Ecological restoration is the attempt to repair ecosystems that have been damaged or degraded, most often by past human activities. Restoration includes everything from removing dams to planting native trees, grasses and wildflowers to bio-reactivating soil to controlling invasive plants to recontouring land. Beyond this, ecological restoration is the attempt to restore humans’ relationship with nature. In its metaphysical understanding of the integral connection between culture and nature, and through the practical activities of restoring land, ecological restoration is seen as providing an ethical model of human living with land. One aspect of ecological restoration that has received surprisingly scant scholarly attention is restoration’s religious and ethical dimensions. Ecological restoration in America, for instance, has been understood as a form of cultural redemption for past ecological sins. In this way, the inherent ethical and religious dimensions of restoration can be interpreted as popular cultural religious phenomena in America. Yet they can also be interpreted theologically by particular religious traditions and communities. This dissertation argues that the field of environmental theology and ethics is in need of a pragmatic turn, that is, a turn toward examining the connections between environmental problems, social practices, and moral and religious experience, and, furthermore, that ecological restoration provides a promising context for exploring these connections. Additionally I argue that insofar as religious communities are engaged in analyzing environmental problems and enacting environmental practices in their particular contexts, religious faith has the potential to positively contribute to public discourse about contemporary environmental practice in America.