Falling in Love with Nature: The Values of Latinx Catholic Environmentalism

by Amanda J. Baugh, 2024. Paperback, 244 pages.

Winner, 2025 Catholic Media Association Book Awards: Inclusion in the Church

Explores the contours of Latinx Catholic environmentalism

Home-based conservationist measures such as cultivating backyard gardens, avoiding consumerism, and limiting waste are widespread among Spanish-speaking Catholics across the United States. Yet these home-based conservationist practices are seldom recognized as “environmental” because they are enacted by working-class immigrant communities and do not conform to the expectations of mainstream environmentalism.

In Falling in Love with Nature, Amanda J. Baugh tells the story of American environmentalism through a focus on Spanish-speaking Catholics, shedding light on environmental actors who have been hidden in plain sight. While dominant narratives about environmental activism include minorities, primarily in the realm of environmental racism and injustice, Baugh demonstrates that minority communities are not merely victims of environmental problems. They can be active agents who express love for nature based on inherited family traditions and close relationships with the land. Baugh shows that Spanish-speaking Catholics have values that have been overlooked in global discourses, grassroots movements, and the highest echelons of the US Catholic Church. By drawing attention to the environmental knowledge that is already abundant within Spanish-speaking Catholic communities, Falling in Love with Nature challenges readers to rethink their assumptions about who can be an environmental leader and what counts as environmentalism.

About the Author

Amanda J. Baugh is Professor and Associate Chair of Religious Studies and Director of the MA Program in Sustainability at California State University, Northridge. She specializes in the study of religion and environment in American culture, with attention to the ways diverse groups relate to environmentalism. Born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, Baugh now resides in Los Angeles with her husband and two sons.