Download or read book Nature and the Environment in Contemporary Religious Contexts written by Thomas Donlin-Smith and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2018-06-11 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays discusses the human relationship with, and responsibilities toward, the natural environment from the perspective of religions and the social sciences. The chapters examine a variety of conditions that have contributed to the contemporary environmental crisis, including abuse of power, economic greed, industrialization, deforestation, and unplanned waste management. They then discuss concepts from several different religious texts and traditions that promote environmental protection as a sacred moral duty for all humanity. Religious concepts such as dharma (duty toward Mother Earth), tikkun Olam (repair of the world), khalifa (people as deputies of God on earth), amanah (the universe as a trust in human hands), and paticca samuppada (dependent co-arising) are employed to argue that all the components of the biosphere are integral to the cosmos, each piece with its own value and role in the harmony of the whole. The book makes it clear that religions can become more “green” and play a helpful role in raising our ecological consciousness and supporting preservation of the environment into the future.
Download or read book Devoted to Nature written by Evan Berry and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2015-07-21 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Devoted to Nature explores the religious underpinnings of American environmentalism, tracing the theological character of American environment thought from their Romantic foundations to contemporary discourse about nature spirituality. This history is most readily visible during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, when religious sources tangibly shaped ideas about the natural world, recreational practices, and modes of social and political interaction. The roots of the environmental movement evidence explicitly Christian understandings of salvation, redemption, and progress, which provided the context for Americans enthusiastic about the out-of-doors and established the horizons of possibility for the national environmental imagination"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Religion and the Environment written by Roger S. Gottlieb and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last two decades a new form of religiously motivated social action and a virtually new field of academic study each based in recognition of the connections between religion and humanity 's treatment of the environment have developed. Interactions between religion and environmental concern have been manifest in the explosive growth of ecotheological writings, institutional commitment by organized religions, and environmental activism explicitly oriented to religious ideals. Clergy throughout the world in virtually every denomination have received word from leaders of their religion that the environment no less than sexuality, poverty, or war and peace is now a basic and compelling religious matter. Out of this confrontation have been born vital new theologies based in the recovery of marginalized elements of tradition, profound criticisms of the past, and ecologically oriented visions of God, the Sacred, the Earth, and human beings. Theologians from every religious tradition along with dozens of non-denominational spiritual writers have confronted world religions past attitudes towards nature. In the realm of institutional commitment, public statements and actions by organized religions have grown dramatically. In the context of political action, throughout the U.S. and the world religiously oriented groups take part in environmentally oriented political action: from lobbying and consciousness raising to activist demonstrations and civil disobedience. This collection serves as a comprehensive introduction, overview, and in-depth account of these exciting new developments. The four volumes cover virtually every aspect of the field from theological change and institutional commitment to innovation in liturgy, from new ecumenical connections among different religions and between religion, science and environmental movements, from religious participation in environmental politics to an account of the global social and political contexts in which religious environmentalism has unfolded.
Download or read book Placing Nature on the Borders of Religion Philosophy and Ethics written by Forrest Clingerman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The natural world has been "humanized": even areas thought to be wilderness bear the marks of human impact. But this human impact is not simply physical. At the emergence of the environmental movement, the focus was on human effects on "nature." More recently, however, the complexity of the term "nature" has led to fruitful debates and the recognition of how human individuals and cultures interpret their environments. This book furthers the dialogue on religion, ethics, and the environment by exploring three interrelated concepts: to recreate, to replace, and to restore. Through interdisciplinary dialogue the authors illuminate certain unique dimensions at the crossroads between finding value, creating value, and reflecting on one's place in the world. Each of these terms has diverse religious, ethical, and scientific connotations. Each converges on the ways in which humans both think about and act upon their surroundings. And each radically questions the damaging conceptual divisions between nature and culture, human and environment, and scientific explanation and religious/ethical understanding. This book self-consciously reflects on the intersections of environmental philosophy, environmental theology, and religion and ecology, stressing the importance of how place interprets us and how we interpret place. In addition to its contribution to environmental philosophy, this work is a unique volume in its serious engagement with theology and religious studies on the issues of ecological restoration and the meaning of place.
