ANT368 World Religions and Ecology

Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology is an international academic journal that studies the relationships between religion, culture, and ecology worldwide. The journal addresses how cultural and ecological developments influence the world s major religions, giving rise to new forms of religious expression, and how in turn religious belief and cultural background can influence people s attitudes towards ecology.

Exploring traditional religious concepts of and attitudes towards nature and how these have been changed by the environmental crisis, this work looks at larger conceptual issues that transcend individual traditions and examines religious participation in environmental politics.

The Companion Encyclopedia of Theology provides a comprehensive guide to modern theological thought. The second half of the Companion is concerned with application, including environmental ethics. See Environmental ethics article by Stephen Clark.

Comprising 60 essays, the volume focuses on communities rather than beliefs, symbols, or rites. It is organized into six sections corresponding to the major living religious traditions: the Indic cultural region, the Buddhist/Confucian, the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim regions, and the African cultural region. In each section an introductory essay discusses the social development of that religious tradition historically.

Addresses all aspects of the dialogue between the sciences and the world's religions, reaching into the humanities as well as into the physical sciences and technology. Examines controversial issues such as human cloning and stem cell research along with more traditional questions such as the origins of life, the nature of sin, and the philosophy of science and religion.

Includes chapters on First Nations views, ecofeminist philosophy, theology, and ethics by Rosemary Radford Ruether and analyses of climate change vs. spiritual and religious beliefs. NOW also available ONLINE.

From the Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions.

From the Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School.

A comprehensive volume from the Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions.

From the Harvard University Press for the Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School.

A leading scholar, cultural historian, and Catholic priest who spent more than fifty years writing about our engagement with the Earth, Thomas Berry possessed prophetic insight into the rampant destruction of ecosystems and the extinction of species. In this book he makes a persuasive case for an interreligious dialogue that can better confront the environmental problems of the twenty-first century. These erudite and keenly sympathetic essays represent Berry's best work, covering such issues as human beings' modern alienation from nature and the possibilities of future, regenerative forms of religious experience. Asking that we create a new story of the universe and the emergence of the Earth within it, Berry resituates the human spirit within a sacred totality.

Thomas Berry is one of the most eminent cultural historians of our time. Here he presents the culmination of his ideas and urges us to move from being a disrupting force on the Earth to a benign presence. This transition is the Great Work -- the most necessary and most ennobling work we will ever undertake. Berry's message is not one of doom but of hope. He reminds society of its function, particularly the universities and other educational institutions whose role is to guide students into an appreciation rather than an exploitation of the world around them. Berry is the leading spokesperson for the Earth, and his profound ecological insight illuminates the path we need to take in the realms of ethics, politics, economics, and education if both we and the planet are to survive.

Today, humanity stands at an historic crossroads. Deepening poverty and accelerating ecological destruction challenge us to act with wisdom and maturity: How can we move toward a future where meaning, hope, and beauty, can truly flourish? Drawing on in sights. from economics, psychology, science, and spirituality, The Too of Liberation seeks wisdom leading to authentic liberation-a path toward ever-greater communion, diversity, and creativity for the Earth community. It describes this wisdom using the Chinese word Tao- both a way leading to harmony and the unfolding process of the cosmos itself. Book jacket.

Our current economic system is unsustainable. Its fundamental elements unlimited growth and endless wealth accumulation fly in the face of the fact that the Earths resources are clearly finite. The destructive effects of this denial of reality are wreaking havoc on our ecological and social systems. But what is the alternative? We need to go beyond simply fixing problems as they arise, or even as we anticipate them, and offer a comprehensive new economic model. It is a moral imperative. Peter Brown, Geoffrey Carver and their colleagues at the Quaker Institute for the Future have accepted this challenge. Drawing on the core Quaker principle of "right relationship," they have launched a campaign to bring our economy, our ethics, and our environment into alignment. A handbook for this movement, Right Relationship proposes an alternative economic model that fuses science and ethics with the earth care teachings of the world's great religions. "

A new edition of one of the most influential books of the last fifty years. After its publication in 1962, Carson's concern for the future of the planet spread throughout the world. Her book helped to launch the environmental movement.

Updated with nearly forty new selections to reflect the tremendous growth and transformation of scholarly, theological, and activist religious environmentalism, the second edition of This Sacred Earthis anunparalleled resource for the study of religion's complex relationship to the environment.

Contemporary threats to the earth and to human life suggest that for many people today the predominant values are consumerism, economic globalisation and violence. In the face of the potent destructive forces unleashed by such lifestyles, this book argues that respecting the earth and building sustainable community call us to live out such spiritual values as gratitude, humility, sufficiency, justice, peace, love, faith and hope. After an exposition of how each of these values motivates active engagement for earth community in Christian and other faith traditions, the author presents a case study of how individuals and groups are seeking to put that value into practice. Suggestions from group study and a bibliography enhance the value of this book for local study groups.

