Conclusion

The conclusion reiterates the book’s main argument, that that environmental innovations in American religions have developed for reasons that expand far beyond direct expressions of religious teachings and faith. Then it discusses implications of these findings for the study of religion and ecology and religious studies more broadly.

Paths Leading to Faith in Place

Chapter 3 considers some of the varied paths that led individuals and groups to work with Faith in Place. While the women and men I encountered during my fieldwork generally supported the organization’s values and messages, additional factors also contributed to their religious environmental involvement. This chapter examines the diverse set of motivations participants brought to their work with Faith in Place, including factors related to religion, racial and ethnic identity, civic identity, and economic opportunity.

Religious Environmentalism in the City

Chapter 2 discusses Faith in Place’s daily activities in the context of the green cities movement. Through its work in Chicago and the surrounding areas, Faith in Place helped shape distinctively urban religious worlds. It reconceived the city as a salvific landscape with redeeming qualities for the environment and for the soul, but it could not entirely overcome the legacy of romantic urges toward wilderness. Over the years its leaders invoked a particular vision of the city and the need for green behaviors within it, and their work aimed to realize that vision, with all its tensions and inconsistencies.

People, Not Polar Bears

Chapter 1 describes Faith in Place’s origins and development within the context of the American environmental movement and with attention to strategic decisions its leaders made to help their organization survive and ultimately flourish. Although Faith in Place originated with priorities, activities, and participants that were quite similar to numerous other environmental groups, Faith in Place’s first ten years involved a series of strategic decisions in which leaders developed measures to differentiate their work from mainstream environmentalism. Strategic decision-making led to a coalition distinct for its racial diversity.

Faith in Place’s Religious Message

Chapter 6 examines the liberal Protestant theological underpinnings of Faith in Place’s work and the limitations to its universalistic discourse. While presenting earth stewardship as an ethic within all religions, Faith in Place leaders actually placed stewardship above all religions, demanding that religions bend and adapt to the earth’s needs. After examining Faith in Place’s theology, the chapter discusses conflicts that emerged through encounters with people who were not liberal Protestants in order to demonstrate the limitations of the interfaith organization’s claims to universality.

From Grassroots to Mainstream

Chapter 7 examines Faith in Place’s shifting identity as it developed from a tiny nonprofit with one paid staff member into a bustling downtown organization with two satellite offices and a staff of seventeen. While initially aligning its work with grassroots environmental causes related to working-class struggles in the inner-city, Faith in Place gradually shifted its image and message as it successfully attracted minority involvement and transitioned to an established and professionalized nonprofit.

Introduction

This chapter advances the book’s central argument: the spread of religious environmentalism in the United States has relied not simply on the “ecological dimensions” of scriptures, theology, and religious traditions, but also on latent assumptions about race, ethnicity, and class. It also introduces the work of Faith in Place in the context of other religious environmental movements in the United States, and discusses how the book contributes to conversations in American religion, religion and ecology, and lived religion.

Finding Racial Diversity with Religious Pluralism

Chapter 5 examines Faith in Place’s use of language around religious, racial, and ethnic diversity. It demonstrates that Faith in Place’s use of “interfaith” discourse helped the organization build a racially and ethnically diverse coalition, while at the same time limiting the kinds of people willing to associate with the Faith in Place. By using the discourse of “interfaith,” Faith in Place tapped into a resonant trope in American life – the valuing of religious diversity and religious differences – to talk about a subject with a much more difficult set of associations: race.

Food and Environment at an African American Church

Chapter 4 focuses on a Faith in Place bible study on food and faith held at an African American church. This bible study was one of Veronica Kyle’s first sustained recruitment efforts and through the group she developed her approach for attracting other African Americans to Faith in Place. Rather than conforming to the norms of religious environmental ideology that developed through the work of white scholars and activists, this chapter demonstrates, Kyle helped the women cultivate an awareness of and language about the environment through a distinctive focus on the history and current circumstances of African Americans.