This week, religious scholar Mary Evelyn Tucker unpacks the entanglement of religion and ecology from an academic perspective. She and Nate discuss what the roots of environmental ethics in religions all over the world look like and how they’ve been evolving in the face of a climate and biodiversity crisis. Could we learn and leverage the uniting power of religion to help us organize and mobilize against impending global crises?
About Mary Evelyn Tucker
Mary Evelyn is a Senior Lecturer and Research Scholar at Yale University where she has appointments in the School of Forestry and the Environment as well as the Divinity School and the Department of Religious Studies, with a specialty in Asian religions. She teaches in the joint MA program in Religion and Ecology and directs the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale University. Her concern for the growing environmental crisis, especially in Asia, led her to co-organize a series of ten conferences on World Religions and Ecology at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard, which were highly successful.
Show Notes & Links to Learn More
00:35 – Mary Evelyn’s Info + Works
02:33 – Forum on Religion and Ecology + online class
04:03 – Confucianism
05:40 – Marlin Perkins, Mutual of Omaha Wildlife Kingdom
05:50 – Ecological teachings in Christianity
06:02 – Ayan Mahamoud + TGS Episode
06:08 – Islam environmental ethic
07:15 – There is an environmental commentary in all the world’s religions
07:42 – Genesis
08:23 – Paul Winter – Earth Mass
09:05 – Increasing prevalence of environmental justice
09:20 – Beginning of environmental justice rooted in christianity
10:44 – Wangari Maathai
14:30 – Population and the environmental movement
16:35 – Consumerism doesn’t satisfy true needs
17:06 – Pope Francis – LAUDATO SI’
17:16 – Bill McKibben
18:08 – Leonardo Boff
18:16 – Thomas Berry
18:55 – Amitav Ghosh
19:31 – Mary’s grandfather – Carlton J. H. Hayes
21:15 – Buddhist ecological and relationality Practice
21:44 – Joanna Macy
23:45 – Anthropocosmic
24:08 – Journey of the Universe
24:55 – Mao’s war on religion and Confucianism’s resurgence
25:31 – Ecological civilization
25:45 – Belt and Road Initiative
26:48 – Tu Weiming
27:37 – The Green Patriarch in the Orthodox tradition – Bartholomew
28:35 – Tom Lovejoy
28:45 – EO Wilson
30:20 – Stephen Jay Gould
30:38 – The inequality of science and humanities in universities
32:10 – Brian Swimme
35:25 – Interfaith Rainforest Initiative
37:38 – United Religions Initiative, calls for UN movement
39:10 – EcoPeace Middle East
40:10 – Humans’ groupish nature
40:45 – In India the waters are considered sacred but the waters are polluted (Yamuna River)
44:36 – GreenFaith
45:18 – In times of anxiety people tend to move towards religion
45:30 – 85% of people in the world identify as religious
47:37 – On Trees: A Conversation With Peter Wohlleben, Jessica J. Lee, and Sumana Roy (Yale Webinar)
52:10 – Jane Goodall on chimpanzees having personalities and relations
52:26 – Suzanne Simard
53:12 – René Descartes
54:37 – Eco-anxiety
54:54 – Greta Thunberg
55:00 – Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion, Sunrise Movement
55:15 – Chaplaincy for how to deal with eco-anxiety
59:26 – Webb telescope images
Teaser photo credit: By Zhangzhugang – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13719015
