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62 — JUDIT FARKAS
creation. There are some who avow an anthropocentric ethic, but they look upon
the distinguished place of humans not as a right to power but as a source of
responsibility. Both ethical stances instill in the individual a strong sense of duty
that thoroughly influences their everyday practice. The most striking example is
Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, which presumes that the Earth is a living entity
(Lovelock 1979; 2009).° Similarly radical theories of eco-philosophy are, for
instance, Arne Naess'’s deep ecology or Murray Bookchin’s social ecology (see the
chapter on Eco-philosophy). Eco-spirituality is most typical of diverse spiritual
movements, as found by religious scholar Bron Taylor, but adherents of traditional
religions also often include this sort of ethic in their worldview (Taylor 2010).
The foundation for the worldviews of the conglomerate of environmentalist
movements is usually eco-spirituality.
In his examination of green movements, Bron Taylor uses the term green religion
to designate the “greening” of historical religions, i.e., the environment-conscious
turn of religious people whose ethics also imply that it is their religious duty to
behave in conformity with the environment. He differentiates this from what he
terms “dark green religion’, the basic tenet of which proclaims that Nature is sacred
and, as such, it is to be venerated and protected. He includes in this category
animism, pantheism, pagan belief systems, the neo-pagan movements, the so-called
nature faiths (and the closely related traditional ecological knowledge), the New
Age movement and certain new religious trends. The spiritual foundations of the
environmental movements are provided by elements of dark green religiosity.
In practice, the two kinds of religiosity — green and dark green — can hardly, if
at all, be differentiated.® Bron Taylor is also aware that his distinction of religion,
belief, spirituality, and green and dark green faiths is an effort at laying the
theoretical foundations (Taylor 2010: 1).
Let us briefly digress to explain the uses of the three terms — religion, belief,
and spirituality. Research on religion has shown that in contemporary discourse,
people speaking about their religiosity more frequently talk about spirituality than
religion, stressing the difference between the two: they identify spirituality with
personal experience and development and with a more profound comprehension
of the world and the individuals place in it, while religion is seen as institutionalized,
ritualized and impersonal (summary: Taylor 2010: 1). Since within the set of beliefs
labeled spirituality are elements that interpret a person’s place in Creation, the
world, and Nature, it is not by accident that this term appears more frequently in
ecological movements.
In the study of contemporary religiosity in the West, certain phenomena have
recently acquired the term nature religion. Though the term is not new, it has
acquired new content as revealed by current investigations: its users basically mean
any kind of religion characterized by a profound respect for nature and a practice
that manifests it.” Apart from tribal religions, researchers use it to refer to all modern
religious movements which revive pagan traditions: neo-paganism, neo-shamanism,
Wicca, and various New Age groups. Peter Beyer even includes revival movements
> On the political impact of the Gaia theory, see Deudney 1995, Litfin 2005.
° — This is also stated by the conceptions of vernacular religion and interactive religion, see Bowman
1990.
This is what the title of Catherine Albenese’s book alludes to: Nature religion in America: From
the Algonkian Indians to the New Age. Albanese 1991.