Ralph Tanner

Religion and the environment

Preface List of Illustrations Foreword Introduction: Religion and the Environment Types of Religions The Limitations of Religion/Environmental Interactions Perceptions of the Environment The Effect of the Environment on Religions The Impact of Religious Behaviour on the Environment Socio-economic Activities and the Environment Religious Influence and Population Pressures Religious Acts with Consequences on Communal Life Style Religious Influence on the Life Cycle The Impact of Religion on the Treatment of Animals Religion and Environmental Management References Index

Perceptions of the Environment

Everyone experiences their own environment. The intensity of this experience depends to a large degree on its relevance to their livelihood and religious beliefs with which they approach it. They feel it most strongly at crisis times, such as when there are poor harvests, the deaths of cattle and children, the infertility of women or illnesses in the family. Soldiers and sailors have a widened perception of the environment when terrain or storms pose threats to their survival. This partly accounts for their common awareness of the need for religious support. In urban-industrial societies the perceived and experienced environment has less to do with survival. It can be ignored when it does not positively intrude with fog, flood and earthquakes.

The Impact of Religion on the Treatment of Animals

The religious protection of animal life has had a very long history. Since Hinduism and Buddhism believe in the transmigration of souls, their followers have for centuries protected and freed animals which they believe may be the repository of human souls who have lost their way in their search to detach themselves from worldly desires. This has preserved certain species which might otherwise have disappeared.

The Limitations on Religion/Environment Interactions

The main limitation on the impact of religious activity on the environment is probably the incompleteness of religious observance. This results from socio-economic pressures, political climate, available leisure and the occurrence of disease. Many people neglect dietary laws under pressure of local circumstances. The Bible, inter alia, condemns the consumption of pork and certain seafoods. This prohibition is observed by Orthodox Jews but neglected by practising Christians. It also condemns excessive wine drinking but Christians are probably both its greatest producers and consumers. All religions condemn theft but it is common everywhere. Pastoral people include cattle in many of their religious rituals but there is widespread cattle rustling among them for wealth and to enhance social prestige.

The Impact of Religious Behaviour on the Environment

The dynamism induced by some religious beliefs has an important influence on human uses of the environment. Christianity is the outstanding example. Christian missionaries have always accompanied and strengthened trade. Jesuits accompanied fur traders in the wilds of central Canada; Spanish priests accompanied the gold seekers to Mexico and Peru. The United States owes Hawaii largely to the efforts of American missionaries. Thirty years after their arrival in the islands, they had secured tracts of land and held all the important offices under the government. This had far-reaching consequences since it laid the foundation in the early twentieth century of the landed aristocracy of planters. Their sons and grandsons took the lead in the revolution of 1893 and in the movement for the annexation of the islands to the United States (Semple 1947, 98–9). Christian missionaries in those parts of Africa colonized by Britain had an educational influence which played an important role in the adhesion of these territories to the British Commonwealth after their independence.

Religious Influence and Population Pressures

Religious factors affect the occurrence and toleration of high population densities. This may be temporarily acceptable at focal sites like Mecca or Lourdes but not in people’s home areas. The density of population in a monastery may be high but there are institutional arrangements which control the resulting stress. The same density in a newly established commune based on ethical if not religious principles would find the situation more difficult to manage. A Hindu joint household with sons and their wives living with their parents is not a particularly stressful situation for those involved, whereas it might not work for English Christians.

Socio-economic Activities and the Environment

Religions react to changing socio-economic circumstances, political domination, and above all, to new ideas. These traditionally arrived from missionaries, traders and returning pilgrims but increasingly from books and most recently from the media. The resulting changes can be drastic and rapid as we have seen in the origins of Christianity and Islam.

Religion and Environmental Management

People generally view environmental management as a political activity with little stress on religious considerations, even in states which are officially religious such as Israel, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. But all generally recognize that the provision of housing, roads, hospitals, water, sewage and food have a religious dimension. Land use planners, whatever their faith, will be concerned with quasi-religious issues which range from the conservation of religious buildings and cemeteries and the prevention of disasters on mass pilgrimages to minor problems such as the widening of a road by a temple or tomb or the provision of safe water used for sacred purposes.

Religion and the Environment: an Overview

Most religions view the natural environment as a harmonious unity, conceived by an external and transcendent mind. They further teach that this applies not only to the world as a whole but also to the neighbourhood and personal level which people experience. As a corollary they recognize that religious groups have a responsibility to preserve, and where possible to enhance, the environment so that humans in general can survive and prosper.

Religious Influences on the Life Cycle and the Maintenance of Environmental Balance

Monasticism and the celibacy of priests, monks and nuns clearly reduce the rate of conception in a community and may even determine whether a particular population expands or contracts. Buddhist monasticism has similar effects. In Outer Mongolia the number of celibate lamas has been associated with the slow growth of the population (Dondog 1972, 52–4). Some religious beliefs have led to practices which have terminated the possibility of conception. The upper-class male members of the Skopsi in nineteenth-century Russia castrated themselves. This sect, which started in 1770, expected the millennium when their numbers reached 144000 as mentioned in the book of Revelation (7: 4; Conybeare 1921). Similarly, the separation of male and female Shakers precluded births. Those who wanted to conceive would have left their communities. However, since female members were often those seeking refuge from male mistreatment, this may have been infrequent.