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‘This provocative collection of essays frmly establishes the vital importance
of religion and ecology to broader conversations in the environmental
humanities. Religion and spirituality are key sites and sources of material
and bodily practices that, for better and for worse, shape human interaction
with the natural world. Deploying a range of methodological lenses and
narrative forms, these essays demonstrate that an inexorable thingness
pervades religion, and that matter matters, religiously and ethically.’
Lisa H. Sideris,
Environmental Studies, University of California,
Santa Barbara, USA
‘This timely publication provides the feld of environmental humanities

with the essential contribution studies in religion and ecology can bring
to the critical conversation that addresses the healing of our planet. Its
diverse authors provide the reader with important new insights into the
nature of matter, materiality, and materialism. Together, they articulate
the relational ontology necessary for human engagement with the more
than human world to ensure a viable future for all planetary existence.’
Roberto Chiotti,
Founding Principal, Larkin Architect Limited,
Toronto, Canada
‘The editors of this volume, all key fgures in the feld, have given readers
an excellent introduction to the intersection of religion and ecology, as well
as the more recent developments in new materialism. The book gathers
contributions from authors writing from the Northern hemisphere, from
US and European contexts. The essays engage a variety of approaches to
religion, nature and spirituality, and give examples on how to develop
material practices for religious and spiritual retraditioning. Through
case studies, poetics and narratives, readers learn of ways to engage new
materialism to reconnect to the sacred stories, places and beings around
them. This volume comes at a time when we most crucially need to take
these teachings and practices to heart, mind and body.’
Marion Grau,
Professor of Constructive Theology, Missiology and Ecumenism,
MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society
‘In the past there was a dual temptation to subsume matter under spirit
or to reduce spirit to mere matter. By recognising that there is a religious
dimension to materialism and by exploring this in novel ways, this volume
breaks new ground—both for discourse on new materialism in the
humanities and for discourse on religion and ecology.’
Ernst M. Conradie,
Senior Professor, Department of Religion and Theology,
University of the Western Cape, South Africa
‘In times of planetary sufering, one wonders why religions have not raised
their voices louder and more prominently so far. This book fnally addresses
the intersection of religion and ecology, politics, ethics, epistemologies
and ontologies—not just from a multi-religious and multi-ethnic but also
global perspective. A must-read for all of us who see or seek the relevance
of religion for a planet in peril.’
Julia Enxing,
Professor of Systematic Theology,
TU Dresden, Germany
‘Important subject matter creatively handled. Solid contributions from

a stellar group of thinkers. Valuable reading for anyone seeking cutting
edge refections on what the environmental crisis demands of philosophy,
religious studies or environmental humanities.’
Roger S. Gottlieb,
William B. Smith Dean’s Professor of Philosophy,
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA
‘Religion, Materialism and Ecology provides an important contribution

to the felds of religion and ecology, and its partnerships with the
transdisciplinary felds within Environmental Humanities. Seasoned and
well-respected scholars present a range of “material entanglements disclosed
by ecological unravelling” in this collection. The book addresses ecological
degradations related to material, philosophical and religious dimensions,
with both theoretical approaches and illustrative case studies. It is rich
with new and relevant insights. This is a most welcomed collaborative
contribution by scholars trying to address various ecological crises in their
many dimensions.’
Heather Eaton,
Full Professor/Professeure titulaire in the School of
Ethics, Social Justice and Public Service,
Saint Paul University, Canada
RELIGION, MATERIALISM AND
ECOLOGY
This timely collection of essays by leading international scholars across

religious studies and the environmental humanities advances a lively discussion
on materialism in its many forms. While there is little agreement on what
‘materialism’ means, it is evident that there is a resurgence in thinking about
matter in more animated and active ways.
The volume explores how debates concerning the new materialisms impinge
on religious traditions and the extent to which religions, with their material
culture and beliefs in the Divine within the material, can make a creative
contribution to debates about ecological materialisms. Spanning a broad range
of themes, including politics, architecture, hermeneutics, literature and religion,
the book brings together a series of discussions on materialism in the context of
diverse methodologies and approaches. The volume investigates a range of issues
including space and place, hierarchy and relationality, the relationship between
nature and society, human and other agencies, and worldviews and cultural values.
Drawing on literary and critical theory, and queer, philosophical, theological
and social theoretical approaches, this ground-breaking book will make an
important contribution to the environmental humanities. It will be a key read
for postgraduate students, researchers and scholars in religious studies, cultural
anthropology, literary studies, philosophy and environmental studies.
Sigurd Bergmann is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the Norwegian
University of Science and Technology,Trondheim.
Kate Rigby is Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Environmental Humanities
and Director of the research hub for Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in
the Humanities at the University of Cologne, Germany.
Peter Manley Scott is Samuel Ferguson Professor of Applied Theology and
Director of the Lincoln Theological Institute at the University of Manchester, UK.
Routledge Environmental Humanities
Series editors: Scott Slovic (University of Idaho, USA), Joni Adamson
(Arizona State University, USA) and Yuki Masami (Aoyama Gakuin
University, Japan)
Towards an Ecocritical Theatre

Playing the Anthropocene
Mohebat Ahmadi
Environmental Humanities of Extraction in Africa
Poetics and Politics of Exploitation
Edited by James Ogude and Tafadzwa Mushonga
African Americans and the Mississippi River
Race, History, and the Environment
Dorothy Zeisler-Vralsted
Environing Media
Edited by Adam Wickberg and Johan Gärdebo
The Environmental Apocalypse
Interdisciplinary Refections on the Climate Crisis
Edited by Jakub Kowalewski
Exploring Interstitiality with Mangroves
Semiotic Materialism and the Environmental Humanities
Kate Judith
God and Gaia
Science, Religion and Ethics on a Living Planet
Michael S. Northcott
Eco-Performance, Art, and Spatial Justice in the US
Courtney B. Ryan
Storying Multipolar Climes of the Himalaya, Andes and Arctic
Anthropocenic Climate and Shapeshifting Watery Lifeworlds
Edited by Dan Smyer Yü and Jelle J.P. Wouters
Religion, Materialism and Ecology
Edited by Sigurd Bergmann, Kate Rigby and Peter Manley Scott
RELIGION, MATERIALISM
AND ECOLOGY
Edited by Sigurd Bergmann, Kate Rigby

and Peter Manley Scott
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Sigurd Bergmann, Kate Rigby
and Peter Manley Scott; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Sigurd Bergmann, Kate Rigby and Peter Manley Scott to
be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors
for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-032-34141-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-34140-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-32072-2 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003320722
Typeset in Bembo
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
In memory of
Bruno Latour
CONTENTS
List of Contributors xi
Introduction 1
Sigurd Bergmann, Kate Rigby and Peter Manley Scott
1 Developing a Critical Planetary Romanticism: Re-attuning

to the Earth 13
Whitney A. Bauman
2 Architecting Zoë: On Haunting Homes and Sacred

Ecomateriality 29
Rachel Armstrong
3 Planetary Technics, Earthly Spirits 48

Nigel Clark and Bronislaw Szerszynski
4 Panexperiential Materialism? On Latour, Whitehead and

Laudato Si’ 66
Ivo Frankenreiter
5 Binding the Wounds of Mother Earth: Christian Animism,

New Materialism and the Politics of Nonhuman Personhood
Today 83
Mark I. Wallace
x Contents
6 Spirit Possession as Focal Point in the Constellation of

Religion, Materialism and Ecology 99
Mary L. Keller
7 Autothanatography and Terminal Relationality in the Time

of the Anthropocene 116
Yianna Liatsos
8 A Poetics of Nature: Religious Naturalism, Multiplicities

and Afnities 133
Carol Wayne White
9 Queering Stories of Religious Materialism: Plural Practices

of (Earth) Care and Repair 151
Todd LeVasseur, Paul M. Pulé and Alfonso Merlini
10 The Matter of Oil: Extraction Vitalisms and Enchantment 168

Terra Schwerin Rowe
11 Fiction’s Double-Helix: Incarnate Process and the Capacity

for Transformation in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol 185
Jessica Brown
Afterword 202
Catherine Keller
Index 207
CONTRIBUTORS
Rachel Armstrong is ZAP Professor of Design-Driven Construction for Regenerative

Architecture at the Department of Architecture at KU Leuven, Belgium.
Whitney A. Bauman is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Florida

International University, Miami, FL, USA.
Sigurd Bergmann is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the Norwegian

University of Science and Technology,Trondheim.
Jessica Brown has completed a doctoral degree in creative writing and narrative
studies from the University of Limerick, Republic of Ireland.
Nigel Clark teaches human geography at the Lancaster Environment Centre,

Lancaster University, UK.
Ivo Frankenreiter is Research Assistant in Christian Social Ethics at the Faculty for
Catholic Theology of LMU Munich, Germany.
Catherine Keller is George T. Cobb Professor of Constructive Theology in the

Graduate Division of Religion, Drew University, USA.
Mary L. Keller teaches in the Philosophy and Religious Studies Department and
African American and Diaspora Studies Department at the University of Wyoming,
USA.
Todd LeVasseur is a senior instructor in environmental and sustainability studies at

the College of Charleston, SC, USA and a visiting senior lecturer in Environmental
Studies at Yale National University Singapore College (2022–2024).
xii Contributors
Yianna Liatsos is Lecturer in English in the School of English, Irish and

Communication at the University of Limerick, Republic of Ireland.
Alfonso Merlini is a storyteller based in the USA.
Paul M. Pulé is a freelance social and environmental justice scholar and activist and
an Honorary Research Fellow at Coventry University, UK.
Kate Rigby is Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Environmental Humanities

and Director of the research hub for Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in
the Humanities at the University of Cologne, Germany.
Terra Schwerin Rowe is Associate Professor in the Philosophy and Religion

Department at the University of North Texas, USA.
Peter Manley Scott is Samuel Ferguson Professor of Applied Theology and

Director of the Lincoln Theological Institute at the University of Manchester, UK.
Bronislaw Szerszynski is Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University, UK.
Mark I. Wallace is the James Hormel Professor of Social Justice in the Department
of Religion at Swarthmore College, USA.
Carol Wayne White is Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Bucknell University,

USA.
INTRODUCTION
Sigurd Bergmann, Kate Rigby and Peter Manley Scott
The research feld of ‘religion and ecology’, which is also called ‘religion and the
environment’ or ‘religion, nature and culture’, ofers, due to its short but highly
dynamic history, a thrilling success story. Emerging from theology and religious
studies, and in cooperation with other disciplines such as philosophy, history,
anthropology, biology and more, it has gradually developed since the 1970s and
mobilised a large number of scholars on all continents in an exciting transdis-
ciplinary process of refection and exchange. The event behind this book also
arose within this new and fourishing research landscape. An impressive number
of handbooks and book series1 serve as introductions to the feld and the number
of both overarching and thematic studies is constantly increasing.2 Three inter-
national societies are ofering a creative arena for communication and research
development.3
As the notion of ‘nature’ is essential for the self-understanding of Western
‘civilization’, religions have also, in their long history, contributed to the devel-
opment of the concept of nature. ‘Nature’ in the three Abrahamic religions is
interpreted as ‘creation’ which exists out of its relation to God. ‘Nature’ is less
central in African and Asian cultures, where ‘Life’ and ‘Earth’ play more impor-
tant roles. ‘Land’ is the analogous category in indigenous traditions and other
spiritualities that grow out of and within relations to specifc bioregional spaces.
Beliefs in Creation, Life and Land are changing as ‘nature’ turns into ‘the envi-
ronment’—that is, as nature is afected radically by human social and technical
activities.
Religions ofer substantial cultural skills. Besides the skills of meaning mak-
ing, ritualising, mapping and tracing, religion enables the human activity of
‘making-oneself-at-home’ (German: Beheimatung). It locates believers in a world
and at a place that is inhabited by the Divine. Humans do not land on Earth as
travelling strangers; our history is fully entangled with the evolution of material,
DOI: 10.4324/9781003320722-1
2 Sigurd Bergmann, Kate Rigby and Peter Manley Scott
bodily life on Earth. Humans, including believers and scholars, are earthlings.
Religious practices therefore certainly ‘refect the natural environments and
ways of life in which they emerged’.4 Natural environments embed, carry and
nurture human life and thereby also faith. Faith, religion, belief and spirituality
appear in such a view as deeply natural forces. Analyses of religion, therefore,
must respect not only the subjective, sociocultural and historical dimensions
of religious traditions, but also the ecological functions of faith. Expressions of
faith appear in new territories and symbolic systems, and the strong transgressive
capacity of religion—transgressive in the sense of being capable of widening,
deepening and transforming borders of our perception, thinking and acting—
becomes manifest. Refecting on the spiritual and religious driving forces in all
their manifold diferences therefore ofers a specifc contribution to the wider
feld of the Environmental Humanities.
This volume emerges from the long-standing feld of environmental religious
studies, but is also situated within the emerging transdisciplinary terrain that has
come to be known as the ‘environmental humanities’. In their introduction to
the inaugural issue of the journal Environmental Humanities, the editors frame this
fast-growing arena of debate and enquiry as engaging ‘with fundamental ques-
tions of meaning, value, responsibility and purpose in a time of rapid, and esca-
lating, change … At the core of this approach’, they go on to explain, ‘is a focus
on the underlying cultural and philosophical frameworks that are entangled with
the ways in which diverse human cultures have made themselves at home in a
more than human world’.5
For most people throughout human history, and still today for some 84 per
cent of the world’s population,6 these questions and frameworks have been
informed, to a greater or lesser extent, by religious worldviews, narratives and
practices. In naming the various environmentally oriented sub-disciplines that
were now being brought ‘into conversation with each other in numerous and
diverse ways’, Deborah Bird Rose and her co-editors nonetheless omit to men-
tion environmental religious studies, pointing only to ‘environmental history,
environmental philosophy, environmental anthropology and sociology, political
ecology, posthuman geographies and ecocriticism’, whilst nonetheless signalling
that this list was by no means exhaustive by adding ‘(among others)’.7
Rose, an eminent environmental anthropologist and ecocultural theo-
rist, played a leading role in the establishment of the environmental humani-
ties globally in her co-curation with environmental historian, Libby Robin, of
the Australian National Working Group on the Ecological Humanities. First
proposed by environmental historian Tom Grifths and environmental lawyer
and art historian Tim Bonyhady in the late 1990s, this initiative is now widely
recognised as one of the cradles of the environmental humanities worldwide.8
Rose and other members of this group (including co-editor of this volume, Kate
Rigby), also had links with Australian initiatives in the area of religion and ecol-
ogy, such as the Earth Bible project, led by biblical scholar Norman Habel, which
also got underway in the late 1990s, leading to the publication of the frst of a
Introduction 3
series of ecologically oriented biblical commentaries in 2000.9 The omission of

