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John Grim on Religion and Ecology
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- apicious remarks on apicious day. Both the uh the season and one of the songs sets one in mood, doesn't it? Don't it always seem to go
- that you don't know what you got? uh sometimes I think that way about religion and ecology when people lose their uh inner
- authenticity you know sometimes we want to shrink religion down to institutional religions but I think we all know it's much bigger game than that
- and mention the confusion thinker he would talk about inner authenticity when you lose that religion when you lose that inner authenticity where do you go
- you know you lose your pigs are your chickens and your dog. You go out on the front and you call for them. There's a good chance they'll come, but you lose
- that. Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone. And you lose that and at your age,
- well, maybe some have a sense of it, but as the years and decades stick on, it's gone like a dog sometimes. Gone like a really good friend.
- You think uh you can hear me now? We need to do the recording. Oh, sure. Well, that's the best part. It's all
- downhill from here. So, the religion uh losing that uh ecology,
- I guess that's where I'm at at this point in my life. I I have seen uh along with Mary Evelyn Tucker some scenes that I wanted to show you that set me on this
- career. So let me launch into it. Uh I wanted to suggest by these terms uh field and force that what we're about um that this collaborative activity that
- we're calling religion and ecology is uh to establish an academic field. So here at Yale we teach courses uh in religion and ecology and have a joint degree
- program between the divinity school and forestry and environmental studies and also then the sense of force. This is an engaged project. I think by
- the end of it you get a sense of what I mean both from these slides and then from the short video piece afterwards. We're engaged scholars. Uh we're we're
- interested in the abstract to use that term. And I'd like to make maybe some uh apologia or defense of the abstract maybe in the question and answer time.
- But uh we're also interested in the engaged on the ground religious environmentalism. So this project has both of those types of concerns. Often
- uh our colleagues in the academic world will say you've crossed the line. You've lost objectivity. You've given over to your own subjectivity of engagement. Our
- colleagues who are on the ground working in projects say, "Grim, you're too abstract. You're just an academic." So, we're navigating along this kind of a
- knife's edge, trying to do some work, huh? maybe uh an overview of these remarks is uh I'm trying to get at some of the
- cultural values that are shaped by uh world views uh from the standpoint of uh I have world religions here downra I wanted to suggest not simply the
- institutional traditions we can talk more about that uh humanitarian and secular values the sense of environmental ethics Jenkins up at the
- divinity school does very fine courses in this regard. Question of behavior with regard to the natural world. Stephven Keller and Ed Wilson at Harvard
- had Steven Keller formerly at the forestry environmental studies paid a lot of attention to biofilia and Keller will talk about it as gen were
- genetically coded which I find very interesting in terms of Thomas Ferry who I'll show in a bit uh aesthetic in the arts. So the type of uh sensing and
- minding if I could use that kind of language sensing minding that leads to creating. I think the arts gives us some very good indications of this kind of
- philosophical uh and uh aesthetic understanding. Uh just a few slides and let me move through them quickly. It's more of a
- mood that I want to create here. These are put in by Mary Evelyn Tucker who in terms of globalization professor Wolf is in China. Mary Evelyn
- is currently in uh India. She's uh helping uh push along a project that we have which I'll talk about later and also at an Earth Charter meeting. Uh
- please take a note uh take a look at earthcharter uh.org I believe. If I have it wrong if it's.com try both. The earth charter is a very interesting uh effort
- at a global ethics with regard to uh these issues. So it's it's worth a look at and they're celebrating 25 years since this document was done at Amabad
- in India. So uh her whole impulse on this re religion and ecology project uh comes from her studies in East Asia especially
- Japan. And in that setting her encounter not only with the uh constructed natural world of the East Asian uh Confucian and Buddhist traditions but also the
- political uh implications of Confucianism which is her field. Now it may seem strange that I'm I'm moving over a number of uh so-called religions
- or fields of very quickly Confucianism, Buddhism uh and uh associating them with one person. But in fact in the East Asian sphere uh it was Buddhism that
- carried Confucianism to Japan. So these traditions interact much more significantly and the ways in which they have interacted with the natural world
- uh influenced her. So she came to this project uh with that uh 1970s encounter in East Asia and it was uh gradually over the years then as we lived in these
