Religious Environmentalism

There’s a common belief that science and religion can’t coexist, particularly when it comes to climate change. And in some respects, that’s an understandable belief. Professor George Handley (Literature of the Americas, Ecotheology) acknowledges that religious groups haven’t always helped with the environmental crisis, stating that “many believers not only deny environmental problems, but they deny the very science that diagnoses them.” However, in his Humanities Center Colloquium presentation on March 6, 2025, Handley argued that the only true way to make significant ecological progress lies in taking a combined approach that blends secularism and religion. In Handley’s presentation, which discussed his recent book Literature and Ecotheology: From Chaos to Cosmos, he talked about how we can approach ecocriticism in a way that integrates the best of both views.

A Missing Piece

As a field, ecocriticism focuses on teaching and writing about environmental values in literature based on the belief that literature is vitally important when it comes to shaping future moral behavior. Though it is a more recent field than ecotheology (the discussion of religion through a natural lens), ecocriticism has historically remained almost exclusively secular, in part because of many religions’ rejection of the science of environmentalism.

However, Handley pointed out that excluding religion from ecocritical discussions turns a blind eye to the most powerful influences in shaping moral codes and understandings of nature: books of sacred literature. “Why don’t we teach those books or, at least, know something about how experts of those texts argue for their environmental relevance today, at least for believing students who might resonate with those kinds of arguments?” Handley asked. “If religion is part of the problem, [then] the only way forward is through, not around, religion. It must become part of the solution.”

The Benefits of Religion

Religion has a lot to offer the field in terms of solutions. Part of the issue perpetuating the environmental crisis comes from the prevalence of individualism—something that secularism reinforces rather than challenges. Humanity needs to see itself as part of the interconnected whole of the world instead of continuing with the deeply independent, disconnected sense of self that secularism offers. Handley explained that when we buy into individualism, we reject the community and collaboration that religion offers and ecocriticism seeks to reinstate.

Challenging long-standing ideologies can be tricky, however, so Handley shared one way he’s approached his largely secular ecocritical audience. He said, “If we really believe, as ecocritics, that nature and we as humans are in peril, and that we have manipulated nature for too long as a mechanism for our own benefit, it behooves us to adopt a suspension of disbelief in the face of ideas that see the world as holy or inspirited by divine presence or potentially worthy of our partnership as a fellow subject.”

Shared Transcendence

When it comes to the practicalities of blending secularism and religion in ecocriticism, Handley argued it’s more possible than it seems. The two have a lot in common, as both environmentalism and religion ask us to accept the world as it is—both the parts we value and the parts we dislike. And when it comes to the people having those discussions, regardless of religion or the lack thereof, nature gives us an avenue of common spirituality that we can use to connect with each other. “I think that’s one of the beautiful potentials of environmentalism,” Handley said. “If we can focus on the ways in which we experience nature very idiosyncratically—but in a kind of spiritual way—it allows for a kind of unity or relationality that motivates and connects people and creates a kind of belonging that doesn’t rely on whether we can all agree on the status of Jesus Christ.”

Interested in reading more? Find Literature and Ecotheology: From Chaos to Cosmos here.