Tenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

This paper aims at contributing to the ongoing discourse on the relationship between religion and environment in a number of ways. In the first section of my paper, I address the question of why the role of religion is important in dealing with the environmental issues today, arguing that religion helps us understand our true relationship with nature. In the second section, I show how and why the response of religious groups has been lackluster toward the issue of environment for a long time. In the third section of my paper, I explain Nasr’s traditional understanding of environmental crisis, and show its relevance in the present times. I argue how Nasr’s understanding enriches us to deal with environmental crisis, as opposed to other materialistic views, and discuss how Nasr’s understanding, despite being useful, has certain limitations. My arguments are based on the premise that religion is intellectually more accessible to lay people than often-times very complicated scientific evidence. I conclude by arguing that scholars of environmental issues need to rely more on religious perspectives in order to prepare people to stop the ongoing degradation of the environment.