- settings and we returned for her work to live for some three years uh in uh Japan and we could see this uh change in the landscape in East Asia which is uh so
- evident today to people who come and visit visit in those areas the sense of u the air quality uh it's remarkable to see the changes
- that have happened in the last 30 years in say Bangkok to think of where uh soul Korea was when I first went to study with ecstatic
- practitioners healers called mudong women who are shamanic practitioners and where soul was when I first visited and where it is now recently I mentioned
- healers because my prime primary field and what brought me into these studies in religion and ecology is my work with the north north um North American
- American Indian peoples uh uh these uh crow absol most most closely John Cumins uh with the glasses in the back is uh the older
- gentleman ah I have one of these uh is uh a what the crow call an ak balia balia is a person and aka a suffix put to indicate instrumental activity on the
- part of that uh which follows. It's a person who can do something. And as a healer and working with him for 30 years, it's very interesting to to begin
- to enter into those cultural understandings that crow people have to their natural world. And of course, one of the ceremonials that uh I first went
- to study in 1979 and that brought me into these understandings is uh what outsiders call the Sundance, but what the crow call ashkis lua. Lisa is to
- dance and Ashkis is a difficult word to translate big lodge but its intention is imitation lodge. This is a lodge built to make present the cosmos. So Neil's
- remarks earlier about cosmological thinking in the religions. It's on the ground with these people. This lodge is only halfway through now. But you also
- notice the stuffed buffalo head and there's a stuffed eagle in the rafters. So there's an effort to bring the presence of also biodiversity into this
- cosmos. It's not just human men and women who will come in here and dance and they dance for three, four or five days depending on the person who
- sponsors it and they go without food or water and their effort is then to achieve something they call diag sincerity may authenticity
- that inner something that makes a person but it's a person in relationship to this uh this place where the poles the lodge poles come from, where the buffalo
- come from. They have a herd of 600 buffalo in a box canyon in the Big Horn Mountains where the eagles come from because the dancers blow on eagle bone
- whistles when they perform this ceremonial and this whistling this constant whistling of the men and women dancing will draw eagles out of the
- mountains and they'll they'll g over this lodge. So you're this effort to achieve diagos sincerity is in relationship to these
- elements. So here's a a religion then that uh has has definite agendas with regard to interior experience. But it's also the
- case that indigenous people now uh are making their mark uh in the res world of resistance huh through their religions or lifeway. I prefer that term rather
- than religion though I don't want to erase religion but I prefer lifeway because their religious activities are not pulled apart from the world as they
- know it the world of everyday activity. So native people would see this resistance as having something to do with their lifeway with their sincerity
- with their authenticity with their relationship with the world. So this uh tar sand uh demonstration by northern Canadian peoples is in league with say
- the unrip document the United Nations declaration on the rights of indigenous people at which there were uh only of the nations of the of the United Nations
- only four who refused to sign it uh New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United States and New Zealand and Australia have reversed and have signed
- uh Canada has not nor is re it's not considering changing its the United States under this administration is uh reflecting and calling back its decision
- to rethink it. Huh. So it's very interesting to to feel the um the effect of indigenous people in so many of these issues. So these this type of background
- is what really brought me into this religion and ecology project along with a scholar named Thomas Barry who taught Mary Evelyn myself. I did my
- dissertation with Barry at Forom University. Mary Evelyn did a master's and then went to Colombia's East Asian and languages program to do
- Confucianism. But this guy's vision uh really uh articulated itself uh after he was 60. and he lived to be 94 and I think it was
- this vision that carried him on. He really uh all of these books that are mentioned here were published after he was 60. He has a whole set of works uh
- prior to this on uh his work as a historian of religion or a cultural historian is a better term. Uh his uh understanding of these issues comes from
- out of his concern uh with regard to cosmology. He was interested in the cosmology of religions that those religions he uh put his mind to study
- and acquire some understanding of. It was their cosmology that interested them. Their story of the of reality as we know it. And so his focus then became
- on the universe itself and his question became where are we as a species? We humans on this planet what's our story as a whole?
