Religion and Ecology Unit

The Religion and Ecology Unit seeks individual paper and complete panel proposals relating to a wide range of themes in religion and ecology, especially proposals that resonate with the 2025 thematic emphasis on “freedom.” As inspired by the Presidential theme, we ask: How is the human claim to freedom entangled with other life forms? If this type of freedom results in environmental degradation and species extinction, is this freedom really free? Is freedom the right of all species? If so, how and why do dominant ideologies control freedom for the rest? In what ways has the promise of freedom for the colonizer, as in westward expansion, Manifest Destiny, private property, and the enclosure of the commons, resulted in environmental degradation and genocide? What are other ways to conceptualize and experience freedom that affirms the rights of all beings?

Broadening one’s understanding of freedom, we are interested in how ecological perspectives open up concepts of freedom to the more than human world. For instance, including non-humans in politics, as with multi-species democracy, thinking of freedom, agency, and will in non-human ways of being and knowing (e.g. how does religion help us understand free agency in plants and fungi?). In other words, how does the intersection of religion and ecology help us frame political freedom (e.g. multi-species democracy, ecofascism, commoning, political representation of non-humans, rights of nature) as well as the freedom of individuals (agency, autonomy, will). 

We are also interested in exploring psychological dimensions of freedom in religion and ecology, especially through ecological griefwork. What are some examples of communities doing ecological griefwork? How does hope tie into ecological griefwork? What is the practical significance of hope for self-sustaining and/or survival practices? How, and when, might hopelessness sustain freedom? 

In addition, we welcome papers who are engaging in themes of practical survival. Are there case studies of communities, movements, or eco-activists who engage in interpersonal struggle and conflict? What can we learn from groups that are building coalitions who are not unified ideologically? In other words, what does it look like to partner with groups that have different moral/principled convictions? How can purity prevent ecological work and activism? What gets to “count” as environmentalism, and how does this prevent creative collaborations and fruitful ecological endeavors?

We also acknowledge the interdisciplinary nature of and multifaceted approaches to research on the connections between religion and ecology. We especially welcome new contributions to religion and ecology intended to develop and push the field in methodology, topics, themes, texts, authors, objectives, and/or audience. We are also interested in including the way intersections of religion and ecology also intersect with other forms of identity (race, class, gender, etc.)

 The Religion and Ecology Unit is pursuing possible co-sponsored sessions with the following Units:

Co-sponsorship with Native Traditions in the Americas 

• The Haudenosaunee influence and origins of American Democracy
• Doctrine of Discovery and ecological devastation
• The logic of colonization
• History of colonialism and Native American people and communities
• Land reclamations as a critical response to nationalism
• Indigenous traditions, values, and lifeways as freedom

Co-sponsorship with the Esotericism Unit 

• Esoteric cosmologies that locate divinity within the natural world rather than as a transcendent reality,
• The moral status of nonhumans in esoteric and new religious movements. The sacredness and moral status of the natural world in New Age, Wiccan, Pagan, and Neopagan communities,
• The intersection between new and esoteric religious groups and the radical environmental movement.
• The viability (or lack thereof) of new and esoteric religious groups as effective political actors. 
• Analyzing esoteric or new-religious movements that are more conducive to greening than world religions
• Esoteric ecological communities as spaces of freedom and liberation
• Elemental symbolism, paranormal experiences in nature (e.g tree spirits, UFOs/UAPs, familiars) and their ecological significance.