Religion and the Environment

An Introduction

Susan Power Bratton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781138569775
• eBook ISBN: 9781351334334
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Atheism

How does religion relate to our global environment? Religion and the Environment provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to this controversial question by covering the following important themes:

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• the religion-environment interface

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• pre- and post-industrial religious practices related to resource extraction and the rise of the Anthropocene

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• an analysis of religious response to the impacts of contemporary industrialization, globalization, and urbanization

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• religious thought, leadership, policy formation, and grassroots activism relative to the environment.

Religion and the Environment will offer students and general readers a sophisticated yet accessible exploration of the relationship between religion and the environment, through case studies ranging from climate change to the impacts of warfare. This engaging book will be an excellent addition to introductory courses and those approaching the topic for the first time.

1 Introduction

Religion, social action, and the environment

Key concepts

1. The controversy at Standing Rock concerned Native American concepts of sacred ground, Native American water rights, and protection of water quality.
2. Religion has four interactive components or the four Cs: Creed, code, cult, and community. Religion may be ordinary, setting the norms for daily life, or extraordinary, exploring human existence transcending the constraints of the material.
3. Religious engagement with the environment locates religion in the public sphere and generates dialog among faith, science, and public policy.
4. Religions are addressing environmental issues and incorporating environmental concepts, such as sustainability, into their values. Conversely, environmental change is affecting the four Cs.
5. Marginalized, minority, and indigenous groups often actualize environmental leadership through grassroots activism. They utilize religious symbols and concepts to build solidarity and to focus public attention on specific issues.
6. Contemporary environmental issues are often national or global in scale, prompting multireligious engagement.

An environmental scenario: Blocking a pipeline

In December 2016, as winter storms blew into North Dakota, the US federal government ordered hundreds of people living in tepees and temporary shelters in the Oceti Sakowin (Seven Council Fires) Camp to leave in the face of plummeting temperatures. A few days prior, the state governor had declared the portable housing unsuitable for winter habitation and in violation of building safety codes. Occupying several make-shift villages on the Standing Rock Reservation and US Army Corps of Engineers land, a mix of Standing Rock Sioux, Native American rights advocates, and environmental activists were blocking the proposed easement for the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Funded by Energy Transfer Partners, the $3.7 billion project would transport crude petroleum interstate from North Dakota's Bakken field oil wells to Illinois refineries. The months-long resistance movement had stoically reiterated concerns that a future pipeline rupture, at the confluence of Missouri and Cannonball Rivers, would threaten the water resources of the Sioux. Digging through the prairies and bluffs disturbed sacred sites and burial grounds dating back to 15,000 years (Medina 2016 a,b; Erbentraut 2016; Estes and Dhillon 2019).

The self-identified water protectors of the #NoDAPL movement had garnered national and international support. The “Front Line” village displayed more than 350 flags of Native American Nations above the accumulating snow. Members of such far-flung tribes as the Tlingit of the Pacific Northwest coast had brought sleeping bags and portable heaters to help them survive the rugged conditions. As a symbol of shared community, a sacred fire burned day and night in Oceti Sakowin. Signs hung at the entrance proclaimed Mni Wiconi—“Water is Life.” In addition to the two to three thousand water protectors at the confluence, The Huffington Post reported 1.6 million Facebook supporters “checking-in” in solidarity. Smaller groups had been holding demonstrations in other regions. At a four-mile march in downtown Phoenix, Arizona, a Navajo participant reiterated the “need to protect water for the children and for the future” (Erbentraut 2016; Mitchell 2016; Estes and Dhillon 2019).

Aside from the on-going faceoffs with regulatory authorities and law enforcement resulting in more than 400 arrests, the Standing Rock Sioux filed a motion for an injunction against the Corps of Engineers permit, allowing the pipeline to cross federally regulated waters along its 1172-mile length. Meanwhile, not all North Dakota voters concurred with the Sioux over the disruption of DAPL completion. A recent fall in petroleum prices had caused job lay-offs in the oil fields. The information website posted by Energy Transfer Partners (2016) stated that aside from providing a cost-effective means of domestic energy production, pipeline construction would generate 8,000 to 12,000 local jobs.

Shortly after they ordered the December 2016 eviction, the Army Corps changed their minds. The Corps temporarily denied the permit necessary to excavate the pipeline's subsurface path under Lake Oaha, to allow evaluation of a proposed reroute. Energy Transfer Partners, in turn, called the decision “purely political.” They released a statement accusing the Obama administration of abandoning “the rule of law” and of “currying favor with a narrow and extreme political constituency” (Medina and Sottile 2016).