any express mention of religion in the inaugural editorial for what remains the
peak journal in the feld is all the more striking. Yet it is by no means unusual:
until very recently, the vital contribution of research in religion and ecology,
stretching back over some 50 years, has generally been under-recognised within
the environmental humanities, as this feld has been framed and named over the
past decade or so.
Book-length introductions to the environmental humanities began to appear
in 2015, and of the major introductory anthologies published over the next three
years,10 only one includes a chapter dedicated to religion and ecology.11 Robert
Emmett and David Nye’s landmark ‘critical introduction’ to the feld (2017)
includes several listings under ‘Religion’ in the Index, including references to
Christianity (5), Buddhism (4), Hinduism (1), First Peoples (3), sacred places (8)
and spiritual values (7), but there is no discussion of religion and ecology as a
research area, as there is, for example, for ecocriticism and environmental his-
tory; nor is any of the relevant scholarship included in the bibliography.12 Only
recently has consideration of religion begun to feature more centrally in the
environmental humanities, notably in Andrew Hubbell and John Ryan’s text-
book Introduction to the Environmental Humanities, which features an excellent
chapter on ‘Ecological religious studies: faith in nature’.13 Recognition none-
theless remains patchy. Jefrey Cohen and Stephanie Foote’s 2021 Cambridge
Companion to Environmental Humanities, for example, lacks a section on religion,
whilst Matthias Schmidt and Hubert Zapf ’s introductory German-language
anthology, Environmental Humanities, references religion only in association with
classical antiquity.14
With this volume, then, we seek to highlight and extend the contribution of
studies of religion and ecology to the environmental humanities, with a particu-
lar focus on questions related to matter, materiality and materialism. Such ques-
tions are increasingly forcing themselves upon even those of us whose privileged
existence has hitherto veiled our vulnerability to those Earth system changes
to which our fossil-fuelled consumerist lifestyles have contributed, shattering
the illusion of separation from a Nature deemed to lie somewhere over yonder,
whether as scenery or resource, and disclosing our complex entanglements with
diverse more-than-human others.
As we write this introduction from our varied locations in northern Europe,
60 per cent of the landmass of the European Union and (weather systems being
impervious to political boundaries) the UK has just been declared in drought,
rivers are running dry, water restrictions are mooted, heat-related fatalities are
on the rise, and fres have been blazing, not only across the Mediterranean, but
also in parts of England’s no longer quite so ‘green and pleasant land’.15 The
growing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events constitute a material
signal in which all but the most determined climate change denialists are begin-
ning to discern the trace of human actions, and the consequences of our inac-
tion. This ominous evidence of anthropogenic ecosystem disruption is fnally
bringing the natural world out of the background, into which it has been cast
within the dominant mindset of modernity, cracking open the walls of human
self-enclosure that have shielded the primary benefciaries of fossil-fuelled indus-
trialism from the recognition of their material dependence on other-than-human
entities and processes and of their impacts upon them.16 Such evidence is showing
up elsewhere: for example, in the health impacts of toxic pollution and zoonotic
pathogens; in the growing silence of the countryside, where ever fewer birds
now sing; in the paucity of insects that once got splattered across car bonnets; and
in the shocking spectacle of mass wildlife mortality events, such as the thousands
of dead crabs and lobsters that have been washing up along the Yorkshire coast
over the past two years. Globally, of course, such evidence has been mounting for
some time, appearing also in rising sea levels, failed harvests and the disappear-
ance of familiar species, valued not only as resources, but for some peoples also
as kin, disproportionately impacting the lives, livelihoods and lifeways of those
who have contributed least to the problem.
Partly in response to the growing realisation that the material entanglements
disclosed by ecological unravelling, climate disruption, toxic pollution and the
manifold injustices these entail, have not only ethico-political but also onto-
epistemological implications, scholars across the humanities and social sciences
have set about challenging prevailing assumptions regarding matter, material-
ity and materialism. Informed also by current research in the natural sciences
(especially in the weirder reaches of physics and biology), as well as in science
studies, the ‘new materialisms’ are many and varied, and have generated a
range of new concepts and theories, such as ‘trans-corporeality’ (Stacy Alaimo),
‘sympoiesis’ (Donna Haraway), ‘agential realism’ (Karen Barad), ‘vital materi-
alism’ ( Jane Bennett), ‘posthumanism’ (Rosi Braidotti), ‘biosemiotics’ ( Jesper
Hofmeyer), ‘Actor-Network-Theory’ (Bruno Latour) and ‘object-oriented
ontology’ (Graham Harman), among many others.17 For all their diferences,
these varied approaches put pressure on the cultural and linguistic constructivism
that had become prevalent in the humanities and social sciences, which efec-
tively reduced the non-human world to a blank screen, upon which humans,
and only humans, inscribed their historically contingent meanings. This is not
to say that such new materialisms deny the crucial role played by cultural prac-
tices and perspectives, including language, in shaping human understandings
of, and engagements with, the worlds they co-create. It is nonetheless to afrm
that these worlds are co-created with more-than-human others, and that other-
than-human entities and processes, individuals and collectives, matter, not only
materially but also morally.
Long before the 2010 anthology co-edited by Diana Coole and Samantha
Frost brought several of these lines of enquiry together under the rubric of ‘New
Materialisms’, scholars working across the ecologically oriented sub-disciplines
of the humanities, and humanities-leaning social sciences, had been hard at work
critiquing human exceptionalism, mainly in the guise of the critique of anthro-
pocentrism (or, more precisely, ‘anthroparchy’, human domination of nature/
Introduction 5
non-humans18); disclosing other-than-human agency, interests and communi-

cative capacities; and querying reductive notions of material reality along with
exaggerated accounts of cultural construction. Among them was Lynn White
Jnr., whose slim article on ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis’, pub-
lished in Science in 1967, has enjoyed a wide resonance across the environmental
humanities in general, being republished, for example, in the inaugural reader in
ecocriticism,19 and of environmental religious studies in particular.
White’s assertion in this article that ‘Christianity is the most anthropocentric
religion the world has seen’,20 has frequently been quoted out of context as a blan-
ket condemnation. In fact, his argument was considerably more nuanced, and far
more interesting. For a start, this sentence begins with the qualifer, ‘Especially
in its Western form’. White takes care to highlight that ‘Christianity is a com-
plex faith, and its consequences difer in difering contexts’, noting that there are
salient diferences, for example, between the predominantly Western develop-
ment that he critiques and Eastern Orthodox traditions. Moreover, he attributes
this diference, at least in part, to environmental contingencies that infuenced
Western Christian culture and society. Inspired by the historiography of the long
durée pioneered by the Annales School in the 1930s, and pre-empting subsequent
work in environmental history, White accords non-human entities the status of
players in the history he sketches here: specifcally, the thick, sticky, clayey soils
of northern Europe, which resisted being worked by the light scratch-plough,
drawn by a single beast of burden, which originated in the Fertile Crescent and
had been adopted throughout the Mediterranean region as agriculture spread
north and westwards; and the heavy iron plough, which was invented towards
the end of the seventh century, in order to work such resistant soils more efec-
tively. This innovative technology reshaped northwestern European farmers’
relations with one another, their domesticated animals and the land. White sees
the impact of these changes in the altered depiction of the seasons in early medi-
aeval illustrated calendars, the imagery of which implies that ‘Man and nature
are two things, and man is master’ (White 1967: 1205). In his account, then,
it was the materiality of the soil and of the contraption invented to plough it,
that contributed to the aggressively anthropocentric interpretation of the biblical
injunction to humans to ‘have dominion’ over other creatures and ‘subdue the
earth’ (Gen. 1.26–1.28), which emerged during the Middle Ages and decisively
informed the modern Western wedding of science and technology to the end of
gaining mastery over the natural world.
Among the various lines of materialist enquiry across the environmental
humanities that White foreshadows here, including ecocriticism and ecophiloso-
phy, as well as environmental history, the most signifcant is undoubtedly studies
in religion and ecology. For, as White observes, ‘Human ecology is deeply con-
ditioned by beliefs about our nature and destiny—that is, by religion’,21 even in
those contexts (including much of the Global North today) where religious belief
and practice have waned, but where underlying assumptions originally derived
from religion remain in force (such as the notion of human dominion that lurks
in the secular construction of nature as ‘resource’, that is, intended preferentially

for human use). As it has grown and diversifed over the past 50 years, research
in religion and ecology has cross-pollinated with other areas in the environmen-
tal humanities, becoming a locus of lively multi-disciplinary exchange, con-
necting historical, hermeneutical, theological, comparative, anthropological and
sociological approaches to religion and spirituality in the horizon of ongoing
environmental damage and injustice. Importantly, such research engages with
religion and spirituality not only as a matter of mentalities but also of material
practices: even the most esoteric and other-worldly of faiths entail forms of situ-
ated bodily activity, and all have implications, not only for how people perceive
but also interact with the more-than-human world. Indeed, the role of religion
in shaping human responses to ecological and climate crisis has now been rec-
ognised by the United Nations Environment Programme, which launched its
Faith for Earth initiative in 2017, building on decades of work by the Alliance
of Religions and Conservation (1995–2019), and other such organisations at
national and local level, to foster links between faith groups and environmental
NGOs around the world.
Study of the material dimensions of religion has never been absent, of course.
The relationship between religious power and political power identifes one
aspect of this issue. Arguments over ritual and the organisation of religious com-
munities indicate a further dimension. Nonetheless, there has recently been a
broader engagement with the materiality of faith—partly as an extension of the
discussion of politics but also as part of a turn to spatiality in religious stud-
ies.22 So now the scope of the enquiry is extended from ritual to religious arte-
facts, journeys and buildings: the material infrastructure of religious practices.
Religions make as well as worship. These themes recur in the essays presented
here and so it is to those essays that we now turn.
This volume is divided into two parts. Part 1, comprising fve chapters, pro-
vides a theoretical context for the consideration of materialisms from a range
of religious perspectives; the six chapters of Part 2 evidence a similar methodo-
logical variety but with a focus on case studies, poetics and narratives (including
autobiography).
First, Whitney A. Bauman starts our enquiry by ‘Developing a Critical
Planetary Romanticism: Re-attuning to the Earth’, in which he calls into
question some of the dominant meanings of our current era (Bauman dislikes
the description ‘Anthropocene’) around notions of time, the backgrounding
of nature and the construction of nature through industrial processes of the
factory and the laboratory. He proposes what he calls a ‘re-attuning’ in which
religion is implicated as a resource towards a revisioning of Romanticism that
turns upon a fresh understanding of our planetary community. The emphasis,
then, is on the making of new meanings in a planetary context. Next, Rachel
Armstrong introduces a conceptual and material framework for a sacred mate-
riality using the concept of continual electron fow as a strategy for changing
human impacts of inhabitation towards enlivening—rather than the devitalising
Introduction 7
status quo. This resacralisation of matter is positioned in relationship to reli-

gious naturalism and its realisation through the concept of uncertain technologies.
The title of her chapter, ‘Architecting Zoë: On Haunting Homes and Sacred
Ecomateriality’, identifes a practice of transforming our waste ‘into vital
exchanges’, so our “living” homes can express characteristics such as sensitiv-
ity, metabolism and even intelligence, raising ethical considerations through
new protocols of care and coinhabitation, enacted through sacred ecomaterial-
ist rituals that transform the impacts of human inhabitation into life promoting
actions.
In our third contribution, ‘Planetary Technics, Earthly Spirits’ by Nigel
Clark and Bronislaw Szerszynski, analysis extends further into the considera-
tion of technology, by developing what they call ‘a critical account of human
“technics”—understood broadly as the “bringing forth” of the properties and
potentialities of physical reality—as an enfolding of planetary and cosmic
powers into the social world’. Joining the philosophical critiques of Western
technology, Clark and Szerszynski press beyond these analyses to explore
resources for the reintegration of technics with the Earth or cosmos. They
conclude by considering ‘the prospects for a “spiritualized” or cosmologi-
cal reimagining of technology in the contemporary world, with an eye to
the insights of both western science and other knowledge formations’. From
technology we move in our fourth chapter to the philosophical interpretation
of matter. Ivo Frankenreiter, in ‘Panexperiential Materialism? On Latour,
Whitehead and Laudato Si’, challenges common understandings in which
matter is taken to be the substrate the physical world consists of; as such
it forms the objective counterpart for human subjectivity, can be manipu-
lated with the help of insight into its deterministic laws, but remains in
itself entirely neutral with regard to human concerns or interests. Instead, he
argues that some of the crucial insights of the papal encyclical can be consoli-
dated by reference to aspects of Latour’s Actor-Network-Theory in his Facing
Gaia once these have in turn been critically interrogated from the perspective
of Whitehead’s process thought. Frankenreiter concludes that in this way key
claims regarding intrinsic value made in Laudato Si’ can be substantiated and
rendered more persuasive.
Part 1 concludes with ‘Binding the Wounds of Mother Earth: Christian
Animism, New Materialism and the Politics of Nonhuman Personhood Today’,
in which Mark I. Wallace proposes the idea of Christian animism in order to
return to the Johannine vision of a divinised material world. Noting that ani-
mism is a contested term with academic roots in Anglo-American white suprem-
acy, Wallace proposes ‘a nuanced recovery of “animism”, in dialogue with the
Chickasaw writer Linda Hogan, in order to set forth the afnity between bibli-
cal religion and Indigenous lifeways’. The chapter makes ‘the case for Christian
animism (in dialogue with new Indigenous, biblical and juridical scholarship) to
empower the healing of Mother Earth as the essential and ennobling political
work of our time’.
Part 2 opens with ‘Spirit Possession as Focal Point in the Constellation of

