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Thomas Berry on Religion A sample entry from the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (London & New York: Continuum, 2005) Edited by Bron Taylor © 2005 All Rights Reserved 164 Berry, Thomas egotistical and anti-social. The Mbuti do not cling to and religion. There he met Columbia professor and Con- things and they do not fear death. The movement of the fucian scholar, Wm. Theodore de Bary. Upon returning to hunter-gatherer assuages the anxiety of self-awareness. the States they founded the Asian Thought and Religion Berman recognized that we cannot simply return to a Seminar at Columbia. Berry taught Asian religions at hunter-gatherer existence. “Living in the question,” he Seton Hall (1956–1960), at St. John’s University (1960– argued, means living with the tension of universalizing 1966) and at Fordham University (1966–1979). He thought and the tribal particular. It means reestablishing founded a Ph.D. program in the History of Religions at the material basis for resacralizing the Earth by lowering Fordham and wrote books on Buddhism (1966) and on human population, living in smaller groups, actively Religions of India (1971). controlling those who aggressively strive for power, and What distinguished Berry’s approach to world religions improving childrearing. For Berman it is the institutional- was his effort not only to discuss the historical unfolding ization of accumulation that breeds social hierarchy and of each of the traditions, but also to articulate their spir- the vertical conscious that separates heaven and Earth, itual dynamics and contemporary significance. Confucian- which causes us to lose our home in the world. ism has had special significance for Berry because of its cosmological concerns, its attention to nature and agri- David Johns culture, its interest in self-cultivation and education, and its commitment to improving the social and political Further Reading order. With regard to Confucian cosmology Berry has Berman, Morris. Wandering God. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, identified the important understanding of the human as a 2000. microcosm of the cosmos. Essential to this cosmology is Berman, Morris. Coming to Our Senses. New York: Simon a continuity of being between various levels of reality – & Schuster, 1989. cosmic, social, and personal. Berry sees this as similar to Berman, Morris. The Reenchantment of the World. Ithaca the ideas of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Alfred North NY: Cornell University Press, 1981. Whitehead, and other contemporary process thinkers. See also: Ecopsychology; Pygmies (Mbuti foragers) and Berry also drew extensively on Native American and Bila Farmers of the Ituri Forest; Radical Environmental- indigenous traditions for rethinking the dynamics of ism; Shepard, Paul. human–Earth relations. Berry’s appreciation for indigen- ous traditions and for the richness of their mythic, sym- bolic, and ritual life was enhanced by his encounters with Berry, Thomas (1914–) the ideas of Carl Jung and Mircea Eliade. Jung’s under- standing of the collective unconscious, his reflections on From his academic beginning as a historian of world the power of archetypal symbols, and his sensitivity to cultures and religions, Thomas Berry grew into a historian religious processes made him an important influence on of the Earth and its evolutionary processes. He sees himself Berry’s thinking. Moreover, Mircea Eliade’s studies in not as a theologian but as a “geologian.” Berry began his the history of religions were influential in Berry’s under- career as a historian of Western intellectual history. standing of both Asian and indigenous traditions. His thesis at Catholic University on Giambattista Vico’s In formulating his idea of the New Story, Berry is par- philosophy of history was published in 1951. Vico was ticularly indebted to the thought of Pierre Teilhard de trying to establish a human historical science of the study Chardin. During the 1970s Berry served as president of of culture and nations comparable to what others had the American Teilhard Association. Berry derived from done for the study of nature. Teilhard an appreciation for developmental time. As Berry Influenced by Vico, Berry gradually developed a com- observes, since Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species we prehensive historical perspective in periodization and an have become aware of the universe not simply as a static understanding of the depths of our contemporary crisis cosmos but as an unfolding cosmogenesis. The theory of due to the ecological destruction caused by humans. evolution provides a distinctive realization of change and Eventually he saw the need for a new mythic story to development in the universe that resituates the human in extract humans from their alienation from the Earth. Berry a vast sweep of geological time. With regard to develop- described this alienation as pervasive due to the power of mental time, Teilhard suggested that the whole perspective the technological trance, the myth of progress, and human of evolution