This session brings together scholars and activists working at the intersection of religion, ecology, and resistance to explore how spiritual traditions and interfaith coalitions are confronting environmental injustice and reclaiming relationships to land. Drawing on fieldwork and grassroots movements—from Maya-led visions of shared territorial belonging in Mexico to interreligious pipeline blockades in the U.S.—the papers trace how sacred practices are mobilized in defense of ecosystems and community life. Engaging themes such as reproductive justice, fossil fuel divestment, degrowth, and Indigenous cosmologies, presenters show how faith-based actors are resisting systems of extraction and dispossession while imagining political ecologies grounded in care, reciprocity, and co-existence. Across diverse contexts, the session highlights how religious worldviews animate collective struggle and nourish radical alternatives to ecological and social domination—alternatives rooted not only in critique, but in ceremony, coalition, and the hard work of transformation.
This paper draws on extensive fieldwork with Maya and Mennonites navigating land conflict in southern Mexico in order to map possible paths towards common freedom understood as collective self-determination. Over the past 40 years, European Mennonites have begun settling in Maya ancestral territory and have brought with them industrial agricultural practices which deplete the local ecosystem. Their large families have fed a sharp expansion in this industry while their religious and economic systems remain resistant to innovation. Nonetheless, a Maya peasant network resists animosity with their new, insular neighbors and has invited us to accompany them as they seek paths toward sharing in the land. We offer this report on these Indigenous-led processes for transformative justice and share political and theological insights we are gleaning over seven years of collaboration.
This paper focuses on contemporary debates about the dynamic between individual reproductive freedom and collective environmental sustainability. I examine two competing views: 1) population policy advocates, who argue that reproductive freedom should be constrained by governments because of global climate threats, and 2) reproductive justice advocates, who reject the notion that governments should constrain reproductive freedom for any reason. While environmentalists are correct that population growth exacerbates climate threats, RJ advocates are also right to direct our attention to the systemic conditions that situate reproductive choices. As such, I argue that governments are responsible for improving the environmental contexts in which reproduction takes place, namely by reducing our reliance upon the most carbon-costly energy sources. Because massive fossil fuel subsidies and the influence of industry lobbies make this difficult, I conclude with lessons from religious environmentalists who participate in anti-fossil fuel activism through institutional divestment campaigns and intergenerational organizing.
This essay enters and responds to a live and ongoing debate in global politics regarding the climate crisis—namely, between ecomodernism and degrowth theory—using Sabbath as a theological lens. I begin by developing Sabbath as a theological and political lens. In particular, I emphasize Sabbath as a spatial politic. With the help of the Marxist geographer Doreen Massey, the first half of this essay challenges Abraham Joshua Heschel’s notion that Sabbath is a purely temporal practice. Instead, I highlight Sabbath as a spatial project. A spatial Sabbath, then, enables a reorientation of Sabbath as both a spiritual and political project. This leads to the second half of the essay, where I use the spatial politics of Sabbath in combination with degrowth theory to build a collaborative vision of post-capitalist economics from a theological perspective. I conclude by offering one modern concrete example of spatial Sabbath in highlighting Agrarian Trust and the FaithLands project.
The #NoDAPL movement at Standing Rock (2016-2017) ushered in a new era of spiritually grounded eco-activism. Over six years, I conducted fieldwork and participated in grassroots organizing among three of the most high-profile spiritually anchored eco-activist movements in the US: the Anishinaabe-led #StopLine3 oil pipeline resistance (MN); the coalition of Yogis and Baptists who helped derail the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (VA); and the partnership of Mennonites and Roman Catholic Sisters who resisted a fracked gas pipeline with a cornfield Chapel blockade (PA). Through the process, I identified the following themes running through all three campaigns: (1) a deep conviction that eco-activism is a sacred duty; (2) a shared commitment to principles of non-violent mass action; (3) the performance of religious ceremony as a tool of direct-action; (4) the embrace of an intersectional theory of justice; and (5) the emergence of new, interreligious spiritual communities arising from the crucible of eco-activism.
It is undeniable that human beings are at the heart of environmental issues. The root of the ongoing ecological crisis is in human exploitation of the Earth. In light of the Marxian concept of primitive accumulation, this paper explores the ecological crisis, focusing on the detachment of humans from the land as a pivotal condition of exploitation. Engaging with the feminist reinterpretations by Silvia Federici and ecological insights in Marx’s understanding of human-nature relations, the paper highlights the process of capitalist appropriation, expropriation, and exploitation in the commodification of land. Incorporating an animist perspective, the study examines how the detachment of humans from the land has contributed to the alienation of both humans and nature. The anthropological and religious literature on animism and indigenous wisdom is proposed as an entry point to call for a revolutionary imagination to restore the reciprocal relationship between body and land.