TY - JOUR
AU1 - Baugh, Amanda, J
AB - Abstract Scholarship on religious environmentalism and green religion in the United States has privileged the actions of progressive white activists who view nature through an Enlightenment framework. In response to a call in the 2015 JAAR’s roundtable on climate destabilization and religion to engage in discourse about “the myriad causes and myriad possible solutions to our environmental crisis,” this article examines religious environmentalism from a nondominant perspective. Based on ethnographic research among Latinx churchgoing Catholics in Los Angeles, I have identified a widespread ethic of living lightly on the earth, which I call nepantla environmentalism. It is grounded in an immanent, relational worldview in which God is present in the material and the human-nature boundary is porous. A focus on nepantla environmentalism calls attention to the raced and classed biases embedded in dominant understandings of green religion in the United States. It demonstrates that there are different ways of being a religious environmentalist. IN HER CONTRIBUTION to the Journal of the American Academy of Religion’s 2015 roundtable on climate destabilization and religion, Lisa Sideris calls for critical scholarly inquiry into “the myriad causes and myriad possible solutions” to the environmental crisis. “Who gets to have a voice in sustainability matters,” Sideris charges, yet an influential branch of religion and ecology scholarship has insisted on “monolithic and vaguely authoritarian forms of environmental engagement” that embrace only those expressions that align with modern science (Sideris 2015, 369). Sideris limits her critique to scholarship identifying with religion and ecology while suggesting that the more empirically grounded religion and nature scholars have favored more critical approaches that presumably are open to conflicting viewpoints. Yet religion and nature scholars have typically privileged the experiences of progressive white activists who embrace modern, scientific outlooks as the exemplars of ecofriendly religious practice. Aside from a few exceptions, white Americans of European ancestry often stand in as the universal subject in studies of green religion and religious environmentalism in the United States (some exceptions include Baugh 2016, Kyle and Kearns 2018, Carter 2018, Clay 2018, Harris 2017). In this article, I seek to decenter dominant narratives by examining religious environmentalism from the perspective of Latinx Catholics.1 Between 2015 and 2018, I conducted forty-five ethnographic interviews and twelve focus groups among white and Latinx churchgoing Catholics at a range of sites across Los Angeles to understand their ecological values and the relationship of those values to their religious worlds.2 I also conducted participant observation at Catholic book clubs, ecological masses and conferences, beach cleanup days, and other Catholic environmental events. In this article, I focus primarily on my research among Latinx Catholics.3 When I began conducting this research, community leaders frequently advised me to adjust my project, because they thought Latinx communities would have little to say about the environment. Several priests encouraged me to visit a predominately white parish in the wealthy community of Manhattan Beach because that church had hosted a series of environmental speakers. There, a Cuban-American priest I call Fr. Ruben told me, “They have the time and luxury of being able to spend time and resources on this [environmental issues].”4 By contrast, he explained, the members of his working-class, primarily Latinx parish were in “survival mode.” Fr. Ruben described his parishioners as “the people who go to work early, earn money, and spend that money immediately on putting bread on the table and roofs over their heads and shoes on their children’s feet. . . . They probably don’t have that luxury of speculating on what’s causing global warming, you know? It doesn’t even cross their minds.” For this priest and many other people that I encountered throughout my research, environmentalism is separate from the struggles of daily life and the domain of people with the privilege to worry about it. Yet in direct conflict with the assumption that working-class, immigrant communities do not care about the environment, a national survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and the American Academy of Religion (AAR) found that Hispanic Catholics were more than twice as likely as white Catholics to be concerned about climate change, and Black Protestants were more likely to be concerned than white, mainline Protestants or white evangelicals (Jones, Cox, and Navarro-Rivera 2014). The ethnic divide among Catholics was especially striking, because among the eight distinct groups included in the survey’s results, Hispanic Catholics were the most likely to be concerned about climate change whereas white Catholics were the least likely to be concerned.5 These findings surprised scholarly observers because, historically, American environmentalism has been associated with the concerns of white elites (Brisman 2009, Montrie 2018, Taylor 2014). Scholarly efforts to explain racial and ethnic differences in the PRRI/AAR survey results have focused on minority communities’ disproportionate suffering from environmental problems. In a comment for the New York Times, sociologist Bernard Zaleha speculated that Hispanic Catholics might express heightened climate concerns “because they still have relatives in the global south where the effects of climate change are already being felt” (Quoted in Oppenheimer 2014). Simon Appolloni suggests that Hispanic Catholics’ and Black Protestants’ heightened concerns indicate that “class and poverty issues might account for the discrepancy between ‘white’ and ‘Hispanic Catholics,’ less so than theology” (Appolloni 2015: 1). To be sure, the PRRI/AAR survey supports an explanation based on poverty and disproportionate suffering because people of color were more likely than white people to believe that environmental problems would affect them personally. This explanation also fits within standard narratives of American environmentalism, which discuss minorities primarily through the framework of the environmental justice movement (Bullard 1994, Pulido 1996). Although issues related to environmental racism, poverty, and injustice offer one important reason why minority communities might care about the environment, an exclusive focus on minorities’ disproportionate suffering limits scholars’ ability to recognize a range of additional ways they might relate to the natural world and express concern for the environment. The PRRI/AAR survey produced striking, counter-intuitive results that challenged scholarly and popular assumptions about the types of communities that care about environmental issues, and it calls for more detailed, qualitative analysis. My ethnographic research among some of the communities included in the survey’s results provides a more textured understanding of the complex factors shaping religious communities’ relationships with nature and the environment. In my ethnographic research among Latinx Catholics in Los Angeles, I identified a widespread set of ecofriendly practices and values that do not conform with normative constructions of environmentalism. I call this ethic nepantla environmentalism. Nepantla is a Nahutl term that connotes a position of being in the middle of two or more things. Gloria Anzaldúa used the term to theorize the psychic and spiritual tensions of mestizas, who are “torn between [the] ways” of clashing cultures (Anzaldúa 2007 [1987], 100). She describes nepantla as a liminal space, the bridge between worlds, where “different perspectives come into conflict and where you question the basic ideas, tenets and identities inherited from your family, your education, and your different cultures” (Anzaldúa 2002, 548). Religious studies scholars have adopted the concept to analyze the complex interplay of Catholic and indigenous outlooks among Mexican-American and