Religion, Materialism and Ecology’ by Mary L. Keller, in which she ‘proposes a
contribution to comparative studies of agential ontologies by focusing on the prac-
tice of spirit possession as a circumcenter between the terms “religion”, “material-
ism” and “ecology” (RME)’. Her argument in Chapter 6 culminates in ‘a narrative
wager by naming the Spirit of Climate Change as a novel spirit that possesses
and excites all matter’ and calls for the restoration of ‘myriad indigenous ontolo-
gies’ as part of ‘work towards a viable world’. In chapter 7, ‘Autothanatography
and Terminal Relationality in the Time of the Anthropocene’, Yianna Liatsos
turns to terminal illness memoirs to consider ‘the contribution of illness writing
to two dominant storylines associated with the Anthropocene discourse and its
discussions around extinction—those of demise and of relationality’ as a way of
exploring ‘a language for enduring “terminal relationality”’. This exploration is
secured, she argues, in that ‘these memoirs nonetheless adopt an auto(thanato)
graphical voice to signify an uncertain but persistent presence and sociality in
the face of demise’.
In Chapter 8, ‘A Poetics of Nature: Religious Naturalism, Multiplicities
and Afnities’, Carol Wayne White introduces a poetics of nature grounded
in the tenets of religious naturalism, which explores other narratives often
made invisible by an overarching concern for the human and activity by
the human. As a capacious, ecological religious worldview, religious nat-
uralism reframes humans as natural processes in relationship with other
forms of nature. It also features a materialist, relational ontology, encourag-
ing humans’ processes of transformative engagement with the more-than-
human worlds that constitute our existence. Next, Todd LeVasseur, Paul M.
Pulé and Alfonso Merlini, in a chapter titled ‘Queering Stories of Religious
Materialism: Plural Practices of (Earth) Care and Repair’, co-create ‘a story
of climate change materialisms and how these may impact religious stories
and ways of being in ecologies of place’. Employing ‘a queer ecologies lens
to analyze masculinist traditions that have onto-epistemologically shaped
worldviews and human behaviors’, they critique a ‘key inherited binary of
logos/eros’. In response, they propose a ‘prioritizing [of ] an eros-centered story
of multispecies belonging grounded within a spirituality of connection to
wider Nature’.
In Chapter 10, Terra Schwerin Rowe argues that ‘[e]nvironmental deg-
radation has been commonly linked to a modern loss of meaning, the sacred
or enchantment in nature, spurring a variety of re-enchantment strategies’.
Yet ‘What [these] predominant disenchantment approaches miss are the ways
extraction, early oil narratives and energy have consistently been received as
animated, enchanted and sacralized, often toward colonizing and environmen-
tally destructive ends.’ The chapter ‘The Matter of Oil: Extraction Vitalisms
and Enchantment’ ‘explores several historical examples—some ancient, some
as recent as 21st-century climate denialisms’. ‘[A] commonly assumed link
between re-enchantment and environmental ethics’, Schwerin argues, ‘needs to
Introduction 9
be re-theorized so that enchantment, material animation and vitalism remains

expected, but ethically ambiguous’. In the fnal chapter, ‘Fiction’s Double-Helix:
Incarnate Process and the Capacity for Transformation in Charles Dickens’ A
Christmas Carol’, Jessica Brown enters ‘the intersections between ecology, mate-
rialism and religion through a literary and imaginative approach’ by examining
the fctional storyworld of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. After establishing
three categories of this storyworld that allow for narrative transformation—tac-
tilities, atmospherics, and spiritual dynamics—the chapter proceeds to investigate
the relationship between these categories, arriving at an incarnational relational-
ity with a special emphasis on the afective and processual nature of incarnation,
to see that it profoundly enables capacities for transformation.
Finally, in a profound Afterword, Catherine Keller interacts with these essays
and with her usual acumen explores some of the ambiguities around discourse on
materialisms. As she powerfully notes, ‘With disarming creativity, this transdis-
ciplinary thinking works to mobilize the dissident energies of religious thought
and practice, the Earth-tuned energies that demand of earthlings responsibility
for our material practices’.
As editors, we would like to thank all the contributors to this volume for their
hard work and the staf at Routledge, especially Matthew Shawbrook, Bharath
Selvamani and Caroline Harrison, for their initial encouragement and ongo-
ing support, along with series editors Scott Slovic, Joni Adamson, and Yuki
Masami. We would also like to acknowledge the interest and support of the
European Forum for the Study of Religion and Environment. Finally, we note
that Bruno Latour gave a keynote address at the conference from which this col-
lection originates. He also readily, and with characteristic generosity, agreed to
write a Preface for this volume. Sadly, this was not to be as he died before he was
able to complete this task. So, as editors, we dedicate this volume to his memory,
and with thanks for his profound contribution to the conversation on religion,
materialism and ecology that is being taken forward in these essays.
Notes
1 Laura Hobgood and Whitney Bauman, eds., The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and
Nature: The Elements (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2018). Willis J. Jenkins,
Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, eds., Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology
(London and New York: Routledge, 2017).
Dieter Gerten and Sigurd Bergmann, eds., Religion in Environmental and Climate
Change: Sufering, Values, Lifestyles (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2011). Hilda
P. Koster and Ernst M. Conradie, eds., T&T Clark Handbook of Christian Theology and
Climate Change (London: T&T Clark, 2019).
Cf. also the Religions of the World and Ecology Book Series, ed. Mary Evelyn Tucker and
John Grim, https://fore.yale.edu/Publications/Books/Religions-World-and-Ecology
-Book-Series; the series Studies in Religion and the Environment, https://www.lit-verlag
.de/Publikationen/Reihen/Studies-in-Religion-and-the-EnvironmentStudien-zur
-Religion-und-Umwelt/; the series Studies in Environmental Humanities, https://brill
.com/view/serial/SEH; the journal Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology,
https://brill.com/view/journals/wo/wo-overview.xml; and The Journal of Religion,

Nature and Culture, https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC.
2 Mentioning just a few: Catherine Keller, Facing Apocalypse: Climate, Democracy, and
Other Last Chances (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2021); Celia E. Deane-Drummond,
Sigurd Bergmann and Markus Vogt, eds., Religion in the Anthropocene (Eugene:
Wipf & Stock, 2017); Celia Deane-Drummond, Sigurd Bergmann and Bronislaw
Szerszynski, eds., Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred: Transdisciplinary Perspectives
(London and New York: Routledge, 2017); Sigurd Bergmann, Religion, Space, and the
Environment (London and New York: Routledge, 2014); Peter M. Scott, Theology of
Postnatural Right (Berlin: LIT, 2019).
3 European Forum for the Study of Religion and the Environment; Forum on Religion
and Ecology; International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture.
4 Ann Buttimer, ‘Afterword: Refections on Geography, Religion, and Belief Systems’,
Annals of the Association of American Geographers 96, no. 1 (2006): 197–202, 200.
5 Deborah Bird Rose et al. ‘Thinking Through the Environment, Unsettling the
Humanities‘, Environmental Humanities 1 no. 1 (2012): 1, 2.
6 ‘The Changing Global Religious Landscape,’ PEW Research. https://www.pewre-
search.org/religion/2017/04/05/the-changing-global-religious-landscape/ (accessed
19/7/2022).
7 Rose et al., ‘Thinking Through the Environment,’ 2, 1.
8 See, e.g., Robert S. Emmett and David E. Nye, The Environmental Humanities: A
Critical Introduction (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017), 3. On the Australian environ-
mental humanities, see also Kate Rigby, ‘Weaving the Environmental Humanities:
Australian Strands, Confgurations, and Provocations’, Green Letters: Studies in
Ecocriticism 23 no. 1 (2019): 5–18.
9 Norman C. Habel, Readings from the Perspective of Earth, The Earth Bible 1 (Shefeld:
Shefeld University Press, 2000). See also A. Elvey’s eco-materialist reading of the
Gospel of Luke, The Matter of the Text: Material Engagements between Luke and the Five
Senses (Shefeld: Shefeld Phoenix, 2011). Rigby subsequently became the inaugural
convenor of the Australia-Pacifc Forum on Religion and Ecology, which launched
at Monash University in 2011.
10 Elizabeth DeLoughrey, Jill Didur and Anthony Carrigan, eds., Global Ecologies and the
Environmental Humanities: Postcolonial Approaches (New York and Oxford: Routledge,
2015); Joni Adamson and Michael Davis, eds., Humanities for the Environment:
Integrating Knowledge, Forging New Constellations of Practice (London: Routledge, 2016);
Serpil Oppermann and Serenella Iovino, eds., Environmental Humanities: Voices from the
Anthropocene (London: Rowman & Littlefeld, 2016); Ursula Heise, Jon Christensen
and Michelle Niemann, eds., The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities
(London: Taylor & Francis, 2017); Hannes Bergthaller and Peter Mortensen, eds.,
Framing the Environmental Humanities (Leiden: Brill, 2018).
11 Kate Rigby, ‘Religion and Ecology. Towards a Communion of Creatures’, in
Oppermann and Iovino, Environmental Humanities, 273–294. George Handley’s chap-
ter on Derek Walcott in DeLoughrey, Didur and Carrigan, Global Ecologies, does,
nonetheless, discuss religious themes, whilst Bergthaller and Mortensen, Framing the
Environmental Humanities, includes a contribution by Ott Heinapuu on ‘natural sacred
sites’ in Estonia.
12 Emmett and Nye, Environmental Humanities.
13 Andrew J. Hubbell and John Ryan, Introduction to the Environmental Humanities (London:
Routledge, 2021), 129–146. See also Matthew Newcomb, Religion, Narrative, and the
Environmental Humanities (London: Routledge, 2023), which brings a rhetorical anal-
ysis to bear on Evangelical Christianity and the environment, while noting that this
type of analysis has been present within religion and ecology scholarship for quite
some time. See, e.g., Laurel Kearns, ‘Cooking the Truth: Faith, the Market, and the
Science of Global Warming’, in Laurel Kearns and Catherine Keller, eds., Eco-Spirit:
Introduction 11
Religions and Philosophies for the Earth (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007),
97–123; and Robin Veldman, The Gospel of Climate Skepticism: Why Evangelical
Christians Oppose Action on Climate Change (Oakland: University of California Press,
2019).
14 Christoph Schliephake, ‘Historische Ökologie(n) der Antike – Theorien, Fallbeispiele,
Perspektiven’, in M. Schmidt und H. Zapf, eds., Environmental Humanities. Beiträge zur
geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Umweltforschung (Göttingen: V&R unipress), 19–38.
15 Bergmann, Weather, Religion and Climate Change.
16 ‘Backgrounding’ is one of the salient features of what material feminist ecophilos-
opher Val Plumwood identifies as the ‘logic of centrism’, which endorses human
domination of nature and contributes to the condition of ‘human self-enclosure’.
Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason (London: Routledge, 2002),
97–122.
17 A number of these concepts and approaches are brought together in Diana Coole
and Samantha Frost, eds., New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency and Politics (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 2010). See also Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman, eds.,
Material Feminisms (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008) and Serenella
Iovino and Serpil Oppermann, eds., Material Ecocriticism (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2014).
18 The term ‘anthroparchy’ was coined by Erica Cudworth in Developing Ecofeminist
Theory: The Complexity of Difference (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
19 Cheryl Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, eds., The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in
Literary Ecology (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1996), 3–14.
20 Lynn White, Jnr., ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis’, Science 155, no. 3767
(1967): 1205.
21 White, ‘Historical Roots’, 1205.
22 Bergmann, ‘Theology in Its Spatial Turn’. See also the new monograph by feminist
ecocritical biblical scholar Anne Elvey, Reading with Earth: Contributions of the New
Materialism to an Ecological Feminist Hermeneutic (London: T&T Clark, 2022).
Bibliography
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Anthropocene. London: Rowman & Littlefeld, 2016.
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1
DEVELOPING A CRITICAL
PLANETARY ROMANTICISM
Re-attuning to the Earth
Whitney A. Bauman
With keen awareness of how deeply embedded we are with myriad nature,
and how our destiny is entangled with other natural processes, humans
continually revise, correct, or even forfeit older perspectives as newer
forms of knowledge become available.1
As Carol Wayne White’s opening quote suggests, life is an ongoing process of

responding to the reality of evolving, embodied embeddedness. Being alive
means being responsive, the ability to respond. In some species, and in most
humans, this has evolved into response-ability: the ability to choose between
multiple possible ways of becoming. Thus, at the heart of life is the possibility
for change, newness and something diferent. These possibilities emerge in the
context of deeply entangled becoming: we exist as earthlings in deep, evolv-
ing relationships with all other life and non-life on the planet. For too long,
industrialised modern Western peoples have, through a series of materialisa-
tions that mimic an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing monotheistic god (in
whose image some humans were made), created the world in their own image.
This set of materialisations through the processes of colonisation, the Industrial
Revolution and globalisation has created violence towards many earth bodies,2
and has led to the phenomenon known commonly as climate change (with all its
problems).3 From this dominant Western modern perspective (which has never
been realised),4 humans claim to be separate from nature and are the locus of
agency and value, nature is in service to (some) human ends, time is linear and
progressive, and humans are seen as discreet individuals for whom relationship
is secondary.
Though the current era is commonly called ‘The Anthropocene’, for many
reasons I think this is inadequate.5 I also fnd the ‘capitalocene’ problematic: not
all humans created these problems equally and communism hasn’t fared much
DOI: 10.4324/9781003320722-2
14 Whitney A. Bauman
better in terms of environmental issues. There very well may be green forms of
communism, capitalism and socialism, so I’m not sure we can reduce everything
to the economic structure. Instead, following some in the energy humanities and
those studying petrocultures, I refer to this as the fossil-fuelled era.6 It is primar-
ily the speed at which modern life moves, thanks to fossil fuels, that is the culprit
of many social and ecological ills. Paul Virilio (among others) has described this
speed revolution as ‘The Great Acceleration’.7 In the case of our planetary com-
munity, sadly, speed kills.8 This chapter argues that the fallout from the two
greatest phenomena that challenge our planetary community—globalisation and
climate weirding both fuelled by fossils—requires us to re-attune to the plan-
etary community. Due to the accelerated, connected and ‘glocal’ phenomena
that mark our daily lives, we can no longer think like modern westerners: rather,
we need to re-attune to our various planetary contexts. Religions as well as other
justice and environmental movements can provide us with resources for such
re-attunement. Such re-attunements should be couched in what I call a Critical
Planetary Romanticism, or CPR for the Earth. In this chapter, I frst examine
some of the materialisations of the modern Western mindset: progressive, linear
time; the backgrounding of nature for humans; and the transformation of nature
through the factory and the laboratory. I then argue that religion and meaning-
making might best be understood as a process of ‘re-attuning’ to the needs of our
entangled earth bodies and the community of bodies that enable us life. Finally,
such re-attunement requires an ‘epistem-ontology’ that I call Critical Planetary
Romanticism.
The modern Western mindset

