A movement known as \u201cnew animism,\u201d which seeks to secure personhood rights for nonhuman beings through legal means, is gaining a following around the globe.<\/p>\n
New animist environmental activists are not the only ones using the term. Animism itself has become fashionable. Some spirituality bloggers talk about animism as a way to deepen one\u2019s spiritual relationship to nature. Scholars \u2013 from anthropologists to philosophers \u2013 have taken a renewed interest in the concept.<\/p>\n
Most of these people are using animism in a very general, and inaccurate, way, to mean the belief that everything in nature has a soul. The renewed interest in animism stems from the hope that people will behave in more ecologically sustainable ways if they believe that the natural world around them is alive.<\/p>\n
However, as an anthropologist of religion who works with people whose religious practices were traditionally described as animist, I believe the reality is both more interesting and more complicated. Animism is not a religion or even a set of beliefs about nature having a soul. It\u2019s a term used by scholars to classify religious practices through which human beings cultivate relationships with more powerful beings that reside in the world around us.<\/p>\n
Read more at: theconversation.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A movement known as \u201cnew animism,\u201d which seeks to secure personhood rights for nonhuman beings through legal means, is gaining a following around the globe. New animist environmental activists are not the only ones using the term. Animism itself has become fashionable. Some spirituality bloggers talk about animism as a way to deepen one\u2019s spiritual … Continue reading \u2018Animism\u2019 recognizes how animals, places and plants have power over humans \u2013 and it\u2019s finding renewed interest around the world<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":21348,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-white-horse"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/white_horse_blog-300x100-300x100-1.jpg","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8fAkI-6ba","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23756"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23757,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23756\/revisions\/23757"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}