Saving Nature : Religion As Environmentalism, Environmentalism As Religion

Environmentalism has moved into the center of the most influential social movements in late modernity. From preserving pre-industrial landscapes, advocating the intrinsic value of nature, and protecting ecosystems against overexploitation, it has developed into a worldview, ethos, and practice, that is radically shifting the frontiers of politics, economics, and ethics. Saving Nature approaches environmentalism as a belief system. The book explores the impact of environmentalism on faith communities and vice versa, and analyzes how environmental worldviews, values, attitudes, and discourses affect religion. By drawing on sources in the sociology of religion and environmental sociology, it sheds light on the religious dimensions of environmentalism. It locates the quick growth of environmentalism in the history of allegedly secular modernity and interprets environmentalism in the context of modernity's re-sacralization. (Series: Studies in Religion and the Environment/Studien zur Religion und Umwelt - Vol. 4)