Download or read book Biodivinity and Biodiversity written by Emma Tomalin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is concerned with the argument that religious traditions are inherently environmentally friendly. Yet in a developing country such as India, the majority of people cannot afford to put the 'Earth first' regardless of the extent to which this idea can be supported by their religious traditions. Does this mean that the linking of religion and environmental concerns is a strategy more suited to contexts where people have a level of material security that enables them to think and act like environmentalists? This question is approached through a series of case studies from Britain and India. The book concludes that there is a tension between the 'romantic' ecological discourse common among many western activists and scholars, and a more pragmatic approach, which is often found in India. The adoption of environmental causes by the Hindu Right in India makes it difficult to distinguish genuine concern for the environment from the broader politics surrounding the idea of a Hindu rashtra (nation). This raises a further level of analysis, which has not been provided in other studies.
Download or read book Nature Technology and the Sacred written by Bronislaw Szerszynski and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This provocative and timely book argues that contemporary ideas and practices concerning nature and technology remain closely bound up with religious ways of thinking and acting. Using examples from North America, Europe and elsewhere, it reinterprets a range of 'secular' phenomena in terms of their conditioning by a complex series of transformations of the sacred in Western history. The contemporary practices of environmental politics, technological risk behaviour, alternative medicine, vegetarianism and ethical consumption take on new significance as sites of struggle between different sacral orderings. Nature, Technology and the Sacred introduces a radically new direction for today's critical discourse concerning nature and technology – one that reinstates it as a moment within the ongoing religious history of the West.
Download or read book Ecological Awareness written by Sigurd Bergmann and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2011 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The past years have seen an ecological development in religions that is staggering. These efforts are responses to difficult local and global ecological problems, with an increased awareness that religions need to be alert, engaged and active partners in the work for a sustainable future. Ecological Awareness - with 17 authors from theology, religious studies, biology, sociology and philosophy - explores how religious practitioners have become increasingly aware of ecological challenges. The book considers aspects of ecological awareness: personal, social, political, religious and ecological. It sheds new light on an essential function of belief systems, which function not only as cognitive and moral systems, but emerge from and affect our human body and its mode of perceiving our milieu and ourselves within it. The book contributes to an increasing awareness of our embeddedness in larger life processes, as well as the awareness of life as a gift.
Download or read book This Sacred Earth written by Roger S. Gottlieb and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-11-07 with total page 783 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 Earth is an unparalleled resource for the study of religion's complex relationship to the environment.
Download or read book Spirit of the Environment written by David Edward Cooper and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spirit of the Enivironment provides a much needed alternative to exploring human beings' relationship to the natural world through the restrictive lenses of 'science', 'ecology' or even 'morality'.
Download or read book Sacred Nature written by Jerome A. Stone and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-06-26 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sacred Nature examines the crisis of environmental degradation through the prism of religious naturalism, which seeks rich spiritual engagement in a world without a god. Jerome Stone introduces students to the growing field of religious naturalism, exploring a series of questions about how it addresses the environmental crises, evaluating the merits of public prophetic discourse that uses the language of spirituality. He presents and defends the concept of religious naturalism while drawing out the implications of religious naturalism for addressing some of the major environmental issues facing humans today. This book is designed for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as scholars specializing in contemporary religious thought or environmental studies.
Download or read book Augustine and the Environment written by John Doody and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-09-30 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings into dialogue the ancient wisdom of Augustine of Hippo, a bishop of the early Christian Church of the fourth and fifth centuries, with contemporary theologians and ethicists on the topic of the environment and humanity’s place in and responsibility to it. The contributors vary widely in their estimation of how sustained and useful such a dialogue might be, from outright dismissal of the church father to extended speculation with him and in his spirit. Their conclusions impact our views of God and both human and non-human creation. Such engagement should influence any future discussion of how Christianity and environmentalism can interact or influence one another.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature written by Bron Taylor and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2008-06-10 with total page 1927 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, originally published in 2005, is a landmark work in the burgeoning field of religion and nature. It covers a vast and interdisciplinary range of material, from thinkers to religious traditions and beyond, with clarity and style. Widely praised by reviewers and the recipient of two reference work awards since its publication (see www.religionandnature.com/ern), this new, more affordable version is a must-have book for anyone interested in the manifold and fascinating links between religion and nature, in all their many senses.
