**3. Religion as a cultural expression, and what it means for sustainability**

The second level to examine is the cultural one. Culture plays a central role in inspiring behaviours and it is very flexible and dynamic, changing in the last times at an accelerated pace. It is clear too that cultures are very complex sets of beliefs, values, and views, shared by a population when they reach some critical mass, and providing orientation and legitimation for individuals and groups. Cultural contents and preferences clearly bias not just personal views or judgements, but decisions and attitudes. Regarding sustainability, a sharp distinction can be traced between those cultural configurations that help to address such concerns, and cultures that become 'counteradaptive' or that nourish living styles that become less sustainable. A good example is consumerism as experienced in Western societies [10]; we have in mind a cultural

framework nourished by publicity encouraging living styles that threaten the future of the entire planet. Other cultural forms clearly support a more austere attitude or living standards which contribute to a more sustainable society.

The idea that culture plays a big role in motivating more sustainable behaviours by individuals and societies alike invites to explore what can render a culture more fitting and less counter-adaptive, and to discern whether religion can play a role in this area. To the first question, it is apparent that cultural expressions are the result of many elements contributing to create a broadly shared opinion, sensitivity, or to build 'collective imaginaries'; among them the media take a first position; then perhaps politicians and authorities with some prestige; and – recently – the so-called 'influencers'. The media continue to be powerful levers in this process, but in the last times, other social media are competing to nourish the cultural milieu and they often reach a critical mass, competing with traditional ones. Media contend with strongly held traditions, with education programs, and with other sources of what is called 'high culture'. However, culture is not a unique container, but a plural one, and this is still more the case in our times and societies. Nevertheless, we can identify 'dominant cultures' and 'minority cultures', which often are linked to social minorities with their own codes, symbols, values, and references. A tension grows between different and sometimes competing cultural expressions. Indeed, a vectors field of forces and attractors, like in physics, could be a more proximate representation about how cultures influence and gain more or less sway in a social setting.

Regarding religion, it is broadly assumed that religious beliefs and values are often integrated into a general culture or appear as minority expressions in clear contrast with dominant forms. In the first case, they configure traditions and nourish a mentality that is learned and assumed in less secularized societies, or even leave a rest in local cultures, as an element hard to disentangle from those massive worldviews. But, in other cases, religious culture becomes just a minority expression that challenges several positions in the dominant culture. The described situation could lead even to 'culture wars' or big tensions between different and contrasting values and worldviews. The point is that religion usually plays an important role in the cultural field, but this role is obviously more or less powerful depending on the secularization levels in a given society: a very secular context is one in which religious culture plays a very limited role or is unable to define any value; a postsecular one offers new opportunities for religious cultural leverage.

Cultures evolve, as a growing specialized literature reveals [11]. This is just a starting point; it is harder to specify the ways and conditions leading cultural evolution. The easiest approach is to assume the same process that applies in the biological realm: cultures know variations, selection of the fittest, and replication. However, the experts have pointed to many specific traits in cultural evolution that discourage such a model as too simplistic. Indeed, cultural transmission is not just genetic, but it works at more levels, like learning. Useful information is the basic unit in that process, and it can be transmitted in a richer way as does the biological model. At the moment some consensus has been reached that recognizes an equal value to cultural and genetic dynamics in the general process that governs human evolutionary history.

It might seem that I am deviating from our main goal and taking a bypass when trying to highlight the importance of culture in social processes and to better describe the role that religion plays. In reality, this alternative focus is just complementary to the first one exposed above: religion can be observed as a cultural expression assuming all the characteristics we can attribute to such social phenomena. In other words, recognizing to religion the status of a culture means that it interacts in a complex way with other cultural configurations assuming similar functions or capacities.

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

Back to our main argument, the question is how religion might work as a cultural instance connecting with sustainability demands, or able to encourage sustainable styles and organizations. At least three possibilities arise: convergence between cultural expressions aimed at similar goals; resistance against negative cultural forms; and complementarity, providing inputs that other cultural forms neglect.

The first relevant model points to cultural convergence. In a social configuration where many cultural forms coexist, competition and clash between cultures emerges often, but in other case we can observe cultural cooperation and mutual enrichment. Christian culture could converge in the last couple of centuries in many areas with local and national cultures, and indeed a long historical season has witnessed this dangerous conflation between nationalism and Catholicism or other Christian confessions. Some experiences or attempts have been done trying to join Christian faith and some contemporary political movements, like fascism or communism. We can now judge such attempts as mostly misguided and flawed in their outcomes. In other cases, some Christian cultures – like Catholicism – have moved towards great hostility and concurrence with other expressions, giving place to 'culture wars'; this was the case with liberalism during the XIX and a good part of 20th century; or socialism later. In many cases, the ideals, values, and expectations of a secular State were seen with suspicion by many Churches. Something similar can be perceived in some expressions of conflict between religious and scientifically inspired cultures in our days. Then some religious cultures could feel in clear contrast with popular cultures exalting narcissism, individualism, and hedonism.

