Is religion an institution? Configuring ecological religion for political and social analysis

Given the increasing interest in religion across various types of public policy, it has become more urgent to establish precisely what sort of a phenomenon religion is. This chapter takes one common point of reference for environmental policy and values literature and explores whether religion is an “institution.” It establishes the range of meanings that might be conveyed by “institution” considering developments within new institutionalism in political science and economics, particularly attending to the range of possibilities offered by what Peter Hall and Rosemary Taylor (1996) define as strategic and cultural approaches to institutions. It surveys the disadvantages of this approach, particularly relative to the ways such analysis can miss politically salient forms of “invisible” or non-institutional religion, and argues for a pragmatic poly-theoretical approach that can make use of institutional analysis alongside other forms of analysis that are better disposed to surface forms of spirituality and hybrid religion.