Download or read book Deep Ecology and World Religions written by David Landis Barnhill and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2010-03-29 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together thirteen new essays on the important relationship between traditional world spirituality and the contemporary environmental perspective of deep ecology, this landmark book explores parallels and contrasts between religious values and those proposed by deep ecology. In examining how deep ecologists and the various religious traditions can both learn from and critique one another, the following traditions are considered: indigenous cultures, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Judaism, Catholicism, Islam, Protestantism, Christian ecofeminism, and New Age spirituality.
Download or read book A Greener Faith written by Roger S. Gottlieb and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-10 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: world-making political agenda that far exceeds interest group politics applied to forests and toxic incinerators. Rather, religious environmentalism offers an all-inclusive vision of what human beings are and how we should treat each other and the rest of life. Gottlieb analyzes the growing synthesis of the movement's religious, social, and political aspects, as well as the challenges it faces in consumerism, fundamentalism, and globalization.
Download or read book Humankind and Nature written by Artur K. Wardega and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2015-01-12 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As climate change continues to batter the coastlines of North America and elsewhere, and as extreme weather events provide abundant proof of its reality, religious leaders can no longer ignore the fact that the human has become a geologic force, a force that must be re-educated and re-formed in order to guarantee safe passage into a sustainable future. Hopefully, Jesuits and their lay partners can continue to provide leadership in regard to this issue, correctly identified by Fr Adolfo Nicolás, SJ, as a top priority. In this particular context, the role of religions and their valuable contributions must be evaluated. Religion’s role is not simply one of morality; rather, it seeks, especially in Christianity, to show the face of God. It is out of this relation that believers then seek to live towards the “good,” especially in relation to their neighbours, creation and God. Religious believers may have failed severely in communicating this relationship in the twenty-first century. This publication gathers together a roster of Western and Asian experts’ contributions from various fields of knowledge related to ecology, anthropology, religions and ethics, economics, technology, and to environmental and health protection studies. This collection of essays embracing a wide scope of current topics, theme and questions will renew awareness of the ecological dilemma and stimulate reflection on its spiritual and social dimensions.
Download or read book Spirit and Nature written by Steven C. Rockefeller and published by Beacon Press (MA). This book was released on 1992 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a collection of essays by Native American, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, and other leaders originally presented at a symposium held at Middlebury College in 1990. An introduction situates the symposium at the end of several decades of steadily increasing concern about our global environmental crisis. The essays are insightful, and in the best traditions of interfaith dialog, they seek to discover what each tradition can contribute to an understanding of this crisis (seen in part as a crisis of moral values and of religious faith), and how to use spiritual resources to respond to the crisis. ISBN 0-8070-7708-9: $30.00.
Download or read book Religion Ecology Gender written by Sigurd Bergmann and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2009 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The understanding of nature is at the heart of European self - understanding, while in Asia the terms of life and energy play a similar central role. Globally, many institutions and movements have made the protection of the environment and climate a top policy priority. Given the urgency of environmental problems the lack of reflections about the human and especially the spiritual dimension of environmental problems is striking. Environmental - and - climatic change transforms not only culture, politics, and economy, but also religion. Religious traditions have on the one hand always been dependent on human ecologies; on the other hand they vibrantly affect our perceptions of nature and sociocultural practices with(in) it. If life and religion change dramatically at present, how could religion make a change? How are religious and ecologic processes gendered, and how can ecofeminism deepen our understanding of justice? What are the life - enhancing spiritual resources in the East and the West? How can Christian theology contribute to the necessary eco - cultural revolution ahead of us? And how can Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian and Christian spiritualities cooperate in a common space and future? Questions like these are reflected upon by scholars of religion and theology from Korea, Canada and Scandinavia. Their chapters emerge from an international workshop, which was arranged and convened by the editors 2007 in Yecheon on the Korean countryside and in Seoul.