Peter Hammarstedt and Benjamin Potts of Sea Shepherd fame and co-stars of television’s Whale Wars. Enei Begaye, a Navajo/Diné activist bringing green jobs to the reservation. Rob Stewart, award-winning filmmaker of Sharkwater. Jamie Henn, co-founder of 350.org. Wen Bo, founder of China’s Greenpeace. Tanya Fields, an urban farmer and poor people’s activist in New York City. Meet the 21st century eco-activists who are devoting themselves to saving our planet. The Next Eco-Warriors features the stories of 22 of these emerging leaders and their heroic work in a variety of green revolutions. Emily Hunter, daughter of Greenpeace co-founders Robert and Bobbi Hunter, introduces us to the feisty and diverse global community of young people who are tackling issues of energy use, overfishing, overconsumption, waste management, the disappearance of indigenous cultures and rainforest, and other urgent environmental/social concerns with a sense of passion and possibility. Together their message is clear: anyone can be an eco-warrior if they use their talents for change. The book will release for Earth Day, with earth-friendly promotions.

"The Inconvenient Indian is at once a “history” and the complete subversion of a history—in short, a critical and personal meditation that the remarkable Thomas King has conducted over the past 50 years about what it means to be “Indian” in North America. Rich with dark and light, pain and magic, this book distills the insights gleaned from that meditation, weaving the curiously circular tale of the relationship between non-Natives and Natives in the centuries since the two first encountered each other. In the process, King refashions old stories about historical events and figures, takes a sideways look at film and pop culture, relates his own complex experiences with activism, and articulates a deep and revolutionary understanding of the cumulative effects of ever-shifting laws and treaties on Native peoples and lands.

Nearly fifteen years ago, in The End of Nature, Bill McKibben demonstrated that humanity had begun to irrevocably alter and endanger our environment on a global scale. Now he turns his eye to an array of technologies that could change our relationship not with the rest of nature but with ourselves. He explores the frontiers of genetic engineering, robotics, and nanotechnology and shows that each threatens to take us past a point of no return. McKibben offers a celebration of what it means to be human, and a warning that we risk the loss of all meaning if we step across the threshold. Instantly acclaimed for its passion and insight, this wise and eloquent book argues that we cannot forever grow in reach and power.

As featured in Bill Moyers's PBS special "Spirit and Nature", leaders from major traditions around the world speak out in this volume about what spiritual resources we may turn to in our age of unprecedented danger to the planet.

What is the proper role of humans in light of the ecological crisis? After a sympathetic and critical analysis of the principal answers to that question, Stephen Scharper argues that only a religious point of view - seeing human agency as central to both the devastation and the reclamation of planetary life - is viable. Such a view must include social, economic, cultural, as well as theological transformation in order to be effective in confronting threats to the. ecosystem. Among the principal answers or "paradigms" assessed by this book are the new cosmology, ecofeminism, process thought, Gaia theory, and liberation theology.

One of the world’s most influential environmentalists reveals a worldwide grassroots movement of hope and humanity Blessed Unresttells the story of a worldwide movement that is largely unseen by politicians or the media. Hawken, an environmentalist and author, has spent more than a decade researching organizations dedicated to restoring the environment and fostering social justice.

The Green Bible seeks out the word of God for our diminished planet. Its sources range from the Hebrew and Christian scriptures to religious and political leaders, scientists and environmentalists today. Their voices bring home the urgent task we face: to mend our household which is Creation, and to inspire hope that life will continue-and flourish-for all earth's beings.

In A Short History of Progress, The 2004 CBC Massey Lectures, Ronald Wright argues that our modern predicament is as old as civilization, a 10,000-year experiment we have participated in but seldom controlled. Only by understanding the patterns of triumph and disaster that humanity has repeated around the world since the Stone Age can we recognize the experiment's inherent dangers, and, with luck and wisdom, shape its outcome.

Perhaps unprecedented in scope, this anthology explores current environmental and ecological issues amidst the various worldviews, cultures, and traditions that constitute the world's major religions. Presenting a global conceptual landscape in part one with selections that focus on the spiritual and environmental crises associated with modernity, this volume, with typical skillful editing in part two, distills all of the major world religions' perspectives-Eastern, Western, and newly emerging-on contemporary ecological issues. Part three rounds out this extraordinary collection of insights with an exploration of other cross-cutting motifs in today's enviro-cultural criticism, including radical environmentalism, ecofeminism, ecojustice, and the rising voice of the Global South.

Revealing : the pain of loss and the delight.
Reflecting : what on earth are we doing?
Redeeming : a creative space for new life-giving relationships.
Conclusion: from sustainable development to sustainable liberation : toward an anthropo-harmonic ethic.