A Multibeing Manifesto

Abstract Half playfully and half earnestly, this manifesto calls for a turn to multibeing studies. Reworking multispecies studies, it draws attention to what scholars of religion gain from this important analytical approach in the humanistic study of ecology, as well as what they can contribute. Multibeing studies includes many species—plants and microbes, human and nonhuman animals—as well as other-than-human beings, like God, ancestors, and spirits. As formulated here, multibeing studies is a critical opening for social scientific studies of religions, like Christianity and Islam, that are awkwardly positioned in multispecies studies. The manifesto builds a concrete example of the approach through fieldwork on barrier islands off the coast of North Carolina, offering analytical and methodological reflections on what it means to study religion by putting grass first. Where does grass lead us? What relations does it prompt?