Environmental sustainability has become a central issue to the message of religious institutions, forcing them to reconsider the use of technology to reduce their environmental impact. The panel aims to explore how religious groups foster technological innovation to promote sustainable lifestyles.
Long Abstract:
In the last decade, the environmental sustainability has become a central issue to the message of religious institutions. The 2015 represented a turning point for the commitment of religious groups to the safeguard of the “Creation”: the encyclical Laudato Sì, the Agenda 2030 and the Global Interfaith Forum, encouraged religions to cooperate to reformulate new messages and actions to foster sustainability practices among their communities (Jenkins et al. 2017). This “ecological turn” has also forced religions to reconsider the use of technology in their daily practices to reduce the environmental impact of their activities (Bergmann 2016). New usages of spaces and resources, through the intermediation of technological devices, accelerated processes of technological innovation within religious groups that once would have shown a great resistance (Siskandar 2020). In this new scenario, the panel aims to explore how this new call for an ecological action has led religious groups to a renewed disclosure in favor of a technological innovation to promote more sustainable lifestyles (Drees 2009). The panel aims to collect experiences of religious groups that share the same awareness about the environmental crisis by responding with the introduction of innovative applications of technologies. Investigating these experiences will contribute to highlight how the technological innovation of some religious communities goes beyond the mere process of instrumental modernization and acquires new symbolic values.
References
Jenkins, W., Tucker, M. E., & Grim, J. (Eds.), (2017), Routledge handbook of religion and ecology, Routledge.
Bergmann, S. (2017), Developments in religion and ecology, In Routledge handbook of religion and ecology, Routledge.
Drees, W. (2009). Technology, trust, and religion: Roles of religions in controversies on ecology and the modification of life (p. 320), Leiden University Press.
Siskandar, S. (2020), “The Role of Religious Education and Utilization Digital Technology For Improving The Quality in Sustainability Madrasa”, Journal Tarbiyah, 27(1).
The paper aims to explore how the call forth planet’s salvation carried out new faith-based practices from two different perspectives: a new interreligious dialogue and a new adaptation of technology.
Paper long abstract:
In the Encyclical letter Laudato Sì, Pope Francis states: “We come together to take charge of this home which has been entrusted to us”, adding that the Creation could be saved from destruction through unity only. In the last years the Encyclical in addition to opening an incisive social, theological, and political debate about the environment, it has also provoked the reaction of other religious leaders and encouraged religious community to promote actions in defense of “Creation”. Beyond the official and institutional actions - such as the signature of the Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together or the G20 Interfaith Forum – this call for unity has opened a period of innovative religious spaces and rituals to promote sustainable lifestyles. This presentation aims to explore some of these practices focusing how the call forth planet’s salvation carried out new faith-based practices from two different levels: a new interreligious dialogue and a new adaptation of technology.
The paper is an investigation of animated movies as forms and technologies of contemporary spirituality. The case study chosen, Tales from Earthsea by Gorō Miyazaki (based on Le Guin’s Earthsea) will be investigated through a “visual ecocritical” (Pike 2010) approach and with regard to the content.
Paper long abstract:
This paper would investigate the role of animation technology in the context of contemporary eco-spiritual turn and the general contemporary link beetween popular culture forms and religious fascination (Feldt 2016).
Animated movies are an immediate and accessible form and technology of communication, based on the expressive potential of shapes and colors in motion that arrange the soul to welcome concepts and messages: the quality of plasmaticness (Leyda 1986). Compared to documentary cinema or live action, it allows us to build from scratch worlds where our understanding and perception of the environment has infinite potential in free forms.
Especially for ecological issues is focal because the most powerful and popular cosmographic technologies (fantastic storytelling) convey a strong sense of wonder (Attebery et. al. 2022).
According to Feldt (2016) pop cultural products inform and give shape to our spiritual-religious life and as Geertz (2011) writes, the narrative-building itself builds a sense of the world around us.
We will focus on Tales from Earthsea by Gorō Miyazaki (2006) freely based on the Earthsea Cycle (1968-2001) written by Ursula K. Le Guin. The case study chosen concerns technology and eco-spirituality on a double level. Firstly, it allows a “visual ecocritical approach” (Pike 2010) focused on the language of images considering animation a means of transmitting ecological messages unintentionally; on a sub-textual level or thoroughly mixed with other vexatae questiones or domains such as morality or balance/world equilibrium. Secondly, leguinian Earthsea’s world itself is dominated by magic, and we can see many different elements which pair with natural world. Magic is seen as equivalent to our world’s technology, a sort of alchemy, and it presents a dilemma with the universal machine since Magic, just like contemporary Science, doesn’t have an intrinsic moral direction or compass.
This presentation aims to elucidate how the Catholic Church repositions itself in the Brazilian civic-political space, as an ecological subject who starts to defend new socio-environmental policies through a religious repertoire of social justice.
