I would add to the previous post (based on what I got back from the Texas Methodists) that environmental activity seems to be strongly related to either A) ease of carrying it out, or B) poorly defined concerns about the environment.

In other words, in the case of A, alot of people said they recycle all the time (this is because most communities in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area either make bins available without making customers pick them up or because having a bin is mandatory). In the case of B, the people I talked to knew that recycling, installing CFLs and weatherstripping was a good thing (in a very vague sense) but didn't have much information on how or why other activities might help. For example, when I gave my talk (after getting the surveys back), most people didn't realize that eating meat posed an environmental problem beyond a potential animal rights issue--same with letting housecats run free, etc. The trend in this particular church was a very genuine feeling of wanting to do something, but a lack of tools and knowledge for doing it.

In other words, this particular group had the impression that God wanted them to care about the environment and to take action to that effect but didn't know precisely what that meant, or how to turn that sentiment into action. There was also a sense that individual action was pretty paltry in the face of corporate and governmental inertia. A woman asked me what could be done about that and all I could tell her was that she should vote for environmentally conscientious candidates and make an attempt to vote with her dollars by investing in companies with good track records and buying green products.

CB

June 25 notes on research questions

June 25, 2009
Thoughts on research so far:

Religion seems to have several main functions in relation to environmental behavior (like other social movements)
1) to offer values that are justified by a transcendent foundation/source
2) to facilitate personal transformation (consciousness raising, conversion)
3) to provide an organizational context that supports and makes possible behavioral changes and activism – providing logistical support, legitimacy, etc
4) to connect people with similar values and concerns to one another (in a supportive, non-threatening context)
5) to connect different scales of activity and institutions – from micro (personal) through meso and macro

For different people, and in different contexts, different religious groups will serve one, some, or all of these purposes

E.g., people who already have a strongly developed environmental concern and awareness don’t need (1) and (2) but for them a religious group can offer (3) (4) and (5)

For others, who have strong religious faith but no environmental concern, 1 and 2 may be most important

This suggests some goals for research:

* Identify what makes it possible for religious groups/congregations to offer any or all of these functions, including internal factors such as leadership; organizational structure and resources; content of beliefs and their form of justification, expression, and communication; kind of people who belong and their connections to each other; and also external factors such as political, economic, and cultural context; social position of congregation; ways congregation/institution is connected to other institutions, organizations, and social groups

* Rank factors if possible – are some more important or essential? Which, why, and under what circumstances (and for whom)?

* Identify what factors religious groups can offer uniquely or at least especially well (and when would another group do just as well)

* Identify how the process of personal transformation/conversion (both the birth of awareness and concern and also the decision to take action) takes place and what makes it possible

IRB procedures

IRB number is 2009-U-504
approved through 5/04/10
Please make sure all informants sign a consent form, code the form with religious group and number, and keep consent form filed separate from interviews and surveys

NEH Narrative

RELIGIOUS VALUES AND ENVIRONMENTAL PRACTICE

Substance and context

Scope and Significance of the Problem

            Most Americans agree that we face serious environmental crises, from species extinctions and global warming to the degradation of local communities.  Surveys consistently show not only widespread concern about these problems but also that environmental issues are central to American cultural values (Kempton et al. 1995).  However, few people act in a way that reflects these values.  Our research is driven by this gap between environmental values and practices.  In order to address environmental crises and create more sustainable societies, we need to close the disjuncture between expressed values and actual practices.  The humanities have a critical and constructive role to play in the task of understanding and closing this gap.  Our project asks under what conditions, for what motives, and in what forms values lead to action.  We explore these questions among religious groups, a major source of both moral values and community, and an increasingly important player in discussions about environmental problems and possible solutions to them.

            We focus on two factors that are crucial to the translation of values into practice.  First, we explore the character of environmental value systems, including their underlying assumptions, legitimating claims, forms of expression (e.g., narrative, metaphor, precept), and the promised consequences of their enactment.  Second, we look at the social context in which values are expressed and potentially enacted, with particular attention to the role of local community relations and social capital.  Religion, a major source of both moral values and community, is an excellent context for examining these issues.

            The relations between religion and nature came to scholarly attention forty years ago, when historian of science Lynn White proposed, in a short article in the journal Science, that “What people do about their ecology depends on what they think about themselves in relation to things around them.  Human ecology is deeply conditioned by beliefs about our nature and destiny – that is, by religion” (1967: 1203).  Against claims that technology and population controlled environmental impact, White identified cultural and spiritual attitudes as the key determinants of ecological behavior.  While these attitudes have largely been negative, White argued, religion has the potential to improve human relations to nature.  Because the roots of our ecological crisis are religious, White argued, so must the solution be “religious, whether we call it that or not” (1967: 1207).  Specifically, “what we do about ecology depends on our ideas of the man-nature relationship.  More science and more technology are not going to get us out of the present ecologic crisis until we find a new religion, or rethink our old one” (1967: 1206).

