Converting the Imagination through Visual Images in Ecological Religious Education

Global ecological crisis calls for humanity's "ecological conversion," as well as deconversion from consumerism as a faith system. Conversion involves the imagination, which suggests an important role for visual images in religious education for ecological conversion. Yet educational proposals for deconversion from consumer culture have neglected the potential of the visual image. This essay focuses on two such proposals, from religious educator and practical theologian Katherine Turpin and Christian philosopher James K.A. Smith, both of whom focus on practice over image. Acknowledging the liabilities of image, the essay describes pedagogical exercises that employ images to support ecological conversion.