Elective Affinities in the Anthropocene: Christianity and the Natural Environment Reconsidered

• In Event: 2329 - Section on the Sociology of Religion Referred Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 4. Religion and the Environment

Abstract

To reach a deeper understanding of the complex relationship between religion and the natural environment, it is important to move beyond essentializing any religious tradition as having a pro-environmental or anti-environmental ethic. Rather, prior work has shown that the canonical, scholarly, and popular literatures and discourse of a number of religious traditions can and have been socially and rhetorically constructed as supporting an array of positions, from preservation to profligacy, and much in between those two ideal types. In this paper, we develop Max Weber’s idea of “elective affinities” and adapt it to the Anthropocene, to make the case that in a fragmented society, people and communities of convenience tend to choose the tropes and framing from the dominant culture to justify self-interested action. That often does take the form of religious discourse. In this paper, we test our theory with a close look at some of the key literature and discourse from Christianity. In the sense of finding a wide array of practical interpretations relative to environment, the theory is largely supported. We do find important nuances, however. It is instructive to look at how the language and legitimacy of one institution (e.g. religion) has been used to justify and legitimate that of another (e.g. the polity). While these processes, which we characterize as “institutional co-optation,” can be effective in the short run, it may have corrosive longer-term effects. Key rhetorical, and in fact political, battles in the Third Millennium, will be how to adapt pre-industrial religion to late industrial and perhaps post-industrial times. In so doing, how central will the natural environment be in what people and communities hold sacred?

Keywords: environment; institutional co-optation; Anthropocene; Christianity and the environment

Authors

• Thomas J. Burns, University of Oklahoma

• Tom W. Boyd, University of Oklahoma

• Peyman Hekmatpour, University of Oklahoma