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Religion, Sustainability, and Place pp 225–251Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Religion and Spirituality in Hungarian Eco-Villages

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Abstract

Sustainability discourses and criticisms of modernization speak to spiritual and moral crises as well as ecological, economic and social ones. Beyond a green ideology, the inhabitants of Hungarian eco-villages are involved with a variety of other worldviews and groups related to the supernatural: with traditional religions, new religious communities, different kinds of spiritual movements and to groups that are committed to what their members consider to be traditional, ancient Hungarian culture alike. Each community is characterized by the presence of elements of eco-spirituality, a holistic attitude and nature faith at some level. In this paper, I discuss the role of religion, belief and spirituality in the life of Hungarian eco-villages.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The concept of integrative spirituality religion is comprised of elements of official, folk and individual faith. See Bowman (2009).

  2. 2.

    Like many other small settlements in Hungary, Visnyeszéplak does not have its own priest.

  3. 3.

    One important reason for not finding a unified nature faith in Hungarian eco-villages is to be found in how they conceptualize nature: There are two dominant understandings of nature in these communities. For some, nature is an ethos, while for others it is an autonomous entity that is more or less independent of human society. For more detail on these questions, see: Aitamurto and Simpson (2013), Farkas (2018), Ivakhiv (2005).

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  1. University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary

    Judit Farkas

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  1. Geography and Sustainability, Salem State University, Salem, MA, USA

    Steven E. Silvern

  2. Geography and Environmental Studies, Emory and Henry College, Emory, VA, USA

    Edward H. Davis

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Farkas, J. (2021). Religion and Spirituality in Hungarian Eco-Villages. In: Silvern, S.E., Davis, E.H. (eds) Religion, Sustainability, and Place. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7646-1_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7646-1_10

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