changes our reflection on ourselves in the autism in relation to nature. With his books, The Dream of universe. For Berry, the New Story is the primary context the Earth, The Universe Story, and The Great Work, Berry for envisioning the immensity of cosmogenesis. aimed to overcome this alienation and evoke the energies Berry also derived from Teilhard an understanding of needed to create a viable and sustainable future. the psychic-physical character of the unfolding universe. After completing his graduate work, Berry spent 1948– For Teilhard this implies that if there is consciousness in 1949 in Beijing studying Chinese language, philosophy, the human and if humans have evolved from the Earth, Berry, Thomas 165 then from the beginning some form of consciousness or This New Story arose from Berry’s own intellectual interiority is present in the process of evolution. Matter, formation as a cultural historian of the West, who also for both Teilhard and Berry, is not simply dead or inert, but studied and wrote about Asian religions and indigenous is a numinous reality consisting of both a physical and traditions. His intellectual journey culminated in the study spiritual dimension. Consciousness, then, is an intrinsic of the evolution of the universe and the Earth, which he part of reality and is the thread that links all life forms. saw as an epic story. Berry suggests that this story pro- There are various forms of consciousness and, in the vides a comprehensive context for orienting human life human, self-consciousness or reflective thought arises. toward the “Great Work” of our time, namely, creating the This implies for Berry that we are one species among grounds for the flourishing of the Earth community. others and as self-reflective beings we need to understand Berry’s idea of the universe story has been critiqued our particular responsibility for the continuation of the by those influenced by postmodernism as having the evolutionary process. We have reached a juncture where potential to be a dominating or hegemonic metanarrative. we will determine which life forms survive and which will Their concern is that such a story may not allow for the become extinct. inclusion of diversity. In particular, they feel that creation Berry’s approach is comprehensive in terms of cultural stories from various cultures will be lost within such a history and world religions, while Teilhard’s is scientifi- large-scale narrative of evolution. Berry’s own studies and cally comprehensive. These two approaches come together writings on other religious traditions suggest that he is in Berry’s book, The Universe Story, written with the sensitive to this issue; he suggests that the new story con- mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme. Together they text gives a new validity and even more expansive role to relate the story of cosmic and Earth evolution along earlier stories. Another critique arises from those con- with the story of the evolution of Homo sapiens and the cerned about using science as a basis for a unifying story development of human societies and cultures. While not inspiring human meaning. They see science (in com- claiming to be definitive or exhaustive, The Universe Story bination with technology) as creating an objectifying view sets forth an important model for narrating the Epic of of nature, which robs nature of its sacred qualities and is Evolution. thus partly responsible for creating the current environ- The Universe Story was based on Berry’s ideas first mental crisis. articulated in 1978 in an article titled “The New Story.” On the other hand, Berry’s influence has been wide- As he pondered the magnitude of the social, political, spread and diverse both within academia and beyond. This economic, and ecological problems facing the human ranges from scientists such as mathematical cosmologist community, Berry observed that humans are in between Brian Swimme, cell biologist Ursula Goodenough, animal stories. The coherence provided by the old creation stories behaviorists Marc Bekoff and Barbara Smuts, and geolo- was no longer operative, Berry asserted, proposing instead gists George Fisher and Craig Kochel. It includes eco- the new evolutionary story of how things came to be and logical economists like Richard Norgaard and David where we are now as a comprehensive context for under- Korten and ecodesigners such as Richard Register and standing how the human future can be given meaningful David Orr. In the field of racism and environmental justice direction. Berry stated that to communicate values and Carl Anthony and Barbara Holmes cite the importance of orient human action within this new frame of reference we Berry’s unifying vision of the story of the Earth. The deep need to identify basic principles of the universe process ecologist John Seed, and others promoting the universe itself. These, he suggested, are the primordial intentions story as the “Epic of Evolution,” such as the ecologist of the universe toward differentiation, subjectivity, and E.O. Wilson, also draw inspiration from Berry.
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