Ecotheology
Based on Wikipedia: Ecotheology
In 1965, a Persian philosopher named Seyyed Hossein Nasr stood before an audience and made a startling claim: the environmental crisis destroying our planet was, at its root, a spiritual crisis. This wasn't the argument you might expect from an environmentalist. He wasn't talking about carbon emissions or deforestation statistics. He was talking about the soul.
Nasr argued that modern civilization had lost something essential—a sense of the sacred in nature. And until we recovered that spiritual vision, no amount of scientific knowledge or technological innovation would save us from ourselves.
A year later, in December 1966, a historian named Lynn White Jr. delivered a lecture that would become one of the most cited and controversial essays in environmental history. Published in the journal Science in 1967 as "The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis," White's argument was provocative: Christianity, he claimed, bore "a huge burden of guilt" for environmental destruction. By teaching that humans were made in God's image and given dominion over nature, Christianity had stripped the natural world of any sacred significance. Trees became lumber. Rivers became resources. Animals became commodities.
White's essay ignited a firestorm. But it also launched a new field of inquiry. If religion had contributed to the environmental crisis, could religion also help solve it?
What Exactly Is Ecotheology?
Ecotheology is the attempt to answer that question. It's a form of theology—meaning the systematic study of religious belief—that focuses specifically on the relationship between faith and the natural world. But unlike traditional theology, which often concerns itself with abstract questions about God's nature or the meaning of salvation, ecotheology is urgently practical. It wants to know: What do our religious traditions actually teach about the earth? And can those teachings help us save it?
The field starts from a simple premise: human beings don't just relate to nature through science and economics. We relate to it through stories, symbols, and beliefs about what the world means and where we fit within it. These worldviews—whether explicitly religious or not—shape how we treat the environment in profound ways.
Consider the difference between seeing a forest as a collection of biological resources waiting to be harvested and seeing it as a sacred grove where divine presence dwells. Same trees. Radically different implications for how you treat them.
The Ecological Complaint
White's critique of Christianity became known as "The Ecological Complaint," and it's worth understanding in some detail because responding to it has shaped so much of Christian ecotheology.
The argument runs like this. In the biblical book of Genesis, God creates humans and tells them to "have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." This language of dominion, White argued, established a fundamentally exploitative relationship. Nature exists for human use. Unlike pagan religions that saw spirits dwelling in trees and streams, Christianity desacralized nature, making it spiritually safe to exploit.
The argument goes further. Christianity also taught that God transcends nature—that the divine isn't found within the created world but beyond it. This transcendence, combined with the idea that humans are made in God's image, elevated humanity above nature in a way that had no parallel in other religious traditions. We weren't part of nature. We were above it, and it existed to serve us.
White wasn't anti-religious. In fact, he argued that since the roots of our crisis were religious, the solution would need to be religious too. He proposed Francis of Assisi—the medieval saint who preached to birds and called the sun his brother—as a model for a different kind of Christianity, one that saw all creatures as fellow members of a sacred community.
The Defense and the Counterargument
Many Christian theologians pushed back against White's thesis. They argued he had misread Genesis. The Hebrew word often translated as "dominion" actually implies stewardship and care, not exploitation. In the second creation account, humans are placed in the garden to "till it and keep it"—language that suggests cultivation and protection, not domination.
Others pointed to a rich tradition of Christian nature theology that White had ignored. Francis of Assisi wasn't an anomaly. The Eastern Orthodox tradition had long emphasized the sacredness of creation. Saints like Isaac of Nineveh, a seventh-century mystic, wrote about having "a heart that burns with love for all of creation—for humans, for birds, for animals, for demons, and for every creature." Seraphim of Sarov, a nineteenth-century Russian monk, was famous for feeding wild bears from his hand.
These traditions were less well known in the West because they had developed primarily within Orthodox Christianity rather than Roman Catholicism or Protestantism. But they were there, waiting to be recovered.
