Looking back at the things I’ve worked on since launching a podcast for the Religion, Race & Democracy Lab at UVA, a big theme that’s emerged is religion and climate change. Which makes a lot of sense, given that climate effects every part of our lives.
Currently working on at least one more episode that’s turning out to largely be about climate change, but here’s what we’ve released so far:
West Virginia has been shaped by resource extraction for hundreds of years. First came timber, then coal. These days, extraction companies are also driving water deep underground to bring up natural gas trapped deep in the rock —in a process known as hydraulic fracking.
These industries bring jobs — well paying, but often dangerous. They also bring environmental consequences, and hard choices for residents. When companies come asking to buy your mineral rights, do you take the money, or do you turn them down?
That’s the question the residents of New Vrindaban have had to answer. The commune is home to a group of Hare Krishna devotees who came to West Virginia starting in the 1970s, intending to start a self-sufficient farming community.
In 1872, an act of Congress transformed newly acquired territory in the American west into Yellowstone National Park. The act declared that the land was “hereby reserved and withdrawn from settlement, occupancy, or sale under the laws of the United States…and set aside as a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.”
And while it was our first national park, Yellowstone draws on much older thinking about sanctuaries. We often use the word sanctuary to talk about places like Yellowstone that have been protected from human development and industry. But it’s a word with deep religious roots. Traditionally, a sanctuary is a place that is set apart from daily human life and reserved for the divine.
Last winter, we traveled to Yellowstone to explore what happens when a religious idea like sanctuary is transformed into a secular and bureaucratic one. How has “setting aside” this land affected the people and animals who have historically lived within its borders? And can any man-made border keep out the effects of climate change?
Nestled in the tall pines of Northern Michigan, the Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies is a unique blend of Christian summer camp and biological field station. It’s an important institution in the world of evangelical environmentalism, or as the folks at Au Sable call it, “Creation Care.” But what students don’t always realize when they register for summer sessions there, however, is that all of this Creation Care is funded directly by oil royalties. In 1967, when a high school science teacher named Harold Snyder founded Au Sable Trails, a summer camp where elementary school boys would come to deepen their love for God and nature, he probably wouldn’t have predicted Au Sable’s future connection with oil either. But in 1975, amid an oil boom across the region, drillers hit perhaps the longest lasting and most productive oil well in Michigan right on Au Sable’s land. Produced by Ph.D candidate Kevin Rose.