The ways in which religions materialise in the world are manifold. Various reli-
gions (or meaning-making practices) shape our bodies through providing us with
rules about what we can wear and eat and with whom we can sleep and when.
Other material ideas are a bit harder to trace, but no less powerful in shaping
earth bodies (both human and non). Furthermore, the efects of many concepts
or ideas take centuries or even millennia to emerge in the process of ongoing
planetary evolution. I look at religions here as emergent, collective meaning-
making practices, ideas, habits and rituals.9 From an emergent perspective, these
meaning-making practices are not constructed ex nihilo nor by any one indi-
vidual, but in an ongoing and collective process of co-construction (over genera-
tions of human and nonhuman life), religions emerge as powerful and very real
levels of reality that afect the becoming of planetary bodies in various ways.
What we might call broadly ‘the modern Western mindset’ has its roots in
several strands of meaning-making practices: including the Ancient Near East
(ANE) and Ancient Greece, monotheisms and the ways in which this emerging
mindset and way of being in the world defned itself in relationship to the many
‘others’ it came into contact with during periods of colonisation, and in par-
ticular European colonisation. As many have pointed out, both understandings
Developing a Critical Planetary Romanticism 15
of ‘religion’ and understandings of ‘science’ were formed during the colonial

era and are a product of the colonising mindset.10 Religion became associated
with those components of other cultures that accounted for their ‘belief sys-
tems’, modelled after the focus in monotheism on theological ideas and belief in
a single god. In other words, the idea of ‘religion’ was partitioned of from the
rest of the culture encountered in a way that didn’t accurately refect the role
of meaning-making practices in that given culture. And, of course, these other
religious beliefs and practices were ranked hierarchically from monotheism at
the top to animism at the bottom during the 18th and 19th centuries, as the
attempt to classify religious beliefs by the emerging modern Western mind was
being codifed into a so-called ‘science of religion’.11 At the same time ‘science’
was being defned over and against what the modern Western mind considered
to be ‘religion’ on the one hand and ‘magic’ on the other.12 The guide for both
theological (religious) and scientifc (study of the mechanical world in search of
laws and towards eforts to control/tame nature) was the objective reason found
in the ancient Greeks, then in monotheistic traditions, and then in what would
become modern Western science.
The modern Western idea of reason has several distinct components that
were already codifed by monotheisms (and in particular Christian and Islamic
Monotheisms): viz. that there is one, universal reality that can be discovered
through human reason: either through study of scripture and revelation in nature
or through the study of nature by ‘detached observation’ and experimentation
that lead us to facts about ultimate reality. Modern Western science adopts the
monotheistic notion of a single world, discoverable by reason and the idea of
linear, progressive time. Obviously there are diferences among modern Western
theologians, philosophers and later scientists about what that one reality looks
like, but the underwritten idea that reality and the universe must be ‘one’ is a
dominant feature that carries through these diferences. Thus, the oneness of
reality and better and worse interpretations of that one reality hold steady. It is
through these ideas that we see how three of the major ways in which monothe-
ism turned modern Western science materialised in the world: progressive time
and the 24-hour clock; the imago Dei and the separation of humans and nature;
and the duty to transform nature in the factory and the laboratory. It is hard to
think about these three things apart from one another and apart from the boost
they all received from fossil-fuelled speed. The argument here is not that there is
a 1:1 correlation between clocks, anthropocentrism/androcentrism and reductive
and productive approaches to the rest of the natural world; rather that ideas about
what time, human nature and the rest of the natural world are, helped to create
knowledge and technologies that constructed the worlds into certain ways, and
the very belief that there is a single interpretation of the world that is more accu-
rate than all others. Let’s start, then, with a look at time.13
Time/clock/fossil-fuelled speed/progress. If we broaden ‘theology’ to mean some-
thing like ‘meaning-making practices’, then I tend to agree with the assertion by
Mary-Jane Rubenstein that all technology is materialised theology. The three
‘technologies’ I am examining here in relationship to the dominant modern

Western mindset are, indeed, theologically based, and specifcally within a cer-
tain type of Christian theology. The frst such technology I examine is that of
progressive, linear time.
The idea of progress in history, that things build upon one another and that
things will ‘improve’ or become more ‘complex’ or somehow ‘better’ over time,
is somewhat of an anomaly if we consider most human cultures, religions, ideas
and civilisations. There have, of course, been declensionist narratives of time,
such as many environmentalists and creationists (strange bed fellows) hold to.
This is the idea that there was some sort of pure and perfect creation ‘in the
beginning’, and that a long, linear process of deterioration has occurred that
will lead to the end or lead to the need for something to save us and re-set the
time clock.14 The point here, in either case, is that there is a single linear time.
Time has been for many, especially what the modern Western mind identifes as
indigenous communities, cyclical. Buddhism has both understandings of time as
epochal, and as illusory: there is only now. For Jainism, time is eternal rotation
of the wheel of time. And for Hinduism, time is cycli-linear. These are just some
of the multiple notions of time. There are many diferent calendars that refect
diferent understandings of time, still in use today. Indeed, up to 40 calendars
are in use today, and each is wrapped up in its own cosmology and meaning-
making practices. They fall into four basic types: solar, lunar, luni-solar and
sidereal.15 Many communities follow multiple calendars. On the island of Java,
for instance, the ofcial calendar often has the diferent days and dates of: a) the
Javanese calendar, b) the Muslim calendar, c) the Chinese calendar and d) the
Gregorian calendar.
In addition to the variety of times found in calendars throughout histories and
in the contemporary world, many meaning-making practices and rituals point
to the constructed nature of time in everyday human life. The eternal now of
meditation practices, the embodied time of yoga, the Dreaming of Australian
Aboriginals (among others), the time of prayer, of song, or the blurring of the
boundaries of time past/present/future found in many shamanistic traditions.
All of these are tools used to help us get out of the constructed notion of daily
human time.16
The idea of a linear time and a single time for the planet emerges hand in
hand with the era of colonisation, eforts to navigate naval shipping routes and
then later the Industrial Revolution. Monotheism, whatever else it might imply,
means that there is one reality, one time and one truth. If the interpretation of
monotheism is of one god (source of all reality, truth, time) that transcends the
physical world, then all physical reality must ft into this monotheistic structure.
Monotheism, in other words, lends itself to monological ways of thinking and
universalism. Furthermore, if god is working for us and we can work towards
salvation in this life, then, at least by many accounts, we must be able to argue
that we are progressing towards something: a new creation, salvation, life after
death, the second coming. Salvation history, in other words, is also creation
history. As Christianity spread throughout Europe and the Roman Empire, and
then later to many parts of the world through the process of European colonisa-
tion, this time and its corresponding reality and truth were also imposed on the
places and peoples colonised.
This earlier imposition of a ‘tunnel of time’ over the face of the globe, which
also had its geographical manifestations (the eastern world was the past, the west-
ern ‘frontier’ was the future, and this placed the European colonisers in the pre-
sent as the acting agents), made it much easier to impose common time during
the Industrial Revolution and Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) time in the late
19th and 20th centuries. This single accounting of time was needed in a world
whose business and industry was being sped up by fossil fuels. A single time
means that workers know when to get to work, one can plan things in diferent
locales more efciently and each second can be accounted for.17 In other words,
time becomes money: the workersʼ time becomes the money of the factory own-
ers in the Industrial Revolution, and each individual’s time could either be spent
progressing towards some goal, remaining in stasis or regressing. This time, then,
has implications for: personal growth, the ‘progress’ of science and humanity
in general and the ‘development’ of peoples and places (out of a cyclical stasis
understanding of time and into the treadmill of chronological time). It is, in part,
this chronological time that also helps to produce the second set of technologies
I want to discuss: humans as over nature.
Humans over nature (the enclosure of bodies). The technologies of progressive time
are also important for and go hand in hand with the enclosure of human bodies
from the rest of the natural world. If most of life on the planet abides by recur-
ring cyclical times, including most human life throughout human history, then
this notion of progressive time that builds on the past had to be learned and
materialised in the world. It is not that there is no progression from youth to old
age, for instance, or from the last moment to the next, but rather that marking
this as ‘progress’ and as more specifcally ‘universal progress’ is problematic. The
idea of progress for some has meant regress for others, and the marking of time
does not necessarily need to be linear alone. Agricultural and nomadic lifestyles
operate from diferent perspectives. Being late or running out of time only really
makes sense from an abstract notion of linear time.18 As European colonisation
spread, so did its methods of production and construction: the enclosure of the
commons brings land under the control of individual humans who transform
the land into the needs of human production. Forests became resources for con-
structing homes and buildings that seal humans of from the rest of the planetary
community, and that fuel the energy needs of such a transformation. During
the Industrial Revolution, resource extraction from the mountains, forests and
waters sped up this process and sped up the pace of the tunnel of time. Humans
began to live into the abstract linear time of chronos, and ‘as if ’ the rest of the
natural world was just a resource for this objective time. All of this was couched
under the name of progress and development (which was formally known as
Christianisation, civilisation and colonisation). The faster the pace one can move
from point a to point b, the faster the progress possible, the more human lives
seem to live outside of the seasonal and cyclical paces of planetary time. One
might even argue that this fundamentally shifts our human meaning-making,
hopes, desires and dreams out of this world.
In our contemporary world of fossil-fuelled transportation, communication
and production, many of us humans can be around the world at the click of a
mouse or the tap of a fnger in just seconds. We modern Western types can sit in
the privacy of our homes and ofces and bring resources from around the world
to us in a matter of days. Some modern Western types can also fy around the
world in a period of 24 hours. This great acceleration has sped up chronological
time and increased the possibilities for how much one can ‘progress’ in one’s own
lifetime, exponentially. The power of our ability to transform the planet into this
modern Western chronological time of progress depends greatly on the ability to
transform nature, which is reduced to the laboratory and the factory.
Transforming nature (reduction, factory, laboratory). If the monotheistic and (later)
scientifc tools of progressive time and anthropocentrism have been destructive
to humans and the rest of the natural world, then the fnal tool leading to the
transformation of nature really materialises a certain type of monotheism at the
expense of much life. The idea that humans are made in god’s image alone, and
that we are somehow ‘above’ the rest of the natural world, bolstered Descartes’
cogito and Locke’s ideas of tabula rasa and private property. It supports the idea
that nature is mere stuf to be used towards human ends.19 The eforts to convert
people to monotheism on the part of colonisers are part of what is necessary
to make ‘industrialisation’ and ‘development’ ok. For many cultures, especially
indigenous cultures, nature is full of value, spirits and meaning beyond the
human. For some it is even sacred. The style of monotheism associated with col-
onisation teaches that the source of value and meaning is outside of nature, that
humans are above nature and that we can manage or transform nature towards
something ‘better’. This paves the way for the factory and the laboratory.
The efcient transformation of the world towards some version of progress
relies on the reduction of nonhuman nature (and who counts as human even
shifts) to things for use by humans in the continuation of linear progress. This
is the process of enframing that Heidegger speaks of.20 The fossil-fuelled factory
and laboratory, along with their agricultural, communication and transporta-
tion technologies, have materialised the modern Western understanding of pro-
gress to the extent that we have now changed the climate of the planet. It is in
this period of destabilisation of climate and corresponding pandemics and social
injustice that we might fnd space for re-attuning to our planetary community.
Re-attuning to the planet: religion as re-attunement