            Especially in the last decade, a wide range of scholars and religious practitioners have taken up White’s challenge, seeking both to create new religions that are environmental friendly and to uncover ecological potential in old traditions.  Religious ecologists range from the Dalai Lama to the Pope and encompass organizations as ideologically disparate as evangelical Protestants and the National Council of Churches.  Representatives of nearly every religious tradition have issued statements of environmental concern, in addition to inter-religious documents such as the Earth Charter.  Numerous scholars have also explored the the connections between religion and environmental values (e.g., Hessel and Ruether 2000; Tucker and Williams 1997, Coward and Maguire 1999, among many others). 

            Despite the interest about religion and nature, the ways in which religious ecologies have affected the practices of believers have received little scholarly attention.  The focus has been on the need for new narratives of human relations to nature rather than on the ways such stories affect actual behavior.  Our project represents the necessary next stage of scholarship on religion and nature.  It is the first systematic effort to examine, in comparative and collaborative fashion,  the practical consequences of religiously-grounded environmental values – the ways that members of environmentally concerned religions interpret, internalize, and enact their tradition’s ecological values, and more broadly to illuminate the translation of values into practice in other contexts.  We explore religion as both a system of belief and a type of social community, and explore both dimensions in relation to environmental practice.  We highlight the role of narratives, images, and metaphors in the articulation and transmission of religious values and the role of social capital and community as the context for the translation of those values into practice.

            We believe that religious values do influence environmental practices, but not in nearly as straightforward or linear direction as many scholars have suggested.  A variety of factors mediate both the attitudes people hold and the practical consequences of those positions.  Our research highlight the ways in which values are expressed, the ways that the tradition relates believers’ spiritual status to moral action, and the shape of the local  religious and social bonds among members, among other factors.  Understanding these dynamics in relation to environmental values is significant in itself, but we also hope to shed light on the relations between values and practices more generally.  This addresses a longstanding and extremely understudied problem in ethics: the almost universal disparity between expressed values and practical action.  Saint Paul expressed this gap famously two thousand years ago, lamenting that “I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.  For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do” (Romans 7:18-20).  Our research aims to shed light on the complex processes and contexts that encourage people to do the good they want.

 

Environmental values and discourse

            A first goal of our research is to characterize the environmental ethics of the diverse groups that we study.  Environmental ethics encompass a broad spectrum of approaches, usually divided into two broad categories.  Biocentric models emphasize the intrinsic value of non-human nature, while anthropocentric approaches focus on the distinctive role of humans in the world.  A prominent biocentric model is Aldo Leopold’s land ethic, which transforms the role of humans “from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it”  (Leopold 1970: 240).  Anthropocentric environmental philosophies often highlight the concept of stewardship, according to which humans have a special role to play but must limit the power they exercise over the non-human world. Religious environmental ethics draw on many of the same themes and divisions that occur in secular philosophies, with additions of distinctive concerns such as the role of divine power, especially in creation, and the significance of nature in humans’ ultimate fate.  In addition, many religious ethics link social and ecological concerns more intimately than secular environmental philosophies have done.

            In analyzing the environmental values and discourse articulated by different religious groups, we study how, when, and to what effect key terms of environmental value, including sustainability and interdependence, are understood, first of all, and second, how they are put into practice.  We are interested not in these discourses as philosophies per se but rather in the differential practical consequences: how do environmental practices differ among people who identify their environmental values as more anthropocentric or ecocentric.

 

Religion and ecology

            Lynn White’s thesis about the significance of religion for ecology has been restated numerous times in the four decades since his classic essay was published.  An early anthology of religion and ecology declared, for example, that the global environmental crisis is “fundamentally a moral and religious problem” (Rockefeller and Elder 1992: 1; see also Yu 1999: 161).  Secular philosophers (Oelschlaeger 1994, Callicott 1994) as well as environmental scientists (Wilson 2006) have also argued that religion plays a crucial role in shaping environmental attitudes.  There is even survey evidence to support this claim.  A dozen years ago, a major study of environmental values in American life found that religion was central to the ways that people think about the natural world – including people who were not particularly religious.  Even individuals who did not invoke God in other contexts did so in order to talk and think about the meaning they give to nature (Kempton et al. 1995: 90).   Specifically, many nonbelievers explained environmental protection as a duty to protect “divine creation,” which the authors call “the closest concept American culture provides to express the sacredness of nature.  Regardless of whether one actually believes in biblical Creation, it is the best vehicle we have to express this value” (92).   Religious conceptions of nature are thus important not only in the context of particular traditions and communities but also as an alternative framework in which North Americans can think about the non-human world and express their concern for it (Peterson 2001).

            While it seems clear that religion influences the ways people think about nature, there is so far very little research into the ways that religiously-grounded environmental values shape behavior.  Do religious ethics have greater practical impact than secular moral commitments?  Are people more likely to act on environmental values that emerge from religious teachings and stories than those that rest on scientific or political foundations?  Our research asks these questions, as part of our larger goal of investigating the ways that environmental values are enacted in everyday life.  Building on discussions of ecologically sound religious narratives and values, we document the practical embodiment of these values in members of groups that have prioritized ecological concerns.

