Paper short abstract:

The paper examines the relationship between religion and the adoration of nature and argues that their relationship is entangled with secularisation. We provide a historical analysis of how this happened and theoretical framework for analysis.

Paper long abstract:

Based on ethnographic material from Sweden and Estonia, we examine the relationship between religion and the adoration of nature in Northern Europe—a region known for its widespread secularisation. Our findings indicate that the existential depth that is often ascribed to nature experiences in this part of the world is deeply entangled with the processes of modernization and secularisation, thus nature can be considered a so far overlooked facet of the secularization process. We provide a historical analysis of how this happened, give an overview of the scholarly approaches to nature and religion, and offer an alternative. We argue that that methodological relationism and the concept of “existential field” might be fruitful in capturing the competitive essence of vague religion-related phenomena.