If, as I argue, the materialisation of the dominant modern Western thought hab-
its in the planet has led to the problems of climate weirding, species extinc-
tion and gross economic and environmental injustice, then perhaps the processes
of globalisation and climate weirding are calling us to re-attune to the bodies

within and around us that make up the evolving planetary community of which
we are a part. In other words, the smoothing over of reality into a progressive,
linear time in which humans transform nature in progressive ways has materi-
alised in the world as climate weirding. If we deem this co-construction of the
worlds we live in to be problematic, then it is time to listen to and re-attune to
the voices and bodies within the planetary community. Religious rituals, ideas
and ethics might play an important role in this shift towards planetarity.
At its etymological root, religion means either collecting and/or binding
together. As such, I interpret religion as a process of making meaning out of oneʼs
changing life: collecting information together in a meaningful (bound together)
way. All humans, though not only humans, make meaning out of life in some
way (whether atheist, agnostic or religious). One can fnd meaning in gardening,
biking, hikes in nature, or in prayer, ritual, texts or meditations. When people
lose meaning in life, or fall into meaninglessness, we often identify them as hav-
ing some sort of mental problem or disorder. Whatever else religion might be,
it involves meaning-making practices that help us to re-read and re-orient our-
selves within the evolving contexts we fnd ourselves in. This doesn’t mean there
is meaning ‘out there’, nor does it mean that we create meaning by ourselves ex
nihilo; rather, we co-construct meanings with and within languages, histories,
communities (of humans and other than humans), ecologies, biologies, narra-
tives, technologies and imaginations.
Religions and religious practices and rituals often help us focus on the need to
re-attune to our contexts in ways that pay attention to sufering bodies. Aesthetic
re-attunements, such as the images of the Kingdom of God in Christianity or
Paradise in Islam, can help us to focus on present sufering, while imagining
a diferent more ecologically sound and just future. Many founding religious
fgures—Jesus, The Prophet, Moses, the Buddha—founded their communities
based upon ethical re-attunements: current ways of relating cause too much vio-
lence and sufering, thus we must act in diferent ways to mitigate that sufering.
Many religious rituals—yoga, meditation, dancing, drumming, singing—help
us to re-attune to our bodies and the earth. Religions often involve apophatic,
negative and deconstructive strands of thought, such as the many trickster fgures
in indigenous communities. The roles of these fgures are to help us re-attune
our thinking away from categories that reify life into strict boundaries such as:
living/dead, male/female, human/animal. Hermeneutics are a form of textual
re-attunement,21 keeping sacred texts alive and relevant to contemporary life. In
all of these ways and more, we might think of religion as re-attunement to the
planetary community in ways that promote justice and planetary fourishing. 22
The most recent Covid pandemic has, of course, provided us much space to
re-attune to the worlds in which we live. Many have experienced psychologi-
cal and physical stress, and have turned to meaning-making practices in order
to re-attune to life in new ways. Several such practices have shed light on the
modern technologies of time, anthropocentrism and ideas of progress through
transformation. In particular, many people have expressed a sense of time that is

both sped up and slowed down all at once. Not to mention, many have taken up
practices that take more time. For essential workers, time has sped up; for those
left unemployed time has slowed down. For many people in between, working
from home on Zoom, there was also opportunity to ‘take back’ some time. I
turned to gardening, bird watching and baking. Cliché though it may be, the
time of sourdough bread is not the time of chronos, nor is the time of gardening
or the time of bird watching. These are activities that take their own time, and
don’t follow GMT; you can’t get there faster by speeding up, and you can’t always
expect you’ll arrive at the same destination, so to speak. These re-attunements
have not just been about leisure either. Baking bread can re-attune one to the
ethics of agriculture, harvesting and eating. Furthermore, baking forces one to
take time, and give over agency to the elements that go into baking (including
the ingredients, the humidity and the temperature). Time here is more like a
palaver,23 or spatzieren, a walk about without an end goal.
Gardening also takes its own time, but it also tunes one’s body into the seasons
and weather. In a world of climate weirding, having a garden, however large or
small, forces us to pay attention to the changing weather in the places we live. It
also breaks down the barriers between humans and plants in a way: one can rec-
ognise just how dependent we are on the elements and the plants doing their own
things. Furthermore, at least in the US, there has been a huge increase in urban
gardening communities. These urban gardening communities create space and
time for people to come together in community and discuss community issues.
They help re-attune bodies to the collective that is a neighbourhood, town or
city. In this sense, urban gardening raises awareness about issues of justice and
the environment.
Bird watching also has the potential to re-attune humans to the more-than-
human world. There were many reports during the pandemic about people
hearing more bird song and seeing more birds and other animals. Our ears and
eyes were being re-attuned to the sounds and sights of the nonhuman world
because the sounds of the morning commute were nearly silenced. Many urban
people began to notice the other life forms that inhabit urban space together
with them. Bird watching in particular became a fash point in Black Lives
Matter as Amy Cooper (a white woman) called the police on Christian Cooper
(a black man) because she felt threatened by him. His crime? Bird watching in
New York’s Central Park. At least for those familiar with the Black Lives Matter
movement in the US, bird watching will always be tied up with issues of racial
justice from now on.
Finally, the Covid pandemic itself is a reminder that our fossil-fuelled reality
is fragile and out of control. Our bodies are porous and relational: which means
also deadly pandemics are possible. The pandemic, one might argue, provides
space for some people to think about the interrelated issues of globalisation and
climate weirding. One might even relate the violence of fossil-fuelled modern
reality to the ‘I can’t breathe’ of Black Lives Matter, to the lack of breathing space
women experience in the workplace and world highlighted by the MeToo move-
ment, to the gasping for air by Covid victims, to the death of phytoplankton in
the oceans, which generate a lot of the earth’s oxygen at any given time, due to
warming waters. Indeed, it seems that our fossil-fuelled era is ending in a great
sufocation: of black bodies, of sick bodies, of women’s bodies, of earth bodies.
If the fossil-fuelled modern Western world is the culprit, perhaps we need a new
framework within which to re-attune. One such framework I have been devel-
oping is a Critical Planetary Romanticism, or CPR for the Earth.
Critical Planetary Romanticism

Other species, as well as nonliving things, make it possible to be human.
That this statement is not obvious to many humans at this moment in
time is only because of habits of thought that have become powerful over
the last few hundred years. In this modernist mode of thinking, humans
presume to transcend and master nature, rather than forming worlds
together with nonhumans. One signifcance of recent discussion of the
Anthropocene as a time of human-sponsored environmental crisis is that it
urges us away from those powerful habits of thought. The imagined mas-
tery of humans no longer looks so successful; we are asked to reconsider
the ways in which human and nonhuman histories are inextricably inter-
twined. The Anthropocene, like every other trajectory in which humans
have been involved, is more-than-human.24
There will never be a single framework to ‘rule them all’. That desire is just a
repetition of the modern Western tendency towards universalisation. As Spivak,
who frst coined the term planetarity (as I intend it), noted: the planetary is
opposed to the global view from above.25 The planetary is simply a collection of
the plurality of worlds that make up the earth at any one moment in time, both
human and non. The planetary at any given moment is, as Anna Tsing suggests,
what makes being human possible. It should not be thought of as an overarch-
ing container into which worlds ft, but rather its shape takes on all the evolving
relationships and bodies that make it up at any given moment. With a slight
modifcation to Walter Mignolo’s decolonial ideas, there are many worlds, at any
given time, that can link together to make up the planetary. Practising a critical
planetary romanticism means listening to as many perspectives as possible within
the planetary community: from this perspective the more perspectives we listen
to and account for, the better understanding we have of the planetary at any
given time. Here at the end of this chapter, I want to describe each of the terms
of CPR, and I begin with romanticism.
Romanticism. As some have argued, the Romantic movement in Europe dur-
ing the 18th and 19th centuries was in response to the fallout of industrialisa-
tion: the beginnings of the fossil-fuelled era. Perhaps more interesting, some
argue that European romanticism contains the vestiges of what was left over in
the indigenous ‘pagan’ traditions stamped out by the spread of Christianity.26

