Green Rituals: Moving Mountains and the Green Eucharist

Abstract

For the last two chapters I will turn to rituals, performances and worship occasions, the outward expression of environmentalism. Ritual is ubiquitous in the green movement. For many activists direct action has a spiritual dimension and my data indicates that in the climate movement direct action is in fact highly ritualised and perceived as an opportunity to create bonds, much like ritual more generally. On occasions, activists are involved in protest events that seem to have purely a symbolic result rather than a practical one. Attempting to shut down a power station that is surrounded by police would seem like an impossible task. Yet activists will attempt the action, which sometimes becomes a game, possibly a relatively safe frame (in the UK at least) to perform one’s dissent. In this chapter, I will investigate some specific ecological rituals performed by environmental Christians and I will discuss the role of ritual in the context of green Christianity and more generally as a performance of environmentalism. Activists often use animal costumes and masks during protest activities, such as seals, penguins and polar bears costumes, thus distancing themselves from humanity and showing their allegiance with the non-human world. I claim here that protest rituals have a role in stimulating an affective process through which participants can either relate to a given group, community or tradition or form new relationships with the planet or a planetary community.