            We begin with an analysis of the distinctive environmental values and discourse of three religious groups and a secular environmental organization.  We then identify and measure the environmentally responsible behavior of members of the different groups, focusing on energy use and food consumption, two practical areas that have especially high ecological impact and that are amenable to deliberate changes in individual and collective consumption patterns.  Finally, we analyze the relations between the environmental values and practices we have identified, in order to understand which values, expressed in which particular forms, influence behavior.

            This research is especially significant in light of evidence about the consistency and strength of American environmental values.  “Patterns of agreement in surveys show that most Americans share a common set of environmental beliefs and values. . . .  There is a single cultural consensus” (Kempton et al. 1995: 211).   This finding is backed by other survey research, which consistently finds around 80% of respondents expressing strong concern for the environment or identifying themselves as “environmentalists.”  The same surveys that show widely shared environmental values also reveal minimal practical application of these values.  Although 80% of Americans express strong ecological concern, for example, only around 20% actually change their behavior to reduce their environmental impact (Duke University 2005).  The consensus about the value of non-human nature coexists with intensifying ecological destruction, fueled by growing consumption and abuse of natural resources such as land, energy, and water.

            Gaps between values and practices exist in many areas of life in addition to the environment, of course.  People often fail to abide by their expressed principles, for a host of reasons that are both personal and structural.  The present disjuncture between environmental values and environmental practice, however, poses an especially serious dilemma, best exemplified by the increasingly evident results of global warming.  If we do not reduce our carbon emissions and more generally our consumption of natural resources, if we do not find more sustainable ways to live on this planet, both human and ecological welfare are in grave danger.  This dilemma is especially serious for the U.S., by far the largest consumer and polluter in the world.

            Thus despite the extent and strength of ecological values in North America, “the task of translating these values into effective action still lies ahead,” as the authors of the environmental values survey assert (Kempton et al. 1995: 226).  The greatest obstacle to this translation, and more generally to the creation of a more sustainable society, lies not in any shortage of knowledge or technology, but rather in the difficulty of embodying our cultural consensus that the environment is valuable and must be protected in effective action, at both individual and societal levels.  Scholars of social psychology, environmental education, and related fields have proposed various models to explain why people act – or do not act – on environmental values, ranging from altruism to self-interest (e.g., Blake 1999; Wall 1995; Kollmus and Ageyman 2003).  Social scientific approaches are crucial, and scholars in these fields have been pioneers in exploring a vital problem.  In order to understand the relationship between values and practices more fully, however, they must be joined by scholars from other disciplines, especially the humanities, who can enrich the analysis of environmental values and discourse and of their complex links to practices.

            The connections between religious values and environmental practices are complex, multifaceted, and fluid, mediated by cultural and religious narrative, interpersonal relationships, and social contexts.  Our research investigates the language and images that shape not only the ways people understand environmental values but also whether, and how, such values are enacted.  We thus enter into the larger scholarly discussion about the relations among language, emotion, and behavior.  Scholarship in cognitive science has clarified these relations in recent years, including some explicit discussions of ethics.  Leslie Paul Thiele’s recent work, for example, explores the important ways that narrative and intuition, rather than rationality alone, enter into ethical judgment (Thiele 2006).  And in Moral Imagination, Mark Johnson shows how metaphor, narrative, and imaginative connections structure moral thought more fully than rational propositions and rules.  Such rethinking of the character of ethical values have implications for the relations between values and practices, but the implications remain under-explored in both philosophy and cognitive science.  Our research draws on the dialogue between these fields, especially insofar as they help us understand the ways that people interpret and make sense of received religious values.  We also contribute to the ongoing reconceptualization of moral imagination by providing detailed studies of the ways that people not only articulate their values, in narratives and images as well as expressions of moral commitment, but also try to embody them in practices.

            We explore, in particular, the significance of narrative for religious ethics.  A number of ethicists, including those concerned with the environment, have argued that values are more powerful when embedded in narrative form.  One of the first was Alasdair MacIntyre, who wrote in his ground-breaking 1981 study After Virtue that “I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’”  (MacIntyre 1981: 201).  MacIntyre and other narratively-oriented ethicists contend that the quandaries of moral life are seldom if ever resolved by deduction.  Rather, people uncover the right thing to do by discovering what their proper roles in a story that concretely situates them in the world.  Religion provides many of the most powerful and enduring stories about the human place in the world, and any investigation of religious ethics must contend with the distinctive roles that stories play in the articulation, justification, and inculcation of moral values.

