Old stories, local attachments : Thomas Merton and Thomas Berry in religion and ecology

In the context of accelerating environmental change, some scholarship in the environmental humanities suggests that contemporary environmental crises require a new story. In contrast, this article argues on behalf of old stories and local, place-based attachments. It engages the field of ‘religion and ecology’, which was shaped (among many other influences) by two US religious thinkers: Thomas Berry (1914–2009) and Thomas Merton (1915–1968). Berry famously argued that Western societies needed a new story to address environmental crises on a cosmological scale. Through close readings and historical contextualization of Berry’s ‘The New Story’ (1974) and Merton’s ‘The Wild Places’ (1968), the article aims to show that scholars of religion and ecology can put traditional materials—old stories—to use in service of contemporary aims—the defense of particular places threatened by unjust economies.