Ecological Imaginations in the World Religions: An Ethnographic Analysis

The field of religion and ecology is an emerging and growing movement that is becoming relevant and influential in the world. It seeks to analyse, encourage, inspire, use, compare, and combine religious traditions to engage and shape environmental issues. Tony Watling seeks to ethnographically analyse this important field and its expressions. In particular, he analyses and compares its explorations of different world religions for ecological themes and the resulting expressions of ecological visions, in what he terms ’religious ecotopias’ - idealized, environmentally-friendly re-imaginings of nature and humanity, and correspondingly religion, which seek to influence environmental attitudes.

Dr Tony Watling researched religious and scientific views in public debates on ecology and the environment as a Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) Research Fellow in the Faculty of Theology at Leiden University.