Faith in Place: Greening Chicago Religious Communities

This dissertation offers an ethnographic account of the production and practice of religious environmentalism in the 21st century United States. Based on a case study of "Faith in Place," a Chicago-based interfaith environmental nonprofit that has partnered with more than nine hundred congregations in Illinois, this study offers insight into the dynamics of interfaith involvement in environmental activism.;Present-day religious environmental practitioners tend to conceive of earth stewardship as a universal ethic to be found in every religion. However, this dissertation shows how religious environmental ideology has been actively produced through entanglements among religious leaders, environmental activists, and scholars. While religious environmental practitioners generally understand stewardship ethics to be neutral and relevant to people of all faiths, I argue that contemporary religious environmental ideology is shaped by modern ideas about religion, especially those specific to liberal Protestantism.;By analyzing the dynamics of interfaith environmental organizing in the specific context of Faith in Place, I demonstrate ways that religious environmentalism has taken shape through intricate webs of meaning and relations. Although religious environmental practitioners may try to project "pure" motivations for their involvement in environmentalism (suggesting that they practice earth stewardship solely out of concern for the future of the planet), this dissertation uncovers varied and complex motivations that brought participants to religious environmental practice. Moreover, it demonstrates ways religious environmentalism at Faith in Place relied upon particular constructions of the city and the people who inhabit it, and interfaith ideologies made possible certain kinds of engagements while curtailing others.