While most interpretations of Terrence Malick's 2011 THE TREE OF LIFE (US) concentrate on the film's theological resonances, I focus here on THE TREE OF LIFE's political vision. I locate this vision in the fraught relationship between two influential strands of American religio-political thought, Augustinianism and Emersonianism. THE TREE OF LIFE's theological concerns are undoubtedly Augustinian, yet it takes up a similar radical politics as what Emerson did in his best-known essays. The result, I argue, is a cinema of religio-political possibility with important implications for a potential rapproachment between religionists (namely evangelical Christians) and secularists, particularly on the topic of environmental conservation and sustainability.