Article
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; …
Article
For many Christians, participation in the sacraments is a more immediate and more fundamental way of discovering the presence of God than is the reading of abstract theological treatises. Through them, as John Habgood explains, “material reality is shown to be capable of bearing the image of the divine.” In this essay Habgood carries this …
Continue reading “A Sacramental Approach to Environmental Issues”
Article
What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet – ‘Inversnaid’, Gerard Manley Hopkins Sixty men gathered at a conference centre in the southwestern United States. As representatives of a national men’s …
Continue reading “A Way in the Wilderness: Men and the Environment”
Article
Jesus said not to take much thought about what you eat or drink, and in the United States obedience to this text is running high. What Jesus had in mind was that there are many concerns more important than eating or drinking: the realm of redemption, for one thing. That realm — the “Kingdom of …
Article
Many of us feel a little silly if we react strongly to the death of a pet or the plight of an animal. “Well, it was just a cat,” we say, embarrassed by our grief. Where does this attitude come from? It’s certainly not biblical. Our modern view of animals can be traced primarily to …
Article
Ecological theologies that are shaped by biblical materials require a thorough analysis of the various views of nature held by biblical writers. This essay offers that analysis. It was written more than a decade ago, when theologians in different parts of the world were first realizing the depths of the crisis inflicted upon earth by …
Article
In the past few decades we have witnessed a massive transfer of power from nation states to corporations. Of course, corporations have been powerful actors for a long time. In the late nineteenth century they were able to control many politicians in the United States and thereby acquire what they wanted. This process has continued …
Continue reading “Can Corporations Assume Responsibility for the Environment?”
Article
It is hard to know which was more difficult for Noah: to build the ark when there was no sign of rain, or to be in the ark with the animals for an entire year. As rabbinic tradition has it, during those 12 months Noah was so busy tending to the needs of all those …
Continue reading “Caring and Working: An Agrarian Perspective”
Book Chapter
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. The earth was desolate and void and darkness was over the surface of the deep and the breath of God hovered over the surface of the water. And God said, “Let there be light;” and there was light. And God saw the light was good, …
Book Chapter
And God said, “Let the earth bring forth a living soul after its kind: cattle and creeper and wild beast of the earth after its kind.”And it was so. And God made the wild beast of the earth after its kind, and the cattle after its kind and every creeper of the earth after its …
Continue reading “Chapter Three: Land Animals and Humans – The Sixth Day”
Book Chapter
And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heaven to divide the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years.” And they will be for lights in the expanse of the heaven to shine upon the earth. And it …
Continue reading “Chapter Two: Planets and Time – the Fourth Day”
Article
Like Albert Schweitzer, and like Daly and Regan in this book, Charles Birch would have ethics extended to all life. Spealdng as a Christian and as a biologist, Birch argues that the Christian obligation to work for the liberation of the oppressed includes an obligation to work for the liberation of the nonhuman oppressed. Birch …
Continue reading “Christian Obligation for the Liberation of Nature”
Article
Tom Regan is among the foremost ethicists of our time who argue for the rights of nonhuman animals. Christians who are concerned with the liberation of the oppressed must listen to the voices of such ethicists; they must begin to hear the demand that we see the wrongfulness in the mistreatment of nonhuman animals — …
Continue reading “Christianity and Animal Rights: The Challenge and Promise”
Article
Ten years ago I wrote a book called The End of Nature, which was the first book for a general audience about the question of global warming. At the time, climate change was a hypothesis. By burning fossil fuels and thereby emitting great quantities of carbon dioxide, human beings would trap heat near the planet’s …
Continue reading “Climate Change and the Unraveling of Creation”
Article
That Christian theology throughout its history has been transformed by sources outside of Christianity is a well-known fact. That it should be open to transformation through the insights of the various traditions, that it should be open to the possibilities of creative transformation by contact with the wisdom and vision of other sources, is highly …
Continue reading “Community of Life: Ecological Theology in African Perspective”
Article
For Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, director of the sub-unit on Church and Society of the World Council of Churches, God’s covenant as depicted in the Bible consists of promises not only to humans but to all of creation as well. In thematizing the concept of covenant and showing its relevance to the crises now faced by life …
Article
Since 1973, most of us have heard so much about “the energy crisis” that the phrase has lost all meaning. We have lived through a steady stream of energy price increases, presidential proclamations, severe-weather energy shortages and raging debate on the various energy-supply technologies. Life remains tolerable and changes slowly for most Americans, and huge …
Continue reading “Cynics, Martyrs and the Importance of Energy Conservation”
Article
Up until some point in the 1960s, people of a certain class routinely belonged to segregated country clubs without giving it much thought — it was “normal.” And then, in the space of a few years, those memberships became immoral. As a society, we’d crossed some threshold where the benefits — a good place to …
