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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.

In 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. (https://www.skanonhcenter.org/)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.This episode was made possible by a great from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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 (https://www.artcrimeprof.com/) and our colleague Jalane Schmidt (https://memoryproject.virginia.edu/director) 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 (https://www.persianpoetics.com/) 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, and 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.