Stephen Fellows- Religions and Ecology

Today in class we were talking about the idea that the environment affected the development of different religions. Especially the number of gods that people worship. The desert leads to monotheism and the southern mountainous regions near the sea the polytheistic religions of the Greeks. Or the Northern Woodlands that lead to the more spiritual and nature oriented religions. This was an idea I was thinking about earlier today. When looking at the religions of the ancient Greeks it is easy to see how their environment would lead to the development of the Greek pantheon of gods. Individual city-states developed along the same lines separated by mountain ranges. Communities would find certain springs or groves holy and believed they were the homes of gods or other spirits. As different communities communicated they would share their storied and since each area had a home for their god it would not make sense to say that everyone’s god was the same. The idea of the desert leading to one god makes just as much sense. People traveling in always see the sky. There are very few groves or springs but the sky is always there. And even if people worshiped a single god by a different name it makes sense that they would agree that it was the same deity. This was interesting to me because it was the first time that I had ever heard of the environment directly affecting the development of religion.