             The narrative character of ethical life has not gone unrecognized in environmental philosophy.  According to the Catholic eco-theologian Thomas Berry, “We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story.  We are in between stories.  The old story, the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it, is no longer effective.  Yet we have not learned the new story” (Berry 1990: 123).  The “new story” Berry has in mind is one in which people understand their dependence on ecological processes and their affinities with the non-human world.  A number of environmental ethicists agree that an appropriate ecological ethic must have a narrative context, at the same time it must be grounded in geography.  For Holmes Rolston, an ecological ethic entails a “storied residence” in a particular place, in which human and non-human histories are intertwined (Rolston 1988: 345; see Cheney 1989).  Studies of indigenous cultures have found that environmental values do indeed take the form of storied residence, narratives of human interactions with nature that carry powerful guidelines for practice (e.g., Basso 1996; Nelson 1986).  While we agree that narrative contexts can empower ethics, perhaps especially environmental values, we question the assumption that better stories lead, in any straightforward way, to better practices.  The practical impact of traditional ethical systems, for example, stems not simply from their narrative formats but also from their embeddedness in social networks and personal relationships.  Our research therefore combines analysis of ethical values with attention to the complex social relations and contexts that mediate and shape the translation from values to practice.

 

Religious community and social capital

            Efforts to put values into practice always occur within the context of distinctive human communities and political institutions.   Certain kinds of institutions, communities, and social relationships may facilitate the embodiment of expressed values into concrete forms, while other kinds may present obstacles to the enactment of the same values.  In analyzing the relations among values, practices, and social life, we draw on the concept of “social capital,” defined by political scientist Robert Putnam as “connections among individuals – social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them” (2000: 19).

            While the literature on social capital is vast and wide-ranging, we concentrate on the ways that social relations and trust influence the translation of environmental values into practice.  Research conducted by Putnam and others suggests that high levels of social capital, including both informal and formal connections among people in a community – will facilitate the practical enactment of that community’s values.  For our research, this suggests that environmental values are more likely to be widely practiced in communities in which members are connected to each other in multiple formal and informal ways, in which people participate in a variety of collective activities, and in which there is a high level of social trust.  Persuading people to live out their values, ecological or otherwise, is much easier with high social capital, high face-to-face interactions, and high levels of shared values and norms.  These networks make informal punishments and rewards more effective, and formal ones are rarely needed, as is evident in the lives of the Amish and other close-knit religious groups (Peterson 2005).  In contrast, communities with lower social capital demonstrate less practical enactment of expressed values.

            Our ethnographic research in religious communities will explore the role of social capital as an important part of the complex process by which values become embodied, or not, in individual and collective life.  In particular, we will ask whether people who are especially active and fully integrated into the larger community are more likely to enact environmental values in concrete ways.  We study this integration, as well as the ways in which people internalize formally expressed environmental values, in three different religious groups and a secular environmental organization.

 

Traditions under study

            We compare the relations between expressed environmental values and environmentally responsible behavior among people who might be expected to undertake this process most energetically.  Specifically, we study members of religious groups with strongly expressed environmental commitments:  the Unitarian Universalist Association; the Episcopal Church in the U.S.; and the International Society for Krisha Consciousness.  We also include a secular environmental organization, the Sierra Club, in order to compare another group with clear environmental values and social capital.  We discuss the history, nature, and environmental values of these groups in more detail below.

 

The Episcopal Church

            The Episcopal Church in the U.S. is affiliated with the worldwide Anglican Communion, as well as the ecumenical National Council of Churches (NCC).  One of the country’s oldest Protestant denominations, the Episcopal Church currently has around 2.3 million members.  While Episcopalians in the U.S. generally consider themselves Protestant, the church is located theologically and ritually between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, reflected in the notion of the via media, or middle way, between the two traditions.

            As a member of the NCC, the Episcopal Church participates in its Ecojustice Network alongside other mainstream Protestant denominations.  In addition, the Episcopal Environmental Network advocates for ecological positions and practices within the church, from local parishes to larger projects at the levels of diocese and province.  The church’s presiding bishop, Kathleen Jefferts Schori (an oceanographer), has made environmental issues, especially global warming, a priority for the church (Schori 2007).  Both national and regional Episcopalian groups have adopted a variety of environmental resolutions, and the denomination’s General Theological Seminary in New York City recently announced that it will convert its heating and cooling system to geothermal energy in order to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions.

            Episcopalian environmental values, like those of Catholics and most historic Protestants, generally follow a stewardship model, in which humans are granted special power and also special responsibilities for caring for creation.  The church’s 70^th General Convention, in 1991, declared that “Christian Stewardship of God's created environment, in harmony with our respect for human dignity, requires response from the Church of the highest urgency.”  This principle has been reaffirmed at subsequent meetings, most recently the 75^th General Convention in 2006.  Other Episcopalian environmental statements have addressed issues including food production, global warming, and specific practices regarding energy use, toxic chemicals, and building standards for individual churches.

