Ringkasan:
● Agama dan spiritualitas menjadi landasan gerakan ekologi serta penggagas awal konsep keberlanjutan.
● Kolaborasi lintas agama dan masyarakat adat sangat penting melawan eksploitasi lingkungan berkedok keberlanjutan.
● Gerakan spiritualitas rentan dipolitisasi dan disalahgunakan jika tidak dilandasi etika keadilan lingkungan.
Oleh: Afkar Aristoteles Mukhaer | Republikasi dari ICRS
For decades, the prevailing narrative in the West has been one of “empty pews.” We have watched religious institutions decline, often assuming that as formal faith faded, it would be replaced by a purely secular, scientific rationalism. However, this transition has coincided with the sharp rise of climate anxiety—a profound, existential dread that science alone seems unable to soothe.
What we are witnessing today is not the disappearance of religion, but a sophisticated re-engineering of spirituality. Our belief systems are being overhauled to meet the specific demands of a planetary crisis. This evolution is moving us past the old “religious vs. secular” binary into a more complex landscape where indigenous wisdom and modern activism converge. The topic was discussed on a panel entitled “Environmental Justice and Sustainability” at the 20th ICRS Conference at UC UGM, Yogyakarta, on June 23, 2026.
Religion is the Initiative on Creating “Sustainability” and the Foundation of the Grassroots Ecological Movement
In 1974, the WCC held a conference to respond to the Club of Rome’s seminal “Limits to Growth” report. It was here that the term “sustainability” was first introduced to the global stage long before it was adopted by the UN’s Brundtland Commission (often referred to as the “Blue Commission”) or corporate mission statements.
The initiative was a result of a radical theological pivot since 1968, when the Uppsala General Assembly held discussions about salvation. The theologians began moving away from “heavenly salvation” toward a commitment to breaking structures of injustice. This trajectory culminated in the 1983 “Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation” (JPIC) framework, which remains a primary driver for certain religious ecumenical work.
Gerrit Singgih, a lecturer at the UKDW Faculty of Theology, commented that the initiative shows that religion has upheld the principle of sustainability long before the global secular movement. This was a rare moment when theology led science in defining the Earth’s future through the concept of sufficiency.
Sustainability awareness from a religious perspective has developed in Indonesia through grassroots movements. Gerrit Singgih cited the Huria Kristen Batak Protestan Church’s struggle on Lake Toba against pulp mill pollution in 1987 as an example. More recently, Gerrit also mentioned the work of Jacklevyn Frits Manuputty, a pastor of the Maluku Protestant Church, who assisted interreligious communities and participated in the fight against a giant sugarcane plantation project in the Aru Islands. Jacky even garnered international support by bringing the issue to the WCC General Assembly in 2013.
“If we are indifferent to the plight of the poor and repentance that climate change never happens for the sake of the economic interests of the few and our sermons never touch climate justice and climate ethics, then something is very mysteriously wrong,” Gerrit said.
Meanwhile, a Deakin University sociologist, Anna Halafoff, points to a massive shift toward a spirituality connected to nature among Generation Z in Australia. This phenomenon is worldview complexity, where the boundaries between religion, secularism, and spirituality are beginning to blur for young people. This spiritual revolution is highly practical, transcending the caricature of the private and the individual that has long discredited the study of spirituality.
For Gen Z, this triangle is manifested in wellness practices: 28% practice meditation and 22% practice yoga, viewing these not just as hobbies but as essential tools for planetary well-being. “All the cool kids do it—at least everyone who talks about meditation,” noted one participant of Halafoff and team.
“This social mainstreaming,” Halafoff argues, “is backed by a profound ecological shift: 76% of those surveyed reported a deep connection to nature, a statistic that translates directly into ethical actions like environmental activism and veganism.”
Inter-religious, spirituality, and indigenous in the Environmentalism Movement
Furthermore, the government’s narrative of sustainability sometimes presents a bitter paradox. Samsul Maarif, Director of ICRS Yogyakarta, points out that renewable energy projects such as geothermal energy are often driven by extractive colonial logic. Projects deemed “green” by the government often destroy the social fabric and living spaces of local communities in pursuit of global carbon metrics. This is a driving force of a new colonialism that prioritizes statistics over the lives of social communities that have been protecting their ecosystems for centuries.
According to Maarif, the voices of religious, interreligious, and indigenous communities are crucial in balancing development ambitions that alienate people from their homelands. He argues that interreligious environmentalism does not focus on theology or doctrinal agreements of a teaching to achieve syncretism. Instead, the concept is to mobilize religious and non-religious resources to achieve shared ecological and social goals. Each participant uses their own traditions and sacred texts to strengthen personal commitments and foster solidarity in concrete actions.
This intergroup collaboration also includes university researchers. However, local residents who are struggling need to be empowered as equal community researchers because they hold knowledge based on lived experience. This collaboration results in ongoing dialogue between communities to understand socio-political and environmental changes and dynamics.
Colonizing New Spirituality Infiltrated by Political Liberalism
However, Halafoff offers a note about spiritual transition and any kind of spirituality or belief. She recognizes that such movements are not inherently virtuous. Spirituality functions as a double-edged sword and failing to acknowledge its inherent dangers represents a significant sociological oversight. Lately, we have witnessed the emergence of “conspirituality”—a corrosive intersection where metaphysical convictions meet unfounded conspiracy narratives. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this manifested as a rise in disinformation and vaccine refusal within wellness communities, often fueled by a “neoliberal” focus on the individual at the expense of the collective.
Moreover, the aesthetic and symbolic language of paganism is being systematically appropriated by ultra-nationalist and far-right ideologies. Whether through “neoliberal yoga” that reinforces capitalist structures to the use of ancient symbols to promote myths of a “white Christian nation,” spirituality can be used to exclude and foster polarization.
Recognizing these darker expressions is essential for a sharp, honest analysis of 21st-century belief. If spirituality is treated as purely private or always peaceful, we overlook the mechanisms through which it is co-opted for discriminatory purposes. For spirituality to truly function as a catalyst for ecological restoration, it must conscientiously deconstruct the persistent nationalistic legends of the West while remaining anchored in a radical ethics of care.
Editor: Andrianor