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다문화와 교육(Journal of Multiculture and Education), Vol.5 no.2 (2020)
pp.105~122

DOI : 10.31041/JME.2020.5.2.105

The Contribution of Religion to a More Comprehensive Environmental Education

Jennchyun Mark Shieh

(Tajen University, Taiwan)

The causes of contemporary environmental and ecological crisis are multiple and complex. This crisis cannot be resolved by science or technology alone. We need not only knowledge, economic, and technology, but also worldviews, ethos, and practices to reconnect humans, other species, and nature. A sustainable ecology relies on ideals and ways of life which include value, belief, worldview, ethical commitment, and pattern of life. The Enlightenment tradition prioritizes human sovereignty over non-human world and invokes individualism, materialism, and consumerism, which objectify, materialize, and instrumentalize the non-human world; detach human being from transcendental constraint on human desire; and seduce human being into short-term self-interested pursuit. They are the main determinants of modern way of living and the major causes of contemporary environmental and ecological crisis. Religious worldviews define the status of human in the world and the human-nature relation. Religious ethos can be biocentric and ecocentric ethics rather than self-centered ethics or materialistic worldview. Furthermore religion grounds its ethics on transcendental or sacred base and incorporates its ethical norms in the practice of everyday life, communal living, and even every spheres of human activities. Nevertheless, there are diverse religions and various models of environmental education. There are difference, even disputes, between science and religion in some aspects. In a situation of diversity there needs to be an open and inclusive public sphere and procedure of engaged mutual understanding for reaching a consensus or temporary mutual agreement concerning environmental education.

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