Chris Sanders
Bron Taylor, “Earth
First!’s Religious Radicalism,” in Ecological Prospects: Scientific,
Religious, and Aesthetic Perspectives, Christopher Key Chapple, ed., State
University of New York Press: Albany, 1994. pp. 185-209 at http://www.religionandnature.com/bron/arts/Taylor--EarthFirstReligiousRadicalism.pdf
and Karen Pickett, "Gimme that Ol' Time (Earth First!)
Religion..." at http://www.earthfirstjournal.org/articles.php?a=881
- Do you agree with Taylor’s characterization of what religion is? (He
advocated on 185 that it was cosmogony, cosmology, moral anthropology, and
eschatology)
- Does religion full fill some societal role as an institution, and do you
think that same role is full filled by Earth First!?
- What parts of Pickett’s article point to differences between Wilders and
Holies?
- For Earth First!ers it seems that environmentalism is more primary then
religion, is this true? (Is their spirituality able to be separated from
their environmentalism?)
- Are traditional religions (the big 5), Hinduism, Buddhism, and the three
Abrahamic faiths fundamentally at odds with biocentrism and by extension
Earth First!?
- One characterization of religion decrees that something is only a religion
once it has produced its first couple of generations of believers who were
born into and died in the faith. Do you think Earth First! Will ever fit
this description?