Portland Public Library

Inherit the holy mountain, religion and the rise of American environmentalism, Mark R. Stoll

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

illustrationsplates

index present

non fiction

Inherit the holy mountain

bibliography

892895236

Mark R. Stoll

religion and the rise of American environmentalism

In Inherit the Holy Mountain, historian Mark R. Stoll introduces us to the religious roots of the American environmental movement. Religion, he shows, provided environmentalists both with deeply-embedded moral and cultural ways of viewing the world and with content, direction, and tone for the causes they espoused. Stoll discovers that specific denominational origins corresponded with characteristic sets of ideas about nature and the environment as well as distinctive aesthetic reactions to nature, as revealed by key works of art analyzed throughout the book. As this innovative exploration of environmentalism's history shows, people raised in a handful of denominations made the movement a moral and political force. Stoll also provides insight into the possible future of environmentalism in the United States, concluding with an examination of the current religious scene and what it portends for the future. By debunking the supposed divide between religion and American environmentalism, Inherit the Holy Mountain opens up a fundamentally new narrative in environmental studies. -- from dust jacket

Calvinism and nature : environmentalism's foundations -- Origins of conservation in the Puritan landscape -- Building the moral society : farms, forests, and parks -- Nature, parks, and emersonian modernism -- Progressive Presbyterian conservation -- Presbyterians and the environmental movement -- Nature and New England's outsiders -- A new era