In many ways, the DAPL standoff was a microcosm of contemporary environmental controversies. Although DAPL is a regional development project pitting corporate planning against local landholders, DAPL has global implications. Extending into Canada, North Dakota's Bakken oil field utilizes hydraulic fracking, or the injection of water into active wells to extract petroleum. Via seepage and spills, the wastewater from fracking transports contaminants into groundwater and streams. Inventorying over 3,900 fracking-related spills by 2015, scientific investigations documented soil contamination by radioactive selenium and high levels of salts, ammonium, and other toxins in Bakken wastewater. One massive fracking-based pipeline leak allowed over a million gallons of brine to flow into Lake Sakakawea, just upstream from a drinking water intake (Duke University 2016; Lauer et al. 2016).

Recent geological research has verified the connection between injecting fracking wastewater into disposal wells and an increased frequency of earthquakes. By 2016, the US Geological Survey had measured fracking-generated quakes in Oklahoma at magnitudes as high 5.8 on the Richter scale, which is more than enough to close businesses, shift residences on their foundations, and destabilize roads and bridges (Wethe and Sachetta 2016). From a global perspective, the crowning concern is that fossil fuel combustion contributes to air pollution, global climate change, and ocean acidification. DAPL supports energy consumption strategies tapping nonrenewable sources, thereby stoking the US contribution to rising levels of greenhouse gases—the greatest of any nation.

Religion and DAPL

Religion played a prominent role at the interface of the scientific and policy issues emerging at Standing Rock. Although the original route for the DAPL did not cross the Standing Rock Reservation, sacred stones and other unexcavated religious artifacts stood in the path of DAPL construction crews. The Lakota Sioux had once counted adjoining properties now supervised by the Army Corps of Engineers within their territory. The Crops had evicted the Sioux in order to construct the Oahe Dam and flood Sioux land (Estes and Dhillon 2019). In September 2016, DAPL pipeline crews used bulldozers to clear a two-mile swath and disturbed or unearthed 82 cultural sites and 27 Native American burials in the process. In October, a crew uncovered a cultural site, then delayed for 10 days before reporting it to the North Dakota Public Service Commission as the permitting agency (Gilio-Whitaker 2019: 131). The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's (2016) motion for a preliminary injunction claimed the Sioux nation would be irreparably harmed, as DAPL “crosses the Tribe's ancestral lands, and traverses landscapes that are sacred to the Tribe and carry great historical significance.” The Sioux invoked the National Historic Preservation Act, which requires federal agencies to consult with affected tribes before authorizing projects that would disturb sites of “religious and cultural significance” even if the sites are on ceded ancestral lands.

As plaintiffs, the Sioux (2016) also invoked The Clean Water Act and The Rivers and Harbors Act. Their motion expressed concerns for the:

…risk of harm to the Missouri River, which is central to the culture, religion, and economy of Tribe, and because of the sacredness of the landscapes across which DAPL would traverse…In particular, the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri Rivers, the site chosen by DAPL for the pipeline's crossing of the Missouri at Lake Oaha, is sacred ground to the Standing Rock Sioux.

Their filing went a step further in stating: “Water is sacred to the Standing Rock people, as is the Missouri River itself.” Crude oil spills pose “an existential threat to the Tribe.” A federal judge did not accept the arguments and denied the injunction in September 2016, resulting in renewed action on the part of the protesters. In response, the Army Corps and Department of Interior temporarily halted DAPL construction 20 miles short of Lake Oaha, pending further federal review (Erbentraut 2016).

Participants in the DAPL controversy appealed to three oft conflicted strategies for environmental planning: Optimal economic growth, conservation, and preservation. Planning for economic growth focuses on goals incorporating job creation, raising corporate incomes, growing new businesses, and making raw materials less expensive and more accessible. Conservation balances financial income with ensuring the productivity of farms, forests, and rivers for future generations. This environmental philosophy plans to prevent erosion, pollution, and unnecessary loss or degradation of natural resources. Conservation seeks the common good or the optimal benefit for the greatest number of people. Preservation holds that selected areas and resources should remain relatively undisturbed or undeveloped, including exemplars of undeveloped natural ecosystems and habitats supporting exceptional species diversity. Preservation also applies to cultural structures or landscapes of outstanding value. As later chapters will outline, all three strategies have religious roots or associations.

