Today we wanted to highlight some of the events and activity related to the field of religion and ecology taking place in May. A full list of event listings can always be found on our Events section.
Faith + Food Dialogue Series
May 6 - June 3
A series of independent dialogues hosted by the Faith and Food Coalition. The coalition has been convened by the Center for Earth Ethics to contribute to the United Nations Food Systems Summit.
This event is free and open to the public. Register here.
May 7, 12:00pm EDT
Hosted by the Green Sabbath Project. With Dekila Chungyalpa, Director of the Loka Initiative, Center for Healthy Minds and Healthy Minds Innovations, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A Tricycle podcast interview with Dekila Chungyalpa can be found here, and the Forum Spotlights interview with her (episodes 30 & 31) can be found on our archive page or our YouTube channel.
This online event is free and open to the public. Register here.
Yearning for Home: The Cry of the Earth
May 8, 1pm EDT
Episode 2 in John Philip Newell’s Series “Spiritual Exile & Seeds of Promise”
From the event site:
In February 2021 John Philip offered a livestream presentation attended by hundreds of women and men throughout the world on the subject of spiritual exile and promise today. The response was so great that he is planning a series to explore, one at a time, the yearnings that have led countless numbers of people into an experience of exile from the religious tradition of their inheritance, whether in literally leaving church or in looking well beyond its bounds for vision and nourishment. Episode 2 will explore the longing for a spirituality that deeply reconnects us to the sacredness of the earth as home in the belief that paying faithful attention to our yearnings will lead to new beginnings.
There is a charge for this webinar. Find out more and register here.
Religion, Materialism, and Ecology Conference
May 14-15, 2021
Online conference
Hosted by the European Forum for the Study of Religion and the Environment, Lincoln Theological Institute, and the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence
From the event site:
Because of changes brought about by, among other things, a warming climate, there has been a revival in materialism. At issue are a range of issues, including hierarchy, the nature of relationality, the relation between nature and society, human and other agencies, and ‘world picture’. The conference will aim to explore some of these new developments, including how materialist issues impinge upon religious traditions and the extent to which religions are already materialist and so have a creative contribution to make to debates about ecological materialisms.
This online event is free and open to the public. Find out more and register here.
May 16-24
Hosted by the Global Catholic Climate Movement
From the event site:
Laudato Si’ Week 2021, to be held May 16-25, will be the crowning event of the Special Laudato Si’ Anniversary Year, and a celebration of the great progress the whole Church has made on its journey to ecological conversion. Laudato Si’ Week 2021 will also be a time to reflect on what the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us and prepare for the future with hope.
Find out more here.
Ecological Civilization and Organic Communitarianism
May 21-26, 5:00-8:00pm PDT.
14th International Forum on Ecological Civilization
3rd International Youth Forum on Ecological Civilization
Six days of international dialogue on the most important challenges we face: rethinking governance, economies, food, education, communities, and more.
The Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology is a co-sponsor of this event.
Find out more about this online event here.
InterAsia Water(s) Graduate Student Conference
May 28-29, 2021
Virtual conference hosted by the Yale InterAsia Initiative
Fron the event site:
Waters, flowing, falling or contained as rain, river, tides and wells, have long shaped connections and disconnections across Asia. As they continue to make and remake lives in a world of climate change and economic development, the ‘InterAsia Water(s) Graduate Conference’ at Yale University brings together qualitative and humanistic approaches to the study of water in Asia. Drawing on, but going beyond, policy-oriented debates on water scarcity and security, this conference aims to bring together rich emerging scholarship on water and waterscapes from different perspectives: biophysical, cultural, historical, and political. We begin with the premise that water is a critical natural resource that sustains and animates life. But we also attend to the myriad ways in which water mediates, reveals, and nurtures social processes such as mobility and immobility, cultural relationships and meanings, as well as political contestations and negotiations. The conference will draw attention to how past and present waters are created and experienced — and future waters imagined and constructed — in and across Asian and interAsian regions. We move from the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea towards the estuarine creeks and inlets of the Bay of Bengal and intertidal ecologies of the Gulf of Kutch, into the tank-based irrigated fields of Tamil Nadu and the wide floodplains of the Mekong, the Nile and the Ganga, the narrow straits of the Bab el-Mandeb and the Bocca Tigris, the glaciers of the Himalayas and the Pamirs, the drained remnants of the Aral Sea, the piped systems of Yokohama and Mumbai, and other watery spaces. We invite scholars and practitioners from around the world working across disciplines such as anthropology, art history, environmental studies, geography, history, law, linguistics, literature, philosophy, science and technology studies, sociology, and urban studies. Therefore, the conference will be a pluralistic interdisciplinary platform to examine and appreciate Asian waters in their various forms from a range of angles.
Find out more and register for this online event here.