Article
BOOK REVIEW: Earth Community, Earth Ethics,b y Larry L. Rasmussen. Orbis, 425 pp., $30.00. In an article published in Science in 1967, Lynn White called Christianity the root historical cause of our ecological crisis. This infamous indictment has now been qualified by the response of many theologians who, while admitting Christianity’s complicity in our environmental …
Article
Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit. By Al Gore, Houghton Mifflin, 407 pp., $22.65. The Age of Missing Information. By Bill McKibben, Random House, 261 pp., $20.50. In an essay in this journal 50 years ago, “War as the Judgment of God,” H. Richard Niebuhr argued that the Jewish and Christian “interpretation …
Continue reading “Ecological Degradation As The Judgment of God”
Article
Dear Chinese Friends, I appreciate the chance to be with you and to share some of my ideas with you, although I realize that it would be much better to listen first, at length, to you in order to learn what you see as the major problems you face. Since that is not practical, I …
Article
Those leaves They gathered, broad as Amazonian targe, And with what skill they had together sewed, To gird their waist — vain covering if to hide Their guilt and dreadful shame; O how unlike To that first naked glory. Such of late Columbus found the American so girt With feathered cincture, naked else and wild …
Article
Only in its infancy — or perhaps its latency period — the ecology movement has come under attack on every side. The Daughters of the American Revolution condemn, its “communist tendencies.” Utilities and other corporate interests, in a parade of TV advertisements defending atomic power plants and off-shore oil wells, suggest that environmentalists are sincere …
Continue reading “Ecology, Justice and Theology: Beyond the Preliminary Skirmishes”
Article
Unlike concerns for food and hunger, attention to energy issues has not been highly visible in U.S. churches. With the exception of some statements by denominational boards and agencies, there has been a notable lack of programs and materials designed to sensitize local congregations to energy as an area of Christian moral concern. The reasons …
Continue reading “Energy Ethics Reaches the Church’s Agenda”
Article
As I write these words, the season’s first named storm — Alberto — is developing in the Caribbean. We’re now in what everyone refers to as hurricane season, which is joining winter, spring, summer, autumn, Christmas and football as a fixture on the calendar. (It probably has a brighter future than winter.) A few years …
Article
A young man was working for a company that operated a large, total-confinement swine farm. One day he detected symptoms of a disease among some of the feeder pigs. As a teen, he had raised pigs himself and shown them in competition, so he knew how to treat the animals. But the company’s policy was …
Article
Book Reviews: The Paradise of God: Renewing Religion in an Ecological Age. By Norman Wirzba. Oxford University Press, 240 pp. The Yahwist’s Landscape: Nature and Religion In Early Israel. By Theodore Hiebert. Oxford University Press, 210 pp. The Ethos of the Cosmos: The Genesis of Moral Imagination in the Bible. By William P. Brown. Eerdmans. …
Article
In 1977 Wendell Berry warned that the rise of corporate farming and the disappearance of the family farm were destroying local communities and economies, These developments also caused soil erosion, and reduced the quality of the food we eat. Those who gathered at Georgetown College in Berry’s home state of Kentucky to mark the 25th …
Continue reading “Field of Corporate Dreams: Farming Without the Farmer”
Article
In this essay, theologian Sallie McFague, author of the influential Models of God: Theology for an Ecological Nuclear Age, engages in what she calls heuristic theology. The aim of such theology is to interpret God, albeit with humility, in an ecologically responsible manner. Such is the need, so McFague claims, of our “ecological, nuclear age.” …
Continue reading “Imaging a Theology of Nature: The World as God’s Body”
Article
In his book Earth in Balance, Al Gore asks, “Why does it feel faintly heretical to a Christian to suppose that God is in us as human beings? Why do our children believe that the Kingdom of God is up, somewhere in the ethereal reaches of space, far removed from this planet?” Gore expresses here …
Book Chapter
At the core of the environmental crisis is a great divide between mind and body, between head and heart, between human and nature. This divide is not new. The world’s religions and mythologies have always told stories of humanity’s separation from nature. But today the split is so vast that its consequences on the environment …
Continue reading “Introduction: The Splendor of Creation: A Biblical Ecology”
Article
Conferences during the early days of the environmental movement were often punctuated by sharp exchanges between environmentalists and the advocates of justice for the poor. The environmentalists argued that without a strenuous attempt to contain growth there was no future for anyone. The advocates of justice for the poor accused the environmentalists of being elitists …
Continue reading “Land and People: The Eco-Justice Connection”
Article
Christians interested in ecological theologies have much to gain from an encounter with other religions. Sometimes this encounter, as exemplified in McDaniel’s essay later in this work, will result in an appropriation of insights of other perspectives. Yet sometimes it will result instead in a sympathetic yet critical rejection of non-Christian perspectives through which Christian …
Continue reading “New Testament Foundations for Understanding the Creation”
Article
In the summers of 1920 and 1921 southern West Virginia was the scene of some of the most historically significant unrest in U.S. history. Yet today this history has been largely forgotten. Although I was raised in West Virginia, I first learned about these events as a nearly grown man when I saw the movie …
Article
