**2. Exploring the systemic level**

The systemic and structural level is probably the most abstract and hard to describe when trying to analyse how religion interacts with society in a whole and with other social systems to achieve goals related to the sustainability ideal, but it becomes a good guide into such dynamics.

Taking the social systems theory of Niklas Luhmann as a general framework [3] and trying to update and adapt it to new circumstances, we can develop a model that could reveal several hidden dynamics when religion is thought as part of a system aimed at becoming sustainable.

Luhmann never ignored religion as a relevant social sub-system, and he devoted several essays along his fruitful career to dissect the functions that religion could perform in highly differentiated societies [4]. From this broad view, to speak about social systems and sustainability would be a redundancy: indeed, per definition, a social system is an entity that subsists despite the odds and manages to articulate a network of meaningful communications in contrast with its noisy environment. The general idea is that a social system is a living case of social survival, and societies exist since a very early stage of human evolution, but they have evolved too, following a path that moved from more hierarchical to more meshed, differentiated and specialized structures, well ingrained and inter-dependent. It is apparent that that evolution has been positive and helped to better adapt to changing circumstances: a progress arrow can be described. In the developed stage, several sub-systems arise to better address their functional issues, like in the case of economy, politics, science, and others. Religion experiences its own evolution, from providing the description and meaning of the entire system, to be a part dealing with a specific issue: managing the residual contingency, or those problems other systems could not manage or fix. In this schema, religion becomes the ultimate resource for unsolvable or pending issues beyond the reach of economic, political, or scientific intervention [5].

Luhmann's analysis moved later to still more abstract functions, like dealing with the paradoxes that unavoidably engenders a self-referential social system like ours. In principle, the sustainability of a society depends on some balance between the differentiation process, that leads to a high specialization of each sub-system, and the integration or coordination of such autonomous instances, with their own approach and communication codes. Furthermore, a society is sustainable when it is able to keep a balance with its own environment – not just natural – and its internal functions. Each sub-system needed to contribute in the right way, performing its own function. The schema reserves a place and a role to religion as an instance able to tackle the hardest or ultimate issues through a code that distinguishes between immanence and transcendence, and remits to a transcending dimension what cannot be adjusted in the immanent or immediate reality.

The emergency we try to address under the label of 'sustainability' forces us to observe our social systems from a different perspective, even if in continuity with what sociologists like Talcott Parsons and Niklas Luhmann could observe from their systemic gaze. The point is not so much how stable societies are at the present, and how they manage to keep so, but rather, how they can preserve in the future a condition that is now perceived as deeply endangered by several disrupting factors. Even if we managed to survive as integrated societies until now, despite many disasters, plagues, and wars, we can no longer take for granted such resilience, when the current conditions appear as more threatening and climate change is setting a concerning trend, together with other contingencies we do not manage to address.

The new condition puts religion under a rising tension, since the growing uncertainties, or non-manageable risks, increase the pressure on the function that the social systems theory assigned to religion. However, providing hope or even to establish a sharp distinction between this-worldly and other-worldly expectations – the first one doomed and the second one open to be revealed – does help only in a relative way, and clearly reduces the range of religious function when the entire system is in question.

Religions have always played a 'vicary role' in many societies, trying to address sectors that were incompletely covered by secular means. In that sense, the idea of 'residual management' acquires a new meaning. In fact, Christian churches have engaged many times in supplying material and human resources to cover gaps in the education, health and welfare systems in many societies. It has been a constant provider of such services during the 19th and 20th centuries in many Westers areas, a model later transferred to other societies in worse conditions. Even today, and as the American anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann stated [6], many Churches in America provide assistance to people suffering psychological illnesses and difficulties, and in that way, they help to remedy a shortage in services that cannot be covered by other administrative or social resources of the Welfare State. The point is that religions show a very adaptive flexibility that clearly contributes to fill gaps and to render the entire social system more resilient and sustainable.

The question is: To what extent do evolved religions exhibit this adaptive capacity, and will become useful to address the far greater concerns linked to sustainability? My proposal has been to expand the basic idea of Luhmann's social systems theory to assume that religion has been vicarious and has always addressed residual problems or has filled empty gaps in the social fabric no other systems were able to fill, or simply inadvertently opened. If this is the case, then, this other great emergency, threatening humanity's future, will mobilize all the available resources to cope with this risk, not just providing hope, but encouraging practices and pressing to reach more reassuring conditions.

Obviously, it is not easy to compare churches interventions aimed at alleviating educational needs, physical or mental health demands, and other social deficits, and to remedy a state of things that could bring to a general collapse. In the first case, concrete actions are expected in schools, hospitals, and charities; in the present emergency it is less about assisting people in need, and more about changing minds and hearts and to interact with other social systems exerting some pressure or lobbying for sustainable management. Several churches and religions have already adopted such a strategy, at least at the level of their declarations and intentions. It is less clear to what extent these religious bodies could effectively interact with more powerful systems, like economy and politics, to achieve these goals.

A main difficulty can be devised in this context: even if religion can play a vicarious role at filling gaps left in the social fabric, it becomes harder to contrast the own dynamics presiding contemporary standard economy, based on increasing production and conspicuous consumption. In this case, religion does not just provide some remedies, without interfering with other system's development, but might contrast and even disrupt those same systems which follow a divergent logic. From a systemic point of view, such interferences should lead to new configurations and adaptations in each system, but the problem could subsist and leave open wounds in the social body.

I have mentioned from the beginning that the interaction works as a two-way dynamic: it is not just about how religions contribute to ensure a sustainable future, but how the model of sustainability can influence and help these religious entities. The expectation is that such a model informs and inspires these institutions, and that

#### *Sustainability and Religion: Mutual Implications DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.104497*

they assume sustainability as their main goal, for them and for all the society in which they are inserted. That means a special emphasis and a style more sensitive towards the common shared future and a revision of everything from this priority. Religious organizations confront similar – or even worse – scenarios as every other social body, and they need to focus more on something that was quite neglected until recently, since the stability of those organizations was presumed. This shared sense of risk clearly invites to redefine priorities and to adapt the organization to whatever can ensure a viable future.

The suggested perspective should assist in redefining the mission of religious organizations according to the current emergency. The central question is whether withdrawing religion and churches from the equation, things could stay the same or even improve to reach better levels in sustainability rankings. This would be the ultimate test when trying to ascertain the function that religion still plays in societies struggling with several threats and a highly uncertain future. The expectation is that the religious sub-system can assume a greater commitment in this field, and that doing so, it focuses all its resources to contribute to assuring life and stability for next generations, beyond providing transcending hope. The point is that such development could work to reintegrate religion and its function into this new context that demands to all social systems to engage – each one in its own way – in improving the present conditions. Not just religion, but every social sub-system needs to review and update its priorities, functions and performance according to that broad goal: ensuring a sustainable future. That goal will redescribe the social system with its many components or sub-systems, now more encompassed according to the current emergencies. Religion will probably not play a leading role in this new configuration as in earlier times, but it could nevertheless make a difference in dealing with the described challenges. Religion is called to contribute to render a society more sustainable than other society without.

Until now, religion has been described in highly general and abstract terms, avoiding the reference to specific religious traditions. Probably each religion offers its own style and rules to better address the described challenge, and surely some religions will be better endowed than others to assume that task and to tackle those issues. We need to move further to practice this analysis in a more accurate and nuanced way. Some steps have been already done, and several studies have been published focusing on particular religious traditions [7–9], but more needs to be done in order to better specify the connections between each religious expression and the described agenda, however this work transcends the limits of the present essay.