other Latinx Catholics (Busto 2003, Medina 2006, Espinosa 2008). Whereas some scholars have characterized nepantlism as a trauma or predicament (León-Portilla 1990, Busto 2003), Lara Medina understands nepantla as a space for harmonizing the Christian and the pagan. Building on Medina’s generative use, I employ nepantla to describe a distinctive orientation to religious environmentalism that combines aspects of Catholic religion, indigenous epistemologies of Latin America, and modern environmental thought. It is grounded in a sacramental, relational worldview in which God is present in the material and the human-nature boundary is porous, and its imperatives are both global and local in scope. Although nepantla environmentalism’s values do not emerge in direct response to climate change or the broader environmental crisis, nepantla environmentalism nevertheless offers essential resources for addressing those problems. Nepantla environmentalism has three distinct characteristics that challenge dominant understandings of environmentalism and green religion. First, whereas dominant narratives include minorities primarily in the realm of environmental racism and injustice, nepantla environmentalism involves active love for nature based on a Catholic sacramental vision toward God’s creation. Second, nepantla environmentalism embraces aspects of a relational, indigenous cosmovision that sees nature as kin and understands humans as part of an interconnected whole. Third, nepantla environmentalism is enacted primarily through an ethic of living lightly on the earth. This ethic begins with experiences of poverty but is preserved through habit, prayer, and a culture of moderation and respect. Nepantla environmental values have been overlooked in scholarship on religion and the environment in part because they do not conform to scholarly expectations of what religious environmentalism entails. Scholars of religion and environment have focused primarily on what I call explicit environmentalism: a political movement that involves concerted, intentional measures to protect the earth (Baugh 2019b). This approach derives from the predominately white, affluent social movement that developed from the conservation and preservation movements in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and “came of age” with the political, modern environmental movement of the 1960s.6 With its priority on protecting nature from human harm, or inspiring humans to reconnect with nature, explicit environmentalism is grounded in Enlightenment dualistic thinking that separates humans from nature (Ybarra 2016, Berry 2015). Literary scholars Sarah Wald, David Vazquez, Priscilla Solis Ybarra, and Sarah Jaquette Ray identify connections between this type of thinking and the colonial encounter, arguing that “its practices and disciplines are ‘racially coded’” and invested in “whiteness, class distinction, and even national belonging” (Wald et al. 2019, 2). In keeping with that critique, explicit environmentalism maintains a classed moral valence requiring environmental actions to be explicitly motivated by concerns for the planet. Recycling for the good of the earth is easily identified as environmentalism within an explicit environmental framework, whereas recycling motivated by monetary reward is not (Baugh 2019a). Nepantla environmentalism, by contrast, is a decolonial formation that draws primarily from Latinx epistemologies. Diverging from the political priorities and purportedly ecological motivations of explicit environmental efforts, nepantla environmentalism comprises attitudes and behaviors that have positive ecological outcomes but may not be motivated primarily by concern for a separate entity called “the environment.” Given the complexity of motivations for environmental actions (or any actions, for that matter), the categories of explicit and nepantla environmentalism can work simultaneously. Just as an explicit environmental action, such as striving to reduce one’s carbon footprint by purchasing a Prius, might also be motivated by financial considerations and an unconscious desire to embellish one’s environmental identity, nepantla environmental values can involve explicit concern for the earth (Sexton and Sexton 2014). My point in distinguishing nepantla environmentalism is simply to highlight a set of values and practices that have been obscured by the demands of normative environmentalism. The mismatch between nepantla ecological values and inherited constructions of environmentalism demonstrates the need to rethink narratives of US religious environmentalism and green religion. Historians of American religion have problematized grand narratives that tell the story of American religious history based on white, Protestant men in the northeastern United States (Tweed 1997). My research demonstrates the need for an analogous shift in the study of US religion and environment. Focusing on the ecological values of Latinx Catholics in Los Angeles illustrates how the study of religion and environment in the United States has been limited by the white, Protestant assumptions embedded in American environmental thought (Berry 2015). Nepantla environmental expressions broaden the definition of religious environmentalism by recognizing that there are different ways of conceiving of and engaging in environmentally friendly behaviors. In other words, there are different ways of being a religious environmentalist. RELIGION, ENVIRONMENTALISM, AND RACE Empirical scholarship examining the connections among religion, nature, and culture in the United States has focused predominately on the cultural expressions of politically progressive, white environmentalists who view nature through an Enlightenment framework.7 While acknowledging the existence of diverse nature-oriented perspectives among nondominant groups, studies often dismiss those very perspectives in favor of creating a hegemonic religious environmental history. Catherine Albanese’s seminal Nature Religion in America: From the Algonkian Indians to the New Age and her subsequent Reconsidering Nature Religion defined nature religion as a broad construct for understanding a cluster of nature-oriented beliefs, behaviors, and values that can be found throughout American religious history (Albanese 1990, 2002). Nature religion includes diverse expressions such as Native American kinship rituals, wilderness preservation campaigns, and natural health movements. Reconsidering Nature Religion acknowledges that West Africans, Roman Catholics, and Jews in early America made their own distinctive contributions to American nature religion. Yet Albanese includes these varied perspectives in service of describing their influence on Anglo-Protestants, because the latter group “assumed hegemonic importance in terms of public and religiously inspired culture” (Albanese 2002, 4). She then offers a schema for understanding nature religion in America that includes four major forms that all are indebted to Anglo-Protestant intellectual history. The first three forms, environmentalism, metaphysical religion, and religious movements advancing natural healing and health, developed directly from Transcendentalism. The fourth, natural religion and theology, can be traced to Enlightenment thought (Albanese 2002). Although Albanese hinted at the importance of non-Protestants and even identified Native Americans as the group whose cultural attitudes and identities are most clearly connected to nature religion (Albanese 2002, 4), she ultimately defined nature religion through its Anglo-Protestant outlets. Bron Taylor and Gavin Van Horn replicate Albanese’s Anglo-Protestant, scientifically inclined framework in their overview chapter, “Nature Religion and Environmentalism in North America.” Adding “green religion” and “religious environmentalism” to Albanese’s nature religion construct, Taylor and Van Horn assert that the American experience of religious environmentalism derives from the “complex reciprocal influences between European and American experiences, perceptions and worldviews” (Taylor and Van Horn 