Scenery

We are in the throes of environmental 'crisis should come as no surprise to anyone who reads or listens to the news. Species extinction, air and water pollution, and global climate change are but a few of the issues covered regularly in the media. With few exceptions, most experts agree that human' activity has played at least some role in the creation of our environmental problems.

Typically, there are nearly' as many proposed solutions to these problems as there are people pointing them out. Some maintain that science and technology provide the' best hope for dealing with issues like pollution and energy shortages (Ray 1990). Others have called for - a philosophical and cultural restructuring that lends more value to' the natural world, (Devall & Sessions 1985, Gore 1992). Still others have invoked religion as the source of their connection to the Earth.

Ultimately, I suspect, a combination of all of these approaches will be necessary, but for the purposes of this article, I wish to explore the relevance of religion in general, and Neopaganism in particular, to the resolution of our environmental crises. Religion, though lately unfashionable in some intellectual circles, has always fundamentally shaped human action, with respect to both other humans, and to the natural world. "What people do about their ecology depends on what they think about themselves in relation to things around them. Human ecology is deeply conditioned by beliefs about our nature and destiny- that is, by religion" (White 1967.) Humans could not have created our current ecological problems without the collusion of religion, nor will we solve them without it.