary science, and the

need by these post-Reformation theologians to

root religious faith in the intangible human spirit or

human subjectivity, so as to leave the objective

world of nature to natural scientists, and also to

protect faith from the attacks of some scientists and

scientifically informed philosophers. This anthro-

pocentric dynamic also made it easy for both the-

ologians and Christian lay people to be swept

along by the dynamics of industrial society, which

were predicated on the exploitations of the earth

for the sake of human progress.

Accordingly, many theologians in the first half

of the twentieth century, like Emil Brunner and

Karl Barth, self-consciously refused to project the-

ologies of nature. Their theologies focused on God

and humankind alone. When they did talk about

nature, it was typically in highly anthropocentric

terms. Both Brunner and Barth affirmed, for exam-

ple, that the purpose for which God created the

world was to have a redemptive history with hu-

mankind. Brunner called nature merely “the

scenery” for the divine-human drama.

Catholic theologians had to deal with the same

socioeconomic and cultural trends, but the offi-

cially sanctioned teachings of the Catholic Church

tended to be mainly reactive to the expanding

claims of the natural sciences, until well into the

twentieth century. Traditional Catholic teachings

about God’s creation of the world and human do-

minion over the earth were simply affirmed against

the advances in science represented by Newton

and Darwin. Thus the work of twentieth–century

Catholic paleontologist and theologian Pierre Teil-

hard de Chardin, who claimed evolution as a the-

ological theme, were banned by the Papacy until

the middle of the twentieth century.

The ecological turn

It was not until the second half of the twentieth

century that Christian theology began to take an

ecological turn. Teilhard himself had led the way

by incorporating evolutionary thought into the cor-

pus of his theology, although Teilhard’s theology

remained anthropocentric in many ways. The mid-

century Protestant thinker Paul Tillich was also a

prophetic voice, eschewing the anthropocentrism

of theologians like Brunner and Barth, radically

criticizing the destructive power of modern “tech-

nical reason,” and richly reaffirming and reinter-

preting Luther’s theology of nature in terms of

Tillich’s own doctrine of God as “the Ground of

Being.” The era of ecotheology fully emerged,

however, only in the 1960s. It was first announced

publicly by the pioneering Protestant ecotheolo-

gian Joseph Sittler. Drawing on Paul’s Letter to the

Colossians, Sittler called for a new theology of

grace that included rather than excluded nature.

Sittler was the first to give the term ecology public

prominence as a theological construct and also

took the lead in establishing conversations with

ecologists like Aldo Leopold and reconsidering

Christian poets of ecological consciousness such

as Gerard Manly Hopkins.

Perhaps the single most important advocate of

ecotheology toward the end of the twentieth cen-

tury was the ecumenically oriented Protestant the-

ologian Jürgen Moltmann. Drawing on the theolo-

gies of the reformers, the fruits of twentieth

century studies of biblical eschatology, and imma-

nentalist insights from the traditions of Jewish mys-

ticism, Moltmann projected a theology of hope for

the whole cosmos, giving a holistic, ecological

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