Sacred & Profane

In 2014, Virginia’s Dominion Energy announced it would be building a new pipeline intended to carry fracked methane from West Virginia to a storage facility in North Carolina. The planned route brought the pipeline right through Virginia’s rural Buckingham County, with a compressor station proposed near a historic Black church and cemetery in the small community of Union Hill.Despite Dominion’s assurances that the pipeline and compressor station would be safe, a group of locals grew concerned — and began to fight back. Opposition to the pipeline forged a new group called Friends of Buckingham, built on the backbone of two very different local faith communities: Union Grove Missionary Baptist Church, a Black congregation with roots stretching back to Reconstruction, and the Satchidananda Ashram, an interfaith yoga community founded by the Swami Satchidananda Saraswati in 1986. Although they have fundamental doctrinal differences, the communities were united in their conviction that the pipeline would bring environmental harm to their county, and therefore must be stopped. This episode was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Special thanks to Erin Burke, Rebecca Bultman, and Devin Zuckerman for their help on this episode. This piece was reported for us by Molly Born, a journalist and producer who’s reported extensively on the legacy of fossil fuels in Appalachia. She previously reported a piece for the show on a Hare Krishna community in West Virginia wrestling with their decision to allow fracking on their land.

Millions of Americans are traveling hundreds of miles for a chance to witness 2024’s total solar eclipse. As many eyes turn towards this rare event, we’re turning our attention to another wonder, one we sometimes take for granted: the night sky. Humans have a relationship with the moon and stars stretching back for millennia. Observing the night sky has given us practical things, like calendars and ways to navigate; but they also give us a sense of awe and wonder that can't be replicated. We’re joined once more by our colleague Kelsey Johnson to talk about how the night sky links us to the wider universe, and how pollution coming from land and space is threatening that ancient link.

As the climate crisis on Earth worsens, some Americans — including the world’s richest man, Elon Musk — have begun to think about a plan (and planet) B. They dream of escaping an increasing polluted Earth in favor of creating an advanced society on our nearest neighbor, Mars. To investigate the roots of our fascination with Mars, we headed to Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona with our colleague Kelsey Johnson. Lowell has been the site of all sorts of important discoveries about our universe, but it was originally built by another very wealthy American to observe Mars and the advanced civilization he believed could thrive there. These observations kicked off many, many imagined versions of the Red Planet and the possible futures humans might have there. And our hosts speak with author Mary-Jane Rubenstein about how religious ideas still color the way we see the universe and Mars itself. Humans may leave Earth in numbers some day, but whatever happens, we won’t be leaving religion behind us.

In 2021, the Biden administration laid out a goal of conserving 30% of the United States’ land and seas by 2030. That number comes from a UN agreement that urges member countries to protect at least a third of their land and marine environments from human development in order to promote biodiversity and fight climate change. But historically, environmental conservation in the United States was less about preserving ecosystems and biodiversity and more about creating a relationship between humans and nature — setting aside “untrammeled” or pristine places where Americans living in cities could have a profound spiritual experience. It’s an idea of nature as somehow separate from humanity that draws deeply on Protestant Christian theology. What does it mean to view nature as something apart from humans, that must be protected from them to be preserved? To find out more, we called Evan Berry, author of Devoted to Nature: The Religious Roots of American Environmentalism. Special thanks to Rebecca Bultman, Erin Burke, and Devin Zuckerman for their help on this episode. This episode was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities

Brigham Young lead his followers west in 1846, fleeing religious persecution. Young was looking for a place that his fellow Americans would consider too inhospitable to follow -- a place that would transform believers into a new people, where they could "blossom as the rose." But it was also clear as much as the desert would transform the church, the church would have to transform the desert. Only hours after scouts arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, they built a dam  and irrigated a field of potatoes. And as church settlements spread across the Great Basin, green fields and lawns followed -- practices that were also eagerly embraced by non-L.D.S settlers who followed. Their success in making the desert bloom has come at a cost. As demands on water grow and climate change makes weather more erratic, the Great Salt Lake is retreating, exposing toxic salts and threatening the reliable snowfall that still provides much of the region's water. We are joined by guests Kathleen Flake and Matt Lindon to discuss the growing water crisis in the Salt Lake Valley -- as well as the role that the Church of Latter Day Saints has to play in efforts to let the Great Salt Lake thrive in a warmer, drier West.

Energy vortexes and the climate crisis collide in Sedona, Arizona, where New Age practitioners are drawn to a stunning but swiftly changing landscape. We spoke with scholar Susannah Crockford about her own time spent in Sedona, and the tension between a movement that may love the landscape but prioritizes individual healing over collective action. And our hosts headed to Sedona to experience first hand how New Age practices acknowledge a rapidly changing landscape. On this season of Sacred & Profane, we explore how religions have shaped the climate crisis -- and how they offer ways to imagine a different future. This episode was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

On this season of Sacred & Profane, we explore how religions have shaped the climate crisis -- and how they offer ways to imagine a different future. In the United States, Christianity and oil have been entangled since the industry's beginning. Our guest Darren Dochuk says Pennsylvania's oil fields gave rise to "two gospels of crude;" competing versions of Christianity that would have a profound effect on politics in the U.S. and around the world. But both versions viewed the prosperity oil brought as a blessing, and downplayed the negative impacts on local communities and the climate at large. Will the beliefs that see America's abundant hydrocarbons as a sign of divine favor survive as younger white evangelicals embrace a different standard of creation care in an era of climate change?