 

Unitarian Universalism

            Unitarian Universalism emerged from two different religions:  Unitarianism, a non-Trinitarian form of Christianity, and Universalism, another Christian denomination that emphasizes universal salvation.  Both traditions emerged in Europe, with branches established in North America in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries.  The two denominations joined in 1961, forming Unitarian Universalism, a new religion which no longer identifies as explicitly Christian.  Today Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) includes over 1,000 member congregations, with more than 217,000 members.   Unitarian Universalism has an eclectic theology, drawing not only from its Protestant Christian roots but also from non-Western spiritual traditions and secular philosophies.

             Unitarian Universalist moral principles emphasize individual conscience and dignity, social justice, and, especially significant for our research, “respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.”  In accord with this principle, the UUA has made ecological concern a centerpiece of its philosophy, pastoral work, and social programs.  The UUA’s “Ministry for Earth” has developed a number of environmental projects, including educational publications and presentations for pastors and members and practical activities for individuals and, through the Green Sanctuary program, for congregations.   Unitarian environmental values emphasize interdependence, harmony, and partnership more than stewardship.  In the words of a Unitarian minister , William Sinkford, “We are part of the interconnected web of existence, not apart from it. We are born of the earth and supported by her bounty. She is our mother” (Sinkford 2007).  This reflects a more ecocentric environmental ethic than most explicitly Christian denominations, including both Protestant and Catholic variants as well as the Anglican via media.

International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON)

            The International Society for Krishna Consciousness was founded in 1966 by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada to spread devotion of the Hindu deity Krishna to the United States and the west. The social and religious conditions of the United States at this time were open to alternate religious experiences, and ISKCON spread quickly through Europe, North and South America. Initially missionary ISKCON devotees established temples which became the hub of close-knit residential communities, primarily of western converts.  As this movement matured, ISKCON temples became cultural and religious centers for Indian immigrants and became an important medium for Hindu thought and practice to both Indian communities and the communities of western devotees and their families. ISKCON has since developed into a global confederation of 10,000 temple devotees and 250,000 congregational devotees and is comprised of more than 350 centers, 60 rural communities, 50 schools and 60 restaurants worldwide.

            ISKCON leadership has made environmental and agricultural concerns central to thought and practice. Srila Prabhupada instructed his followers and disciples to build self-sufficient farm communities practicing sustainable organic agriculture, and ISKON's farm projects around the world demonstrate this concept. While ISKCON responds generally to environmental degradation, ISKCON thought and practice provides motivations that set them apart from other American religious organizations.  The first is the preservation of Krishna's idyllic landscape (Braj Bhumi).  Second, as Hindus, ISKCON devotees are vegetarian and sensitive to agricultural issues.  Different temples  enact these concerns according to local leadership and community members.  For example, in ISKCON's worldwide headquarters in Vrindavan, India, ISKCON has paired with the World Wildlife fund to plant trees and engage in other ecological practices.

 

The Sierra Club

            The Sierra Club, founded in 1892, is the largest and most influential environmental group in the United States, with a mission to “explore, enjoy, and protect the planet.”  Club activists participate in national and local elections and seek to influence policy at various levels, from municipalities to federal laws.  Its organization emphasizes grassroots action and member participation, notably through elections for the Board of Directors that decides major club activities and positions.  Nonetheless, professional staff run many of the club’s day to day advocacy projects.  The Club is also notable for its emphasis on outdoor activities or “outings,” ranging from local bird walks to international eco-tours.  This emphasis reflects a conviction that experiences in nature can inspire and reinforce environmental commitments.

            The Sierra Club is a “big tent” organization, with significant ideological as well as practical diversity among its more than one million members.  Overall, however, the club’s environmental values can be characterized as a moderately ecocentric land ethic, grounded in evolutionary and ecological science.  For many years, this led club activists and staff to focus on preserving wilderness areas.  In recent years, however, the club has directed significant attention to global warming, sprawl, and related problems.

            The Sierra Club is a good choice to compare to religious groups concerned with the environment because it has the strongest local basis of any major environmental organization – local groups which meet regularly for education, advocacy, and outings and are similar to the parishes or congregations of a national religious group; and the club has a clearly articulated set of environmental values, which is communicated to members in a variety of ways.  The club has also reached out increasingly to faith communities in recent years, which adds an important dimension to our comparative study.

 

History and duration of the project

            The principal investigators have been planning and preparing for this research for over a year, building on many years of scholarship and teaching on environmental values, lived religion, and related issues.  Preliminary research and planning began in Fall 2006, with the receipt of a seed grant from the University of Florida’s school of Natural Resources and the Environment (SNRE) to Leslie Paul Thiele and Anna Peterson.  With that funding, Thiele and Peterson organized a planning meeting in April 2007, which brought together over 25 interdisciplinary environmental studies scholars, including Whitney Sanford and Samuel Snyder, for three days of intensive conversations about the relations between environmental values and practices.  The seed grant also enabled Thiele, Peterson, and Snyder to conduct preliminary research during summer 2007, including reviews of relevant scholarly literature and contact with leaders of congregations to be included in the ethnographic research.  Peterson and Snyder also co-authored a working paper (Peterson and Snyder 2007).

