I grew up in New Mexico and Washington State, and a love of the outdoors has been with me ever since. My bachelor’s degree in Religion is from Colorado College, and both my master’s and doctoral degrees in Religious Studies are from the University of California Santa Barbara. I am currently Associate Professor and the Graduate Programs Director in American University’s Department of Philosophy and Religion.
My research examines the relationship between religion and the environment, with special attention to the ways that religion is brought to bear on political contestations about climate change and sustainability. With respect to the mounting ecological pressures facing societies around the planet, religion is a fundamentally ambivalent category of analysis. By mapping the uneven, unsystematic, and extraordinarily diverse range of religious responses to climate change and other global environmental challenges, my research seeks to better understand the ways that religious ideas, practices, and authority are constructed and enacted in response to evolving historical conditions.
My first book, Devoted to Nature: The Religious Roots of American Environmentalism (University of California Press, 2015), traces the influence of Christianity on the environmental movement in the United States. I argue that the particular character of environmental politics in American history is shaped by specific ideas about the position of human beings in the natural order, that these ideas are derived from Christian theological anthropology, and that thinking against and outside these ideas raises provocative questions about environmental ethics.
Over the past several years, my work has focused on religion and global climate change. In collaboration with American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies, I am the primary investigator of a Henry Luce Foundation funded project on “Religion and Climate Change in Cross-Regional Perspective.” This multi-year initiative advances research about religion and climate change in subtropical mountain regions, small island developing states, and rapidly urbanizing parts of the Global South. As part of an effort to make this knowledge available to broader audiences, I recently spent a year in residency at the State Department’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs, where I was the American Academy of Religion’s inaugural Religion and International Relations Fellow. I also serve on the American Academy of Religion’s Committee for the Public Understanding of Religion and am the President Elect of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture.
I am currently working on a book project about the relationship between fossil fuel production and religious lifeways. My curriculum vitae is available here.