2006, 170). The authors acknowledge that not all Americans are of European ancestry when they note that “the reciprocal influences among the experiences of those who came to North America from Africa, and later those from Latin America and Asia” are “less well studied and understood” (Taylor and Van Horn 2006, 170). Yet the perspectives and experiences of those others largely are neglected throughout the rest of the chapter.8 Taylor and Van Horn’s history of American religious environmentalism, moreover, entails a secularization narrative in which supernatural belief gradually declines, and more scientifically inclined thinkers combined scientific naturalism with religious pantheism to “pioneer an approach more amenable to the veneration of nature through environmental activism and bioregional experimentation” (Taylor and Van Horn 2006, 169–170). The result is a Humesian secularization narrative of religious environmental history in which rational, scientifically minded nature enthusiasts overtake those who retain backwards, otherworldly beliefs as the model of nature religion most worthy of attention. Subsequent work on green religion in the United States has continued to focus primarily on actors who are white, religiously progressive, and committed to harmonizing religion and science, examining nature religion through expressions such as surfing spirituality, white water kayaking, homesteading, and sustainability activism (Taylor 2007, Sanford 2007, Gould 2005, Johnston 2014). By defining religious environmentalism based on white, progressive, scientifically inclined actors, scholars of religion and environment have uncritically accepted the Anglo-Protestant inheritance of the American environmental movement itself. The religious resources of white Protestants were “central conceptual ingredients” in the formation of American environmentalism, Evan Berry demonstrates in Devoted to Nature, shaping ideas toward nature as a basis for spiritual redemption (Berry 2014, 5). Mark Stoll identifies the Reformed Protestant denominational origins of environmental and proto-environmental ideas in Inherit the Holy Mountain, finding that “virtually every single person associated with the early movements for parks and forest conservation was no further than one generation away from a Congregational church in a small New England town” (Stoll 2015, 4). Although environmental activists who inherit this legacy offer one entry point for understanding green religion in the United States, defining a field of study exclusively from this perspective results in a body of scholarship that focuses primarily on whether and how diverse communities are embracing a white, middle-class, Protestant way of being a religious environmentalist. Theories of decolonial Latinx environmentalisms, which critique mainstream environmentalism for its modern, colonialist assumptions, are essential for moving beyond the field’s white, Protestant foundations. Whereas some social scientists have placed Latinx activists within standard narratives of environmental history through a focus on environmental justice (Pulido 1996, Peña 1998, Park and Pellow 2011), scholars writing from a decolonial perspective have sought to understand Latinx environmentalisms through their own histories. Literary scholar Priscilla Solis Ybarra, for example, identifies a genre of “goodlife writing” that conveys a distinct set of values that derive from the experiences of Mexican Americans: “not too much but just enough, wealth measured by degrees of simplicity and community rather than material accumulation, a sense of respect for the dignity of the spirit and the land all in one breath” (Ybarra 2016, 7).9 Ybarra identifies other expressions of Latinx environmentalisms along with coeditors Wald, Vazquez, and Ray in Latinx Environmentalisms, a collection of essays that identify environmental themes in Latinx literature and cultural productions. In their introduction to the volume, the editors emphasize that many Latinx cultures have embraced environmental ideals for centuries, yet they rarely identify as environmentalists. This disconnect, they suggest, “emerges from the colonialist and white supremacist ideologies embedded in the formulation of mainstream environmentalism” (Wald et al. 2019, 3). Building on Walter Mignolo’s contention that Western epistemology is not the only starting place for the production of knowledge, they highlight previously marginalized environmental expressions derived primarily from Latinx epistemologies (Mignolo 2012). Historian Sara Fingal similarly observes that Latinxs have long-standing environmental values such as “conserving resources and respecting the natural world,” but they tend not to identify as environmentalists due to the legacy of racist ideologies that have shaped American environmentalism (Fingal 2019, 2). The environmental movement, and its precursors in the conservation and preservation movements, advanced priorities that directly conflicted with those of Mexican Americans. Whereas white environmental activists and government officials sought to protect pristine, uninhabited nature for the enjoyment of white elites, Mexican Americans’ relationship with the land involved hunting, fishing, and grazing and was tied to their own survival (Fingal 2019, 3). A focus on Latinx environmental expressions, Fingal shows, forces scholars to expand understandings of what environmentalism can entail. Scholarship on Latinx environmentalisms exposes the raced, classed, and Eurocentric assumptions that have shaped environmental humanities scholarship. But these studies do not acknowledge an additional factor that has shaped normative environmentalism, Protestant ideas about nature, nor do they attend to the significant ways that Catholic and indigenous religious formations might contribute to decolonial environmental values and practices. My focus on nepantla environmentalism calls attention to the ways that one set of (white, Protestant) religious ideas has led to restrictive understandings of environmentalism and how a decolonial focus on other religious worlds can reveal environmental actors who have been hidden in plain sight. ACTIVE LOVE FOR NATURE AND CONCERN FOR GLOBAL ECOLOGICAL ISSUES The primary place for minorities within dominant narratives of American environmental history, and by extension religious environmental history, is the framework of environmental racism and injustice. Nepantla environmentalism challenges that singular placement, supporting the decolonial insight that environmental values in minority communities need not be defined solely through environmental justice. In my research, Latinx Catholics did talk about traditional environmental justice concerns such as human suffering related to drought, and they encouraged food conservation with awareness that many in their community did not have enough to eat. But many also mentioned active love for nature and the environment, and they expressed concerns about global ecological issues, such as President Trump’s energy policies, the Dakota Access Pipeline, climate change, natural resource depletion, consumerism, and more. Carlos, a thirty- one-year-old electrician who immigrated to Los Angeles from Mexico as a young child, specifically mentioned polar bears as he quipped about the global ecological problems that his generation faced. “If you don’t take care of the planet it’s really going to be messed up,” he declared. “I mean, have you guys seen what’s going on with the polar bears? That’s sad, dude, like they’re dying . . . I don’t know about you guys, but I love animals.” Similar to Carlos’ expression of love for animals, many other Latinx Catholics described relationships with nature that were characterized by a sense of familiarity, love, and respect—not victimhood or struggle—grounded in a sacramental outlook in which God is present in the material world. A sacrament, according to Catholic theologian John Haught, is “any object, person, or event through which religious consciousness is awakened to the presence of the sacred mystery” (Haught 1993, 76). Theologian