The ReMembering and ReEnchanting Podcast
Conversations
Conversations with amazing people connecting what is all too often disconnected
Is there a new-ancient ecologically-centered spirituality erupting into different spheres of life around the world? Professor Bron Taylor's decades of research suggest that, yes, a diverse spiritual movement that values and experiences a spiritually informed and often infused connection with nature is rapidly growing. In this conversation, we look at many dynamics of this movement, from the global environmental milieu to surfers to scientists to indigenous activists and intellectuals.
1:55 - Getting to know Bron
7:20 - Bron's early work with the park service and thinking about organizational change and organizational development
11:57 - How Earth First inspired him to think about religion and the climate crisis differently
15:16 - How looking at social and ecological activists were working with and cultivating an eco-spiritual lens
18:58 - Global patterns of spiritualities of belonging and connecting with nature
20:15 - "Dark Green Religion"/Spiritual-ecology through the lens of science, popular media, and art
29:20 - How terms and definitions are changing
32:15 - Can global religious traditions become 'green' (as many people want them to be?)
46:00 - Where do you see the ideas and actions around decolonization intersecting with the dark green religious movement? (Which gets us into a conversation about animism)
55:20 - What does it mean to go deeper and learn the spiritual path of Dark Green Religion
1:06:17 - Language, Identity, Appropriation, and Practice
1:12 - There is going to be awkwardness, and it's okay.
Website: www.Brontaylor.com
Instgram: @Bron.Taylor
Books:
Avatar and Nature Spirituality
Affirmative Action at Work: Law, Politics, and Ethics
Ecological Resistance Movements: The Global Emergence of Radical and Popular Environmentalism
Civil Society in the Age of Monitory Democracy
These articles provide a pithy introduction to research exploring religion and environmental behavior suitable for popular audiences and undergraduate classrooms:
B. Taylor, Religion and Environmental Behaviour (part one): World Religions & the Fate of the Earth, Ecological Citizen 3(1): 71-76, 2019.
B. Taylor, Religion and Environmental Behaviour (part two): Dark Green Nature Spiritualities and the Fate of the Earth, Ecological Citizen 2(3): 135-140, 2020.
For in-depth analysis of the scholarly ferment over religion and environmental behavior, followed by a comprehensive review of such research’s see:
B. Taylor, ”The Greening of Religion Hypothesis (Part One): From Lynn White, Jr. and claims that religions can promote environmentally destructive attitudes and behaviors to assertions they are becoming environmentally friendly” Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 10(3): 268-305, 2016.
B. Taylor, Gretel Van Wieren, and Bernard Daly Zaleha, The Greening of Religion Hypothesis (Part Two): Assessing the Data from Lynn White, Jr., to Pope Francis (with Gretel Van Wieren and Bernard Zaleha), Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 10(3): 306-78, 2016.
Music Title: Both of Us
Music by: madiRFAN
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About Bron Taylor
Bron Taylor was born in Long Beach California in 1955, lived most of his early years in South Pasadena, and was fortunate to move to Ventura California on his 13th birthday in 1968, where he became a beach rat and developed a love for the ocean, went to high school, and secured a job within the California State Park System, first as an ocean lifeguard, eventually also serving as a State Park Peace Officer.
While working weekends and summers at various Southen California beaches between 1974 and 1989 (and sometimes also for an ambulance company as an Emergency Medical Technician) he earned degrees in Psychology and Religious Studies at California State University Chico, an MA in religious ethics from Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, and a Ph.D. in Social Ethics from the University of Southern California (in 1988). Along the way he engaged in social and environmental activism, and took on his most important role, as a husband and father.
In 1989 he became an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, and promoted rapidly to Associate and full Professor, while also leading a faculty initiative to establish its Environmental Studies program, serving as its director from 1993-2002. In 2002 he assumed the Samuel S. Hill Ethics Chair at the University of Florida, where he was recruited to anchor the world’s first graduate program focusing on religion and nature. He has been deeply involved in research initiatives in Europe, and was honored by his selection as a Carson Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich Germany in 2012.
In his academic work he has had the privilege of traveling widely, meeting, interviewing, and working with some of the most compassionate and passionate people on earth, all whom in their own ways are struggling to prevent further erosion of the earth’s biocultural diversity. Today, he cannot imagine doing anything else, except returning to the beach and surfing a lot more.
Source: Brontaylor.com