Paper long abstract:
My postdoctoral research project has as a privileged case of anthropological inquiry the processes of conception, formulation, construction and finishing of the Church of Our Lady of Lourdes - known as the “Indigenous Cathedral” - and carried out by the Salesian Mission in the community of Maturacá (São Gabriel da Cachoeira, Amazonas, Brazil). With the hypothesis that from this temple an “ethnoecological religion” is made, my presentation will seek to elucidate the articulations between ecology and ethnicity that guide the socio-environmental policies carried out by the Catholic Church in the Amazon region. In doing so, my presentation aims to contribute to the elucidation of how the Catholic Church repositions itself in the competition for the Brazilian civic-political space, as an "ecological subject" who starts to defend new socio-environmental policies through a religious repertoire of "social justice" which articulates a certain “ecological imagination” to its consolidated theology of “inculturation”. Therefore, by electing the Indigenous Cathedral as the mediator par excellence of this articulation, it will be through the processes of construction and “public presence” of the new temple that I will demonstrate how Catholic convergences and divergences between notions of ethnicity and ecology materialize religiously on two levels – community and national - in this pluralistic society.
The Islamic Declaration of Climate Change (2015) was a result of a global awareness among Muslims. Eco-Islam has inspired practicing Muslims to develop more sustainable options within their own tradition. However, not all environmentally engaged Muslims are even interested in nature.
Paper long abstract:
Environmentalism and the conception of nature is an apt example of the transformations of values and beliefs both in religiosity and in the meaning of place. Before the Paris climate conference in 2015, an awareness among intellectuals within the Muslim community concerning the climate change took place. This came in the context of Pope Francis and Buddhist and Hindu monks publishing statements about how their respective religions viewed climate change. This triggered Muslims to reflect on the Muslim perception of environment and climate change during a two-day symposium or conference in Istanbul in 2015, which resulted in the Islamic Declaration of Climate Change.
This presentation focuses on the conception of eco-Islam in relation to the climate crisis and global awareness. The movement of Islamic eco-theology (even called eco-Islam) – based on Islamic-ecological philosophy, environmental jurisprudence grounded in sharia, and Islamic-ecological activism – has inspired practicing Muslims to develop more sustainable options within their own tradition.
However, not all environmentally engaged Muslims are even interested in nature. This can e.g. be seen in the massive entrepreneurship of green technology in the UAE. The ever-increasing awareness of climate change has caused Arab and Muslim governments and organizations to initiate environmental projects and invest in green technology, such as preservation of nature, green businesses, water purification etc. As a result, more and more businesses, whose main field of activity is the environment, have been established. This does not automatically mean that the people involved in these projects appreciate or even show interest towards nature.
Based on ethnographic research in the Middle East and in Turkey, this paper argues that the eco-Islam is gaining ground but simultaneously, it faces great challenges around the Muslim world.
The paper will discuss Cape Town’s Claremont Main Road Mosque (CMRM)’s program for eco-justice. It will explore the content of a few selected sermons delivered from its pulpit between 2011 and 2015, and then present a short description of the mosque's green practices implemented in the last decade.
Paper long abstract:
Founded in 1854, Cape Town’s Claremont Main Road Mosque (CMRM) has since the early 1980s established itself as a key platform in South Africa for the elaboration of a progressivist and liberationist Muslim discourse. Under the leadership of Imam Hassan Solomon (1980-1985) and later of Imam Abdul Rashied Omar (1986-), the pulpit (minbar) became the medium of a systematic political communication performed through Friday and Eid sermons (khutbas) by the imams, members of the congregations, and guest preachers. After the 1994 democratic turn, CMRM’s confrontational focus on the State and its apartheid politics left room to an inclusivist, socially engaged message centered on five interlinked dimensions: the empowerment of youth, jihad against poverty, gender jihad, interfaith solidarity and environmental justice.
This paper will focus on the latter; first, it will present a brief historical background of CMRM’s discourse, highlighting how the mosque’s interlinked dedication to scientific humanism and progressive politics has its roots deep into early twentieth century, when physician Dr. Abdullah Abdurahman (1872-1940) became the first Black South African elected politician. It will then take into exam CMRM’s program for eco-justice, formally started in 2011, when the mosque registered as an eco-congregation “committed to working for a more just and sustainable world in response to the wisdom of its sacred texts and teachings”. In order to do so, this paper will explore the content of a few selected sermons delivered from CMRM’s minbar between 2011 and 2015, performed by a diverse array of preachers that include the imam Rashied Omar, sociology of education Professor Aslam Fataar, gender scholar Nafisa Patel, medical doctor Rafiq Khan, and religious scholars Noor Salie and Sa’dullah Khan. Finally, it will present a short description of CMRM’s green practices implemented in the last decade.
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