Roberto Goizueta suggests that a sacramental outlook can lead directly to love and appreciation for nature. For those who inhabit a sacramental way of being, he writes, “physical existence is seen as intrinsically related to the supernatural, transcendent realm of the sacred”(Goizueta 1995, 19). This easily leads to love for all of creation because “one cannot love the universal and supernatural if one cannot love the particular and natural—and love these precisely as particular and natural. One cannot love the Creator if one cannot love the creature—and love him, her, or it precisely as creature” (Goizueta 1995, 49). Nepantla environmentalists expressed a sense of connection with nature as part of their cultural identities, and that connection was grounded in a sacramental vision of God’s presence in nature. In a Spanish-language focus group, Miguel declared that “nature and God are one,” and that vision meant that Catholics must “love and take care of [nature], and protect it.” Pablo also conveyed a sense of God’s presence in his experiences with the natural world. “When I go to a place and see nature, I stop to look and see,” he said. “When I am at the sea, a mountain, a lake, I appreciate everything that is natural. And what I most see there is the hand of God.” Maria’s sacramental outlook was especially pronounced in connection to her ancestral homeland, Mexico. Fondly recalling her trips home, Maria said she loved to go into the fields and watch the seeds being planted. “Everything is beautiful, and one sees God because God created it.” Cassandra added that she and other immigrants who grew up in small villages loved nature: “We are raised there [in nature], and we love her; we take care of her.” Many of my informants expressed a special connection with trees and indicted that close relationships with trees were a marker of Latinx identity in the United States. Returning to Carlos, he offered an anecdote to illustrate the prevalence of that affinity. A few years earlier, Carlos had brought a friend to visit his grandmother’s home in a middle-class, predominately white Los Angeles neighborhood. His friend immediately identified the grandmother’s house when they arrived on her block, Carlos recalled, because of the eight fruit trees that she had planted in her front yard. Paul, a first-generation Mexican American in his twenties who participated in a focus group that comprised mostly white Catholics, suggested that a love of trees distinguished Latinx from white Catholic culture. “How many of you guys have plants at home that provide fruits and vegetables?” he challenged the white members of the group. “How many plants? At my house I have an orange tree, lemon tree, pomegranate tree, walnut tree, and guava tree.” Paul suggested this affinity was rooted in his indigenous heritage, because cultivating the land “is just second nature to us, like, you see the Aztecs can work wonders with corn. . . . We learned to love our land that was granted to us because not only are we Catholic but some of our Hispanic influence has shaped the way we are now as Hispanic Catholics.” On a different occasion, Robert, a first-generation Mexican American in his twenties, also described an abundance of fruit trees that always were in Latinx neighborhoods: “Usually you’ll have an avocado tree, you’ll have an orange tree, apple tree, guava tree. Some type of a fruit tree, maybe from wherever they’re from. They usually grow here pretty well!” When I asked Robert to help me understand the significance of trees, he responded, “If you’re Latino and you don’t have a fruit tree at your house, it’s like, you’re not really Latino.” Araceli suggested that her parents’ love for gardening was part of their sacramental connection to nature in their ancestral homelands. “There has to be something spiritual about it [gardening],” she said, “because when you are surrounded with nature it just feels different. And that’s what all of our parents and our families feel, that they want to bring what they had over there and that’s how they do it by having all these plants and foods and what not.” These stories convey a sense of connection with nature as part of cultural identity, and that connection sometimes entails the presence of God. Just as Goizueta suggests that loving the particular and natural are inherent to loving the universal and supernatural, nepantla environmentalists express love for trees, mountains, and other aspects of the natural world for themselves and as places for experiencing the sacramental presence of God. In a survey of major trends in Christian eco-theology, Catholic theologian John Haught suggests that embracing a sense of sacramentality, “and the genuine reverence toward nature that this implies,” is the single most effective way that religions can support efforts to avert environmental catastrophe. Citing the work of white, creation spirituality-oriented eco-theologians such as Thomas Berry and Matthew Fox, Haught encourages Christians to embrace precisely the types of sentiments that my informants expressed.10 But far from being the radical intellectual shift that Haught suggests, sacramentality is already embedded in the daily outlook of many of my informants. Nepantla environmentalists embrace the positive sacramental outlook that Haught celebrates, but they express it in ways that do not fit into dominant narratives of American religious environmentalism. Whereas dominant narratives focus primarily on minorities’ struggles against environmental racism, nepantla environmentalism balances cases of victimhood with a focus on the positive experiences that minority communities have with the natural world. Nepantla environmental expressions of love and respect for nature are tied specifically to idealized memories of a Latin American past, but its ecological concerns are global in reach, not focused primarily on personal struggles. INDIGENOUS COSMOVISIONS AND KINSHIP In addition to embracing a Catholic sacramental outlook, nepantla environmentalism also derives from a relational, indigenous cosmovision that sees nature as kin and understands humans as part of an interconnected whole. It differs from narratives of religious environmentalism that focus on efforts to resacralize, or reconnect with nature, because it derives from a decolonial epistemology in which that connection with the sacred was never lost (Berry 2015, 11).11 Within mainline Protestant and progressive Jewish contexts, a common explanation for why protecting the environment is a religious issue involves the concept of stewardship: humans are called to care for the earth because it is a gift from God (Swartz 2003, Kearns 2004). In my research, some Latinx Catholics offered versions of a stewardship argument when they explained why it was important to take care of the earth. But a second explanation also emerged across Latinx Catholic research sites: it is important to protect the environment because of the biblical mandate to love your neighbor as yourself. For example, in one focus group, Carlos explained that his concerns about environmental policies and polar bears were directly related to his faith because, “I mean, it’s one of the commandments: love your neighbor as you love yourself. . . . If you’re not thinking about others, you’re being selfish, right?” Carlos went on to discuss how climate change was affecting bees, polar bears, and fish in addition to humans, implying that all of those communities were neighbors that he was commanded to love. In a different conversation, Adriana explained that her Catholic faith taught her to be conscious in all aspects of life, including “the way that you portray yourself to the world and the way you treat the environment the same way that you would treat your neighbor.” In contrast to stewardship explanations that situate humans as separate from and above nature, this relational viewpoint conceives of humans and the rest of nature as part of the same reality. The “love your neighbor” explanation is Christian because it directly references the Bible, but its assumption that “neighbor” involves the