Latter-day Saint Theology and the Environment

Dear Colleagues,

The theology of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (often informally known as the Mormon Church) has received increasing attention in recent years for what its interpreters consider to be its unique and insightful articulations of human responsibility toward the Earth. Sometimes referenced as ‘creation care’ or ‘environmental stewardship’, this scholarship remains somewhat less known in the broader academic field of Religion and Ecology, the subfield of Christian Environmental Theology (or Ecotheology), and even among lay membership of Latter-Day Saints. Although The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has recently provided resources to highlight and promote its teachings about the importance of attending to ecological health, those resources are under-utilized and sometimes irrelevant to the daily religious practice. In order to contribute to this vital scholarly conversation and to contribute to an understanding of the Latter-Day Saint tradition within the larger field of Religion and Ecology, the online journal Religions will dedicate a Special Issue of its journal to Latter-Day Saint environmental values and ethics. As co-editors, we invite essays that will build on previous work to extend the scholarly conversation about the Latter-Day Saint tradition in relation to the contemporary environmental crisis.

We look for papers that will explore these and other topics as articulated by and interpreted within Latter-Day Saint belief and practice:

• Latter-Day Saint theologies of land, material wealth, and prosperity;
• the environmental significance of divine embodiment;
• agency of matter;
• the ethics of climate change;
• the ethics of an end-times or “latter-day” religion; the usefulness and challenges of understandings of apocalypse;
• the Word of Wisdom as a guide to sustainable living and point of intersection with other ecological aspects of other religious dietary laws;
• the place and stature of animals and the value of biodiversity;
• sustainability and the Latter-Day Saint church as a developer of land and builder of chapels, temples, and schools;
• environmental ethics in the uniquely Latter-Day Saint sacred texts;
• race and gender in Latter-Day Saint theology in relationship to environmental care;
• nature and spirit in Latter-Day Saint thought and practice;
• Latter-Day Saint creation narratives and Ecotheology;
• the Law of Consecration, care for the poor, and environmental justice; the international church and environmental degradation; and
• the history of environmental thought in Mormonism; the roots of environmental indifference or antagonism in Mormon culture.

Abstracts of no more than 300 words and a CV should be received by February 28, 2021. The editors will make their selection of contributors by March 15, 2021. Final papers of no more than 7500 words are due on August 15, 2021. Final revisions and publication will be completed by December 2021.

Prof. George Handley
Ms. Kristen Blair
Ms. Anna Thurston
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.