Church, Cosmovision and the Environment ─ Religion and Social Conflict in Contemporary Latin America

Though currently only partially understood, evolving interactions among Latin American communities of faith, governments, and civil societies are a key feature of the popular mobilizations and policy debates about environmental issues in the region. This edited collection describes and analyses multiple types of religious engagement with environmental concerns and conflicts seen in modern Latin American democracies.

This volume contributes to scholarship on the intersections of religion with environmental conflict in a number of ways. Firstly, it provides comparative analysis of the manner in which diverse religious actors are currently participating in transnational, national, and local advocacy in places such as, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Mexico. It also considers the diversity of an often plural religious engagement with advocacy, including Catholic, Evangelical and Pentecostal perspectives alongside the effects of indigenous cosmological ideas. Finally, this book explores the specific religious sources of seemingly unlikely new alliances and novel articulations of rights, social justice, and ethics for the environmental concerns of Latin America.

The relationship between religion and environmental issues is an increasingly important topic in the conversations around ecology and climate change. This book is, therefore, a pertinent and topical work for any academic working in Religious Studies, Environmental Studies, and Latin American Studies.

Evan Berry is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion and also Co-Director of the Ethics, Peace, and Global Affairs master’s program at American University, USA. His current research combines ethnographic research with philosophical reflection to examine the intersections among religion, globalization, civil society groups, and climate change, and seeks to advance knowledge about the role of religious actors as part of contemporary environmental contestations. His book, Devoted to Nature (2015), explores the religious underpinnings of the American environmental movement. Berry has been a Carnegie Council Global Ethics Fellow and is currently a Franklin Fellow at the US Department of State.

Robert Albro is Research Associate Professor in the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at the American University, USA. He has conducted ethnographic research and published widely on popular and indigenous politics along Bolivia’s urban periphery. Much of this work is summarized in his book, Roosters at Midnight (2010). He has been a Fulbright scholar, and held fellowships at the Carnegie Council, the Kluge Center of the Library of Congress, and the Smithsonian Institution.