ABSTRACT
Religion would have been related with Abraham Maslow's suggested need for self-actualization and the like, which he dropped in later revisions. So, it is not strictly fitting for the framework of human needs to include religion. In their roles as soteriology, in legitimating social relations, etc., religions do not have the strongest of relations to the environment. There is, however, a fundamental similarity between the questions of religion and human ecology/environmentalism that pertain to the workings of the world and the human position and role in it. A more direct relation can be argued to exist: nature has spiritual value as a setting and object for contemplation and spiritual growth quite beyond its value as a relaxing and/or arousing environment. Such spiritual ecologies are by and large distinctly modern developments arising both out of an age-old concern over the proper understanding/teaching of the relationship between humans, nature and the supernatural, and the mainly recent environmental crisis.
