Falling in Love with Nature - (North American Religions) by Amanda J Baugh (Paperback)

About the Book

"This book shows how a focus on environmental values Latinx Catholics challenges us to rethink our ideas about climate resilience and the future of sustainability in America"--

Book Synopsis

Winner, 2025 Catholic Media Association Book Awards: Inclusion in the Church

Explores the contours of Latinx Catholic environmentalism

Home-based conservationist measures such as cultivating backyard gardens, avoiding consumerism, and limiting waste are widespread among Spanish-speaking Catholics across the United States. Yet these home-based conservationist practices are seldom recognized as "environmental" because they are enacted by working-class immigrant communities and do not conform to the expectations of mainstream environmentalism.

In Falling in Love with Nature, Amanda J. Baugh tells the story of American environmentalism through a focus on Spanish-speaking Catholics, shedding light on environmental actors who have been hidden in plain sight. While dominant narratives about environmental activism include minorities, primarily in the realm of environmental racism and injustice, Baugh demonstrates that minority communities are not merely victims of environmental problems. They can be active agents who express love for nature based on inherited family traditions and close relationships with the land. Baugh shows that Spanish-speaking Catholics have values that have been overlooked in global discourses, grassroots movements, and the highest echelons of the US Catholic Church. By drawing attention to the environmental knowledge that is already abundant within Spanish-speaking Catholic communities, Falling in Love with Nature challenges readers to rethink their assumptions about who can be an environmental leader and what counts as environmentalism.

Review Quotes

"Amanda Baugh unveils the home-based 'la tierra environmentalism' of the U.S. faith group that surveys report is most likely to address climate change: Latinx Catholics. Her superb study belies the frequent presumption that Latinx communities are merely victims of environmental injustice, underscoring that Latinx conservation efforts necessitate a more holistic analysis than the standard Eurocentric narratives of religious environmentalism."--Timothy Matovina, University of Notre Dame

About the Author

Amanda J. Baugh is Professor and Associate Chair of Religious Studies and Director of the M.A Program in Sustainability at California State University, Northridge. She is the author of God and the Green Divide: Religious Environmentalism in Black and White.