            During the 2007-08 academic year, the collaborators are meeting regularly to discuss theoretical and methodological issues as well as relevant scholarship.  We are also expanding our contacts with local religious leaders, in preparation for the beginning of intensive ethnographic research in May 2008.  A speaker series, funded by the University of Florida Center for the Humanities (to co-PI’s Peterson and Thiele), will bring in a series of speakers on the theme of “Rethinking Environmental Values.”  The speakers will meet with researchers involved in the current project in order to help clarify and deepen our research questions and themes.

 

Staff  (Short résumés are included in appendix)

            This project is a necessarily collaborative and interdisciplinary effort undertaken by four researchers, all of whom have been exploring issues of environmental value and practice for many years.  PI Anna Peterson, Professor of Religion at the University of Florida, has examined the ways that people construct, transform, and live out religious value systems, especially attitudes toward non-human nature and in religious communities in Latin America.  Her participation in this collaborative project develops out of her longstanding interest in how religious communities live out their ethics, and particularly in what motivates and sustains ethical action.

            Co-PI Leslie Paul Thiele, Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida, has explored the development of environmental movements in the United States and the nature of environmental ethics.  More recently, he has investigated the affective and narrative foundations of moral and political judgment.  With this study, Thiele hopes to ground humanistic interpretation in empirical research and expanding the exploration of civic life to include religious orientations and practices. 

            Co-PI Ann Whitney Sanford, Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Florida, has studied how Hindu agricultural narratives provides a means to rethink the human relationship to the earth.  Drawing on this research, her participation in this project focuses on the ways that Hindu agricultural and environmental thought shapes practice in ISKCON communities in North America. 

            Our project manager and associated researcher is Samuel Snyder, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Religion at the University of Florida, studies the ways that environmental and outdoor practices constitute lived religious experience.  His dissertation examines fly fishing and conservation activities initiated by fishers as ecological and religious practice.  With this collaborative project, Snyder expands his longstanding interests in the distinctive nature of religious experience and the ways in which concrete practices shape and are shaped by environmental values.

 

Methods

            Our research uses ethnographic methods to investigate the relations between environmental values and environmentally responsible behavior in members of religious congregations that have committed to environmental stewardship.  In addition to self-reported practices, we study environmental behavior in key areas such as home energy use, transportation, and food consumption.

 

Research questions

          Our central research questions fall into three categories. 

1.  Environmental discourse and values

            As preparation for our investigation of environmental practices, we will document and analyze the environmental discourse and values in each of the groups under study.  After conducting our own summaries and analyses of groups’ official environmental positions, we will ask members of the communities under study to summarize the environmental values of their religion or organization, in addition to information gained through interviews and participant-observation.   We will characterize them, first, in relation to established categories of environmental philosophy, such as stewardship, biocentrism, or partnership models. In addition, we will describe the types of moral argumentation made in each model.  Some are largely propositional, expressing values in terms of rules for and exhortations to proper behavior.  Other groups articulate their values in more deliberately metaphorical form, offering images of correct action and its consequences.  The reasons given for moral behavior, implicitly and explicitly, also differ.  Central questions for this stage include:

            * What assumptions about human nature and the natural world undergird the group’s environmental position?

            * How are environmental values expressed – e.g., as moral propositions, stories, goals, or rules?  Most religions combine two or more of these forms.  We ask which types people in a given tradition find most compelling and memorable.

            * How are environmental values related to the community’s religious identity?            * How are environmental values related to the community’s other moral concerns, e.g., with social justice?

            * How well do members understand their tradition’s expressed position on environmental issues?  How does this knowledge (or lack of knowledge) relate to environmentally responsible behavior?

            * To what extent do members agree with these positions as expressive of their religious tradition and as expressive of their own beliefs and values?

2.  Environmentally responsible behavior

Our second stage of research consists of ethnographic research, including participant-observation and in-depth interviews with informants.  This provides context to understand how environmental behavior emerges in social and individual contexts.  We will measure participants’ environmental behavior through interviews and observations, and also with a self-reporting guide (attached in the Appendix).  Interviews will include the following questions:

            * What do members perceive as the behavioral requirements that follow from their faith tradition’s environmental positions?  Which are prioritized?

            * To what extent and in what ways do members practice these behaviors?

            * Do they have environmental practices that are not recommended by their religion?

            * Are their practices encouraged by their religion that they believe are not important?

            * What other practices do members engage in as a result of their religious and moral commitments?

            * How active and identified with the religious community or environmental organization are members?

 

3.  Analysis of the relations between values and practices

Interviews and participant-observation will focus on these questions:

            * For environmental practices that are frequently engaged in, what factors encourage and assist people to start and continue?

            * For environmental practices that are rarely engaged in, what obstacles discourage or prevent people from starting or continuing?

            * What frustrations and satisfactions do members experience as a result of their efforts to practice environmental values?

            * How does participation in the larger religious and social community provided by their group facilitate (or hamper) environmental practices?

