By Kelly Darroch

Amanda Baugh, author of  Falling in Love with Nature: The Values of Latinx Catholic Environmentalism spoke recently at UCSB.                 Photo courtesy of  Amanda Baugh

Ecological practices in the Latinx Catholic community have been written off as a response to poverty instead of viewed an expression of concern for the environment and an innate human connection to nature, says Amanda J. Baugh, a religious studies professor at Cal State University Northridge.

“The implication is that when I, a white middle-class urban environmental humanities professor, recycle or ride the bus, that’s environmentalism. But when other people from other backgrounds recycle or ride the bus, that’s not environmentalism,” Baugh recently told a UC Santa Barbara audience.

Baugh, who serves as director of the master’s program in sustainability at Northridge, was speaking at the annual fall lecture of the UCSB Capps Center’s Forum on Ethics and Public Policy. The event was cosponsored by UCSB’s Department of Religious Studies, Chicana and Chicano Studies, and Environmental Studies.

Baugh discussed her ethnographic research findings, which are published in her book Falling in Love with Nature: The Values of Latinx Catholic Environmentalism.

She said that Hispanic Catholics are the most likely to be concerned about climate change, when compared to White Catholics and to those with other religious affiliations such as Judaism and Protestantism. This was revealed in a 2014 study by the Public Religion Research Institute, which surveyed views on climate change in relation to religious affiliation. Baugh said these findings prompted her to conduct her research.

Cal State Northridge religious studies professor  Amanda J. Baugh at a recent  Capps Center talk at UCSB on Latinx sustainability practices, influenced by Catholic views on God and nature.

She also recounted asking her students, some years ago, to raise their hands if they considered themselves environmentalists. In response, three hands went up in a full college lecture hall — all of them white students.

At the same time, many of her students who did not identify as an “environmentalist” described engaging in all sorts of eco-friendly practices such as riding public transit, recycling, gardening, and preserving food. These students saw their actions not as environmentalism, but an expression of poverty or simply for other purposes.

Baugh credits these class conversations with students, as well, for inspiring her research and book. Through her students, she began to see the limitations of the frameworks that she had learned in graduate school.

With the help of her students, Baugh began conducting research in 2015 on environmental values among Catholic parishes in Los Angeles. The research focused specifically on Spanish-speaking Catholics, meaning those who chose to worship in Spanish.

She and students would ask focus groups how their Catholic faith shapes their daily life and would branch into questions about environmentalism. Often the interviews were conducted in Spanish to put the subjects at ease. They also researched groups of Catholics who were involved with environmental efforts.

Community leaders and priests urged Baugh to adjust the project because they thought that their mostly-working class Latinx parishes didn’t have the luxury to spend time and resources on environmental issues.

To her surprise, there was an overwhelming appreciation of nature in the first focus group she conducted at a Spanish-speaking adult religious education class. Most of the people in this group were low-income and fairly recent immigrants from Mexico and Central America.

“From the moment we believe in God and all of his creation we’re already aware of nature and the connection humans have with nature,” Baugh said, quoting a research subject she cited in her book. “From the simple fact of being Catholic and believing in God and the Bible, we are 100% conscious of nature in the environment.”

Religion scholar Amanda Baugh coined the term  “la tierra environmentalism” to describe eco-friendly practices within the Latinx community that are linked to their Catholic faith. She spoke recently at UCSB’s Walter H. Capps Center.

Photo by Nikolett Emmert

Baugh said this attitude of loving nature as a way to meet God was common. She identified a widespread ethic of living lightly on the earth and protecting one’s environment just as you would your neighbor, which she termed “la tierra environmentalism.” She based this framework on the work of theologian Jeanette Rodriguez who coined “la tierra theology,” which describes those who hold a special relationship to the land, which intersects with their Catholic beliefs and Latinx culture.

La tierra environmentalism features an active love for nature and concern for ecological issues and seeing nature as an aspect of everyday life. Those who practice it also transmit nature into the private space of the home, most often following the examples of pious, admired women such as grandmothers, mothers, and aunts.

By contrast, modern environmentalism conveys the notion that humans are separate from the earth, Baugh said. She noted how many of the country’s pristine landscapes, wilderness areas and national parks were created via settler colonialism, which forcibly removed indigenous people from their homelands — homelands in which they had been maintaining a sustainable relationship with the land for centuries. La tierra environmentalism, on the other hand, centers on human intimacy with the land.

UCSB Religious Studies professor Gregory Jarrett, who attended Baugh’s talk, agreed with her that people of color are undervalued in the world of environmentalism. “Certainly in terms of these groups that do have a certain power, they’re not represented, except the Sierra Club,” Jarrett said. “I think Amanda Baugh makes a really important point and she’s right about people of color being represented as victims instead of whatever you want to call it, environmentalists.”

At UCSB, Baugh urged white scholars in the fields of religious studies and environmental humanities to work harder to uplift perspectives other than their own. She also acknowledged that, as a white woman, she was not necessarily the right person to write this book, but hopes it serves as a starting point for others.

“Sometimes the expertise comes from computer models and peer reviewed articles and reports. Sometimes it comes from the embodied knowledge and life experiences of people whose livelihoods depend on the land,” Baugh said.

Kelly Darroch is a second-year English major at UC Santa Barbara. She covered this lecture for her Digital Journalism course.