http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/gateway/plugin/WebFeedGatewayPlugin/atomJournal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture2024-01-20T18:28:45+00:00Amanda Nicholsamnichols@ucsb.eduOpen Journal Systems<p><em>The Journal of Religion, Nature and Culture, </em>which has been published quarterly since 2007<em>,</em> explores through the social and natural sciences the complex relationships among human beings, their diverse 'religions' (broadly and diversely defined) and the earth's living systems, while providing a venue for analysis and debate over what constitutes an ethically appropriate relationship between our own species and the environments we inhabit. <a href="https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/about">Read more.</a></p>http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/28090On Mother Earth2024-03-14T11:31:51+00:00Bron Taylor
<p>Introduction to a special issue</p>
2024-03-13T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2024 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/27462‘Mother Earth’ is an Ancient Meme in the Global North2024-03-14T11:37:59+00:00Joseph A P Wilson
<p>In this response to Sam Gill, I contend that European colonizers were not the first to combine and synthesize the goddesses of Eurasia and North America. I suggest that Athabaskan-speaking Native Americans share one identifiable Mother Earth concept with Yeniseian linguistic cousins in post-neolithic Siberia. Further, I regard this concept as congenitally related to a particular Mother Earth deity common to late ancient north Europe, via the multiethnic cultural continuum of the grassland steppe corridor connecting ancient central Europe to Siberia.</p>
2024-03-13T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2024 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/27454Comments on Responses to ‘What is Mother Earth?’2024-03-14T11:44:35+00:00Sam Gill
<p>Sam Gill responds to his interlocutors concerning the concept of Mother Earth and its employment in indigenous studies and beyond. </p>
2024-03-13T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2024 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/27451Jon Mathieu, Mount Sacred. A Brief Global History of Holy Mountains Since 15002024-03-07T14:31:00+00:00Edwin Bernbaum
<p>Jon Mathieu, Mount Sacred. A Brief Global History of Holy Mountains Since 1500 (Winwick, UK: The White Horse Press, 2023), 170 pp., £30.00 (pbk), ISBN: 978-1-9121867-71-6.</p>
2024-03-07T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2024 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/27302Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Alexa Weik von Mossner, W. P. Malecki, and Frank Hakemulder (eds.), Empirical Ecocriticism: Environmental Narratives for Social Change2024-03-07T14:31:00+00:00Inas S Abolfotoh
<p>Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Alexa Weik von Mossner, W. P. Malecki, and Frank Hakemulder (eds.), Empirical Ecocriticism: Environmental Narratives for Social Change (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2023), 368 pp., $30 (pbk), ISBN: 9781517915353.</p>
2024-03-07T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2024 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/27193Cherice Bock and Christy Randazzo, Quakers, Ecology, and the Light, Series: Brill Research Perspectives in Quaker Studies2024-03-07T14:31:00+00:00Sarah Werner
<p>Cherice Bock and Christy Randazzo, Quakers, Ecology, and the Light, Series: Brill Research Perspectives in Quaker Studies (Boston: Brill, 2023), 96pp., $84 (pbk), ISBN: 9789004535916.</p>
2024-03-07T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2024 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/27241Marjorie Swann, Environment, Society, and The Compleat Angler2024-03-07T14:31:01+00:00Kenneth H. Lokensgard
<p>Marjorie Swann, Environment, Society, and The Compleat Angler (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2023), 270 pp., $124.95 (cloth), ISBN: 978-0-271-09519-6.</p>
2024-03-07T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2024 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/27090Brianne Donaldson and Ana Bajželj, Insistent Life: Principles for Bioethics in the Jain Tradition2024-03-07T14:46:12+00:00Christopher Chapple
<p>Brianne Donaldson and Ana Bajželj, Insistent Life: Principles for Bioethics in the Jain Tradition (Oakland: University of California Press, 2021), 294 pp., $34.99 (pbk), ISBN: 9780520380561.</p>
2024-03-07T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2024 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/27018Joel E. Correia, Disrupting the Patrón: Indigenous Land Rights and the Fight for Environmental Justice in Paraguay’s Chaco2024-03-07T14:31:01+00:00Dana Lloyd
<p>Joel E. Correia, Disrupting the Patrón: Indigenous Land Rights and the Fight for Environmental Justice in Paraguay’s Chaco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2023), 236 pp., 34. (pbk), ISBN: 978052039103.</p>
2024-03-07T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2024 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/26877Ursula Goodenough, The Sacred Depths of Nature: How Life Has Emerged and Evolved2024-03-12T14:07:40+00:00Mark CE Peterson
<p>Ursula Goodenough, The Sacred Depths of Nature: How Life Has Emerged and Evolved (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, 2023), 288pp., $29.95 (hardcover), ISBN: 9780197662069.</p>
2024-03-07T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2024 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/26874Evan Berry (ed.) Climate Politics and the Power of Religion2023-12-21T11:39:27+00:00F Garrett Boudinot
