Sacred & Profane

We started our series with an exploration of how religious doctrine and belief became deeply entwined with both colonialism and the petroleum industry. We followed the stories of contemporary Americans whose religious beliefs -- and beliefs about climate -- shape their determination to stop pipelines and restore local ecosystems. But what about our future? We spoke with the Rev. Mariama White-Hammond about climate justice, and her hopes for a new vision where care for our neighbors and care for the environment go hand in hand.

There is a very long relationship between the Anishinaabe people and manoomin (sometimes known as 'wild rice' in English). The tribe received a prophecy to travel west from the Atlantic Coast to the Great Lakes region-- they would know they had arrived in the right place when they found food that grows on the water. Manoomin is both a culinary staple and a spiritual and cultural one. In December of 2018, the White Earth Nation passed a resolution declaring, “Manoomin, or wild rice, within the White Earth Reservation possesses inherent rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, and evolve, as well as inherent rights to restoration, recovery, and preservation.” Within the White Earth Nation, at least, wild rice has those rights.

We spoke with Joseph LaGarde, the executive director of the Niibi Center, a member of the White Earth Nation and a long-time community activist about the threats facing manoomin. Joe was joined by Amy Myszko, program manager for the Niibi Center, and scholar Michael McNally to explore both the rising threats to manoomin, and efforts to preserve the food that grows on the water for generations to come.

We'll be back with more episodes from our season on climate in the coming weeks. Until then, we're returning to our archive for an episode we recorded back in 2021 that feels especially relevant.

Each year, Americans celebrate the Fourth of July with fireworks, parades, and barbecues. Celebrating July Fourth is part of what some scholars identify as America’s civil religion. And like any religion, civil religion is built in part upon foundational myths and symbols that Americans, regardless of their religious faith, believe in and rally behind.

Those symbols include documents like the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. There are many Americans who view these two documents as sacred texts, both in a figurative and literal sense.

We're joined by our colleague Lisa Woolfork, who teaches a version of the Declaration of Independence that tackles the tension between the document as sacred text, and the reality of the government that grew out of it.

In 2014, Virginia’s Dominion Energy announced it would be building a new pipeline intended to carry fracked methane from West Virginia to a storage facility in North Carolina. The planned route brought the pipeline right through Virginia’s rural Buckingham County, with a compressor station proposed near a historic Black church and cemetery in the small community of Union Hill.

Despite Dominion’s assurances that the pipeline and compressor station would be safe, a group of locals grew concerned — and began to fight back. Opposition to the pipeline forged a new group called Friends of Buckingham, built on the backbone of two very different local faith communities: Union Grove Missionary Baptist Church, a Black congregation with roots stretching back to Reconstruction, and the Satchidananda Ashram, an interfaith yoga community founded by the Swami Satchidananda Saraswati in 1986. Although they have fundamental doctrinal differences, the communities were united in their conviction that the pipeline would bring environmental harm to their county, and therefore must be stopped.

This episode was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Special thanks to Erin Burke, Rebecca Bultman, and Devin Zuckerman for their help on this episode. This piece was reported for us by Molly Born, a journalist and producer who’s reported extensively on the legacy of fossil fuels in Appalachia. She previously reported a piece for the show on a Hare Krishna community in West Virginia wrestling with their decision to allow fracking on their land.

Millions of Americans are traveling hundreds of miles for a chance to witness 2024’s total solar eclipse. As many eyes turn towards this rare event, we’re turning our attention to another wonder, one we sometimes take for granted: the night sky. Humans have a relationship with the moon and stars stretching back for millennia. Observing the night sky has given us practical things, like calendars and ways to navigate; but it has also given us a sense of awe and wonder. We’re joined once more by our colleague Kelsey Johnson to talk about how the night sky links us to the wider universe, and how pollution coming from both land and space is threatening that ancient link.

This episode was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Special thanks to Erin Burke, Rebecca Bultman, and Devin Zuckerman for their help on this episode.

