About Faiths in Green
“In Faiths in Green, Lukas Szrot explores deeper implications of environmental-change-as-metamorphosis. His explorations of human morality in the emergence of environmental awareness are as wickedly insightful as the problems are wickedly complex. He moves the how and when of human religious behaviors like chess pieces illuminating the game of religious environmentalism. Read this at the risk of encountering a lucid vision of human-Earth relations.”
—JOHN GRIM, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and Yale Divinity School
“In this compelling analysis of how environmental change and religious change are intertwined, Szrot presents quantitative data with a humane touch, describing the shifting patterns of relation between religious identity and environmental concern in the United States. With the specter of climate change looming ever larger, and with social precarities exacerbated by the pandemic, fresh perspectives on these issues are as important as ever.”
—EVAN BERRY, president-elect of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture (ISSRNC)
Szrot uses data from the General Social Survey to measure changes in support for environmental stewardship and conservation across age cohorts of the religiously affiliated US population since the 1970s. He applies the concepts of habitus and reflexivity to explain the interplay of religion with environmental concern, pointing to individual socialization and institutional adaptation as influencing factors and taking into account the potential impact of political party loyalty as well as race, class, and gender. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.
— Choice Reviews
Lukas Szrot’s book provides an interesting take on the influence religion has on environmental concerns and how it spurs change within U.S. politics. This book contributes to the growing literature on environmental studies, politics, and religion and could be useful for those teaching and studying the intersections of conservation, environmentalism, religion, and stewardship.
— Symbolic Interaction
Faiths in Green addresses the complex and fraught relationship between religious identity and environmental concern in the United States, particularly how that relationship has changed over time. Examining the effects of religious upbringing, belonging, and disaffiliation on environmental concern across multiple religious groups over several decades, Lukas Szrot shows where, when, how, and why religious groups and their memberships have responded constructively to environmental change. Szrot also visits the effects of gender, social class, race, and politics on both religion and environmental concern in the United States. Faiths in Green is an in-depth and accessible guide to the at-times incongruous relationship between religious beliefs and motivations, as well as the ways in which cultural shifts both drive and are driven by religious persons and institutions. In examining how religion and culture are linked to environmental concern over time, Faiths in Green demonstrates the importance of morality and worldviews in confronting global hazards of unprecedented scale.