<p>Evan Berry (ed.) <em>Climate Politics and the Power of Religion</em> (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2022), 289pp., $40 (pbk), ISBN: 9780253059062.</p>
2023-12-21T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/23681Todd LeVasseur, Climate Change, Religion, and Our Bodily Future2023-12-21T11:37:29+00:00Matthew R Hartman
<p>Todd LeVasseur, <em>Climate Change, Religion, and Our Bodily Future</em> (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2021), xxxii + 181 pp., $95.00 (cloth), ISBN: 9781498534550.</p>
2023-08-09T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/23753Neall W. Pogue, The Nature of the Religious Right: The Struggle Between Conservative Evangelicals and the Environmental Movement2023-12-21T11:37:29+00:00Ryan Juskus
<p>Neall W. Pogue, <em>The Nature of the Religious Right: The Struggle Between Conservative Evangelicals and the Environmental Movement</em> (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022), 264 pp., $42.95 (hbk), ISBN: 9781501762000.</p>
2023-08-09T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/23909Edwin Bernbaum, Sacred Mountains of the World2023-12-21T11:37:28+00:00Fausto O Sarmiento
<p>Edwin Bernbaum,<em> Sacred Mountains of the World</em> (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed, 2022), 411 pp., $29.99 (pbk), ISBN:9781108-8334742.</p>
2023-08-09T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/23911Bejamin Grant Purzycki and Richard Sosis, Religion Evolving: Cultural, Cognitive, and Ecological Dynamics2023-12-21T11:37:29+00:00Jed Forman
<p>Bejamin Grant Purzycki and Richard Sosis,<em> Religion Evolving: Cultural, Cognitive, and Ecological Dynamics</em> (Sheffield, UK: Equinox, 2022), xviii + 247 pp., £75 (pbk), ISBN: 9781800500525.</p>
2023-08-09T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/20036A New God for a New Paganism2023-08-08T22:48:04+00:00Ethan Doyle White
<p>Modern Pagan religions are past-oriented, seeking inspiration and legitimation from the pre-Christian religions that once existed in and around Europe. This has led modern Pagan groups to adopt various ideas about pre-Christian religions and their survival that stem from late nineteenth and early twentieth-century scholarship – including the notion of the Green Man. The belief that the foliate heads of medieval ecclesiastical architecture demonstrated evidence for a pre-Christian religion surviving into the High and Late Middle Ages, as articulated in its most complete form by Lady Raglan in 1939, appealed to early Wiccans such as Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente, who interpreted these heads as depictions of the Wiccan Horned God. By the 1990s, the Green Man had become a<br />recurring image in the modern Pagan milieu who was increasingly incorporated into ritual, while the 2000s witnessed the growth of modern Pagan literature devoted to this new sylvan god.</p>
2023-07-13T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/23944The Foliate Head in Medieval Norway2023-08-08T22:46:31+00:00Kjartan Hauglid
<p>The foliate head is a common motif in the architectural decoration of Norwegian stave churches. It is commonly used in doorways, where beast’s heads are disgorging foliage or are spewing stems with vine. The artistic style of wooden church decoration in Norway from the eleventh and twelfth centuries clearly shows inspiration from Viking art. This legacy has led to the belief that Christianity inherited the foliate head from a heathen past. This understanding is mainly due to a need for more convincing explanations for this motif. However, it is also due to the high status of trees in Old Norse society, especially Yggdrasill, the great tree that in Norse mythology constituted the center of the world. The article traces the sources for the motif in Norwegian architectural sculpture and the notion of the Green Man in the scholarly tradition in Norway. The Green Man was absent in Viking art, and the motif first appeared<br />in Scandinavia in Romanesque architectural stone sculpture in the early twelfth century.</p>
2023-07-13T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/24138The Green Man2023-08-08T22:45:44+00:00Ronald Hutton
<p>The Green Man, a figure usually taken as representing the vivifying and fertilising power of the natural world, and especially of vegetation, has become one of the icons of modern ecology and environmental spirituality. He is often represented visually by a foliate head, gushing leaves from mouth and nose, of the kind found carved in medieval churches, and associated also with the foliate Jack-in-the-Green character in May Day festivities and with dying and returning fertility gods in ancient mythologies. This essay is intended to chart the development of the figure, which gains much of its emotive and creative power from being a twentieth-century construction, drawing on a range of disparate older images. It provides an important case study of the relationship between professional and independent scholarship in the creation of modern ideas, and the manner in which new and powerful iconic motifs can be evolved within modern spirituality.</p>
2023-07-13T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/25765In Search of Green Men2023-08-09T06:31:58+00:00Mercia MacDermott
