Sustainability as a Global Faith? The Religious Dimensions of Sustainability and Personal Risk Lucas F. Johnston* Tracing the development of the religious dimensions of sustainability and sustainable development discourse, this article highlights the participation of religious individuals and groups in sustainability advocacy, and the man- ufacture of sustainability narratives which perform religious work. Since their inception, sustainability and its cognate, sustainable development, have been utilized in the public sphere to promote certain value sets and manage citizen populations. The religious dimensions of sustainability dis- course have been some of the primary levers through which the social func- tions of sustainability have been realized. The term sustainability often acts as a shorthand reference to the core values, beliefs, and practices that par- ticular individuals or groups would like to see persist over the long term. Focusing on the notion that it is largely the absence of conversations across these differing value structures and desirable futures that drives unsustain- ability, I highlight the work of nongovernmental leaders of sustainability movements who rely on what I have termed an ethic of personal risk. CLARIFYING THE TERMS: RELIGION AND SUSTAINABILITY ACCORDING TO THE DEVELOPMENT SPECIALIST Jennifer Sumner, “[s]ome authors consider sustainability to be like an ethic . . . *Lucas F. Johnston, Religion and Environmental Studies, Wake Forest University, Wingate Hall 118, Winston-Salem, NC 27109, USA. E-mail: johnstlf@wfu.edu. Some of the following analysis appears in my more expansive treatment of these and related questions, Religion and Sustainability: Social Movements and the Politics of the Environment (Equinox/Acumen, 2013). Journal of the American Academy of Religion, pp. 1–23 doi:10.1093/jaarel/lft056 © The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the American Academy of Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com