Still, the Ecological Complaint had touched a nerve. Even if White's historical argument was oversimplified, there was no denying that Christian civilization had presided over unprecedented environmental destruction. Something in the tradition—whether the theology itself or how it had been practiced—needed to change.
The Many Streams of Christian Ecotheology
What emerged was not one ecotheology but many. Different thinkers drew on different resources within the Christian tradition to construct new visions of faith and nature.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest and paleontologist who died in 1955, became a foundational figure even though he wrote before the term ecotheology existed. Teilhard saw evolution as a sacred process—the universe gradually becoming conscious of itself and moving toward union with God. For Teilhard, matter wasn't opposed to spirit. Matter was spirit in formation. The natural world wasn't merely the backdrop for human salvation; it was part of the cosmic story of divine becoming.
Thomas Berry, a Passionist priest and cultural historian, built on Teilhard's vision. Berry argued that we needed a new story—what he called "The Universe Story"—that would reconnect humans to the larger community of life. He was critical of traditional Christian theology for being too focused on personal salvation and not attentive enough to the fate of the Earth. "We are not talking about saving souls," Berry wrote. "We are talking about saving the planet."
Process theology, developed from the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, offered another approach. In process thought, God isn't a distant monarch ruling over creation from outside. God is intimately involved in every moment of existence, feeling what creatures feel, suffering with their suffering. This makes the environmental crisis not just a human tragedy but a divine one. When species go extinct, something in God is diminished.
John B. Cobb Jr., perhaps the leading process theologian, spent decades developing the ecological implications of this vision. Jürgen Moltmann, a German Protestant theologian, also emphasized God's presence within creation rather than merely above it.
Ecofeminism and the Critique of Domination
Some of the most radical rethinking came from feminist theologians. Ecofeminism noticed something that White had missed: the exploitation of nature was structurally similar to the exploitation of women. Both involved one group claiming dominion over another. Both involved treating subjects as objects, beings with inherent worth as mere resources.
Rosemary Radford Ruether traced this connection through Western history. The same dualisms that placed men over women—mind over body, reason over emotion, culture over nature—also placed humanity over the natural world. To heal our relationship with the earth, we would need to challenge these hierarchies at their root.
Sallie McFague proposed reimagining our basic metaphors for God. Instead of thinking of God as a king ruling over creation, what if we imagined the world as God's body? This wasn't meant as literal theology but as imaginative experiment. If we really believed that when we poisoned the earth we were poisoning God's body, how might that change our behavior?
Catherine Keller wove together process theology, feminism, and ecological concern into what she called a "theology of becoming." For Keller, neither God nor the world is finished. Creation is ongoing, and we are participants in what emerges.
Liberation Theology and the Cry of the Earth
Liberation theology, which originated in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s, had always focused on the poor and oppressed. Leonardo Boff, one of its leading voices, extended this concern to the Earth itself. In his view, environmental destruction and social injustice weren't separate problems. They were two faces of the same exploitative system.
The same economic forces that kept peasants poor also destroyed their forests. The same corporations that polluted rivers also exploited workers. To liberate the poor without liberating the Earth would be only half a revolution.
This connection between ecology and justice became a major theme in ecotheology. The people who suffer most from environmental destruction are usually not the ones who caused it. Pollution concentrates in poor neighborhoods. Climate change devastates the Global South while the Global North continues to emit. Environmental justice became impossible to separate from social justice.
Pope Francis and Laudato Si'
In 2015, Pope Francis released Laudato Si', an encyclical—a formal letter to the entire Catholic Church—devoted entirely to the environment. The title means "Praised Be," taken from Francis of Assisi's medieval hymn to creation.
The document was remarkable for several reasons. It brought ecotheology from academic journals into the mainstream of Catholic teaching. It explicitly named climate change as a moral crisis requiring urgent action. And it connected environmental concern to the full range of Catholic social teaching—care for the poor, critique of consumerism, the common good.
