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

Thomas Kirchhoff

Landscape Research, 2024, vol. 49, issue 1, 19-32

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.

Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1080/01426397.2023.2238619

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