Teaching against the “False Religion” of the Market: Toward Explicitly Anticapitalist Teaching and Research in Religion and the Environment

Abstract

David Loy’s 1997 essay, “The Religion of the Market,” should be a foundational text for all who study and teach the intersection of religion and the environment. In contrast to the more field-defining essay by Lynn White, Loy focuses on the structural and economic roots of environmental degradation and calls for scholars and practitioners to actively oppose the global capitalist systems causing the problem. When brought into conversation with other anticapitalist scholarship, Loy’s essay offers ways to characterize existing debates about economics within our field, and can be used to argue against hegemonic capitalocentrism to set the stage for other kinds of resistance in our teaching and scholarship.

Keywords

• religion and environment
• anticapitalism
• capitalocentrism
• David Loy