more-than-human world reflects an indigenous, relational worldview. Scholarship on indigenous communities often discusses environmental ethics in the context of reciprocity and balance that is grounded in a nondualistic outlook and a sense of kinship with the natural world. Anthropologist Miguel Astor-Aguilera writes that in many indigenous cosmovisions of Latin America, elements of nature can be addressed as kin, “because everything is potentially extended family” (Astor-Aguilera 2016, 163).12 For the Maya, “dealing with the environment is similar to dealing with one’s kin and neighbors” (Astor-Aguilera 2016, 161). Lois Ann Lorentzen and Salvador Leavitt-Alcantara also describe a relational outlook common among indigenous groups in Latin America, whereby “sharp divisions between nature and humans or between the wild and civilized are rarely made.” Instead, indigenous people’s relationships with the natural world are grounded in a system of “ecokinship” that involves “norms valuing reciprocity or balance between humans and the non-human world” (Lorentzen and Leavitt-Alcantara 2010, 512–513). Reciprocal norms are evident, for example, in the Nahua practice of asking permission before cutting trees (Silva 2001), and a belief among Andean communities that mountains will revolt through natural disasters such as mudslides if the people do not provide them with proper nourishment (Madera 2008). Whereas nepantla environmentalism does not replicate the specific norms of any particular indigenous cosmovision, it does reflect a general nondualistic outlook and sense of ecokinship shared by many Latin American indigenous traditions. For many of my informants, the line between humans and the rest of nature was blurred. Alejandro, a Mexican American immigrant who works with Spanish-speaking Catholics in Los Angeles, exemplified a nondualistic outlook in response to my opening focus group question: “What do Catholics contribute to society?” I had explained my research to this group as an investigation of Catholic values in daily life without divulging my particular interest in the environment, yet Alejandro instinctively included the natural world as part of the society that Catholics could benefit. One of the Church’s greatest contributions, according to Alejandro, was education toward the formation of consciousness: “What is right, what is good for the other person, not only for me but for us in the community. Protection of life, not only human life, but also animals, also plants, resources.” In a different focus group, Roger expressed both a Christian understanding of God the Creator and an indigenous understanding of nature as kin: “God created everything and we have to love all of Creation. We love a plant like a brother. Neglecting nature is like seeing a brother in the streets and not helping him. . . . Cutting a tree is like scorning a brother.” Building on Roger’s comments, José described nature as a neighbor when he suggested that caring for nature is a fundamental aspect of faith because everything is interconnected: “To love God is to love your neighbor. . . . Because God created everything, if we want to be loving to God we must be concerned with all aspects of life.” By describing nature and trees as part of society, as a brother, and as a neighbor, these comments combine a Catholic commitment to the value of human life with an indigenous relational worldview that blurs distinctions between humans and the rest of the world. Even as they viewed the natural world through the lenses of Catholic sacramentality and indigenous kinship, my informants also exhibited global ecological awareness that humans must protect the environment in order to protect human life. Many prayed to God daily and believed that God listened to their prayers and could intervene in worldly affairs, but they nevertheless insisted that humans must take responsibility to protect the natural world. In a Spanish language focus group comprising volunteers from a Friday night prayer group, Mia stated, “I believe that God listens to us in many ways, but we also have to do the work ourselves.” Rather than praying to God to save the environment, she elaborated, “it has to begin at home, as a family, to start saving [resources] such as water and light.” When asked whether they prayed to God for anything related to nature or the environment, respondents most frequently said that they prayed for increased awareness and education. Pablo insisted that even though God created humans and loves humans, people must still educate themselves so that they do not destroy the environment through actions such as smoking and using aerosol. “We need training because God created us, but you must educate yourself, learn, and study,” he said. Alejandro acknowledged God’s grace while insisting that humans must do their part. “With prayer you can stop a hurricane,” he declared. But even though “grace helps us understand that we can prevent natural disasters, we also need to be in communion with nature. You cannot abuse it and you cannot take advantage of it because otherwise we are destroying ourselves.” Across research sites, my interlocutors expressed particular concern with humans’ reliance on trees for oxygen. Gloria, a Mexican American woman in her seventies who was born and raised in Los Angeles, said, “I think we have a tendency to forget that without the trees and grass our oxygen is very low. Without the trees and all the plants and the grass, we get very little oxygen. We have to have oxygen to live.” In a Spanish language focus group, Julio also described human’s reliance on nature as part of their reliance on God: “Without nature we cannot exist. . . . We cannot live without oxygen; we cannot live without air. . . . There is a divine power that created all of this, and that is God.” According to Ismael, a high school senior who was born in Mexico and raised in a rural community on the outskirts of Los Angeles, “We have to respect everything around us because it is creation. It is part of us. . . . If we kill nature we are going to kill ourselves.” These comments express biblical belief in God the creator but also a scientifically informed understanding of humans as destroyers. God may have created the world, but humans are part of an interdependent whole, and by destroying God’s creation they will ultimately destroy themselves. NEPANTLA ENVIRONMENTAL EXPRESSIONS A third way that nepantla environmentalism defies expectations about religious environmentalism and green religion involves the ways that its ecological values are inspired and expressed. Nepantla environmentalism involves an ethic of living lightly on the earth that entails daily practices—such as conserving resources, cultivating gardens, and avoiding unnecessary consumption—that result from a variety of factors and motivations. Although not unique to Latinx Catholic communities, these practices are significant because they demonstrate the prevalence of ecofriendly ways of being within a community that has not been recognized in studies of religious environmentalism or green religion. In several articles challenging what he calls the “greening of religion hypothesis,” the idea that religious people are transforming their traditions to respond to the environmental crisis, Bron Taylor establishes a stringent set of requirements that religious actors must meet to count as evidence of green religion. First, he suggests that religion, as opposed to other cultural variables, must be a primary motivating factor that supports green religious actions. Case studies that document environmental activism among religious communities often fail to support the greening of religion hypothesis, Taylor asserts, because “such information does not demonstrate that religion is responsible for the environmentally friendly ideals and practices even when these are demonstrable” (Taylor 2011, 225). In addition to being motivated primarily by religion, Taylor also requires green religion to demonstrate evidence of political influence and direct involvement with environmental movements. Along with co-authors Gretel