Nature and the Divine

Reading Emerson's "Nature" made me reflect on all of the nature writing and media I've read and viewed in my life. Some was forced, like reading much of Walden in high school, reading Emerson and other Thoreau writings in both this class and spring semester, pieces about a certain place (like Tinker Creek), and movies that rely upon the character's relationship with their environment but some wasn't like Prodigal Summer or The Bean Trees. What these all pretty much have in common is an association between nature and the divine, whether that be capital G God or a spiritual association. And I understand why, historically, it has been so. Religion was everywhere, especially in America. But religion's hold on the nation's population is declining. Fewer people attend church, fewer people pray nightly, and an increasing number of people are self-identifying as atheist. And so, with this trend away from established religion and religious belief itself, will nature writing ever leave behind the divine?
To me, the constant visions of God's beauty or benevolence or existence in nature seems to detract from nature's own beauty. If the beauty is to be ascribed to God or a higher being/power, then there is little inherent worth in nature outside of it's being a window to the divine. And now that humanity has evidence of mathematical order in the universe and a history of how we got to now (as Steven Johnson put it) we don't need to associate the beauty or usefulness of nature to anything divine. I don't want it to appear that I believe that there is no place for the divine in nature writing because there is a place for divinity in everything if you believe it is so, but I want to see more nature writing that explores nature outside of any divine or otherworldly worth as many other genres have done. We don't see religious epics being published as we used to. I think that nature writing would be more relatable if nature seemed more attainable because nature could be more than an area that seemed to be especially special. There is nature in a front yard lawn that is too easily overlooked because Nature is (supposedly) separate from society (humanity) and is closer to origins (creation) than your lawn. If people have recommendations I will gladly take them because this is the type of nature writing I would like to explore because it would be much more relatable and authentic for me.