- So the globalization project was is very much in the background of his work because his concern was we have many stories from the traditional communities
- and they are still valorized they still motivate as Neil's point made but we are also very much aware that they don't made motivate as they did in the past
- and so his uh concern was we now have a scientific story of our emergence uh from uh early um primal flaring forth of uh reality as we know it into the
- galaxies and the solar system and life on earth and the human community itself. So that became for him a new story and it was that story that he felt raised
- the question a new question for us that the universe as we know it uh is has this subjectivity. So uh there's uh lot many questions that
- draw forth some closer philosophical attention than Barry himself could give before he died. But he left a legacy which is very interesting. For example,
- he has this um observation that uh this moment that we face is utterly unique. And so that in itself marks the
- difference of this moment for the so-called world religions. It marks it also for the non-believing community, the uh new atheists, the um community of
- uh uh secular uh political activity. All of us experience this moment in our own unique way. And for Barry, one of these abiding questions would be um we have
- not even thought about this in the world religions. Uh we have a very clear ethical regards for these issues. If you cut yourself or
- if you cut other people, if you kill other pe even now genocide in the 20th century, but these uh concepts of ecoside or bioside or geocide still
- perplex the religious traditions. This project then uh is uh grows out of an awareness this religion and ecology product project out of the types of
- issues that we're all all aware of in this class. Huh. The the sense of uh uh urbanization and uh alienation from the land in conjunction with the prior
- issues. Huh? that climate change and all of the global issues that go with that and biodiversity loss. These probably the uh two more prominent uh global
- environmental issues that we're aware of. And as we see these species uh wink out uh it's an it's an issue um about this
- uh you don't um you don't know what you've got till it's gone and uh it's enough to give a person aja uh at some days and so Neil's remark
- about environmental despair is easy But finding hope, these are people also that we find hope with in terms of dialogue partners. Our
- coming to forestry and environmental studies was very important for us. Our whole career has been in religious studies. So the divinity school is very
- familiar. Religious studies, it's a very familiar setting for us. But forestry and environmental studies these are the people then that raise questions for us
- which are very sharp provide information for us which is everchanging but at least probing in a contemporary mode. Huh. And uh Gus Beth has been quoted
- several times and again just to re-emphasize Neil's point, Gus Beth has said very clearly 40 years of a career establishing pro uh the foremost
- environmental organizations in the United States for monitoring environmental health, a career in the United Nations development program. And
- for him to say after 40 years and knowing that we have the science that we have the legal laws quite often in the books not only in this country but let's
- say in China also in India also the laws are on the books but we do not have the motivation he would say we have not turned the corner on this and why not
- that's his question why not where's the motivation so he's now calling for greater participation from the religions from the phil philosophical community
- from the arts. And so our project in religion and ecology has sought to really interact on the policy side at the top and then on the religion side on
- the bottom. Huh. So that our effort is to share a common sense that uh we feel we have in common common with the uh science community. Cellular life has
- opened itself up in ways that maybe for those of us who are not scientists, we we begin to understand even the amazing character of photosynthesis.
- And to think about uh what it means to come to the symmetry of growth in its larger expression, even ourselves and our movement through time and the
- varieties of beings that we share this planet with. and the wonder the incredible wonder that uh all of this presents to us. And so these kinds of
- projects as I've indicated before with Thomas Barry and his uh uh focus on cosmology have brought us to one of the projects that I invite you all to
- participate in March 25th uh at the forestry and environmental studies. Uh we will show a new film which we have made called journey of the universe.
- It's an effort by a mathematical cosmologist Brian Swim to literally tell the story of the emerging universe. And I think that character of story is
- something we might talk about in the question and answer. So March 25th, the religion and ecology project on the religion side is significantly oriented
- towards uh assisting religions to move into their ecological phase. So that uh these uh religious leaders, the Dalai Lama, Benedict the 16th, um Williams the
- Archbishop of Canterbury, uh someone help me. What's his first name? Crow. Thank you. Croin and uh the green patriarch. Not so many people know
- Bartholomew, the patri uh ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople or Istanbul, a major uh spokesperson for religious environmentalism. I'll speak more of him
- in just a moment. Uh, Tikknar Han, many of you should know, the Dharma Master Chongyan, over 6,000 recycling centers in Taiwan. She is a Zen Buddhist uh
- leader in uh Taiwan who's become very active in global outreach, so ecojustice, human justice tied to environment and these other leaders.