We assist now to a different process, one in which more common ground can be found and explored. In this new development, the urgencies and dangers we foresee constrain us to rather unite forces and to build a more constructive approach able to summon different sensitivities or cultural backgrounds. Sustainability reflects not just a cultural form or a living style, but it represents a call to engage for the goodness and wellbeing of everybody, involving all possible sectors and cultural forms. Many cultural expressions, like living religions, ideologies, or sensitivities can get together under the same flag and contribute from one's own specific cultural motives to the same cause.

Pope's Francis last Encyclical *Fratelli tutti* offers a good case for embracing a convergence stance, and not a concurrence or exclusivist model for engaging in the pursuit of a common good, as it is the case when what is at stake is our general survival as human species. This model entails a disposition to recognize every other cultural or religious instance that pursues a similar goal, and that contributes to the peace and unity of the human race.

Besides the convergence model, other models come to mind when considering religions as cultural forms. In fact, it is quite usual to advance a model of resistance and contrast. This is characteristic for expressions that have a cause to vindicate or to fight for, and it is associated to protest movements, but it can be expanded to many cultural forms that resist being assimilated to a majority or dominant culture that ignores or even dismisses other views and rights, calling for greater justice, equity and respect for the 'others.' Indeed, a part of the standard ESG model that rules in the world of sustainable assessments places emphasis not just on environmental issues, but on social ones, including equity and equality or social justice. The point is that religion as a cultural expression sometimes needs to assume a similar version of resistance and protest, to contrast cultural dominant forms that result in margination, injustice or justifying the powerful and the abuses against those worse off.

Religion as a culture plays both games: converging with cultural expressions engaging in a similar interest to ensure a more sustainable future; and the contrasting game, against cultures that endanger our planet's equilibrium or that cover injustice and inequality. This 'double game' poses the question about the required discernment to find out when a religious body feels more called to engage in one or the other strategy, depending on circumstances and facts – not just ideas.

A third possibility – besides those described – can be added when we take religion as a cultural form: complementarity or implementation of neglected issues. This is a topic that requires further study. At first sight, several issues that appear important for most Christian traditions, like family stability, fecundity or intergenerational concern and engagement, could appear as absent in most agendas dealing with sustainable projects; indeed, they are usually missing in the criteria to value and rank ESG or sustainable levels in organizations and countries. However, the religious point of view, grounded in its own tradition and values, and then in common sense, suggests a set of issues that are very related to any sustainable social setting. Some of them are too obvious: a society without stable families will suffer in their present and future development. Furthermore, if families do not form and people do not want to have children, no sustainable future can be conceived. The point of intergenerational concern is perhaps less obvious, but it plays an important role: if elderly people are left alone or there is no concern for the wellbeing of our grandchildren in a long term, then sustainability becomes an empty program or an unsensitive technical issue, not something human and with a soul.

The described contributions in the last point remind us about a role that religions as cultures can still play, and to the idea, already advanced, which renders religions necessary when thinking on a complex program of sustainability. Possibly without the emphasis religions place on these family issues and others regarding human dignity and care for those in need, we would once more notice big gaps and neglects that other cultural systems are unable to address and fill. Religion as a cultural instance becomes then a fundamental factor, whose absence would result in many gaps and neglects.

## **4. The 'human factor': the role of beliefs and believing process**

We move now to the third level in where the relevance of religion for sustainability programs can become more significant, but now the perspective changes from the structural and cultural level to the personal. For many scholars, religion works more at the individual level, or transferring to that level general or social issues, to deal with them better. In fact, religions are usually big organizations with their own structure, and they need to be integrated into the social fabric, through complex interactions, However, its focus is on the person, its beliefs, values and hopes. I will not discuss now about that thesis – if religion resorts mostly to the individual treatment of perceived problems – but we need to pay attention to how religion becomes relevant at that level when we try to better understand its role or function concerning a sustainable future.

A good approach to the question invites us to consider the important role that beliefs play in our societies and how they determine their future and even the legitimacy of democracy and other social entities. According to several recent studies, believing or holding the right or the wrong beliefs becomes the most sensitive factor in open societies affecting their stability [12, 13]. The impact of beliefs and believing on sustainable systems is more than apparent; many examples come to mind. For instance, when a population sector does not believe the scientific reports pointing to climate change, then we can expect that these people will resist demanding policies

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

aimed at contrasting that dangerous trend. When people do not believe in vaccines, then their resulting attitude could jeopardise efforts at fixing a pandemic.

Beliefs are not just self-generated, but they arise from many inputs, perceptions and data, a process now better-known and studied [14, 15]. Recently the enormous expansion of new media, social networks, and the conspicuous diffusion of fake news using those channels prompt a wave of false beliefs, biases and delusions hard to tackle and to confront with the current means. A big issue in our time and social context is – after recognizing the central role that beliefs play – how to help in forming the right beliefs, those more useful or functional, and to avoid beliefs that become destructive and encourage irresponsibility and deceit.