Indeed romanticism then and now does have many similarities with older indig-
enous traditions worldwide. According to most animistic traditions, humans are
interrelated with other animals and the earth, which is often considered sacred.
Various indigenous peoples interpolate their culture, language and cosmology
with features of the local landscape. In Jogjakarta, Indonesia, for instance, the
Javanese cosmology is tied up with the volcano Mirapi (the god) on one side of
the region and the Indian Ocean (goddess) on the other side. Located right in
the middle is the Kraton, or Sultan’s palace, and the reigning Sultan is considered
to be married to the goddess. There are several sacred places lined up between
Mirapi and the ocean, some of which are marked by obelisks, others are sacred
water spots or trees. In order to learn about Javanese philosophy and cosmology,
then, one must walk through the geography of the place. This is one vision of
what it looks like to re-attune our bodies to the earth.
There are romantic strands in most mystical traditions of monotheism as well.
And plenty of earth-afrming/worshipping traditions in just about every religion
we might categorise as a ‘world religion’. Perhaps it is high time we highlight
these non-dominant strands as we reinterpret ourselves as part of planet earth.
Science too has its romantic traditions and proponents. Ernst Haeckel under-
stood humans as part of evolutionary theory and thought the study of nature
produced wonder and awe. This particularly comes through in his artwork, and
in one collection entitled Art Forms in Nature.27 Wilhelm Bölsche wrote a book
entitled Love Life in Nature, and Gustav Fechner on The Soul of Plants.28 These
19th-century scientists argued that a non-reductive understanding of nature
should be the basis for the sciences. Of course, there are plenty of scientists and
other scholars today who take romantic readings of nature as scientifc.29 New
materialisms, emergence theories, animisms and other philosophies and theories
have all more recently called us to a form of neo-romanticism that gives agency
and value back to the more-than-human planet. Perhaps it is time we re-attune
our thinking to these ways of thinking. Some form of romanticism could help
re-embed the fossil-fuelled humans (and all things human) into the mineral,
plant and animal worlds. However, this romanticism cannot be local, parochial
or national, hence the need for planetary thinking.
Planetary. One critical diference between earlier romanticisms and perhaps
animisms as well, is that there is no cutting localities of from the planetary fows
of materials, energy and information. We live in a globalised world, for better
and worse, and I don’t see a ‘return’ to localism, parochialism or nationalism
as good options. Indeed, we are experiencing a return to localism across the
globe with rising nationalisms across the US, Europe, India, Russia, China and
other places. Making romanticism local provides too much of an opportunity
for ‘us’ and ‘them’ thinking. Keeping out ‘illegal’ immigrants and ‘non-native,
invasive’ species results in much violence to earth bodies and doesn’t refect the
worlds in which we live.30 I’m not necessarily arguing for complete open bor-
ders and allowing all non-native species in, this would create its own violence.
I’m arguing for a re-attunement to our planetary contexts, which even before
fossil-fuelled globalisation experienced exchanges between ecotones, oceans and
the atmosphere. Even when one stays ‘local’, one’s life is crisscrossed daily by
global fows of energy, materials and information. Thus, I have called elsewhere
for a polyamory of place: the love of many places that we can link and connect
through planetary fows.31
The planetary is also a term meant to remind humans of our creatureliness.
We are frst and foremost creatures among creatures, sharing the ‘common
grounds’ of earth, air, fre and water.32 Humans are nothing without the planet.
This may seem obvious, but the hopes and dreams of leaving this planet on the
part of some people such as Elon Musk and Jef Bezos means that the human
anthropology suggesting we are not part of nature is still quite active and persua-
sive.33 A focus on the planetary means also realising that whatever we think of
as ‘the best’ of humans is a result of our entanglement and relationality with the
rest of the natural world rather than in spite of it. Finally, the focus on the planet
cannot be singular because we are multiply embodied and experience the world
diferently. Therefore we need the critical part of CPR.
Critical. CPR for the Earth must be critical. There is no one experience of the
planet, and there are multiple worlds at any given time of the planetary process
that make up the planet. Diferent embodiments in diferent worlds experience
the planet in multiple ways. We need critical theories of race, gender, queer
studies, disability studies, class, post- and de-colonial studies, animal studies and
afect in order to map out the ways in which certain worlds privilege certain
bodies at the expense of others. These ‘multiple maps’34 provide us with better
understandings of any current construction of the planetary. In this case, the
more critical perspectives we can listen to, the more ‘objective’ understanding
we have of the planet at any given moment. Pluralism, multiperspectivalism and
diversity do not need ranking from this perspective; they are each in their own
right diferent, valid perspectives on the planetary moment.
Of course, we must also contend with ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’ in
the ever fuid and shifting world of the internet and 24-hour news and informa-
tion. Critical perspectives do not mean ‘anything goes’. In fact, the more critical
perspectives the better. Uncertainty and multiperspectivalism are better judges
of knowledge than certainty and monological thinking. One might think of a
scatter plot of perspectives: there will be many that make up a core plotted along
a certain side of the graph, with a few outliers, and some completely of the chart.
In co-constructing worlds and knowledge, and the actions based upon them,
from a critical perspective we should listen to them all, but the extreme outli-
ers might be especially scrutinised. I would argue that conspiracy theories, fake
news and alternative facts are based on ‘certain’ knowledge to the exclusion of all
others. The inability to change one’s mind or consider alternatives is a sure sign
of one’s self-certainty, and in a Planetary Critical Perspective such monological,
dogmatic thinking is dangerous. Rather, contextual, critical thinking enables us
to consider ‘others’’ perspectives (human and non), to re-attune to the needs of
neglected and abjected bodies and to come to some sort of collective decision
making.
At any given time, we live in multiple co-constructed worlds that, when
linked together, make up the planetary. Rather than there being a single narra-
tive or line of history and progress, I would ofer that CPR suggests the plan-
etary is more like a starling murmuration. There is beautiful order and patterns
to be found, but ultimately reality is more rhizomatic and meandering: it fows
together from one place to the next, making up a given manifestation of the
planetary community. From this perspective we can perform ‘cartographies of
violence’,35 taking note of how a given construction of a world creates violence
for some assemblages and privileges others. Given this data, we can work to co-
construct new worlds that take into account more bodies and more perspectives
in a way that promotes greater planetary fourishing.
Notes
1 Carol Wayne White, ‘Planetary Thinking, Agency, and Relationality: Religious
Naturalismʼs Plea’, in Earthly Things: Immanence, New Materialisms, and Planetary
Thinking’, ed. Karen Bray, Heather Eaton and Whitney Bauman (New York: Fordham
University Press, Forthcoming 2023).
2 Glen Mazis, Earthbodies: Rediscovering Our Planetary Senses (Albany: State University
of New York Press, 2002).
3 There are critiques to the language of climate ‘change’ for various reasons. I prefer
Hunter Lovinsʼ term ‘climate weirding’ as that is more descriptive of the unpredicta-
ble shifts in weather patterns we experience from our human perspectives. ‘Weirding’
adds a more accurate description to the types of ‘changes’ we are experiencing, in
other words. It gained some traction with an article by Thomas Friedman titled
‘Global Weirding Is Here’, New York Times, 17 February 2010. Sigurd Bergmann
prefers the term ‘climate alterationʼ. As he notes, ‘Weather is not just simply there, it
does not simply change from one state to another, but it alternates’ (31). We might pay
more attention to the shifts of the climate by paying more attention to the process of
alteration itself. See: Sigurd Bergmann, Weather, Religion and Climate Change (New
York: Routledge, 2021).
4 Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1993).
5 See, e.g.: Lisa Sideris, ‘The Human as World-Maker: An Anthropocene Dogma’, in
T&T Clark Handbook of Christian Theology and the Modern Sciences, ed. John. P. Slattery
(New York: T&T Clark, 2020), 223–236.
6 See, e.g.: Terra Schwerin Rowe, Of Modern Extraction: Experiments in Critical
Petro-Theology (New York: T&T Clark, 2022); and Marion Grau, ‘The Revelation
of Global Climate Change: A Petro-Eschatology’, in Eschatology as Imagining the
End: Faith between Hope and Despair, ed. Sigurd Bergmann (New York: Routledge,
2018), 45–60.
7 Paul Virilio, The Great Accelerator (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2012).
8 Sigurd Bergmann articulates well the problem with speed (and its immobilis-
ing efect) in: Sigurd Bergmann and Tore Sager, eds, The Ethics of Mobilities:
Rethinking Place, Exclusion, Freedom and the Environment (New York: Routledge,
2008), 17: ‘Hypermobility threatens social systems of planning and democracy.
The increasing acceleration of fnancial speculation threatens the general useful-
ness of monetarism. Technical and social processes of acceleration become more
and more insensitive and therefore destructive of ecological processes, where the
speed of biological life cycles and development do not follow the principle of
constant acceleration.’
9 Ibid.
10 See, e.g.: Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures,
Decolonial Options (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011); and Tomoko
Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was
Preserved in the Language of Pluralism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
11 Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions.
12 Lisa Stenmark, ‘The Benefts of an Entire Civilization: Religion, Science and
Colonialism’, in Bloomsbury Religion, Science and Technology in North America, ed. Lisa
Stenmark and Whitney Bauman (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021). Theology
and Religion Online. Web. 7 March 2022.
<http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350934986.005>.
13 I discuss this as ‘theoforming’ in: Whitney A. Bauman, ‘Theoforming Earth
Community Meaning-Full Creations’, in Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Religion and
Ecology, ed. John Hart (Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell, 2017), 427–438.
14 Carolyn Merchant, Reinventing Eden: The Fate of Nature in Western Culture (New York:
Routledge, 2003).
15 Alan Longstaf, ‘Calendars from Around the World’ (London, UK: The National
Maritime Museum, 2005). Online Resource: https://www.rmg.co.uk/sites/default/
fles/Calendars-from-around-the-world.pdf.
16 Anindita N. Balslev and J.N. Mohanty, Religion and Time (Leiden, The Netherlands:
Brill, 1993).
17 See, for example, the classic text: Frederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of Scientifc
Management (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1911). Or for a more recent analysis of
global time: Vanessa Ogle, The Global Transformation of Time: 1870–1950 (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).
18 For an excellent read pointing out how time management is harming us in physical
and emotional ways: Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for
Mortals (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021).
19 Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientifc Revolution
(New York: Harper and Row, 1980).
20 Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (New York:
Garland, 1977).
21 Forrest Clingerman, ‘Memory, Imagination, and the Hermeneutics of Place’,
in Interpreting Nature: The Emerging Field of Environmental Hermeneutics, ed. Forrest
Clingerman, Brian Treanor, Martin Drenthen and David Utsler (New York:
Fordham University Press, 2013), 245–263.
22 Thomas Tweed’s understanding of religion as ‘crossing and dwelling’ is helpful here.
See: Thomas Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2006).
23 Isabel Stengers, ‘The Cosmological Proposal’, in Making Things Public, ed. Bruno
Latour and Peter Weibel (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2005), 994–1003.
24 Anna Tsing, Feral Atlas, https://feralatlas.org/.
25 Gayatri Spivak, Death of a Discipline (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003).
26 See, e.g.: Kocku von Stuckrad, A Cultural History of the Soul: Europe and North America
from 1870 to the Present (New York: Columbia University Press, 2022); and Kate
Rigby, Reclaiming Romanticism: Towards an Ecopoetics of Decolonization (New York:
Bloomsbury, 2021).
27 I’ve written about this elsewhere, see: Whitney Bauman, ‘Wonder and Ernst Haeckel’s
Aesthetics of Nature’, in Arts, Religion, and the Environment, ed. Sigurd Bergmann and
Forrest Clingerman (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2018), 61–83.
28 Gustav Theodor Fechner, Nanna oder über das Seelenleben Der Pfanzen (Leipzig,
Germany: Leopold Voss, 1848); Willhelm Bölche, Love Life in Nature, 2 vols (New
York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1926).
29 Dalia Nassar argues, along similar lines that I hope to argue, that the way in which
romanticism and empiricism have been juxtaposed in the history of science and phi-
losophy of science is not accurate or helpful, but rather that a ‘romantic empiricism’
exists and has a long history. See: Dalia Nassar, Romantic Empiricism: Nature, Art, and
Ecology from Herder to Humboldt (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022).
30 Peter Coates, American Perceptions of Immigrant and Invasive Species: Strangers on the Land
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).
31 Whitney Bauman, Religion and Ecology: Developing a Planetary Ethic (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2014).
32 The practice of ‘creaturely eco-poetics’ that Kate Rigby articulates is helpful here.
It is a poetics that ‘highlights human entanglements, at once material and moral,
with other living beings. These entanglements entail shared, if unevenly distrib-
uted, vulnerabilities as well as shared, if variegated, communicative capacities. They
harbour the ever-present risk of conflict and harm but also opportunities to co-
create emergent multi-species worlds no longer constrained by the colonizing logic
of human-nonhuman hyperseparation, and hence conducive to more felicitous forms
of coexistence and “sympoiesis” (a term coined by Friedrich Schlegel) in our own
perilous times.’ (Kate Rigby, Reclaiming Romanticism, 38).
33 Mary Jane Rubenstein, Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022).
34 Mary Midgley, Science and Poetry (New York: Routledge, 2001).
35 Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2013).
Bibliography
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Netherlands: Brill.
Bauman, Whitney. 2014. Religion and Ecology: Developing a Planetary Ethic. New York:
Columbia University Press.
———. 2017. ‘Theoforming Earth Community: Meaning-Full Creations,’ in Wiley-
Blackwell Companion to Religion and Ecology, 427–438. Edited by John Hart. Malden:
Blackwell.
———. 2018. ‘Wonder and Ernst Haeckel’s Aesthetics of Nature,’ in Arts, Religion, and
the Environment, 61–83. Edited by Sigurd Bergmann and Forrest Clingerman. Leiden,
The Netherlands: Brill.
Bergmann, Sigurd. 2021. Weather, Religion, and Climate Change. New York: Routledge.
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Burkeman, Oliver. 2021. Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. New York:
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———. 2003. Reinventing Eden: The Fate of Nature in Western Culture. New York:
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New York: Oxford University Press.
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Harvard University Press.
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Rigby, Kate. 2021. Reclaiming Romanticism: Towards an Ecopoetics of Decolonization. New
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2
ARCHITECTING ZOË
On Haunting Homes and Sacred Ecomateriality
Rachel Armstrong
Introduction
Having lost sight of the sacred nature of the material realm by rendering it a
‘brute’, soulless entity, modern society has shed itself of ethical concerns in its
unfettered pursuit of the exploitation of nature and natural resources. Regarding
the living world as an endless ‘standing reserve’,1 it is rationally devitalised to
become ‘mere’ matter, where biological entities are simply more complex ver-
sions of chemistry. With no innate vitality, there is neither moral obligation nor
duty of care to the objects and fabrics that are sacrifced on the altar of resource
capitalism. Consequently, our consumption of natural systems is indulged with-
out limits, concern and with impunity. The damaging environmental behaviours
that typify this Anthropocene are inficted on such a scale they are measurably
altering the dynamics and vitality of our world, leading to global, ecosystem-
scale collapse.2
What is sacred ecomaterialism?

This critical secular moment, in the sense of nature as a standing reserve, calls
for a new way of living and being in the world.3 Providing a pertinent value
system and approach, sacred ecomaterialism recognises the transformational poten-
tial within matter as the fundamental force that can turn around the negative
impacts of human development towards life-promoting outcomes, as a sacred
relationship with the living realm. In the mainstay, this is achieved through
material relationships, specifcally through the life-promoting fow of elemen-
tal cycles (like the water cycle) and nutrient cycles (like the carbon, phospho-
rous and nitrogen cycles) that sustain life on this planet. Additionally, this sacred
ecomaterialism invites an inclusive and special relationship between the body
DOI: 10.4324/9781003320722-3
30 Rachel Armstrong
and environment whereby the incorporation of these fundamental ingredients

into an entity or system is not the end of a journey but an immanent stage in
the ongoing cycling of matter on the planet. Possessing a regenerative and even
transcendent quality, sacred ecomaterialism is more than an up-cycling prac-
tice that re-values discards,4 or non-specifc notion of fow,5 but also embraces
more-than-human (embracing all the bodies that are entangled these fows) and
geostorical perspectives (appreciating the contributions of these materials in deep
time before the advent of humans). Such an expanded perspective of human
experience within specifc contexts explores what it means to be human and
how our contributions can be extended to establish a renewed relationship, and
communion, with nature.6
By setting life-promoting matter apart from the mundane and base aspects of
living that end in its consumption by humans, sacred ecomaterialism aims to
enliven our living spaces and, ultimately, beneft natural systems.7,8,9 Moreover,
the sacred aspects of ecomaterialism uphold natural and supernatural associa-
tions with materiality—i.e., the vital ‘spark’ of life10,11 and notions of haunting
(see p. 34 in this essay), to provide an ongoing connection with a transcendent
divine creative force, without losing a tangible connection to the living realm.
Maintaining the immanent reality of ecological interdependence in our daily
rituals,12,13 they do not terminate in consumption of matter but ensure the ongo-
ing journey of matter into the living world through its re-entry into the cycles
of life. Specifcally, a sacred ecomaterialist perspective rejects the incineration of
household organic waste, which results in low-value biological compounds that
are not readily incorporated into metabolic networks, and instead promotes com-
posting, which produces a rich range of molecules that are readily returned to
the lifeworld. Such radical circularity holds many entanglements, collapsing the
simple enlightenment dualities—between mind and body, subject and environ-
ment, nature and culture—enabling appropriate shifts to occur in how we live.14
Informed by a twenty-frst-century understanding of physics, chemistry and
biology, the specifcs of these material exchanges can be explored through the con-
tinual, regulated fow of massless electrons15 between lively agents. Characterised
by a plethora of performative particles and ions, this irreducibly complex bioelec-
trical platform provides a material basis that embodies the fundamental life-force
within vital matter. As further characterisation of the subatomic realm of matter
is still unfolding,16 this knowledge is not absolute but indicative that alterna-
tive models of understanding reality exist and is, therefore, used both in literal
and metaphorical contexts. Capable of initiating a broad range of observable
activities including membrane modulation, change in protein structure, colour
change, charge, metabolism and many more vitalising actions, a sacred ecomate-
rialist view of matter exceeds established explanations of complexity ofered by
‘systems’ thinking,17 and the mechanistic feedback loops characteristic of cyber-
netics.18 Detectable at the human scale through the apparent liveliness of a mate-
rial, electron fow can be both empirically measured and tested as electricity,
while also confguring our material experiences in a living world.
Architecting Zoë 31
This electron relay between atoms, molecules (ions) and complex material
domains, extends beyond the limits of any metabolising body. This enlivening
process and resacralisation of matter is assisted by uncertain technologies, which
provide a counterpoint to the machine,19 without reducing matter to its ‘brute’
(inert) characteristics or geometrical forms.20 Leaking out into our surroundings,
free electrons travel through various kinds of electron transfer chains—both by
human design, and natural—facilitating their journey between living and even
non-living entities like rocks and metals. Collectively comprising a continuous,
sacred ‘Gaian’ entity, this unevenly distributed fow of electrons is the funda-
mental characteristic of a sacred, lively world.21,22
Introducing uncertain technologies

A twenty-frst-century understanding of microbes can actualise a sacred eco-
materialist perspective. Providing fresh insights into the nature of microorgan-
isms, biotechnological advances position microbes as a novel technical platform,
which, through its ‘living’ characteristics, can be regarded as an uncertain technol-
ogy. Both conceptual framework and means of working to develop an appropriate
toolset and value system, microbial actions are based on regenerative environ-
mental exchanges that simultaneously uphold classical and non-classical material
views of ‘life’.
Generous in their legacy, the world’s frst organisms were microbial ancestors
whose life-promoting metabolisms combined matter and technology to change
the chemical nature of a site. Signifcantly, through the novel metabolic power
of photosynthesis, ancient cyanobacteria turned the reducing atmosphere of
early earth that was saturated by greenhouse gases, into an oxygen rich one—
ultimately enabling the evolution of multicellular life.23 Even today, microbes
continue to render the world a livelier, more diverse place through their active
recycling and complexifcation of matter.
Converging the characteristics of vital (eco)materiality (their dynamic sub-
stance) and a natural technological platform (their cell components), today’s
microbes enjoy a synergistic and predominantly bioremediating relationship
with nature. It would also be naive not to acknowledge the opportunistic poten-
tial of less than 1% of microbes, which are destructive pathogens that must be
dealt with tactically and sternly.24 Establishing an ethics as the basis for sacred
ecomaterialist practices is therefore essential for fruitfully engaging microbes.
Contrasting starkly to modernity’s Reign of Hygiene,25 which sets itself in a con-
dition of war against microbes, a sacred approach towards the microbial realm
involves a better understanding of, and even care for, our microbes,26 estab-
lishing a transactional system for the exchange of our ‘waste’27 in return for
microbial ‘goods’. Such diplomacy can be achieved by constructing spaces that
set microbes apart from ordinary ‘waste’ processing called bioprocessors, whose
environmental design invites them to perform specifc functions. This synthesis
of both naturalistic ideas and designed, technical interventions is grounded on
32 Rachel Armstrong
a scientifc understanding of matter, where environmental programmability in

combination with molecular biological toolsets increases the participative range
for mutual engagement, while the technical environment enables ‘us’ to ‘speak’
with microbes on their own terms—i.e., chemically and electrically.
Aligning with the religious naturalism proposed by Baumann and White28 in
this volume that afrms the natural world as the centre of humans’ most signif-
cant experiences and understandings (see Baumann and White—this volume),
the following exploration of electron fow within microbial metabolisms as an
example of innovation via uncertain technologies aims to reconcile a non-reductive,
scientifc view of the material realm with an everyday practice of sacred ecoma-
terialism that is fundamentally life-promoting.
PART ONE
Life as a material paradox

