Sacralisations of nature beyond church-based religion in modern western societies

Abstract

In environmental ethics and landscape research, sacralisations of nature have commonly been considered in the context of so-called nature religions or ethnic religions of traditional societies. However, an analysis of the cultural history of the perception of nature indicates that sacralisations of nature–contrary to classical theories of modernisation and secularisation–have remained widespread and influential in modern Western societies too. Some of these sacralisations represent (new) forms of church-based or church-oriented religion or religiosity, while others lie beyond it. I confine here myself to the latter, not to denigrate the relevance of the former but to highlight that sacralisations of nature are common even among people who are non-church-going and regard themselves as non-religious and that sacralisations thereby constitute essential non-instrumental, non-material appreciations and valuations of nature in modern Western societies. By way of examples, I reconstruct eight such types of sacralisations of nature beyond church-based religion.