As the climate crisis on Earth worsens, some Americans — including the world’s richest man, Elon Musk — have begun to think about a plan (and planet) B. They dream of escaping an increasing polluted Earth in favor of creating an advanced society on our nearest neighbor, Mars.

To investigate the roots of our fascination with Mars, we headed to Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona with our colleague Kelsey Johnson. Lowell has been the site of all sorts of important discoveries about our universe, but it was originally built by another very wealthy American to observe Mars and the advanced civilization he believed could thrive there. These observations kicked off many, many imagined versions of the Red Planet and the possible futures humans might have there.

And our hosts speak with author Mary-Jane Rubenstein about how religious ideas still color the way we see the universe and Mars itself. Humans may leave Earth in numbers some day, but whatever happens, we won’t be leaving religion behind us.

This episode was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Special thanks to Erin Burke, Rebecca Bultman, and Devin Zuckerman for their help on this episode.

In 2021, the Biden administration laid out a goal of conserving 30% of the United States’ land and seas by 2030. That number comes from a UN agreement that urges member countries to protect at least a third of their land and seas from human development in order to promote biodiversity and fight climate change.

But historically, environmental conservation in the United States was less about preserving ecosystems and biodiversity and more about creating a relationship between humans and nature — setting aside “untrammeled” or pristine places where Americans living in cities could have a profound spiritual experience. It’s an idea of nature as somehow separate from humanity that draws deeply on Protestant Christian theology. What does it mean to view nature as something apart from humans, that must be protected from them to be preserved? To find out more, we called Evan Berry, author of Devoted to Nature: The Religious Roots of American Environmentalism.

Special thanks to Rebecca Bultman, Erin Burke, and Devin Zuckerman for their help on this episode. This episode was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Brigham Young lead his followers west in 1846, fleeing religious persecution. Young was looking for a place that his fellow Americans would consider too inhospitable to follow -- a place that would transform believers into a new people, where they could "blossom as the rose."

But it was also clear as much as the desert would transform the church, the church would have to transform the desert. Only hours after scouts arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, they built a dam and irrigated a field of potatoes. And as church settlements spread across the Great Basin, green fields and lawns followed -- practices that were also eagerly embraced by non-L.D.S settlers who followed.

Their success in making the desert bloom has come at a cost. As demands on water grow and climate change makes weather more erratic, the Great Salt Lake is retreating, exposing toxic salts and threatening the reliable snowfall that still provides much of the region's water.

We are joined by guests Kathleen Flake and Matt Lindon to discuss the growing water crisis in the Salt Lake Valley -- as well as the role that the Church of Latter Day Saints has to play in efforts to let the Great Salt Lake thrive in a warmer, drier West.

Energy vortexes and the climate crisis collide in Sedona, Arizona, where New Age practitioners are drawn to a stunning but swiftly changing landscape. We spoke with scholar Susannah Crockford about her own time spent in Sedona, and the tension between a movement that may love the landscape but prioritizes individual healing over collective action. And our hosts headed to Sedona to experience first hand how New Age practices acknowledge a rapidly changing landscape.

On this season of Sacred & Profane, we explore how religions have shaped the climate crisis -- and how they offer ways to imagine a different future. This episode was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

On this season of Sacred & Profane, we explore how religions have shaped the climate crisis -- and how they offer ways to imagine a different future.

In the United States, Christianity and oil have been entangled since the industry's beginning. Our guest Darren Dochuk says Pennsylvania's oil fields gave rise to "two gospels of crude;" competing versions of Christianity that would have a profound effect on politics in the U.S. and around the world. But both versions viewed the prosperity oil brought as a blessing, and downplayed the negative impacts on local communities and the climate at large. Will the beliefs that see America's abundant hydrocarbons as a sign of divine favor survive as younger white evangelicals embrace a different standard of creation care in an era of climate change?

This episode was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.