Ecotheology as an Academic Field

Abstract

This article examines ecotheology as an academic subject. Building on a previous analysis of ecotheological curricula published in Sacred Earth: Ecotheology, Sustainability and Education (Bredal-Tomren, 2026), it shifts attention from formal course descriptions to the selfunderstanding
of scholars working within the field. The main empirical material consists of a digital survey conducted in April 2026 among researchers affiliated with the European Christian Ecotheology Research Network (ECErN). The findings point to a substantial degree of conceptual convergence regarding ecotheology’s normative, interdisciplinary and practiceoriented
character, alongside considerable variation in institutional location and organisational form. Read in dialogue with prominent ecotheology scholars’ and Arne Næss’s notion of ecosophy, the material suggests that ecotheology is best approached not as a clearly bounded subdiscipline
but as an integrative theological field oriented towards ecological sustainability and social transformation.