On this season of Sacred & Profane, we explore how religions have shaped the climate crisis -- and how they offer ways to imagine a different future. Scholars and climate activists increasingly point to European colonization of the Americas as a kind of tipping point in not only human history, but climate history as well. Colonialism created a legal and cultural framework that prioritized private ownership of land and resources, giving rise to extractive industries that have weakened and destroyed ecosystems across the world. We're joined by Philip Arnold and Sandy Bigtree of the Skä•noñh Great Law of Peace Center. They have a podcast of their own, Mapping the Doctrine of Discovery, which explores the impact of a series of proclamations by Catholic popes that have become the basis for land ownership in countries across the world -- including right here in the United States.

Bhutan is a small country in the Himalayas with a long Buddhist tradition, and a more recent reputation for embracing careful development and cultural preservation. Many of the visitors who are willing to pay the $200 a day tourist visa to come to Bhutan are drawn to a beautiful landscape that's seen as largely untouched by the problems facing more industrialized nations.But of course, no country is a Shangri-La. We spoke with people across Bhutan about the real choices and challenges that come with efforts to balance tradition, development, and environmental preservation. And we look at one valley in particular that is trying to balance the needs of local farmers, monasteries, international tourism, and the endangered black-necked crane.

Over the last few years, Americans have removed statues from public spaces at what might be a record clip. In 2022, we spoke with art historian Erin Thompson and our colleague Jalane Schmidt about why these demands by average Americans to control their public space are a departure from much of American history. But they're not without precedent -- and they're definitely not so unusual considering humanity's very long history of destroying statues of kings, gods, and other public figures who have fallen from grace.

If you had to guess one of the best-selling poets in America, a long-dead Sufi mystic named Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi might not be at the top of your list. And yet, his poetry has found a wide audience in the U.S. -- centuries after his death, and thousands of miles from his home. You can find Rumi quotes everywhere, from Pinterest boards to Brad Pitt's underarm. But are these inspirational snippets of poetry missing a key element of Rumi's work? Our hosts speak with translator Muhammad Ali Mojaradi on what's absent from the most popular English interpretation of Rumi's verse - and why the internet still cares about a poet who died nearly 800 years ago.

Here in the States, it's become an annual tradition for conservative commentators to bemoan the "war on Christmas." That's the idea that Christmas is being pushed out in favor of non-Christian holidays or more secular winter celebrations. But as our fellow Jue Liang tells us, in China, the government is actually cracking down on Christmas and many other holidays as the ruling party looks to the calendar as a way to promote Han Chinese identity.

The Confederate monuments around Charlottesville’s county courthouse have all been removed, and a new kind of public memory is emerging in Charlottesville’s Court Square. The streets around the courthouse were the site of hundreds of slave auctions over Charlottesville’s history. The descendants of the people who were bought and sold in the square are at the center of a movement to bring their stories to the forefront — in essence, to create a new civil religion. Our colleague Jalane Schmidt and descendant Myra Anderson met in Court Square to discuss how the memory of the humans bought and sold in the square is changing both Court Square itself and how Charlottesville understands the past.

We're living in an era where robots are increasingly common in our factories and our homes. So maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that robots are also finding a place in religious spaces, too. Professor Holly Walters joins us to discuss how robots are finding a home in some Buddhist and Hindu temples. Some see temple robots as a simple continuation of religious technology like prayer wheels or church bells, but they also raise radical questions about what it means to be religious at all.

Each year, Americans celebrate the Fourth of July with fireworks, parades, and barbecues. Celebrating July Fourth is part of what some scholars identify as America’s civil religion. And like any religion, civil religion is built in part upon foundational myths and symbols that Americans, regardless of their religious faith, believe in and rally behind. Those symbols include documents like the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. There are many Americans who view those two documents as sacred texts, both in a figurative and literal sense. We're joined by our colleague, Lisa Woolfork, who teaches a version of the Declaration of Independence that tackles the tension between those documents as sacred texts, and the reality of the government they created.

The media often cover the Satanic Temple as an elaborate prank, pulled off by a group of dedicated trolls trying to rile conservative Christians. But despite those public perceptions, in 2019 the IRS recognized the Satanic Temple as a tax exempt religious organization. And even though many do not see them as a "real" religious movement, Satanists play an important role in American religious and political life, showing us how ideas about religion, pluralism, and the separation of church and state are changing in the U.S.

Renowned Biblical scholar Dr. Renita Weems joins us to discuss how the translation of one particular word can profoundly change the meaning of a well-loved book of the Hebrew Bible — and what translation choices can reveal about race and gender in the modern world, as well as the ancient one.

Today on the show, we dive into one the best-selling books in the early United States: a massive compendium of world religions. It's a work that's incomplete, and sometimes incorrect, but also one that shows how the first generation of Americans were exploring ideas about faith, tolerance, and religious pluralism. And almost as interesting as the book itself is its author, a woman who lived and died in greater Boston, but never stopped thinking of a much larger world.

We'll be returning with a third season soon. But we couldn't ignore the biggest story about religion in 2021 - the pro-Trump mob that stormed the US Capitol hoping to overturn a democratic election. Journalist and author Sarah Posner joins us and charts decades of racist, anti-government rhetoric and conspiracy theories from the religious right to explain how white evangelical Christians came to be a key part of the violent mob at the U.S. Capitol earlier this year.

There are hundreds of Confederate memorials across the U.S. With our colleague Jalane Schmidt, we explore an often overlooked part of their history: religion. Not only are these monuments often steeped in religious symbolism, white Christian communities also helped to build and maintain them. And we hear from a group of Christians here in Charlottesville wrestling with that legacy today.