If we are to meet the environmental needs of our time, it is important that we accept our surroundings — the earth and the universe itself — as a hospitable habitat, a home. Yet much of the theology and science that we inherit as Christians leads us to a different way of experiencing our surroundings, …
Continue reading “Religious and Cosmic Homelessness: Some Environmental Implications”
Article
In 1983 the Sixth Assembly of the World Council of Churches at Vancouver invited all churches to engage in a process of mutual commitment to justice, peace, and respect for the integrity of creation. Though the phrase integrity of creation was clearly intended to encourage ecological responsibility and a concern for the well-being of life, …
Continue reading “Revisioning God and the Self: Lessons from Buddhism”
Article
Book Review: The Collapse of the Kyoto Protocol and the Struggle to Slow Global Warming By David C. Victor Princeton University Press, 114 pp., When the threat of global warming burst into our awareness about 15 years ago, I was profoundly shaken. Human action would lead to the melting of the polar ice caps and …
Article
Browsing in a local bookstore recently, I took down several of the more general books from the “Ecology” shelf. Scanning the tables of Contents and indexes of 13 books, I discovered that nine of them made reference to “Christianity,” “the Bible” or the “Judeo-Christian tradition.” Examining their contents more closely, I found that seven of …
Continue reading “Stewards of the Earth’s Resources: A Christian Response to Ecology”
Article
Two decades ago it was common to speak of the need for economic “development” among “backward” nations. The assumption behind this language was that Western-style industrialization was the model of progress, and that all nations could be judged by how far they had come along on that road. Poor nations were poor because they were …
Continue reading “The Biblical Vision of the Ecological Crisis”
Article
For all our Christian talk of hope, we are offering little hope today. Some people still believe that our problems can be solved within the basic structures of our society. New international agreements on trade and development, increased support for the industrializing nations, the "green revolution," implementation of birth control programs, adjustments in the economic …
Continue reading “The Christian, the Future, and Paolo Soleri”
Article
High-level radioactive waste is piling up around our nuclear power generation plants. It is dangerous — and something needs to be done about it. The U.S. government will take steps to do something about it within this decade. Most likely it will be disposed of through burial in deep mines or salt domes. The planning …
Article
The majority of the world’s resources pour into the United States. And as we Americans grow more and more wealthy, money is becoming a kind of narcotic for us. We hardly notice our own prosperity or the poverty of so many others. The great contradiction is that we have more and more money and less …
Continue reading “The Liturgy of Abundance, The Myth of Scarcity”
Article
For Thomas Berry and for those who follow him, the earth, in a very real sense, is our mother. We are born from this mother, from Gaia; we are extensions of the earth and the cosmos of which it is a part. This means that our conceptualizing and our spirituality also extend from the spiritual …
Book
(BOOK EXCERPTS) The introduction and three excerpts from The Splendor of Creation, A Biblical Ecology by Ellen Bernstein. The book is comprised of 31 ecologically oriented essays inspired by the 31 verses of Genesis 1:1- Genesis 2:3, the first Creation story. The excerpts are on the Mystery of Creation, The Gift of Time, and Genesis 1:28: Dominion.
Article
I spent my last sabbatical leave in England, that green and pleasant land, where in contrast to our countryside there are no billboards and little trash. I recall an early-morning bus trip to Coventry; the lovely, gently rolling hills, quaint villages and thatched-roofed cottages. There were sheep dotting the hills — but also something else: …
Article
I awoke to the importance of the environmental crisis in the summer of 1969. One of my sons pushed me to read Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb. For the first time I saw the interconnection between the growth of population, dominant economic practices, the exhaustion of resources, and pollution. Although even then I recognized …
Article
Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf," writes Aldo Leopold in A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (1949) Leopold reports what happens to a mountain when all the wolves, who are predators, are exterminated. The rancher wants to protect his cowherd, the hunters …
Continue reading “Thinking Like a Mountain: Toward a Sensible Land Ethic”
Article
Yet despite all these developments a Yale study has found that in America, the more a person participates in religious services, the less concern he or she is likely to have for nature. Many people of faith are calling religious groups to confront the attitudes that have fostered a progressive devastation of our planet, and …
Article
American society has laws governing property rights, but it has never had an ethic guiding the use of land. Lacking an explicit ethic, the implicit ethic has been that any use of land by a holder of property rights is justifiable so long as it does not impinge upon the rights of some other property …
Article
An earth summit will take place next June in Rio de Janeiro. Organized as the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), the summit will gather world heads of state who are expected to propose strategies for stemming the riptide of environmental degradation and fostering sustainable development. One envisioned outcome is an Earth Charter. …
Article
The photograph is actually that of a stuffed museum specimen, for the Carolina parakeet became extinct more than 50 years ago. The species’s demise was hastened by hunters who had learned this trick: shoot one bird and let its cries draw the rest of the flock. Instead of scattering, the others hovered over their wounded …