            * What is the relationship between their own environmental practices and the practices of other community members and the organization/denomination/congregation as a collective?

 

Research methods

            Our research team brings a blend of strengths to this project that makes us uniquely qualified for this undertaking. Our approach is two-pronged and reflects our background as religious studies scholars and political philosophers as well as ethnographers.  Our combined expertise in western religious traditions, devotional Hinduism, and environmental philosophy enable us to examine the relations among beliefs and values, social communities, and conservation practice.  Our research seeks to where specific forms of discourse fits within the relevant tradition, e.g. is it innovative, and how such discourse is related to changed behavior.

            In addition, we will conduct extensive ethnographic fieldwork with these religious groups. Our methods will be primarily multiple interviews with informants and participant-observation in these communities over set time-period, as well as measures of environmentally responsible behavior.  Our dual strategies of multiple interviews and prolonged participant-observation enable us to interact with informants and participants to determine how practices are shaped by values and vice-versa, and to identify the significance of both values and practices in the context of individual and community practice. Alongside this research, we will measure environmentally responsible behavior in participant individuals and groups (see form for self-reporting environmental practices in Appendix). 

            It is important for us to understand actions and their contexts because we seek to identify the confluence of factors that enable people to put their values into practice. We do not anticipate finding a sole cause of such behavior but rather seek to identify the individual and social factors that make environmental practice beneficial and possible. These factors include influences such as social networks, religious or spiritual rewards, and deep personal relationships, as well as the structural and material conditions that make action possible. Multiple interactions with informants make it possible to determine the relative strengths of these factors as well as the interaction of the factors that promote action, much like emergent properties that arise only under certain conditions.

            The principal investigators have extensive experience with this methodological approach. Les Thiele’s Environmentalism for a New Millennium (1999) included interviews with more than 75 subjects.  Anna Peterson’s research in the U.S. and Latin America  has included extensive fieldwork, including interviews, oral histories, surveys, and participant-observation (Peterson 1997, 2005; Peterson et al 2001).  Whitney Sanford has conducted ethnographic research in India for a number of years, including interviews and participant-observation. Her ten months in Baldeo, India was funded by AIIS-NEH in 1998-99.  Samuel Snyder has also conducted participant-observation research and interviews as part of his dissertation research.   Funding permitting, we will also train graduate students in religion, political science, and interdisciplinary ecology to participate in the field research.

 

Research sites

            We study communities within the religious traditions discussed above, all located near the University of Florida campus.  Our Episcopalian site is Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, one of the oldest and largest Protestant churches in Gainesville.   Holy Trinity has an active “Earth Stewardship Commission,” in addition to other environmental and social projects.   Peterson will conduct most of the research at Holy Trinity.  Our second site is the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Gainesville, a large congregation affiliated with the UUA Ministry for Earth and the Earth Charter (an international religious-ecological forum). In addition to serving as project manager, Snyder will coordinate the research with the UU Fellowship.  Our third site is the large ISKCON community in Alachua, Florida, where Sanford will conduct research.  Finally, we will study the Suwanee-St. John’s group of the Sierra Club, a local affiliate which has very active educational, advocacy, and outings programs throughout the region.  Thiele will coordinate research with this group.

 

Final Product and Dissemination

            In the second year of research, we will present papers based on preliminary analysis at several scholarly meetings, with the goals of presenting some of the case studies and significant conclusions and receiving constructive feedback on our work.  We will revise these papers to produce journal articles.  During the third year, we will write a co-authored book, built around our case studies and presenting a constructive analysis of the complex relationships between environmental values and practices.

 

Work Plan

Year One (July 1, 2008-June 30, 2009)

July 1-Aug. 15: Documentation and analysis of environmental values of groups

Aug. 15- Dec. 15: Analysis of environmental values; start field research

Jan 1. - May 1: Field research

May 1-June 30:  Field research

Year Two (July 1, 2009-June 30, 2010)

July 1-Aug. 15:  Begin collation and analysis of field research results to date

Aug. 15- Dec. 15: Field research continues

Jan. 1-May 1: Field research continues; presentation of initial material at conferences

May 1-June 30: Completion of field research

Year Three (July 1, 2010-June 30, 2011)

July 1-Aug. 15:  Final analysis of field research results

Aug. 15- Dec. 15: Writing

Jan. 1- May 1:  Writing

May 1-June 30: Revise manuscript

PSG

PSG application, due Nov. 6, 2008

 

Response to NEH reviewers

            In November 2007, we submitted a proposal to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for a Collaborative Research Grant titled “Religious Values and Environmental Practice.”  We were notified in June 2008 that our project had not been funded.  We recently received the reviewers’ comments from the NEH program officer. All five reviewers agreed on the significance of the topic and, further, the basic soundness of our research plan.  Their comments both provide specific ways for us to strengthen the proposal and encourage us to think that this is both an important project to pursue in the humanities and one that stands a strong chance of receiving significant support once we address weaknesses in the first proposal.