Van Wieren and Bernard Zaleha, Taylor suggests that many documented examples of religious environmentalism in action fail to support the greening of religion hypothesis because environmental concerns, “although professed, remain such a low priority that they do not produce politically effective environmental action” (Taylor, Van Wieren, and Zaleha 2016, 348 emhasis added). A third requirement mandating that green religion must be engaged with the broader environmental movement can be discerned in this dismissive statement: “Not only is there a dearth of evidence that religious greens are playing a leading role in promoting effective environmental protection movements, they do not appear to contribute significantly to the environmental movement in general” (Taylor, Van Wieren, and Zaleha 2016, 350; emphasis added). According to Taylor and his collaborators, then, ecofriendly actions can serve as evidence of green religion only if they are motivated primarily by religion, politically efficacious, and directly involved with the broader environmental movement.13 A focus on nepantla environmental expressions illustrates inherent limitations within this theoretical framework because nepantla environmentalism involves values and behaviors that are intimately connected with religious worlds and result in positive outcomes for the environment, but would not meet these three requirements. First, nepantla environmentalism does not meet the mandate that green religion must result in political activism and involvement with the broader environmental movement. While acknowledging the importance of concerted efforts and legislative approaches for addressing the environmental crisis, nepantla environmentalism rejects the notion that these are the only legitimate or effective responses. Instead, it involves daily practices that have positive outcomes for the environment but may not directly lead to political outcomes and may not reflect involvement with the (predominately white) American environmental movement. Second, nepantla environmental ethics often begin with experiences of poverty, not religious beliefs. But its values are sustained and transmitted through a culture of moderation and respect even when they are no longer compelled by economic circumstances, and that culture is indebted in part to nepantla religion. My conversation with Fr. Javier, a Mexican American priest who helped me establish a focus group with Spanish-speaking immigrants at his church, underscored that nepantla environmentalism is often deeply connected with poverty. Fr. Javier described home visits with parishioners where he saw five adults sharing a single bedroom in a small apartment. To save enough to send money to relatives back home, they would hold down expenses by eating very little. If they needed to move, they could pack up all of their belongings in a few boxes within an hour. For individuals living in such impoverished circumstances, there is no need to discuss carbon footprints—they necessarily live very lightly on the earth. But attributing their ecofriendly practices exclusively to the constraints of poverty fails to appreciate the multi-faceted reality of their existence and ethical outlook. The immigrant members of Fr. Javier’s working-class church made deeply sacramental comments about loving God’s creation and feeling God’s presence in nature. One focus group participant, Manuel, suggested that caring for creation was even more fundamental than the spiritual components of his faith: “We have to become aware of taking care of these elements and that they’re God’s creation. There’s no sense in worrying about spiritual things if we don’t take care of what gives us life.” Manuel and his fellow churchgoers may not have attended talks on Laudato Si or lobbied their legislators to support the Clean Energy Act, but they expressed strong ecological ethics and lived very lightly on the earth.14 They traveled by public transit, seldom if ever rode on airplanes, conserved energy to keep their bills low, and consumed very little. Without a doubt their small ecological footprints resulted directly from their impoverished circumstances. Yet they simultaneously expressed environmental concerns through a sacramental outlook, and that supported their values of living lightly on the earth. Although some nepantla environmentalists’ small ecological footprints resulted directly from the conditions of poverty, an ethic of living lightly on the earth was also embraced as a cultural ideal among Latinx Catholics at sites across Los Angeles. Time and again, across research sites I consistently heard about an ethic of moderation that was grounded in a sense of respect. During a conversation at a Panera restaurant near her home, Sofia, a Mexican American woman in her eighties, told me that her mother had taught her to respect the land. God gave humans the land, she recalled her mother explaining, and “we were to take care of what was given to us.” To illustrate her point, Sofia held up the disposable cup she was drinking from, and told me she would take the cup home and reuse it until it became too shabby. Other people would probably just throw it away, she said, because they lacked a sense of respect. Marco, an environmental engineer in his thirties who immigrated to Los Angeles from Mexico as a child, told me that he wanted to teach other people in his community “to respect what we already have,” because “little by little we have to take care of the environment.” Nancy, a first-generation Salvadoran American, told me “Our beliefs teach us to respect nature. . . . It’s respect, not bringing harm to the trees. Just to love one another, and also to love what God has blessed us with. The trees, the flowers, nature, animals, things like that.” In keeping with that culture of moderation and respect, both working-class and affluent Latinx Catholics contrasted the materialistic, consumeristic United States with a much more balanced, “earthy” lifestyle “back home.”15 In the United States, according to Gloria, “We are a very modernized country. And we are not going to go back. We’re going to go forward. And if you’re going to cut a tree, no big deal. You know? Do I want a swimming pool? Sure why not? It’s just a materialism here in United States.” Elena, the thirty-two-year-old daughter of Mexican immigrants, suggested that consumerism is “very American, you know? Oh, you just buy, buy, buy, regardless of if you really have the need for it. And then you just throw away when the latest model comes out. . . . It’s just this weird mentality that Americans have.” Andre suggested that a visit to his parents’ homeland, El Salvador, made him appreciate the scant nature that remained in his dense Los Angeles neighborhood. In El Salvador, he said, “you always see just how carefully everything is grown and taken care of.” But in the United States, “you can see how little there is, and just how little care there is for it as well. But when you see it all, the vast difference and change that you see from here to there, you want to take care of it even more because there’s already so little.” Carlos suggested that his father’s mindset was “more earthy” due to his formative experiences cultivating the land back home in Mexico. Angelica, a thirty-two-year-old educator who I met through a Spanish language young adult group at her church, offered a related perspective when she told me she had been surrounded by a culture of conservation throughout her life. As we were chatting over lunch one sunny May afternoon, Angelica told me she had picked up a few tips from an exhibit on Laudato Si that she visited at a religious education conference, but the encyclical’s message was continuous with the way she had been raised. Angelica leaned in closer as she asked me, “I don’t know if you already heard, how our families recycle or save stuff?” Having grown up poor, she was accustomed to sharing and reusing. People in her community never bought Tupperware because they just used old containers from yogurt and butter, she said, and as a child her entire wardrobe consisted of hand-me-downs