<p>In Explore Green Men (Heart of Albion Press, 2008) the British scholar Mercia MacDermott provided one of the most important and serious works on foliate-human iconography, which has become widely known in common parlance as the Green Man. She graciously agreed to let us reprint the chapter ‘Triple Hares and the Green Men: The Indian Connection’ along with a significantly shortened version of her introductory chapter, ‘In Search of Green Men’. Her introduction provides an important background for understanding Green Man research. The reprinted chapter suggests that Green Man iconography originated in India and subsequently journeyed to Europe with the Vikings. Because two of the articles in this issue of the JSRNC focus on such iconography in Norway, MacDermott’s proposal provides an essential baseline for exploring whether the Green Man was originally a cultural export that journeyed to Europe on a Viking ship. MacDermott’s niece, Dr. Gwen Adshead, assisted us with the editing of the article republished here; she can be contacted at Gwen.Adshead@westlondon.nhs.uk.</p>
2023-07-13T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/25977Searching for the Green Man2023-08-09T06:31:29+00:00Karen V LykkeBron Taylor
<p>.</p>
2023-07-13T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/20463‘We’ll All Dance each Springtime with Jack-in-the-Green’2023-08-08T22:47:17+00:00Amy WhiteheadAndy Letcher
<p>The Green Man is a familiar image in British popular culture who is celebrated in a variety of ways, not least in an ever-growing number of festive processions in towns, villages, and cities, particularly around Beltane (May Day). Combining two scholarly voices, this article offers a survey of the Green Man image and related ritual phenomena in what we refer to as the ‘Green Man complex’. Here we address the Green Man’s role in what could be the mobilization of responses to the current ecological crisis, as well as his relationship to growing trends in dark green religion. Last, we turn our attention to the theoretical innovations that current Green Man phenomena invites: more than ‘symbolic’ or ‘representational’, the Green Man is a source for contemporary Pagan ritual religious creativity that is being used in animistic, embodied, territorializing, and reciprocal fashions to direct human attention toward the other-than-human vegetable kingdom.</p>
2023-07-14T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/24300The Foliate Mask in Vernacular Material Culture from Medieval to Modern Norway2023-08-08T22:45:42+00:00Karen V LykkeAne Ohrvik
<p>In this article, we explore the contexts and appearances of what we argue is a Norwegian version of the Green Man – the Glibb – in vernacular settings. We also discuss the figure’s possible meanings in Norwegian secular culture. Most of the objects are part of the digital artifact collection called DigitaltMuseum (Digital Museum), which is a common database for Norwegian and Swedish museums and collections. Our collection and analysis of this material provides an initial step toward documenting the figure’s appearances and uses beyond the ecclesial material culture; however, it does not represent an exhaustive list of sources. We investigate the appearance of this particular ‘Green Man’ figure, discussing its material form and iconographical features and analysing its placement and occurrence. We argue that the Glibb’s ambiguous and flexible imagery is also a flexible symbol. Over the centuries, such symbols can enter into new constellations and interpretations of meaning with is new generation that continues to use their material forms.</p>
2023-07-17T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/24447Joshua S. Duclos, Wilderness, Morality, and Value2023-12-21T11:37:30+00:00Kevin J O'Brien
<p>Joshua S. Duclos, Wilderness, Morality, and Value (New York: Lexington Books, 2022), 141 pp. $95.00 (cloth), ISBN: 9781666901368.</p>
2023-08-01T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/24905Sam Gill, The Proper Study of Religion: Building on Jonathan Z. Smith2023-12-21T11:37:29+00:00Jacob Barrett2023-08-01T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/24921Matthew Hall, The Imagination of Plants: A Book of Botanical Mythology2023-12-21T11:37:30+00:00Gavin Van Horn
<p>Matthew Hall, The Imagination of Plants: A Book of Botanical Mythology (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2019), 298 pp., $33.95 (pbk), ISBN: 9781438474380.</p>
2023-08-01T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/25173Siv Ellen Kraft, Indigenous Religion(s) in Sápmi: Reclaiming Sacred Grounds2023-12-21T11:37:28+00:00Olle Sundström
<p>Siv Ellen Kraft, Indigenous Religion(s) in Sápmi: Reclaiming Sacred Grounds (New York: Routledge, 2022), 203 pp., $120 (hbk) ISBN: 9871032019239.</p>
2023-08-01T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/26781Richard J. Bernstein, The Vicissitudes of Nature: From Spinoza to Freud2023-12-21T11:39:27+00:00Zoe Anthony
<p>Richard J. Bernstein, <em>The Vicissitudes of Nature: From Spinoza to Freud</em> (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2023), 278 pp., $26.95 (pbk), ISBN: 9781509555208.</p>
2023-12-21T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/26757Introduction to the Special Issue on Contemporary Pagan Ecospiritualities2023-10-19T16:06:37+00:00Helen A BergerCaroline Tully
<p>.</p>
2023-10-19T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/26747Bénédicte Meillon, Ecopoetics of Reenchantment: Liminal Realism and Poetic Echoes of the Earth2024-01-15T10:07:02+00:00Bron Taylor
<p>Bénédicte Meillon,<em> Ecopoetics of Reenchantment: Liminal Realism and Poetic Echoes of the Earth </em>(Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2023), 386pp., $125 (hbk), ISBN: 9781666910421.</p>
2023-12-21T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/22491Book Review of Courtney Catherine Barajas's Old English Ecotheology: The Exeter Book2023-12-21T11:37:31+00:00Donna Beth Ellard2023-07-11T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.