Francis introduced the concept of "integral ecology"—the idea that everything is connected. You can't solve environmental problems without addressing economic systems. You can't address economic systems without examining cultural values. You can't change cultural values without spiritual transformation. The crisis is one crisis, and the response must be equally comprehensive.
Beyond Christianity: Ecotheology in Other Traditions
While much early ecotheology developed in response to White's critique of Christianity, the field has always been interfaith. Different traditions bring different resources to the conversation.
Jewish ecotheology draws on the rich tradition of biblical interpretation. Rabbi Arthur Ocean Waskow has explored ecological themes throughout the Hebrew scriptures—from the sabbath (a day of rest for the land as well as for people) to the jubilee (a periodic redistribution of property that prevented permanent accumulation). Rabbi David Mevorach Seidenberg has gone deeper, finding ecological wisdom in Kabbalah, the mystical tradition of Judaism. In Kabbalistic thought, divine sparks are scattered throughout creation. Every creature contains something of God.
Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the great Jewish philosophers of the twentieth century, wrote about "radical amazement"—the capacity to see the world as miraculous rather than mundane. This sense of wonder, Heschel argued, was the beginning of religion. It was also the beginning of ecological consciousness. You don't destroy what fills you with awe.
Muslim ecotheology has deep roots as well. The Quran portrays humans not as masters of nature but as stewards—khalifah in Arabic, the same word from which "caliph" derives. Humans are entrusted with care of the Earth, not ownership of it.
Water holds special significance in Islamic tradition. The Quran asks: "Explain to me if your source of water dries up; then who will give you flowing water?" Water is a gift from God necessary not only for biological survival but for ritual purity. To pollute water is therefore not just an environmental sin but a religious one.
Some Islamic schools—pesantren in Indonesian—have begun integrating environmental education into their religious curriculum, teaching students from a young age that care for creation is part of what it means to be Muslim.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, the philosopher who anticipated Lynn White's critique, drew on the Sufi mystical tradition. Sufism has always emphasized the divine presence within nature. The world isn't separate from God—it's a continuous manifestation of divine creativity. To destroy nature is to obliterate the signs of God.
Indigenous Traditions and Traditional Ecological Knowledge
Perhaps the most significant contribution to ecotheology has come from indigenous traditions—though calling them "ecotheology" might impose a Western framework on something that doesn't fit neatly into academic categories.
Indigenous peoples around the world have maintained relationships with their environments that Western societies are only now learning to value. These aren't primitive holdovers from a pre-scientific age. They're sophisticated systems of knowledge developed over thousands of years of careful observation and spiritual practice.
Consider the Sumba people of Indonesia. Their traditional religion, Marapu, prohibits hunting hornbills. The reason given is religious: hornbill wings resemble God. But modern ecological research has discovered that hornbills are keystone species—they disperse seeds that keep forests healthy. A prohibition that seemed like mere superstition turns out to encode vital ecological wisdom.
Or consider the Dewa fish in West Java, regarded as guardians of sacred waters. Because harming them is prohibited, their populations remain stable. The religious taboo functions as an effective conservation strategy.
John Collier, who headed the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the 1930s and 1940s, devoted much of his career to documenting the link between ecological sustainability and religion among Native American peoples. He found that indigenous communities across North and South America had developed complex systems for living within ecological limits—systems grounded in spiritual beliefs about the sacredness of the natural world.
The emerging field of Traditional Ecological Knowledge, or TEK, tries to integrate these indigenous insights with modern conservation science. The combination is powerful. Indigenous communities bring local knowledge accumulated over generations. Scientists bring tools for measurement and analysis. Together, they can develop approaches to ecosystem management that neither could achieve alone.
The Gaia Hypothesis and Scientific Spirituality
Some of the most interesting developments in ecotheology have come from the intersection of science and spirituality. The Gaia hypothesis, developed by the atmospheric chemist James Lovelock and the microbiologist Lynn Margulis, proposes that Earth functions as a single self-regulating system—almost like a living organism.
