Guest Blog: Elsa Kunz, History Department, The Webb School

Overview

Ethics is typically characterized as an inquiry into right and wrong dispositions and behaviors. However, the high school ethics classroom is about much more than simply answering the question, “What should I do?” It’s also about how we understand the world. Tackling this broader endeavor requires interrogating the very nature of being. While this can be done in various ways, articulating stories about what is “right” or “natural” and examining ways in which our own lived experiences shape our understandings can both make powerful contributions. 

Religion plays a powerful role in how we approach and answer such questions. As a current teacher, with a background in religious studies, it is important to me that I integrate the academic study of religion into my Ethics classroom. These lesson plan guidelines, focusing on Bears Ears National Monument, were part of my mini-unit on land ethics. 

Starting with Questions

This past semester, my students spent two weeks examining different narratives about the natural world and the role that religion plays in creating, shaping, and influencing such narratives. I specifically chose to do a mini-unit on land ethics because almost all of my students, whether they believed in climate change or not, expressed interest in protecting the environment. Further, since students had just finished reading the piece, What Will Future Generations Condemn Us For? by Kwame Anthony Appiah,* I figured that examining land-centered cultural narratives would provide an opening for students to imagine different possibilities for understanding the natural world.

First, following the QFT Method, I asked students to generate as many questions as they could about the human relationship to the natural environment. Their responses included:

• Does recycling really matter?
• Are electric vehicles better for the environment?
• Who is responsible?
• Why should I do anything if my actions won’t make a significant difference?

Does Nature Have Intrinsic Value?

With these questions in mind, students were asked to compare their questions with the questions raised by Desmonda Lawrence in her short piece, Ethical Concepts in the Age of the Anthropocene. Lawrence argues that, in today’s age, answering the question “How should I live?” requires deviating from rights-based and utilitarian approaches to environmental ethics. Instead, Lawrence suggests that we must engage with frameworks that assume the environment, even devoid of humanity, has intrinsic value. 

Not all of my students agreed with the idea that nature has intrinsic value. In fact, many thought the primary purpose of nature was to serve humanity. More specifically, many students felt that humans were separate from, and superior to, the natural world.

When prompted to think about the origins of their ideas, most students claimed that “it was just how they were taught.” A handful referenced an interpretation of Genesis in which humanity is blessed by God and tasked with “dominion” over all the Earth. Another student mentioned that food chain diagrams – which place humans as the top predator with the plants and decomposers at the bottom – as further evidence that humans rule the world. Once these narratives surfaced, other students could better identify similar themes in their own contextual experiences.

The Case of Bears Ears National Monument

To provide students with another perspective about human relationships with the natural world, I turned to resources from the Religious Literacy and Local Knowledges Educator Module available from the Religion and Public Life program at Harvard Divinity School. Specifically, I asked students to read and grapple with a 2021 Op-Ed written by four Indigenous women, including Religion and Public Life Fellow Cynthia Wilson, calling on President Biden to protect Bears Ears National Monument. 

They were given the following instructions as they read.

1. Take note of the Op-Ed.’s form. What do you notice about the language, visual structure, and style of the piece? 
2. Find your “Golden Line” (a phrase or sentence from the texts that speaks to you). What is it about this line stands out for you? 
3. Place an asterisk next to the places where you see “religion” present in the piece (think about religion broadly). Mark points where religion and the land of Bears Ears commingle. 

With these annotations in mind, students brought up deep questions about the relationship between religion and land. Some students remarked that the Op-Ed is like a poem or a prayer, citing the line “Pray with us.” Others noticed that the land was sacred to the Women of Bears Ears, and asked questions like “Can land be sacred?” “Can you use the First Amendment ‘freedom of religion’ clause to keep land?” “They say the land is like a mother, like it’s alive.” Most also observed that the land and the women could not be separated. As quoted in the text, “We are Bears Ears. Bears Ears is Us.” 

How Can We Articulate the Role of Religion?

The class discussion that followed provided students with the opportunity to see “religion” at play in a way that moved beyond a belief systems comparison chart. It also provided them with an alternative religious “deep story” about human relationships with land.

Most students concluded that their own ethical priorities were quite different from Women of Bears Ears. Many also remained baffled that land, itself, could hold religious significance. But reading and discussing the piece together allowed students to interrogate how religion might play an integral role in shaping the stories we tell about the “right” way to be in the world.

It was a great way to get students to explore some of the deeper questions that define the Ethics course. What type of world do we want to live in? How do we understand the worlds (school, city, nation, globe) we currently inhabit? What ways of being move us toward our aspirational goals? Hopefully, such discussions provide opportunities for students to think critically about how they define themselves in relation to their values, their various communities, and the land. 

*I am grateful to Misty Koger-Ojure for sharing this piece with me.

About the Author

Elsa currently teaches in the History Department at The Webb School in Bell Buckle, TN. She received her BA from St. Olaf College and a Masters in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. She enjoys thinking about ways to incorporate the academic studies of religion and philosophy into the humanities classroom. In addition, Elsa loves to spend time singing, hiking, and dancing with friends. Her previous Religion Matters posts include:

Islamic Funerary Practices Across the Globe During COVID-19

Religious Literacy in French Classes: Changing Understandings of Laïcité

Religion All Around: Engaging Students with the Category of Religion