INTRODUCTION

Do terms such as “sustainability” or “religion” lose some of their usefulness if their boundaries are conceived as broad, permeable, and imprecise? No, and on the contrary, their analytic utility expands if defined broadly because deployments of such terms shed light on why a particular set of beliefs, values, or behaviors matters to particular persons. I am specifically interested here in how religion functions in the context of sustainability.

Sustainability is a strategy of cultural adaptation to the dynamic interplay between ecological and social systems that is often tethered to broad-scale narratives that elucidate how to make such survival strategies meaningful. Thus, the deployment of sustainability can be a socio-political identity marker since it refers to what it is those who use the term believe is required to live meaningfully over the long term. Spirituality, broadly defined, has been a crucial ingredient in the feedback loops between cultures and their environments historically, and there is some evidence (although debatable) that its inclusion in ecosystem management planning is important for long-term success. Rather than excluding religion from the policy formulation process, it may be more productive to channel its affective power into a more robust reflective phase of policy deliberation. To understand how exercising religious concepts in the public sphere can act as a sort of social therapy, it is necessary to clarify what is meant by the term religion.