From a material viewpoint, ‘life’ is paradoxical.
At the macroscale it appears essentially classical in its overall behaviour, but
at the molecular scale it also exhibits fundamentally quantum characteristics.29
Previously thought to be too hot, wet and noisy to make use of quantum weird-
ness, quantum phenomena play a non-trivial role in biology where: biomolecules
tunnel through energetic barriers to carry out incredible chemical transforma-
tions; photosynthesis captures and stores the energy carried from the sun by pho-
tons; and optically induced chemical reactions enable us to visualise the world.30
Both predictable and strange, ‘life’ is impossible to describe solely in classical
materialist terms and our attempts to do so have led to two main (and broad)
theses: the frst establishes a structural principle of ‘brute’ matter that is enlivened
by an animating force (this principle does not account for material change with
time); while the second is a material system in state of constant fow (which does
not account for the formation of structure).
Comprising the oldest systems of ‘life’, geochemically produced assemblages
comprising oxidation-reduction (redox) reactions freed themselves from the solid
structures of the rocks during the Hadean period. Becoming portable in solu-
tion (acid/base couplings) and in the air (e.g., ions/free electrons) these energy-
harnessing systems enabled the enlivened reactivity of the living realm. Resisting
reaching the ‘brute’ ground state of relative equilibrium, these electron transfer
chains were essential for the persistence of the earliest cells and became enfolded
within their internal milieu.
Forming attractions, tensions and repulsions, chemist Ben McFarland
describes the importance of these physical forces in chemical terms:
when molecules ft together, they only care about two things: shape and
charge. Shape is familiar—all atoms are spheres that can stack together like
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in Mr. Ashman’s presence, which led me to believe he would give me
permission to draw rations, and undoubtedly promised to afford me
every facility in his power. Subsequently he sent me a private pass to
the War Department to enable me to get through the crowd of
contractors and jobbers; but on going there to keep my appointment,
the Assistant-Secretary of War told me Mr. Stanton had been
summoned to a Cabinet Council by the President.
We had some conversation respecting the subject matter of my
application, which the Assistant-Secretary seemed to think would be
attended with many difficulties, in consequence of the number of
correspondents to the American papers who might demand the
same privileges, and he intimated to me that Mr. Stanton was little
disposed to encourage them in any way whatever. Now this is
undoubtedly honest on Mr. Stanton’s part, for he knows he might
render himself popular by granting what they ask; but he is
excessively vain, and aspires to be considered a rude, rough,
vigorous Oliver Cromwell sort of man, mistaking some of the
disagreeable attributes and the accidents of the external husk of the
Great Protector for the brain and head of a statesman and a soldier.
The American officers with whom I was intimate gave me to
understand that I could accompany them, in case I received
permission from the Government; but they were obviously unwilling
to encounter the abuse and calumny which would be heaped upon
their heads by American papers, unless they could show the
authorities did not disapprove of my presence in their camp. Several
invitations sent to me were accompanied by the phrase, “You will of
course get a written permission from the War Department, and then
there will be no difficulty.” On the evening of the private theatricals by
which Lord Lyons enlivened the ineffable dullness of Washington, I
saw Mr. Stanton at the Legation, and he conversed with me for some
time. I mentioned the difficulty connected with passes. He asked me
what I wanted. I said, “An order to go with the army to Manassas.” At
his request I procured a sheet of paper, and he wrote me a pass,
took a copy of it, which he put in his pocket, and then handed the
other to me. On looking at it, I perceived that it was a permission for
me to go to Manassas and back, and that all officers, soldiers, and
others, in the United States service, were to give me every
assistance and show me every courtesy; but the hasty return of the
army to Alexandria rendered it useless.
The Merrimac and Monitor encounter produced the profoundest
impression in Washington, and unusual strictness was observed
respecting passes to Fortress Monroe.
March 19th.—I applied at the Navy Department for a passage
down to Fortress Monroe, as it was expected the Merrimac was
coming out again, but I could not obtain leave to go in any of the
vessels. Captain Hardman showed me a curious sketch of what he
called the Turtle Thor, an iron-cased machine with a huge claw or
grapnel, with which to secure the enemy whilst a steam hammer or a
high iron fist, worked by the engine, cracks and smashes her iron
armour. “For,” says he, “the days of gunpowder are over.”
As soon as General M‘Clellan commenced his movement, he sent
a message to me by one of the French princes, that he would have
great pleasure in allowing me to accompany his head-quarters in the
field. I find the following, under the head of March 22nd:—
“Received a letter from General Marcy, chief of the staff, asking
me to call at his office. He told me General M‘Clellan directed him to
say he had no objection whatever to my accompanying the army,
‘but,’ continued General Marcy, ‘you know we are a sensitive people,
and that our press is exceedingly jealous. General M‘Clellan has
many enemies who seek to pull him down, and scruple at no means
of doing so. He and I would be glad to do anything in our power to
help you, if you come with us, but we must not expose ourselves
needlessly to attack. The army is to move to the York and James
Rivers at once.’”
All my arrangements were made that day with General Van Vliet,
the quartermaster-general of head-quarters. I was quite satisfied,
from Mr. Stanton’s promise and General Marcy’s conversation, that I
should have no further difficulty. Our party was made up, consisting
of Colonel Neville; Lieutenant-Colonel Fletcher, Scotch Fusilier
Guards; Mr. Lamy, and myself; and our passage was to be provided
in the quartermaster-general’s boat. On the 26th of March, I went to
Baltimore in company with Colonel Rowan, of the Royal Artillery,
who had come down for a few days to visit Washington, intending to
go on by the steamer to Fortress Monroe, as he was desirous of
seeing his friends on board the Rinaldo, and I wished to describe the
great flotilla assembled there and to see Captain Hewett once more.
On arriving at Baltimore, we learned it would be necessary to get a
special pass from General Dix, and on going to the General’s head-
quarters his aide-de-camp informed us that he had received special
instructions recently from the War Department to grant no passes to
Fortress Monroe, unless to officers and soldiers going on duty, or to
persons in the service of the United States. The aide-de-camp
advised me to telegraph to Mr. Stanton for permission, which I did,
but no answer was received, and Colonel Rowan and I returned to
Washington, thinking there would be a better chance of securing the
necessary order there.
Next day we went to the Department of War, and were shown into
Mr. Stanton’s room—his secretary informing us that he was engaged
in the next room with the President and other Ministers in a council
of war, but that he would no doubt receive a letter from me and send
me out a reply. I accordingly addressed a note to Mr. Stanton,
requesting he would be good enough to give an order to Colonel
Rowan, of the British army, and myself, to go by the mail boat from
Baltimore to Monroe. In a short time Mr. Stanton sent out a note in
the following words:—“Mr. Stanton informs Mr. Russell no passes to
Fortress Monroe can be given at present, unless to officers in the
United States service.” We tried the Navy Department, but no
vessels were going down, they said; and one of the officers
suggested that we should ask for passes to go down and visit H.M.S.
Rinaldo exclusively, which could not well be refused, he thought, to
British subjects, and promised to take charge of the letter for Mr.
Stanton and to telegraph the permission down to Baltimore. There
we returned by the afternoon train and waited, but neither reply nor
pass came for us.
Next day we were disappointed also, and an officer of the Rinaldo,
who had come up on duty from the ship, was refused permission to
take us down on his return. I regretted these obstructions principally
on Colonel Rowan’s account, because he would have no opportunity
of seeing the flotilla. He returned next day to New York, whilst I
completed my preparations for the expedition and went back to
Washington, where I received my pass, signed by General
M‘Clellan’s chief of the staff, authorising me to accompany the head-
quarters of the army under his command. So far as I know, Mr.
Stanton sent no reply to my last letter, and calling with General Van
Vliet at his house on his reception night, the door was opened by his
brother-in-law, who said, “The Secretary was attending a sick child
and could not see any person that evening,” so I never met Mr.
Stanton again.
Stories had long been current concerning his exceeding animosity
to General M‘Clellan, founded perhaps on his expressed want of
confidence in the General’s abilities, as much as on the dislike he felt
towards a man who persisted in disregarding his opinions on matters
connected with military operations. His infirmities of health and
tendency to cerebral excitement had been increased by the pressure
of business, by the novelty of power, and by the angry passions to
which individual antipathies and personal rancour give rise. No one
who ever saw Mr. Stanton would expect from him courtesy of
manner or delicacy of feeling; but his affectation of bluntness and
straightforwardness of purpose might have led one to suppose he
was honest and direct in purpose, as the qualities I have mentioned
are not always put forward by hypocrites to cloak finesse and sinister
action.
The rest of the story may be told in a few words. It was perfectly
well known in Washington that I was going with the army, and I
presume Mr. Stanton, if he had any curiosity about such a trifling
matter, must have heard it also. I am told he was informed of it at the
last moment, and then flew out into a coarse passion against
General M‘Clellan because he had dared to invite or to take anyone
without his permission. What did a Republican General want with
foreign princes on his staff, or with foreign newspaper
correspondents to puff him up abroad?
Judging from the stealthy, secret way in which Mr. Stanton struck
at General M‘Clellan the instant he had turned his back upon
Washington, and crippled him in the field by suddenly withdrawing
his best division without a word of notice, I am inclined to fear he
gratified whatever small passion dictated his course on this occasion
also, by waiting till he knew I was fairly on board the steamer with my
friends and baggage, just ready to move off, before he sent down a
despatch to Van Vliet and summoned him at once to the War Office.
When Van Vliet returned in a couple of hours, he made the
communication to me that Mr. Stanton had given him written orders
to prevent my passage, though even here he acted with all the
cunning and indirection of the village attorney, not with the
straightforwardness of Oliver Cromwell, whom it is laughable to
name in the same breath with his imitator. He did not write, “Mr.
Russell is not to go,” or “The Times correspondent is forbidden a
passage,” but he composed two orders, with all the official formula of
the War Office, drawn up by the Quartermaster-General of the army,
by the direction and order of the Secretary of War. No. 1 ordered
“that no person should be permitted to embark on board any vessel
in the United States service without an order from the War
Department.” No. 2 ordered “that Colonel Neville, Colonel Fletcher,
and Captain Lamy, of the British army, having been invited by
General M‘Clellan to accompany the expedition, were authorized to
embark on board the vessel.”
General Van Vliet assured me that he and General M‘Dowell had
urged every argument they could think of in my favour, particularly
the fact that I was the specially invited guest of General M‘Clellan,
and that I was actually provided with a pass by his order from the
chief of his staff.
With these orders before me, I had no alternative.
General M‘Clellan was far away. Mr. Stanton had waited again
until he was gone. General Marcy was away. I laid the statement of
what had occurred before the President, who at first gave me hopes,
from the wording of his letter, that he would overrule Mr. Stanton’s
order, but who next day informed me he could not take it upon
himself to do so.
It was plain I had now but one course left. My mission in the
United States was to describe military events and operations, or, in
defect of them, to deal with such subjects as might be interesting to
people at home. In the discharge of my duty, I had visited the South,
remaining there until the approach of actual operations and the
establishment of the blockade, which cut off all communication from
the Southern States except by routes which would deprive my
correspondence of any value, compelled me to return to the North,
where I could keep up regular communication with Europe. Soon
after my return, as unfortunately for myself as the United States, the
Federal troops were repulsed in an attempt to march upon
Richmond, and terminated a disorderly retreat by a disgraceful
panic. The whole incidents of what I saw were fairly stated by an
impartial witness, who, if anything, was inclined to favour a nation
endeavouring to suppress a rebellion, and who was by no means
impressed, as the results of his recent tour, with the admiration and
respect for the people of the Confederate States which their
enormous sacrifices, extraordinary gallantry, and almost unparalleled
devotion, have long since extorted from him in common with all the
world. The letter in which that account was given came back to
America after the first bitterness and humiliation of defeat had
passed away, and disappointment and alarm had been succeeded
by such a formidable outburst of popular resolve, that the North
forgot everything in the instant anticipations of a glorious and
triumphant revenge.
Every feeling of the American was hurt—above all, his vanity and
his pride, by the manner in which the account of the reverse had
been received in Europe; and men whom I scorned too deeply to
reply to, dexterously took occasion to direct on my head the full
storm of popular indignation. Not, indeed, that I had escaped before.
Ere a line from my pen reached America at all—ere my first letter
had crossed the Atlantic to England—the jealousy and hatred felt for
all things British—for press or principle, or representative of either—
had found expression in Northern journals; but that I was prepared
for. I knew well no foreigner had ever penned a line—least of all, no
Englishman—concerning the United States of North America, their
people, manners, and institutions, who had not been treated to the
abuse which is supposed by their journalists to mean criticism, no
matter what the justness or moderation of the views expressed, the
sincerity of purpose, and the truthfulness of the writer. In the South,
the press threatened me with tar and feathers, because I did not see
the beauties of their domestic institution, and wrote of it in my letters
to England exactly as I spoke of it to every one who conversed with
me on the subject when I was amongst them; and now the Northern
papers recommended expulsion, ducking, riding rails, and other
cognate modes of insuring a moral conviction of error; endeavoured
to intimidate me by threats of duels or personal castigations; gratified
their malignity by ludicrous stories of imaginary affronts or
annoyances to which I never was exposed; and sought to prevent
the authorities extending any protection towards me, and to
intimidate officers from showing me any civilities.
In pursuance of my firm resolution I allowed the slanders and
misrepresentations which poured from their facile sources for
months to pass by unheeded, and trusted to the calmer sense of the
people, and to the discrimination of those who thought over the
sentiments expressed in my letters, to do me justice.
I need not enlarge on the dangers to which I was exposed. Those
who are acquainted with America, and know the life of the great
cities, will best appreciate the position of a man who went forth daily
in the camps and streets holding his life in his hand. This expression
of egotism is all I shall ask indulgence for. Nothing could have
induced me to abandon my post or to recoil before my assailants;
but at last a power I could not resist struck me down. When to the
press and populace of the United States, the President and the
Government of Washington added their power, resistance would be
unwise and impracticable. In no camp could I have been received—
in no place useful. I went to America to witness and describe the
operations of the great army before Washington in the field, and
when I was forbidden by the proper authorities to do so, my mission
terminated at once.
On the evening of April 4th, as soon as I was in receipt of the
President’s last communication, I telegraphed to New York to engage
a passage by the steamer which left on the following Wednesday.
Next day was devoted to packing up and to taking leave of my
friends—English and American—whose kindnesses I shall
remember in my heart of hearts, and the following Monday I left
Washington, of which, after all, I shall retain many pleasant
memories and keep souvenirs green for ever. I arrived in New York
late on Tuesday evening, and next day I saw the shores receding
into a dim grey fog, and ere the night fell was tossing about once
more on the stormy Atlantic, with the head of our good ship pointing,
thank Heaven, towards Europe.
THE END.
BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