- Obviously the the sense of uh environmental justice picturing Wangari and Mati is also a major concern of this religion and ecology project because
- this um issues of environmental uh pollution of environmental problems due to climate change affect people on the ground and so the uh religious
- traditions not only in their uh uh beliefs and practice but also in their on the ground activities. So the Zuji problem um the Zuji sect was pictured
- there. But I wanted to move into the area that Neil also mentioned that religions definitely have to be considered uh in their problematic
- character in this uh context of religion and ecology. Also we've had a a recent occasion uh in the election I think to see some of these statements on the on
- the margins also with regard to climate change. Uh I received a email today uh outlining the statements by some of the new members of the house with regard to
- climate change and labeling it a hoax uh labeling it simply a cyclical pattern. It's due to sunspots. So we have um very interesting connection here between the
- political and the religious where there's there's a a mutual um interaction there where the intolerance and unwillingness to uh consider these
- questions mark some of the religions also within the religions you find transcendent orientations which uh would tend to remove people from concern for
- the material world. So it's obviously one of the problems in the religious traditions that's uh evident and uh historical uh issues where nature is
- devalued which have resonated into the present. For example, the um charge of paganism which is used quite often in discussions
- to simply uh appropriate the ground that any Christian or any of the Abrahamic traditions especially anyone from the Abrahamic traditions who would give
- attention to the natural world as an integral reality uh sometimes might be charged with paganism. It's a kind of nature devalued card. I think the
- anthropocentric focus I think is a major concern say in the seminaries where Christian yeshivas uh or the um uh Islamic teaching centers name escaped
- right now where the um anthropocentric focus is very clear the traditions uh educating clergy to meet uh challenges often in a human
- earth context only. Uh the promise of religion is also very evident once one begins to consider it. Namely uh large numbers of people in institutional
- authority as well as the uh possibility of retrieval from textual traditions from ritual traditions from the commentarial traditions uh a new
- understanding of what these traditions have actually said about uh individuals and communities in relationship to bio regions. So this is a very uh uh very
- significant part of this religion and ecology project and is actually part of where we began this project. Obviously a one of the positive promises of religion
- is the capacity to educate and bring people into some persuasive encounter environmental ethics and action. the uh roof here of the Yale Divinity School.
- Prior to the building of the new Kun Center for uh forestry, this was the largest solar array on campus and also uh an evangelical college with a obvious
- uh interest in uh in environmental activity. And notice the language issue here, how people finding their own language to talk about these issues in
- the religions. a a text uh slide which uh rather than simply uh repeating the slide, I think it gives you a sense of the range of
- activities that we need to understand and I think Neil was going at the same thing with regard to uh ecological positions or perspectives
- in the religious traditions. So that when I talk about retrieving in the traditions, bringing forward the past, I think these are the areas in which to
- consider this retrieval act, but I don't think they mean much unless we re-evaluate what is retrieved. So does it have anything to say to the present?
