Orthodox Iconic Imagination as a ‘Translational’ Legal Fact: Religious Difference and Urban Intercultural Ecology

Abstract Contemporary climate and environmental crises have caused changes in human perceptions of the environment. This transformation has also impacted secular legal spaces, which are commonly perceived to be universal. Their prior categorizations are undergoing further significant changes due to the demographic transformations resulting from migration. The combination of these social conditions opens new research avenues for religion when understood in its capacity for transformative agency. The plastic and dynamic nature of religion, moreover, is a source of cultural diversity in constructing relationships between humans and nature. Ignoring the anthropological dimension of religious knowledge in ecological transition processes risks provoking the building of still more boundaries between communities within the so-called secular public sphere. With specific reference to this aspect, the essay will demonstrate how a coordinated approach to eco-environmental and anthropological-religious issues is indispensable for the regulatory processes concerning sustainability. This study depends on a key nuance: what may seem fair and sustainable to some could be viewed as unfair and unsustainable by others—a seemingly trivial observation which however has profound implications on, inter alia, the so called “European Green Deal”. Theoretical arguments will be supported by drawing from an empirical analysis conducted among Romanian Orthodox communities in Italy.