she had gotten at church. When I asked Angelica why she continued these practices, absent the economic need, she responded with a laugh, “Because you don’t want to waste anything. And because of growing up poor! We learn the value of things and all that.” To illustrate how avoiding consumption was an inherited cultural practice, Angelica reminisced about cleaning out her grandmother’s home in Mexico after her grandmother had died. “We found all of these new dishes and pots and pans,” she recalled, “and we were like, why does she have this new stuff, you know? But I remember her telling me, these pots, the ones that she would use, the old ones, she’s like, they’re still good! We can still use them. She wouldn’t throw them away until they were literally broken. I was like, this lady, even though they were well-off in that little town, she still saved as if she were poor.” Angelica similarly continued to reuse everything and to purchase second-hand clothing even when her income would allow her to buy things new. For Angelica, avoiding needless consumerism was an admirable value. Although the practice began with her impoverished childhood, it represented a cultural value that she retained as an upwardly mobile adult. Other Latinx Catholics described a similar conservation ethic that centered primarily around food. Alejandro, the Mexican American leader of a Spanish-language Catholic group, described his own revulsion at food waste as an inheritance from his indigenous roots. When Alejandro first immigrated to the United States, he recalled, he worked at a Catholic high school and was shocked by the amount of food he saw students throw away in the cafeteria every day. “If our great-great-grandfathers that come from indigenous traditions saw that, that would be an offense, like disrespect. Because food is sacred and food is a gift from God. . . . You don’t waste food because it’s sacred. Those traditions are still alive, in a very subtle way.” Alma also suggested that her parents were drawing on their indigenous heritage when they taught her that “the earth is sacred; land is sacred. The fruit of your day’s work, what you get out of the land, all of that is sacred. It’s not something to be just ignored or taken for granted.” Adriana, an upwardly mobile Mexican American immigrant who worked in the television industry, described a similar sense of disgust at the amount of food that she saw her white colleagues routinely throw in the trash. One day she was so fed up with their wasteful habits, she recalled during a focus group conversation, that she decided to teach her colleagues a lesson. She collected several bananas from the trashcan, took them home to bake banana bread, and brought the bread back to work the next day. While her colleagues initially were appreciative of Adriana’s gift, they were dismayed when Adriana told them the source of the bananas. “But it’s very interesting,” Adriana said as she reflected on the experience. Her white colleagues did not care about wasting food, “and even if you tell them, they don’t care.” By contrast, Adriana said, even though she had never experienced hunger, her parents had taught her not to waste. “But it’s not only one family, it’s the entire culture. Because when you go to events like at church everybody eats everything; and that’s another thing that I noticed that we are not picky, we eat absolutely everything that they put in our plate.” In addition to crediting her parents and her church community with inculcating her conservation ethic, Adriana also credited her personal faith. Earlier in our conversation she had explained that her faith had deepened over the previous five years, as she developed from a “cultural Catholic” to a “Catholic with conviction.” Adriana returned to the theme of her renewed faith as she discussed her ethic of avoiding waste. Ever since she had started “walking with Jesus,” Adriana explained, she had become very bothered by wasteful habits. Her faith had led her to strive for “balance” in every aspect of her life: “On the way that you portray yourself to the world and the way you treat the environment the same way that you would treat your neighbor . . . It’s the trees, nature and everything, it’s part of the same creation. So, by default, you know that this is not right, like wasting trash, putting trash in there, it’s not good. Wasting your food is not good. It’s all by default because you become this other person.” Becoming a Catholic with conviction, she concluded, “does have a lot of effect.” Although my informants did not meet Taylor’s stringent requirements for the evidence of green religion, their comments suggested a shared cultural value that valorized a simple, ecofriendly lifestyle of avoiding needless consumerism and waste. Their reported behaviors, moreover, aligned with the prescriptions of religious groups that are directly engaged with the broader environmental movement. Take, for example, a list of “50 Ways to Help the Planet” that was promoted by the Creation Sustainability Ministry of the Los Angeles Archdiocese. Several of the tips, such as “plant your own tree,” and “buy second hand,” are routine practices already embraced by the Latinx Catholics I encountered across Los Angeles. Other tips such as “turn your computer off overnight,” “use e-tickets” instead of printed paper for airplane flights, and “recycle unwanted wire hangers” are small measures that could slightly offset the unsustainable lifestyles of those who own computers, travel by airplane, and own clothing that must be laundered professionally. Although nepantla environmentalists already embraced many aspects of the ecofriendly lifestyle promoted by the Creation Sustainability Ministry—whether because of economic circumstances, cultural values, or some combination of both—their values and behaviors have been overlooked by both scholars and activists interested in the greening of religion. A focus on nepantla environmentalism shows that actions with positive ecological outcomes are a form of religious environmentalism, even when they are not motivated exclusively by religious beliefs or a direct desire to protect the earth and even when they are not performed as a part of the mainstream environmental movement. CONCLUSION In this article, I set out to interpret the PRRI/AAR survey finding that Hispanic Catholics were more likely to be concerned about climate change than any other American religious group. In the process, I responded to a call published in this journal to understand the myriad voices that can contribute to environmental solutions by focusing on the values of a community that has been neglected in scholarship on religion and the environment. Although environmental historians and sociologists have critiqued American environmentalism extensively for framing environmental problems in ways that exclude people of color, research on religious environmentalism and green religion in the United States has continued to focus on the presence or absence of explicit environmental formations without critically reflecting on how this framework has excluded entire groups of people. My focus on the nepantla environmental values of Latinx Catholics offers an alternative way of understanding diverse approaches for addressing the environmental crisis. Nepantla environmentalism offers a distinct, underappreciated approach, but this is not meant to imply that it offers the key to solving the climate crisis or that its values are somehow better or more effective than other examples of green religion. For all of the ecofriendly values and practices I have described, many of my informants also undertook practices with negative ecological consequences, such as purchasing new clothing and consuming bottled water. I also do not suggest that nepantla environmentalism is a monolithic outlook shared by all Latinx Catholics in the United States or that nepantla environmental expressions are unique to Latinx Catholic communities. Conserving resources, planting trees, and avoiding consumerism are behaviors familiar to many others, including other immigrant