Lovelock and Margulis didn't intend this as a religious claim. They were describing feedback loops and homeostatic mechanisms. But the image of Earth as Gaia—the ancient Greek name for the earth goddess—resonated with people seeking a spiritual framework for environmental concern.
Elisabet Sahtouris, an evolutionary biologist who worked with both Lovelock and Margulis, has developed the Gaia concept in more explicitly spiritual directions. She sees humanity as facing a choice: we can continue acting like a cancer, growing without limit until we kill our host, or we can mature into responsible members of Earth's community, contributing to the health of the whole.
The Literary Tradition
Ecotheology isn't only found in academic treatises. Some of its most powerful expressions have come through literature.
Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975, combines careful observation of nature with profound theological reflection. Dillard spent a year exploring the area around Tinker Creek in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, recording what she saw with almost painful attention. A frog deflating as a giant water bug sucks out its insides. A mockingbird diving from a rooftop and catching itself at the last moment. The book raises questions that traditional theology often avoids: Why is nature so violent? What does the cruelty of predation tell us about God?
Terry Tempest Williams, a Mormon writer from Utah, brings her religious tradition into conversation with the desert landscapes of the American West. Her book Refuge interweaves the story of her mother's death from cancer—possibly caused by nuclear testing—with the flooding of a bird sanctuary. The personal and the ecological become inseparable.
Williams represents something important: ecotheology isn't only for theologians. It emerges whenever people of faith try to make sense of their relationship to the natural world.
Creation Spirituality and Christian Animism
Matthew Fox, a former Dominican friar who was eventually expelled from the Catholic Church and became an Episcopal priest, developed what he called "Creation Spirituality." Fox argued that Western Christianity had been too focused on sin and redemption—the fall of humanity and its salvation. This "fall-redemption" spirituality, he claimed, devalued the goodness of creation and led to ecological destruction.
Instead, Fox proposed a "creation-centered" spirituality that started with blessing rather than sin. The universe is fundamentally good. Our primary spiritual task isn't to escape the world but to celebrate it and participate in its ongoing creativity.
Mark I. Wallace has taken this even further, describing himself as a "Christian animist." Animism—the belief that spiritual beings inhabit natural objects—is usually associated with indigenous religions and considered incompatible with Christianity. But Wallace argues that the Bible itself contains animist elements. When God appears as a dove at Jesus's baptism, or as a burning bush to Moses, or as the serpent in Eden, these aren't merely metaphors. They're genuine divine manifestations within nature. If God can be truly present in a bush or a bird, then nature itself becomes sacred.
The Challenge Ahead
Ecotheology has accomplished something remarkable. It has taken traditions that were often accused of causing environmental destruction and found within them resources for healing. It has built bridges between science and religion, between indigenous knowledge and academic theology, between personal spirituality and political action.
But the harder question remains: Can it work?
Critics argue that science and education alone cannot inspire the changes necessary to address the environmental crisis. We know what's happening. We have the data. We understand the physics of climate change and the biology of extinction. What we lack is the will to act.
Ecotheology proposes that religion might provide what's missing—the motivation, the moral framework, the sense of sacred obligation that could move people from knowledge to action. If we truly believed that nature was sacred, that harming the Earth was a sin, that caring for creation was a divine command, would we behave differently?
Perhaps. Or perhaps religion has always been better at blessing the status quo than challenging it. Perhaps churches and mosques and temples will continue to consume and pollute like everyone else, adding only a layer of pious rhetoric.
The test of ecotheology will not be the books it produces but the actions it inspires. Right now, around the world, religious communities are building solar panels on their houses of worship, divesting from fossil fuels, protecting sacred forests, and teaching their children that care for creation is a fundamental religious duty. Whether these efforts will prove sufficient remains to be seen.
But the conversation has changed. No one can now argue that religion has nothing to say about the environment. The only question is whether we will listen—and whether we will act on what we hear.