Sacred & Profane The Religion, Race and Democracy Lab at the University of Virginia

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 it has also given us a sense of awe and wonder. We’re joined once more by our colleague Kelsey Johnson (https://www.kelseyjohnson.com/about) to talk about how the night sky links us to the wider universe, and how pollution coming from both 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 (https://gened.as.virginia.edu/people/profile/kej7a). 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 seas 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?This episode was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.