communities and concerted environmental activists. Instead, I offer the more modest claim simply that religious environmental values exist among Latinx Catholics in the United States. Yet these values are dismissed in assumptions that Latinx communities care about immigration, not the environment, or that their environmental values, when professed, are expressions of poverty or suffering rather than ecotheology. In other cases, nepantla environmental values have been obscured by scholarly narratives that perpetuate the raced and classed biases of the early American environmental movement by severely restricting what counts as evidence of green religion. Defining environmentalism based on the particular visions that follow from the movement’s white, Protestant foundations prevents both scholars and activists from seeing the wide range of possibilities for responding to the environmental crisis. Although concerted ecological efforts grounded in the white Protestant history of the American environmental movement offer one framework for addressing the environmental crisis, ecological values and behaviors stemming from Southern indigenous epistemologies, diasporic realities, and Mestizo/a theologies offer another. 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I refer to nepantla environmentalism more specifically as a form of “religious environmentalism,” because I want to emphasize how nepantla expressions require scholars to expand understandings of what can count as environmentalism. Whereas some scholars differentiate between the fields of “religion and nature” and “religion and ecology,” my use of “religion and environment” is intended to include scholarship from both of those fields. 2 At the beginning of this research, I told potential informants that I was interested in the connections between their environmental values and their Catholic faith, but this approach seemed to attract primarily participants who already identified as environmentalists and might have led informants to overly emphasize their ecological values. After the first two focus groups, I began explaining my research as an investigation of how Catholic faith influences daily life. In focus groups and interviews, I began with a set of broad opening questions about informants’ Catholic faith, and then steered the conversation toward contemporary issues such as immigration and the environment. I appreciate Bron Taylor’s suggestion to shift my methodology in this way. 3 I acknowledge the tremendous diversity of backgrounds, nationalities, ethnicities, social locations, citizenship, and experiences contained within the generic category of “Latinx.” The majority of my Latinx informants are of Mexican and Central American (especially Salvadoran) descent, and I provide the precise background of individual speakers whenever possible. I have chosen to retain the category of Latinx as relevant in the context of my research field in Los Angeles, where Spanish-speaking Catholics from diverse communities find common ground through Spanish language programming and a sense of difference from the dominant culture. That being said, I do not set out to define a particular way that all Latinx individuals, or even all Latinx Catholics, relate to the environment. Instead, I draw concrete examples from particular communities to show the limitations of current understandings of green religion. Future research could offer more fine-grained analysis of the particular experiences and values of various Latinx communities. 4 Throughout this article I employ pseudonyms to protect my informants’ identities. 5 The survey results included statistically significant findings for eight distinct groups: Black Protestant, Hispanic Catholic, Jewish, non-Christian religion, unaffiliated, White Catholic, White Evangelical Protestant, White Mainline Protestant. 6 Elitist themes in American environmentalism and environmental history have been well documented by environmental sociologists and historians, yet scholarship on American religious environmentalism and nature religion has been significantly less attentive to these issues (D. Taylor 2016, Merchant 2003, Gottlieb 2005). 7 The individuals and groups receiving the most attention in the scholarship embrace some form of what Gordon Lynch calls progressive religion, which is characterized by “commitment to understanding and practicing religion in the light of modern knowledge and cultural norms,” as well as “sympathy with, and often active engagement in, green and left-of-centre political concerns” (Lynch 2007, 19). 8 Native Americans again receive attention through a discussion of traditional ecological knowledge in a section covering developments after the 1960s, but the vast majority of the examples highlight the experiences of Americans of European ancestry. The Euroamerican biases of this account are especially evident in the chapter’s opening vignette, which offers portraits of “green” Catholic sisters at Genesis Farms in New Jersey; a Midwestern evangelical Christian, Zen Buddhists at Green Gulch Farm near San Francisco, and Neopagan practitioners at a nature center in Indiana as examples of “the many ways that diverse Americans are drawing upon religious and spiritual commitments in response to environmental concerns” (Taylor and Van Horn 2006, 165). Although these examples may include individuals from a range of different religious traditions, the actors are most likely white, and they all likely inhabit what Lynch calls the progressive milieu (Lynch 2007, 12). 9 Ybarra takes the name “goodlife writing” from a 1949 book by Fabiola Cabeza de Baca, The Good Life: New Mexico Traditions and Food, in which Cabeza de Baca describes a “rich but simple” life lived off the land. 10 For more on “creation spirituality” in Catholicism, see (Agliardo 2013, Kearns 1996). 11 Literary scholar Priscilla Solis Ybarra makes a similar point about environmental values among Mexican Americans. Mainstream American environmentalism involves a search for alternative, nonexploitative relationships with nature, Ybarra argues, but “Mexican American and Chicana/o culture enacts values and practices that include nature all along” (Ybarra 2016, 7). 12 Astor-Aguilera points out that Indigenous Latin North and South America includes more than fifty million people who belong to hundreds of distinct populations and with their own cultures and languages. In this survey chapter, he focuses on a set of core commonalities that can be seen within the cosmovisions of many of those cultures (Astor-Aguilera 2016, 158). 13 The requirement to participate in the broader environmental movement is especially problematic given the role of white supremacist ideologies in the movement’s history and the overwhelming whiteness of the contemporary movement (Fingal 2019, Taylor 2014). 14 Laudato Si is an encyclical (official church teaching document) that Pope Francis issued on climate change and the environment in June 2015. 15 This supports the observation of Taylor et al. that “many who self-identify as indigenous strongly critique modern industrial societies, which have been far more responsible for negative environmental changes than have indigenous ones” (Taylor, Van Wieren, and Zaleha 2016, 339). Author notes I would like to thank Kate Dugan, Tina Howe, and Michal Raucher for their feedback and encouragement throughout the development of this article, and the two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful recommendations. Laura Levitt, Daisy Vargas, Robin Veldman, Elaine Nogueira-Godsey, and Brett Hoover also offered helpful insights that pushed my thinking in new directions. © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Academy of Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - Nepantla Environmentalism: Challenging Dominant Frameworks for Green Religion
JF - Journal of the American Academy of Religion
DO - 10.1093/jaarel/lfaa038
DA - 2020-09-23
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/nepantla-environmentalism-challenging-dominant-frameworks-for-green-PjZgTVIOhd
SP - 832
EP - 858
VL - 88
IS - 3
DP - DeepDyve
ER -