FOOTNOTES:
[1] Since died of wounds received in action.

[2] It may be stated here, that this expedition met with a
disastrous result. If I mistake not, the officer, and with him the
correspondent of a paper who accompanied him, were killed by
the cavalry whom he meant to surprise, and several of the
volunteers were also killed or wounded.
[3] Since killed in action.
[4] I have since met the person referred to, an Englishman living
in Washington, and well known at the Legation and elsewhere.
Mr. Dawson came to tell me that he had seen a letter in an
American journal, which was copied extensively all over the
Union, in which the writer stated he accompanied me on my
return to Fairfax Court-house, and that the incident I related in my
account of Bull Run did not occur, but that he was the individual
referred to, and could swear with his assistant that every word I
wrote was true. I did not need any such corroboration for the
satisfaction of any who know me; and I was quite well aware that
if one came from the dead to bear testimony in my favour before
the American journals and public, the evidence would not
countervail the slander of any characterless scribe who sought to
gain a moment’s notoriety by a flat contradiction of my narrative. I
may add, that Dawson begged of me not to bring him before the
public, “because I am now sutler to the ——th, over in Virginia,
and they would dismiss me.” “What! For certifying to the truth?”
“You know, sir, it might do me harm.” Whilst on this subject, let me
remark that some time afterwards I was in Mr. Brady’s
photographic studio in Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, when
the very intelligent and obliging manager introduced himself to
me, and said that he wished to have an opportunity of repeating
to me personally what he had frequently told persons in the place,
that he could bear the fullest testimony to the complete accuracy
of my account of the panic from Centreville down the road at the
time I left, and that he and his assistants, who were on the spot
trying to get away their photographic van and apparatus, could
certify that my description fell far short of the disgraceful
spectacle and of the excesses of the flight.
[5] P. 200, Spencer’s American edition, New York, 1858.
[6] Since killed in action.
[7] Since killed in action fighting for the South at Antietam.
[8] Since shot dead by the Federal General Jeff. C. Davis in a
quarrel at Nashville.
[9] Since killed in action in Pope’s retreat from the north of
Richmond.
NEW WORKS LATELY PUBLISHED OR IN THE
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THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL

SOCIETY IN 1862.
[In the Press.
MR. THACKERAY.
In One Vol., crown 8vo, price 7s., a New Edition, uniform with “Vanity Fair,” &c.,
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By W. M. THACKERAY.
Author of “Vanity Fair,” “Pendennis,” “The Newcomes,” “Esmond,” &c.
LANDSCAPE GARDENING.
ILLUSTRATED BY NUMEROUS PLANS, SECTIONS, AND SKETCHES OF GARDENS, &C.
In One Vol., demy 8vo, a New Edition, much enlarged and improved, of
HOW TO LAY OUT A GARDEN.

By EDWARD KEMP, of Birkenhead.
INTENDED AS A GUIDE IN CHOOSING, FORMING, OR IMPROVING AN
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(From a Quarter of an Acre to a Hundred Acres in Extent.)
[In the Press.
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In Two Vols., post 8vo., price 21s.,
THE DIARY OF AN
AUSTRIAN SECRETARY OF
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AT THE COURT OF MOSCOW IN THE REIGN OF CZAR PETER THE
GREAT.
TOGETHER WITH A NARRATIVE OF THE DANGEROUS REBELLION OF THE STRELITZ, ETC.
Translated by COUNT MACDONNEL.

[In the Press.
BRADBURY AND EVANS, 11, BOUVERIE STREET, E.C.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful
comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources.
Many words with hyphens, or without them, have been silently adjusted to be more
consistent. For example, instances of ‘head quarters’ have been made ‘head-quarters’;
‘bedroom’ has been changed to ‘bed-room’; ‘fire-arms’ has been changed to ‘firearms’.
For consistency, instances of A.M. or P.M. have been made lower case a.m. or p.m.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, and inconsistent or
archaic usage, have been retained.
Pg v: ‘“Tory”’ replaced by ‘“Troy”’.

Pg vi: ‘Battle seenes’ replaced by ‘Battle scenes’.
Pg vii: ‘camp—Generall’ replaced by ‘camp—General’.
Pg 18: ‘volunteeers. He served’ replaced by ‘volunteers. He served’.
Pg 39: ‘or be garotted’ replaced by ‘or be garroted’.
Pg 40: ‘developes itself’ replaced by ‘develops itself’.
Pg 47: ‘the but over’ replaced by ‘the butt over’.
Pg 48: ‘grimace, he exclamed’ replaced by ‘grimace, he exclaimed’.
Pg 53: ‘on a drisly day’ replaced by ‘on a drizzly day’.
Pg 65: ‘defective educacation’ replaced by ‘defective education’.
Pg 70: ‘West-point men’ replaced by ‘West Point men’.
Pg 71: ‘to the field picee’ replaced by ‘to the field piece’.
Pg 79: ‘Illonois railroad’ replaced by ‘Illinois railroad’.
Pg 85: ‘apropos’ replaced by ‘à propos’.
Pg 89: ‘the crusiers of either’ replaced by ‘the cruisers of either’.
Pg 104: ‘ornamental mocassins’ replaced by ‘ornamental moccasins’.
Pg 104: ‘command of McDowell’ replaced by ‘command of M‘Dowell’.
Pg 105: ‘indefinite strengh’ replaced by ‘indefinite strength’.
Pg 119: ‘drove up Pennyslvania’ replaced by ‘drove up Pennsylvania’.
Pg 120: ‘developes its power’ replaced by ‘develops its power’.
Pg 129: ‘the whileom editor’ replaced by ‘the whilom editor’.
Pg 141: ‘that n the South’ replaced by ‘that in the South’.
Pg 169: ‘vivacions prying’ replaced by ‘vivacious prying’.
Pg 177: ‘white gaiter—mdae’ replaced by ‘white gaiter—made’.
Pg 186: ‘started at 4·15’ replaced by ‘started at 4.15’.
Pg 190: ‘with turburlent and’ replaced by ‘with turbulent and’.
Pg 199: ‘stray aide-de-camps’ replaced by ‘stray aides-de-camp’.
Pg 200: ‘spiled with blood’ replaced by ‘spoiled with blood’.
Pg 210: ‘in eference to’ replaced by ‘in reference to’.
Pg 220: ‘to develope loyal’ replaced by ‘to develop loyal’.
Pg 222: ‘commssiariat carts’ replaced by ‘commissariat carts’.
Pg 225: ‘Notwitstanding all’ replaced by ‘Notwithstanding all’.
Pg 228: ‘from he men and’ replaced by ‘from the men and’.
Pg 231: ‘the throng inrceased’ replaced by ‘the throng increased’.
Pg 235: ‘down theere with’ replaced by ‘down there with’.
Pg 241: ‘whiskey and and tallow’ replaced by ‘whiskey and tallow’.
Pg 250: ‘General Patteson’ replaced by ‘General Patterson’.
Pg 253: ‘andot hers who’ replaced by ‘and others who’.
Pg 258: ‘hanging a Secesssionist’ replaced by ‘hanging a Secessionist’.
Pg 267: ‘House—Drunkeness’ replaced by ‘House—Drunkenness’.
Pg 277: ‘developes itself in’ replaced by ‘develops itself in’.
Pg 283: ‘be seat off’ replaced by ‘be sent off’.
Pg 283: ‘time to develope’ replaced by ‘time to develop’.
Pg 294: ‘This day month’ replaced by ‘This day a month ago’.
Pg 306: ‘has been meeted to’ replaced by ‘has been meted to’.
Pg 321: ‘Captain Foote, U.N.S.’ replaced by ‘Captain Foote, U.S.N.’.
Pg 377: ‘and resmbles its’ replaced by ‘and resembles its’.
Pg 382: ‘utterly villanous’ replaced by ‘utterly villainous’.
Pg 391: ‘egregrious share’ replaced by ‘egregious share’.
Pg 401: ‘with grizly bears’ replaced by ‘with grizzly bears’.
Pg 404: ‘his own responsibilty’ replaced by ‘his own responsibility’.
Pg 415: ‘plaee in honour’ replaced by ‘place in honour’.
Pg 421: ‘villanous deserter’ replaced by ‘villainous deserter’.
Pg 421: ‘cotillon party’ replaced by ‘cotillion party’.
Pg 440: ‘almost unparelleled’ replaced by ‘almost unparalleled’.
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Religion Materialism and Ecology 1st

Edition Sigurd Bergmann Editor Kate

After Science and Religion Fresh Perspectives from

International Practice Development in Health and Social

Handbook of Industrial Organization Volume 4 1st

Applied anatomy for the FRCA 1st Edition Abdul Syed

The New Politics of Materialism History Philosophy

Religion Regime Relations in Zimbabwe Co operation and

Epistemic Dilemmas New Arguments New Angles 1st Edition

Political Ecology and Environmentalism in Britain 1st

‘This timely publication provides the feld of environmental humanities

‘Important subject matter creatively handled. Solid contributions from

‘Religion, Materialism and Ecology provides an important contribution

This timely collection of essays by leading international scholars across

Towards an Ecocritical Theatre

Edited by Sigurd Bergmann, Kate Rigby

1 Developing a Critical Planetary Romanticism: Re-attuning

2 Architecting Zoë: On Haunting Homes and Sacred

3 Planetary Technics, Earthly Spirits 48

4 Panexperiential Materialism? On Latour, Whitehead and

5 Binding the Wounds of Mother Earth: Christian Animism,

6 Spirit Possession as Focal Point in the Constellation of

7 Autothanatography and Terminal Relationality in the Time

8 A Poetics of Nature: Religious Naturalism, Multiplicities

9 Queering Stories of Religious Materialism: Plural Practices

10 The Matter of Oil: Extraction Vitalisms and Enchantment 168

11 Fiction’s Double-Helix: Incarnate Process and the Capacity

Rachel Armstrong is ZAP Professor of Design-Driven Construction for Regenerative

Whitney A. Bauman is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Florida

Sigurd Bergmann is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the Norwegian

Nigel Clark teaches human geography at the Lancaster Environment Centre,

Catherine Keller is George T. Cobb Professor of Constructive Theology in the

Todd LeVasseur is a senior instructor in environmental and sustainability studies at

Yianna Liatsos is Lecturer in English in the School of English, Irish and

Alfonso Merlini is a storyteller based in the USA.

Kate Rigby is Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Environmental Humanities

Terra Schwerin Rowe is Associate Professor in the Philosophy and Religion

Peter Manley Scott is Samuel Ferguson Professor of Applied Theology and

Bronislaw Szerszynski is Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University, UK.

Carol Wayne White is Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Bucknell University,

series of ecologically oriented biblical commentaries in 2000.9 The omission of

non-humans18); disclosing other-than-human agency, interests and communi-

in the secular construction of nature as ‘resource’, that is, intended preferentially

status quo. This resacralisation of matter is positioned in relationship to reli-

Part 2 opens with ‘Spirit Possession as Focal Point in the Constellation of

be re-theorized so that enchantment, material animation and vitalism remains

https://brill.com/view/journals/wo/wo-overview.xml; and The Journal of Religion,

As Carol Wayne White’s opening quote suggests, life is an ongoing process of

The modern Western mindset

of ‘religion’ and understandings of ‘science’ were formed during the colonial

‘technologies’ I am examining here in relationship to the dominant modern

Re-attuning to the planet: religion as re-attunement

of globalisation and climate weirding are calling us to re-attune to the bodies

transformation. In particular, many people have expressed a sense of time that is

Critical Planetary Romanticism

the indigenous ‘pagan’ traditions stamped out by the spread of Christianity.26

What is sacred ecomaterialism?

and environment whereby the incorporation of these fundamental ingredients

Introducing uncertain technologies

a scientifc understanding of matter, where environmental programmability in

Life as a material paradox

BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

[1] Since died of wounds received in action.