In this innovative and deeply felt work, Bron Taylor examines the evolution of “green religions” in North America and beyond: spiritual practices that hold nature as sacred and have in many cases replaced traditional religions.
Tracing a wide range of groups–radical environmental activists, lifestyle-focused bioregionalists, surfers, new-agers involved in “ecopsychology”, and groups that hold scientific narratives as sacred–Taylor addresses a central theoretical question: How can environmentally oriented, spiritually motivated individuals and movements be understood as religious when many of them reject religious and supernatural worldviews?
The “dark” of the title further expands this idea by emphasizing the depth of believer’s passion and also suggesting a potential shadow side: besides uplifting and inspiring, such religion might mislead, deceive, or in some cases precipitate violence. This book provides a fascinating global tour of the green religious phenomenon, enabling readers to evaluate its worldwide emergence and to assess its role in a critically important religious revolution.
In his work, Taylor serves as an erudite and impassioned tour guide of the “deep roots and modern expressions” of this hitherto unnamed religion, providing, along with his powerful yet undogmatic analysis, an instructive compendium of ideas and actions that cogently legitimize dark green religion as a concept with significant explanatory power.
Through this book we hear of 18th-century philosophers expressing sensations of oceanic unity, modern-day mainstream scientists reflecting upon the “being-ness” of trees, surfers earnestly scrambling to find words to explain the satori that occurs inside the tube of a wave, and Disney’s Pocahontas imploring Western colonialists to stop and “ask the grinning bobcat why he grins”.
It is precisely this diversity of thinkers coupled with the synchronicity of their thoughts that makes Taylor’s thesis so compelling. While some may feel that the Earth is sentient and/or animals have souls, and others might take a more naturalistic approach, most all of the “practitioners” of dark green religion share a sense of felt kinship with nonhuman life and a sense of wonder at the structure and flow of the interconnected Earth and cosmos. This religious, or “para-religious”, cosmological outlook occasions an ecological conscience that sensitizes humans to the condition of the planet with a depth of feeling that secular, humanistic concerns of sustainability might have a hard time matching.
Many of the excerpted passages from Taylor’s book are not only extremely convincing, but also extremely moving. If you are at all receptive to these sorts of sentiments, you might find Dark Green Religion to be a source not only of information, but also inspiration.
Related Books:
- An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith : Barbara Brown Taylor
- Essential Spirituality: The 7 Central Practices to Awaken Heart and Mind : Roger Walsh
- Stephen King’s Dark Tower: Treachery (Dark Tower (Marvel)) – By Robin Furth
- Batman: The Dark Knight Returns – By Frank Miller
- Spirituality Simplified : Jeff Maziarek
