Numerous interlocking ecological crises, including mass extinction of species, climate change, desertification, and poverty, mark the 21st century as a time of unprecedented change and challenge. This ecological devastation calls forth scientific, economic, and policy responses. Yet such standard responses often appear inadequate to the scope of the crisis.
Many leading thinkers have come to understand that the ecological crisis represents a crisis of human consciousness, and requires fundamental revisioning of cultural values. The pace of global change calls for an understanding of the process by which humanity came to this crossroads in planetary history. It also calls for more enlightened ways of thinking and being in the world. The world's religious and spiritual traditions offer deep insight into the human condition, along with profound teachings about how humans should relate to one another and to Earthly life. Questions about the role and meaning of the human have illuminated religious quests for millennia; these same questions inspire the contemporary search for ecological sustainability. The concentration in Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion at CIIS is designed to help students to address these and related questions with rigor, insight, and efficacy.
Taking inspiration from such visionaries as geologian Thomas Berry; His Holiness the Dalai Lama; systems theorist Joanna Macy; Nobel Laureate and Green Belt Movement founder Wangari Maathai; World Resources Institute founder Gus Speth; Forum on Religion and Ecology founders Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim; and many other leading thinkers, the Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion concentration invites students into an emerging discussion in which they will generate new knowledge, contributing to a growing field of academic inquiry and activism.
Through the Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion concentration in the Philosophy and Religion department at CIIS, master's and doctoral students explore the role of worldviews, philosophies, and religion in understanding and responding to interconnected global ecological crises. They gain facility with ecological principles and practices. They develop the knowledge and wisdom to respond to the ecological devastation from healing integral and transdisciplinary perspectives. Students acquire skills and insight to transform practices, worldviews, and consciousness in service of a more just, sustainable, and flourishing future.
The program's uniquely integrated curriculum explores such questions as:
- What is the role of religion, spirituality, and culture in the ecological crises of our time?
- What ecological insights does the world's religious heritage offer?
- How can exploring worldviews help to understand and address ecological trauma?
Located in the Philosophy and Religion department, the program in Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion has several distinctive attributes.
Philosophy: While philosophical inquiry into the nature of being - metaphysics - is out of vogue in many philosophy departments, such inquiry is essential to analyzing and understanding the appropriate human role with regard to the rest of the cosmos. Metaphysical inquiry, which allows philosophy to take a broader approach to the meaning and nature of existence, is alive and well in the CIIS department of Philosophy and Religion.
Religion: Philosophical reflection focuses on questions of meaning and purpose - the questions that the world's religions strive to address. Religions also require the critical reflections of philosophy. Located in a department in which philosophical and religious reflection occur in tandem and inform one another, the Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion program creates a unique atmosphere for deep critical reflection relevant to ecological concerns.
Cosmology: Courses offered within the department of Philosophy and Religion employ cosmological understanding to place human creativity within the history of the 13.7 billion year old expanding cosmos. Such courses provide an important context for understanding the interconnections of human and cosmological history. The cosmological perspective places environmental challenges into their larger context in time and space, allowing access to new analytical tools for the genealogical understanding of environmental problems and a new, broader context for ethical and moral inquiry.
Imagination: The faculty of the Philosophy and Religion department stress the role of human imagination in interpreting texts and phenomena. World literature, art, music, meditation, and philosophical Romanticism are used to open up new avenues of perception. Imagination - the ability to see beyond what currently exists - is urgently needed for reshaping the human relationship with the Earth.
Spirituality: Spirituality is woven throughout the academic programs at CIIS, and is essential to understanding Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion together. The spiritual commitments of both modern environmental activists and indigenous peoples deserve additional reflection in the context of the environmental crisis. As a nonsectarian and pluralistic institution, CIIS provides the ideal context in which to engage in further reflection on the connections between spirituality and ecology.
Activism: Students in the Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion program are encouraged to apply their intellectual discoveries and commitments in the larger community, to put their knowledge into action. Master's students participate in a three-unit, 100-hour practicum, in which they provide service to an organization working to repair the relationships between human and the natural world. Through these fieldwork experiences, students gain practical, hands-on experience, as well as professional connections, which will help them to devise productive opportunities following graduation.