            One reviewer is concerned about the proposal’s expressed goal of drawing on findings to help close the gap between environmental values and actual practices.  The question about whether scholars should have a role in helping to “turn commitment into action” is legitimate. At the same time, however, we believe that research in the humanities can and should play a vital public role.  What we need to convey in our revised proposal is the distinction between shedding light on significant social problems, a legitimate and necessary role for humanistic scholars, and partisan advocacy.  We have no intention of engaging in the latter, but we do hope that our work will help scholars, policy makers, and a broader public understand how ethics are formed, expressed, and acted upon.  Such an increase in understanding can aid in efforts to translate widely-held values, such as concern for the natural environment, into more effective social practices and structures.

            In general the reviewers find the research questions valid and significant.  They praise specific aspects of our methodology, including the plan to hold repeated interviews with the same participants over time.  One reviewer raises questions about protocols regarding human subjects; this will not be an issue, since we will comply with all IRB requirements. 

            Several reviewers raise helpful questions about the details of our methodology, which we will incorporate into our proposal revisions.  One question concerns the numbers of informants to be interviewed and demographic data such as age, gender, etc.  Additional discussion and preliminary research during the next year will enable us to provide this information.  We will do so, further, in the light of the most significant questions raised about research design:  the selection of groups and their location.  These are among the most substantial changes that we will make in revising our proposal. 

            We proposed to study four groups with strong environmental concerns, including three religious institutions, the Episcopal Church, the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKON), in addition to one secular environmental group, the Sierra Club.  Regarding selection of groups, one reviewer notes that the absence of evangelical Protestants is a major gap.  Another notes that our informants will come entirely from the ranks of “the converted,” limiting our comparative depth.  We discussed this issue at some length in preparing our proposal last fall, and decided not to include Evangelicals at that time for several reasons, including their relative lack of attention to environmental issues.  As noted in our proposal, we chose specifically to concentrate on religious groups that have made environmental concerns a priority.  We believed that this focus would help us answer our key research questions, which ask if and how religion facilitates the translation of expressed ecological values into concrete practices and structures.

            The reviewers’ comments, however, point to the possibility of exploring this question in a broader context, especially by including religious groups (such as Evangelicals) that have not made environmental values as central to their ethical teachings as have the groups on which we originally chose to focus.  The possible inclusion of Evangelicals becomes more interesting, further, in light of developments in the last couple of years, including growing concern about climate change, in particular, among a broader religious constituency including Evangelicals.  In revising our proposal, then, we will add, as a fourth religious group, an Evangelical Protestant church that has made environmental values an important part of its ethical teachings. 

            The selection of the specific church is related to the possibility of geographic expansion,

which addresses the second limitation that concerned some reviewers: our decision to limit research to the Gainesville area.  Several reviewers noted this focus as a strength, insofar as it would both facilitate follow-up research with informants and make it more likely that we could follow our proposed time table.  These factors did indeed influence our decision to stay local with our research.  As we reflect on ways to strengthen the proposal, however, we find ourselves in agreement with the reviewers’ concern about the limitations of this local focus.

            In revising the proposal, we will look for ways to expand while retaining a manageable scope.  We will aim to add religious groups in at least one and possibly two locations.  These additional groups will be from the same traditions as the Gainesville groups we study, in order to provide comparative data, e.g., do Episcopalians in north central Florida differ significantly (and how) from Episcopalians in another region?

            This expansion will require additional background research on regional variations in attitudes, values, and organization.  Other background research will include studies of the religious groups’ statements on the environment – a factor included in our original proposal, but perhaps not emphasized enough, since one reviewer asks about it.

            Several reviewers suggest broader dissemination of the study’s results, and particularly a website.  We find this suggestion extremely helpful and will plan, in revising the proposal, to add on-line features including a website with information about the study method and groups, additional resources, and other features.  This is related to the question of follow-up research, which one reviewer would like to see in order to stimulate further studies in this area.  We agree that this is important, given the innovative nature of our project.  We will aim, in our revised proposal, to

 

Use of PSG funds

            In order to revise the proposal successfully, we request support for some initial research, consulting, and writing, to be undertaken primarily in summer 2009, with the goal of submitting a revised proposal to the NEH Collaborative Grants proposal for the November 1, 2009 deadline.

            During the summer we will conduct background research on religious groups under study and also preliminary field research in Gainesville and additional field sites, probably in North Carolina and the Pacific Northwest. This research will include interviews with religious leaders and focus groups with members of the congregations under study.  We will also conduct small surveys with these congregations.  The aims of this research will be first, to gather initial data that will help us write a better proposal, and second, to refine our interview and survey questions in preparation for more extensive research.

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Let me know if this format works. The interface is relatively easy to use. I'm not sure about posting documents at this point, but documents can be converted to images and posted. In order to tag something, use the labels field below... we probably ought to talk about a list of labels we want to use so that we don't have to go hunting for things.