A recent study has highlighted how the 'human factor' is missed in most instruments aimed at measuring and valuing levels of sustainability in organizations, or the most standardized ESG [environmental, social and governance] controls and rankings [16]. Possibly the problem lies in that it becomes much harder to assess such a factor, than measure other technical issues, like carbon emissions, or recycling and waste management, or analysing GINI rankings. This is harder, but not impossible when we count now with more sophisticated polling means, and we access much more data revealing beliefs, moods, and feelings towards issues like environment, equality, or social justice. The point is that any program aimed to establish a more sustainable future should avoid ignoring the sets of beliefs, values and hopes that encourage people to behave in a way or the other, or to support policies that could mean more sacrifices in the short run, but which could repay in the long term and correct disastrous trends.

Religion is about beliefs and believing, but it is not the only system that relies on beliefs. Most – if not all – social systems need for their right functioning that individuals commit to a set of shared beliefs and values: this is evident in politics, economy, and the judiciary system, but it reaches to sciences as well, grounded in a network of deeply shared beliefs and values [17]. Religion is not just a system that needs strong beliefs, sometimes quite counterintuitive and counterfactual, but it is for a long time a system to infuse and educate in the right way to believe, a system to watch over beliefs and tries to correct their most dangerous and negative expressions. Believing is indeed a complex cognitive system that clusters several mental functions, including perceptions, probability estimates, emotions and culture [18, 19]. The critical point is whether religions can assist in forming better, more balanced beliefs, and to encourage beliefs that are functional in order to improve our chances for a sustainable future.

The answer needs to be nuanced. Indeed, a set of lightly held beliefs could make little difference. Recent studies reveal the dynamics that render religious belief and practice effective in the long run, and incisive in practical life [20]. The idea is that religious beliefs per se, without the right training and implementation, could have a very limited effect, when it remains too fuzzy and inarticulate to one's own living. Beliefs come in degrees and express different levels of strength, which then translate into greater or lesser commitment. If faith is not well supported in rituals and practices, it will eventually fade away, lose strength and fail to motivate sustainable living styles.

Religions may be polyvalent and ambiguous in that respect. We can identify apocalyptic versions that do not care for sustainability, but rather long for a world collapse that might give place to a radically different reality presided by a new divinely imposed order. The question is that many religious forms choose now to encourage beliefs and values that lead their faithful towards greater responsibility in that area. Several studies point to this effort and provide examples on how religious beliefs encourage values aimed at supporting sustainable programs [21–25]. Religious

beliefs need to adjust to these new perceived needs, and in that sense, they evolve to make place to such new perspectives, surely absent in former stages of each religious tradition. In this sense too, the mutual model works in both senses: from and towards religions. Sustainability objectives re-entry in the set of religious held beliefs and values, and become integrated into their own symbolic configuration.

### **5. Concluding remarks**

The present study tried to address an initial provocation by one of the greatest theoretical sociologists in the late 20th century: religion would have very little to provide when trying to address ecological challenges, and its sometimes very vocal declarations would add rather little to what other social systems can do without such a redundant voice. The radical question is posed in those terms: Can religious traditions improve things and offer a significant contribution to address these pressing issues? Can advanced secular societies do well without religion, which becomes even embarrassing when trying to tackle with its weak means what requires much more technical and harder intervention?

I have tried to show that religion offers an effective contribution at three levels, even if quite related: the systemic, the cultural, and the human or believing system. This quick review has showed that religion – as in other cases – can play a positive or a negative role with respect to sustainability. It happens too in the studies on religious coping: not every religious form becomes helpful when trying to cope with personal crises and distress; actually, some versions could even worsen the problem. In a similar vein, we can discriminate between religious forms that rather hope for a universal collapse and are happy with the self-destructive trends present in our societies and cultures; and other religious forms that engage in pursuing a sustainability agenda. This is clearly a recent trend that needs to be integrated into the body of very traditionally rooted systems of beliefs and values, and conforming cultural clusters; and it is related to an evolutionary process that requires time and changes to better adapt to current conditions. To some extent, we cannot take for granted the connection this article has tried to establish between religion and sustainability. Probably, the conditions that could favour such a link are in place, and each religion has to decide whether it will adapt to this new context integrating such beliefs and values and contributing to the general effort aimed at ensuring a better future for all; or whether it prefers to stand out and to follow its own way, unaffected by those risks and demands, just trying to be faithful to its old traditions.

In a sketch, religions can exert a positive influence on conforming a more sustainable future, if they engage at the systemic level, interacting in a critical way with other social systems; at a cultural level, nourishing the collectively shared views; and at a personal level, encouraging beliefs and values which become functional. However, this is not taken for granted and every religious tradition must make choices in that regard.

In any case, a last reflection invites to assume a more critical stance in dealing with that proposed link. I am aware of internal secularizing effects in many religious organizations when the attention is displaced from the traditional religious activities, aimed at keeping alive the communication on transcendence, towards ethical or even political issues and activities, which appear as more alluring or flattering in some cultural contexts, like embracing secular causes for peace, justice and the environment. My concern points to the necessity to keep a right balance: only when religion

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

develops in a conscious and improved level its own and proper missions to provide transcendent meaning and hope, it can deliver a good assistance to address, together with many other social instances, the current challenges we go through and to heal what is wounded in our planet, our society and in each person.