The DAPL controversy as religiously diverse

The Standing Rock Sioux's insistence that corporate developers honor their religious beliefs may superficially appear provincial and anti-scientific, yet their concern about spills has scientific support. Most North Dakota voters welcoming DAPL are of European heritage, and if they have a religious preference, it is likely to be Christian. Treating the role of religion at Standing Rock as indigenous religions versus the Christian mainstream is, however, as unjustified as considering the controversy to be a battle between religion and science. Many members of the Native American Nations supporting the water protectors self-identify as Christian. The Standing Rock Reservation has Christian congregations within its boundaries.

On November 3, 2016, over 500 clergy and laity from 20 faiths walked together to form a circle around the sacred fire in the Oceti Sakowin Camp. Episcopal, Presbyterian, Lutheran, and Baptist ministers publicly testified that their denominations had officially repudiated the 15th-century Doctrine of Discovery, awarding Christian explorers the right to claim the lands they entered in the Americas. The ministers asked the Sioux elders to burn a copy of the Doctrine—a form of ritual cleansing. The elders ignited fragments of the Doctrine in pots near the sacred fire rather than by placing the disruptive document in the sacred fire itself (Wilson 2016). Fueled by wood, sage, tobacco, and other natural combustibles, sacred fires are a key ritual element in indigenous American religions. Throwing paper or other manufactured materials, like cigarette butts into a sacred fire, violates its purity.

In encouraging his fellow Episcopalians to support the Sioux, Rev. John Floberg called solidarity as a “powerful opportunity to exercise our shared baptismal ministry.” Floberg identified the passing of the peace around the sacred fire as a Niobrara Circle—a combination of Christian and Sioux symbolism (Wilson 2016) (Box 1.1). To add to the diversity of perspectives at Standing Rock, the environmental advocates and Facebook followers who joined forces with the Sioux originated from a variety of faith backgrounds, including east Asian religions and the new or alternative religions. The belief systems categorized as New Age or metaphysical, for example, have spread in industrialized countries as alternatives to both Christianity and the flaws of technology-driven culture.

Box 1.1 Niobrara Circle origins

The first Christian missionaries forced Sioux converts to give up all symbols and objects associated with their Plains religious heritage. A more recently instituted annual gathering, the Niobrara Convention, conducts Christian services using Sioux language, dress, symbols, and drumming, thereby acting as a ritual recovery of Sioux culture and ancestry. During noon prayers with sage burning, clergy unroll a buffalo robe painted with 72 pictographs depicting the life of Jesus as recounted in the Gospel of Luke. The robe is in the tradition of the Winter Count, a ceremony honoring important events and people in the history of the Tribe. The Niobrara Circle combines Christian and Sioux ritual and symbols. Not all Native Americans, however, condone synthesizing their traditions with Christian ritual.

Source: Schjonberg (2012)

Although diverse, Standing Rock was not a religious free-for-all. Conflicts did sometimes arise when non-Native Americans refused to camp where they were assigned, avoided chores, or interfered with the daily water ceremony. The Lakota staff insisted that non-Native Americans residing in one of the encampments respect Sioux religious practice by not taking over ceremonial spaces, not attempting to lead rituals, and not taking photos as souvenirs. Organizers conducted orientation sessions emphasizing decolonization for new arrivals. For Native Americans, outsiders appropriating or exploiting their rites and spiritual experiences violate their sovereignty. The corporation building DAPL was similarly extracting resources and damaging sacred spaces without...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of boxes
• List of abbreviations
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction: Religion, social action, and the environment (the environment the environment)
• 2 Connections: Sacred stories, sacred springs
• 3 Communities: Harvesting and respecting the wild
• 4 Sustenance: Food security, agricultural innovation, and environmental degradation
• 5 Ignitions: Sacred tools, ritual fires, and the value of “things”
• 6 Watersheds: Scale, place, and consilience
• 7 Sanctuaries: Preservation of species, ecosystems, and natural features
• 8 Megacities: Sacred space, urban planning, and built environments
• 9 Healing: The iconography of pollution and planetary wellness
• 10 Networks: Tackling global climate and sea change
• 11 Models: Conceptual approaches to a planetary future
• 12 Communalities: Greening and the challenges of modernity
• References
• Index