- If it does, if it traditions past speaks to contemporary issues, then I think it calls also for reconstruction of tradition. So retrieval, re-evaluation
- and reconstruction are major agendas of this religion and ecology project. And of the three, reconstruction is obviously the most difficult. Religions
- are very conservative, slow to change and to so to consider reconstructing themselves is very difficult. I want to move through these very quickly. I think
- in the readings you got a sense of the project that we had done. It uh after 10 conferences it culminated with several conferences in New York and the
- formation of the forum on religion and ecology which we brought to Yale and the publication of these volumes. Over 800 scholars have collaborated in the
- initial beginnings of this project and brought these books which are still very fine uh resource works in this field. We have a a journal now which is a
- peerreview journal. It's uh uh it's 12 years old now and it's a setting in which younger scholars can place their published works. So this is very
- important and we'll watch a piece of the renewal film which is again our first entry into film projects to bring larger communities into consideration of these
- issues. uh some of the uh activities that we continue to be involved in uh along with the Detalus uh publication some years
- ago is to support this attention to climate change in various settings and I just want to point out the indigenous environmental network the attention of
- indigenous people to climate change is rather remarkable. the evidence and the statistical the empirical evidence which is being reported by indigenous peoples
- and is being recorded by such a group as the indigenous environmental network is is substantial and uh as I want to indicate very important uh and on the
- ground group interfaith power and light is worth mentioning largely in the Christian Jewish Islamic communities in the US but very focused on church audits
- on the whole idea of energy use by religious institutions. Another project that we began uh quite early after the initial conferences on the religions was
- to raise the question of religion and animals and this continues uh this work at the Yale Center for Bioeththics where we have our offices. So the uh religion
- and animals group also at the American Academy of Religion where I just came from and also Neil was there. I had a chance to chat a bit uh that the
- professional organization of all religious teachers in the United States and Canada has significant groups on animals and also religion and ecology. I
- mention the uh animal issue because the many of you might know the earth mass at St. John the Divine held every October at the feast of St. Francis of Aisi
- where they open the main doors. I think you should be aware it's only when the bishop comes and knocks on the door that they open the main doors at St. John the
- Divine. But at the Earth Mass, they open them for the animals and they bring these animals right down the front the aisle, the central aisle and people
- bring their dogs and cats. You can see in the background, it's remarkable to sit in the pews with parakeetses, chickens, dogs, and whatnot. And not uh
- the place doesn't go into absolute mayhem. It's a very interesting kind of moment. The music is especially remarkable. Paul Winter, who many of you
- might know, has done the music for probably uh it's it's 15 years old now. The Earth Mass of St. John the Dawn. Uh religion and water is where I'm heading
- to close up. Are we still okay? That's good. Um the uh religion science and environment symposium is where I'll go with the
- slide in just a moment. The friends of the earth uh is a project which was nurtured also uh here at Yale at the World Fellow Center and some uh students
- graduate students at Yale are working on this project to bring the Abrahamic face together on a project to clean and refurbish the Jordan River. Many of the
- same issues with the Yamina. So I'll save them for just a moment. But I did want to give some attention to the ecumenical patriarch. He has held eight
- conferences focused on water beginning with the AI in 1995 and through the Mississippi River. Next year will be Lake Victoria in Africa. His um his
- intention is uh to focus on environmental issues. So he gathers together on a single boat over 200 uh politicians, scientists, academics,
- journalists, people who are focused on environmental activities and rather than sailing to the significant tourist spots, he goes to these troubled
- environmental spots and the news articles that are generated out of that by the New York Times, uh Manchester Guardian, there's significant uh news
- attention uh to these environmental spots, many of which are are easily passed over by the press. So the patriarch is one of these uh religious
- leaders who has u major thinkers like a metropolitan John Zulus uh who's helping him think through a lot of these issues in terms of his own theological
- tradition. And uh Bartholomew, this uh ecumenical patriarch has labeled uh uh industrial pollution as a sin. So he's uh someone who's tried to find language
- to talk about these issue rather than simply abstract uh orthodox statements. He's put himself in some jeopardy within his own tradition. For example, on the
- Amazon, he allowed indigenous leaders after he had apologized to them on behalf of Western civilization and what it had imposed on indigenous people and
- a personal apology from his standpoint. He allowed indigenous leaders to bless him and together they blessed the Amazon River. You can imagine what a leader
- like this would pay in his own tradition in terms of u collegial support for allowing other religious leaders to bless him. So he's a remarkable uh um
- ecumenical and interreligious dialogue oriented person. uh the one case study just a a few close minutes on this is coming up in January and as I mentioned
- Mary Evelyn is uh helping to um in Delhi now helping to get some of our logistics clarified uh we're bringing together uh a Yale Terry so Terry University in
- Delhi but what's interesting here is the uh joining of this discussion on the Yamina River by religious leaders from the Vindavan area led by the Radar Ramen
- temple. Huh. So, religious leaders from Vindavin, leaders of significant pilgrimage sites. This is the setting uh for a Bishnava theology namely where uh
- Krishna consciousness uh emerged uh in India over the centuries. And uh I I mean by that the uh ancient tradition of of Krishna awareness mentioned in the
- Bhu in the Mahabarata and the Bhagavad Gita and in later texts. So these religious leaders will come to terra university on January 3rd and 4th and we
- we will have a dialogue on the condition of the Yamina River. The Vindavin temples are all located on the Yamina River. The Yamna River is a goddess.
