New encyclopedia, journal, and society on religion and nature

The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature was published this month of July
2005 by Continuum Press. Bron Taylor ( U Florida) is Editor-in-Chief.

It consists of 1,877 pages in two volumes, with some 1,000 entries and 800 authors.
Among the authors are J. Baird Callicott, Jane Goodall, Ursula Goodenough,
Stephen R. Kellert, James Lovelock, Bill McKibben, Arne Naess, and Max
Oelschlaeger. Authors who are anthropologists include Kelly D. Alley, Kaj Arhem,
William Balee, Richatd O. Clemmer, Susan M. Darlington, Stephen D. Glazier, Ann
Grodzins Gold, Edvard Hviding, George A. James, Arne Kalland, Shepard Krech III,
Victor Montejo, Laura Rival, and Eric B. Ross. Three UH alumni contributed
entries, Morgan Brent and Tom Splain from Anthropology, and Safia Aggarwal from
Geography. UH faculty member Davianna Pomaika’i McGregor wrote on Hawai`i.

Although I served as one of the Associate Editors and contributed 11 articles,
it is fair and accurate for me to assert that this is a monumental reference
work and historical benchmark that will considerably advance the scientific and
academic study of the relationships between religions and nature, the exciting
and flourishing new field that is sometimes called spiritual ecology.*

The ERN also provides the foundation for two other important new initiatives in
this field, the development of the international Society for the Study of
Religion, Nature, and Culture with an inaugural meeting planned for next May,
and the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture with the first
issue scheduled for 2007. For more information and subsequent updates see the
ERN web site:

http://www.religionandnature.com

(Some ERN entries are available on the above web site).

Finally, also of interest and promise is the development of graduate student training and research programs in this new field at U Florida in Religion and UC Santa Barbara in Geography as well as at U Hawai`i in Anthropology, among other universities. For information on the latter see the entries under Ecological Anthropology Program on this homepage.:

http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/Sponsel/

For summaries of other programs see Religion and Nature News on the ERN web
site.

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*My articles are:

Amazonia 1:37-40
Anthropologists 1:94-96
Anthropology as a Source of Nature Religion 1:96-98
Biodiversity 1:179-182
Caves- Sacred (Thailand) 1:276-277
Ecological Anthropology 1:544-548
Noble Savage and "Ecologically Noble" Savage 2:1210-1212
Southeast Asia 2:1582-1585
Trees - Sacred 2:1661-1663
Yanomami 2:1778-1779