ABSTRACT
The relation of religion and sustainability pairs one ambiguous, absorptive concept with another equally contested. As the editors of this book make clear in Chapter 1, the study of religion covers a broad range of social phenomena and contains multitudes of human experience. The emerging study of sustainability covers a narrower range but its central concept seems almost as susceptible of contrary worldviews and competing moral agendas. Sustainability has been used to argue for and against climate treaties, for and against free markets, for and against development spending, even for and against environmental preservation. Thinking through the relation of religion and sustainability therefore requires understanding how the pluralism and ambiguity of each concept creates important questions. Answers to those questions shape how societies interpret and respond to
global problems such as climate change and persistent world poverty. Views on the relation of religion and sustainability thus bear practical significance for addressing some of society’s most difficult challenges. Those views help determine, for example, whether and how biodiversity loss is perceived as a moral issue; whether cultural values and moral traditions must change, and if so, which ones and how extensively; how human poverty relates to economic systems and what difference human suffering should make in environmental policies. Those are normative issues concerning how persons and societies will address grave problems, so the conceptual ambiguity here cannot remain merely a matter of speculative inquiry. Relations of religion and sustainability shape how humans will make their future, how the human future will affect life on earth, and – perhaps most importantly – what hope and meaning cultures will make from the task of addressing global problems. This chapter therefore focuses on questions that arise as moral communities draw from religious traditions or use religious resources in order to respond to sustainability problems.
