Ecological religious education: new possibilities for educational practice

The crises evident in today’s ecological context require the attention and action of Christian communities, including within the work of religious education. This essay describes a set of practices for religious education that integrate ecology as a constituent dimension of Christian formation and discipleship, organized around three key educational domains which holistically attend to students’ heads, hearts and hands. Narratives derived from Christian traditions, as well as scientifically-based stories about the natural world, can serve as vehicles of religious and ecological knowledge that can also inform students’ own lives and stories. Affectivity, or an embodied and “felt” type of knowing, is another important foundation for forming the whole person in relationship with nature. Finally, ethical education, with a particular focus on the virtues, links students’ character development with their actions towards the natural world. Altogether, this paper argues that by incorporating practices from these three areas into religious education, teachers can have an important and effective role in promoting students’ right relationships with the natural world.