- Huh? So this is an effort to really uh pay attention to what has happened to this river and the paradox of religious attitudes towards this river. So the
- Yamina as you can see in turquoise here parallels the Ganga or Ganges river that these two major sacred rivers in northern India and the Yamina when it
- comes out of the glacier yam at Yamanotri and develops into a magnificent rel river and it's especially first 100 miles it's about a
- 900 mile long river before it joins the Ganges it is actually larger than the Ganges when it joins it at Alahhabad uh But the looks uh are subject to an
- incredible assault about a 100 miles from Delhi. This literally this uh river is literally broken in half and it's the two halves
- are channeled into two canals which are uh directed towards irrigation of the green revolution crops in the doab the region between the Yamina and the Gan
- Ganges river. So this is incredible fertile agricultural region which is now water dependent and the yamina is used totally to irrigate uh those crops. What
- returns to the yuma then is laced with um agricultural runoff pesticides insecticides fertilizers. Then that water is then damned at uh the entrance
- to Delhi and that becomes Delhi drinking water and the Gamina is largely dry through Delhi except for industrial waste and human waste. So there is
- flowage through Delhi but it is utrophic. Huh? And so beyond uh Delhi the Yamina is largely uh utrphic. it will not support uh overt life. There is
- aquatic life uh and that's uh a miracle in itself that there is still some life in the Yamina beyond Delhi. uh but this raises then uh one of the paradoxes and
- I'm moving to a close namely um the issue of purity and pollution that the Yamina is as pictured on the bottom here is one of the beloved of
- Krishna like the gopy maidens the herder of the the cattle who are from low cast so the social justice issue is also very interesting uh in the vishnava
- theological tradition by what I mean by that it's not simply a bromanical uh focused religion where uh this tradition and the person of Krishna himself he
- becomes blue by absorbing the toxic poisons that had been put in the Yamuna river so you can see the retrieval characteristic of old ideas in this
- tradition about toxins or poisons in the uh Krishna uh is in relationship to the gopy maidens and to the river in an ecstatic relation of love. It's a
- tradition of it's a bakti tradition, a tradition of deep devotion. So we have of course this incredible paradox again where uh even religious activity is
- undertaken which seemingly wantingly throws um garbage from the ceremonials themselves into the Yamina River and the
- Yamina here is a deeply polluted river. So the conference is an effort to call this paradox into question. How could a deified reality become so terribly
- defiled? Huh? The overarching agenda then in this religion and ecology project is to activate within the religious traditions in all of their
- difference. So this is not simply a monological position but rather extreme diversity in the traditions of with regard to reverence and respect then for
- biodiversity and a sense of restraint which Neil also mentioned the aesthetic impulses within these religious traditions now being seen in a broader
- range. the question the uh social justice question of distribution of environmental technology and aid uh
- to assist uh other peoples and countries to address their environmental issues as an act of responsibility more than in simply an anthropocentric setting but in
- an anthropocmic understanding that we recognize ourselves as part of this reality that we live among. And that this reality also shares with us this
- larger story of the emergence. We share with all of reality this sense of uh living uh on a planet which is itself alive and how to understand the
- restoration project is obviously one of the most challenging issues because it immediately begs restore to what? And so that's a question I think that we all
- ask ourselves. What is it that uh we suddenly recognize it's gone? And uh having recognized it's gone, we realize that in some linguistic
- traditions, gone is a temporal verbal. Gone is something which people understand as coming towards them. And gone is something which people realize
- they're entering into. And gone is something which people see happening and having happened they realize it's gone. We don't have that kind of language
- reflection in English so much. But I think we're capable of it. And restoration I think activates this kind of thinking. What is it that we restore
- to? Is it something past? Is it something present? or is it something to which uh we want uh life uh and ourselves to head towards? I hope. Thank
- you. [Applause]