Introducing Religion and Nature
What are the relationships between human beings,
their diverse religions, and the Earth’s living
systems?
The question animating this encyclopedia can be simply
put. The answers to it, however, are difficult and complex,
intertwined with and complicated by a host of cultural,
environmental, and religious variables. This encyclopedia
represents an effort to explore this question in a way that
illuminates these relationships without oversimplifying
the dynamic relations between human beings, their
religions, and the natural environment.
This introduction and the “readers guide” that follows it
provide a map to this terrain. The introduction explains
the questions that gave rise to this project, describes the
approach taken and rationale for editorial judgments
made along the way, spotlights some of the volume’s
most important entries, and speculates about the future of
nature-related religion as well as the increasingly interdisciplinary
scholarly field that has emerged to track it.
The “Readers Guide,” located after this introduction,
should not be missed, for it describes the different types of
entries included in the encyclopedia and explains how to
use it.