The Sea Can Wash Away All Evils: Modern Marine Pollution and the Ancient Cathartic Ocean

Kimberley Patton examines the environmental crises facing the world's oceans from the perspective of religious history. Much as the ancient Greeks believed, and Euripides wrote, that "the sea can wash away all evils," a wide range of cultures have sacralized the sea, trusting in its power to wash away what is dangerous, dirty, and morally contaminating. The sea makes life on land possible by keeping it "pure."

Patton sets out to learn whether the treatment of the world's oceans by industrial...