Back to the land and waters: futures for the study of religions

"In this reflection, I consider how paying attention to the grounds of our research, literally, affords the study of religion an opportunity to return to its roots as a discipline that thinks seriously about how what we call religion is connected to what we call nature. I ask what scholars of religion can learn from the 21st century movement of Indigenous Water Protectors, reading their invocations to ‘protect the sacred’ alongside earlier classic approaches in the study of religion and nature, such as those of David Hume and Jonathan Z. Smith. I close by briefly laying out five grounds for research in the study of religion, including positionality and land-based approaches."