Ongoing Projects
Catholics, Justice, and Socio-Ecologies in Appalachia
Since 1891, the Catholic Church has developed and promoted a set of teachings on social, environmental, economic, and political justice. Called CST, it presents a vision of a liberatory future where love and goodness structure social relations. The Church moreover uses CST to call Catholics to do whatever they can to make sure a future real
To date, most research on CST is theological or theoretically. Far fewer scholars, especially outside of history, have empirically assessed CST or sought to understand the potentials (and pitfalls) associated with seeking to place a counterhegemonic conception of the world amidst quotidian everyday. Grounded in theories of lived religion, I seek to close this major gap in our understanding of the Catholic Church
My dissertation carries this work forward by focusing on Nazareth Farm, a Catholic intentional community and service-retreat center nestled in the hills of north-central West Virginia’s Doddridge County amidst the thousands of natural gas wells which today dominate the area’s economy and socio-ecologies. Drawing from ethnographic research and detailed interviews, I examine how Nazareth Farm’s community seeks to live out and teach CST–as well as those instances where they fall short. From this I have learned that a Catholic Church which takes seriously socio-ecological justice is not merely possible but in some places already lived reality. However, such a Church is quite far removed from the one in power today
Religions and Environmental Communication
While moving parts of my reserach in Appalachia to publication, with undergraduate students at Colorado College I have begun conducting research examining environmental themes in Catholic and other religiously-affiliated media outlets. We are currently conducting a pilot study of five outlets, and based upon exciting initial findings, I look forward to expanding this research strand to encompass other efforts. As this project grows, I look forward to using a mix of methods to understand both the production of religious mediascapes as well as their effect in shaping socio-ecological imaginaries.
Recent Past Projects
Religion & Nature-Society Geographies
Understanding how various human communities entwine with and co-produce the more-than-human world constitutes one of geography’s core disciplinary themes. Indeed, this is a central part of what makes geography interesting among the social sciences and allows it to speak to many of the pressing challenges facing our world today
However, despite clear calls and examples at key moments in the discipline’s history and a growing interdisciplinary consensus as to the important role religions play in mediating individual’s and community’s varied relations with the world beyond, nature-society geographers have tended to overlook religion/s and religious actors. This strand of my research program seeks to understand why this gap in geography’s literature emerged, what potential theoretical insights it has occluded, and how we might bridge this gap. The initial paper stemming from this project was published in Progress in Human Geography and should be accessible here. I also have a chapter forthcoming on this topic in the Handbook of the Geographies of Religion (Springer, 2025).
Catholic Clergy & Climate Change
In 2015, Pope Francis released Laudato Si’, which outlined the Catholic Church’s perspective on nature-society relations and their links with the Church’s broader social justice efforts. This was met with widespread acclaim, especially among environmental advocates who hoped Francis’s encyclical would usher in a new wave of Catholic socio-ecological activism unlike anything seen before. To assess whether this was happening, I interviewed parochial priests and deacons across the Diocese of Syracuse. However, despite broad optimism and indeed desire on the parts of many clergy, I found that barriers both individual and systemic were impeding meaningful uptake of Francis’s encyclical almost across the board. My results were published in Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, and they should be accessible here
Catholic Environmental Imagery
They say ‘if a picture’s worth a thousand words, a video’s worth a million.’ This project involved an ecocritical reading of a YouTube video published by the Vatican as part of their efforts to stir Catholics to environmental activism. I assessed how the choice of imagery furthered or, perhaps unintentionally subverted, the video producer’s aims. In doing so this paper drew attention to the difficulties associated with creating counterhegemonic digital media. It was published in Environmental History and should be accessible here
Dominic Wilkins 