Download or read book Problems and Difficulties that Religious Traditions Face when They Address Problems Related to Ecological Issues written by Mwita James and published by Grin Publishing. This book was released on 2016-12-15 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essay from the year 2016 in the subject Sociology - Religion, course: Master of Religion Society and global issues, language: English, abstract: Religious traditions and ecological issues have been the key features of human affairs and the leading issues in the contemporary society, attracting the attention of the global society. The paper discusses the problems and difficulties that religious traditions face when addressing problems related to ecological issues. The essay defines the terms "religious traditions" and "ecological issues." The paper points out issues on general ecology, and current ecological crisis showing the areas of conflict between religion and ecology in view of Christianity and African traditional religion as examples of five major world religions for the purposes of trying to understand the key environmental challenges are impossible for the two religions to address the crisis. Challenges facing religious tradition in combating ecological issues are summarized for better understanding.
Download or read book Religious Environmental Activism written by Jens Köhrsen and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-12-20 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores how religious and spiritual actors engage for environmental protection and fight against climate change. Climate change and sustainability are increasingly prominent topics among religious and spiritual groups. Different faith traditions have developed "green" theologies, launched environmental protection projects and issued public statements on climate change. Against this background, academic scholarship has raised optimistic claims about the strong potentials of religions to address environmental challenges. Taking a critical stance with regard to these claims, the chapters in this volume show that religious environmentalism is an embattled terrain. Tensions are an inherent part of religious environmentalism. These do not necessarily manifest themselves in open clashes between different parties but in different actions, views, theologies, ambivalences, misunderstandings, and sometimes mistrust. Keeping below the surface, these tensions can create effective barriers for religious environmentalism. The chapters examine how tensions are manifested and dealt with through a range of empirical case studies in various world regions. Covering different religious and spiritual traditions, they reflect on intradenominational, interdenominational, interreligious, and religious-societal tensions. Thereby, this volume sheds new light on the problems that religions face when they seek to take an active role in today’s societal challenges. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.
Download or read book Inherited Land written by Whitney A. Bauman and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2011-08-04 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Religion and ecology" has arrived. What was once a niche interest for a few academics concerned with environmental issues and a few environmentalists interested in religion has become an established academic field with classic texts, graduate programs, regular meetings at academic conferences, and growing interest from other academics and the mass media. Theologians, ethicists, sociologists, and other scholars are engaged in a broad dialogue about the ways religious studies can help understand and address environmental problems, including the sorts of methodological, terminological, and substantive debates that characterize any academic discourse.This book recognizes the field that has taken shape, reflects on the ways it is changing, and anticipates its development in the future. The essays offer analyses and reflections from emerging scholars of religion and ecology, each addressing her or his own specialty in light of two questions: (1) What have we inherited from the work that has come before us? and (2) What inquiries, concerns, and conversation partners should be central to the next generation of scholarship?The aim of this volume is not to lay out a single and clear path forward for the field. Rather, the authors critically reflect on the field from within, outline some of the major issues we face in the academy, and offer perspectives that will nurture continued dialogue.
Download or read book Religion s Influence on Environmental Concern written by Aaron S. Routhe and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars identify an emerging religious social base to U.S. environmentalism and public concern about anthropogenic global climate change. Surveys also show religious and political conservatives express skepticism about this environmental problem and oppose environmental regulations addressing it. White conservative Protestants reflect this contrast by denying human activity causes it and opposing climate policy for mitigating anthropogenic effects on Earth's atmosphere, while concern and activism for climate protection simultaneously increases among other environmental evangelical Christians. Decades of quantitative investigations reveal religion's role in environmental concern remains murky. Little clarity exists about how biblical literalism, "end times" eschatology, and religious environmental stewardship or creation care inform their opposition to environmentalism and emerging climate activism. How religion may constrain human agency in response to changing large-scale biophysical conditions or facilitate adaptation to global ecological change is unclear. This dissertation examines how religious beliefs inform public concern about global environmental problems among U.S. conservative Protestants using a qualitative research strategy and case study. It explores predominately white, Republican, educated, middle to upper-income evangelical Christians' perceptions of climate change through individual, face-to-face unstructured interviews with 52 participants living in the Dayton, Ohio area. It describes how religion informs their climate change beliefs, perceptions it is a problem, and their responses from an applied sociology of knowledge perspective and within a constructionist approach to social problems. Participants differ in beliefs about anthropogenic climate change, but largely agree it is not a serious environmental problem. Six religious themes emerge: Creation beliefs, Sin beliefs, Anti-evolution, God's involvement in the world, End Times, and Christian stewardship. Individuals' religious mental schemas reflect literalist applications of Biblical texts to understand large-scale ecological conditions, a theology reducing human agency for addressing global environmental problems, and a perceived responsibility to engage in individual, pro-environmental actions in their everyday lives. This case study richly describes how religion informs public opinion, balances qualitative investigations of religious elites' perceptions, and contextualizes quantitative analyses of lay evangelical Christians' views. Implications arise from religion's' intersection with environmental policy, public environmental concern, and climate science communication to members of this highly religious segment of U.S. society.
Download or read book Biodivinity and Biodiversity written by Emma Tomalin and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2009 with total page 240 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 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 How the World s Religions are Responding to Climate Change written by Robin Globus Veldman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-11 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A growing chorus of voices has suggested that the world’s religions may become critical actors as the climate crisis unfolds, particularly in light of international paralysis on the issue. In recent years, many faiths have begun to address climate change and its consequences for human societies, especially the world’s poor. This is the first volume to use social science to examine how religions are helping to address one of the most significant and far-reaching challenges of our time. While there is a growing literature in theology and ethics about climate change and religion, little research has been previously published about the ways in which religious institutions, groups and individuals are responding to the problem of climate change. Seventeen research-driven chapters are written by sociologists, anthropologists, geographers and other social scientists. This book explores what effects religions are having, what barriers they are running into or creating, and what this means for the global struggle to address climate change.
Download or read book Religion and Ecological Crisis written by Md. Abu Sayem and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-09-02 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion and Ecological Crisis delves into the complex relationship between religions and ecology, presenting Christian and Islamic perspectives on ecological issues through the work of John Boswell Cobb and Seyyed Hossein Nasr. It examines how faith traditions of the world see and respond to our current unprecedented climate change issues. This is the first comparative study of Cobb and Nasr’s eco-religious understanding, and explores how their prescriptions can contribute alternatively to techno-scientific initiatives in environmental sustainability. Taking Cobb’s "economism" and Nasr’s "scientism" as the key concepts for surveying the roots of the ecological crisis, the book offers interdisciplinary and interreligious insights into the debates about ecological equilibrium, motivational awareness in human mind and about entanglements between religion and the environment. This will be an insightful resource for policy makers, faith leaders and for academics working in Environmental Studies and Religious Studies.
Download or read book Caring for Creation written by Max Oelschlaeger and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that religion - blamed for contributing to the ecological crisis - provides an ethical context that will help solve the problem. The approach suggests that the environmentally positive aspects in various Western creation stories demonstrate religion
Download or read book Religion and Ecological Crisis written by Todd LeVasseur and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-07-01 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1967, Lynn White, Jr.’s seminal article The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis was published, essentially establishing the academic study of religion and nature. White argues that religions—particularly Western Christianity—are a major cause of worldwide ecological crises. He then asserts that if we are to halt, let alone revert, anthropogenic damages to the environment, we need to radically transform religious cosmologies. White’s hugely influential thesis has been cited thousands of times in a variety of disciplines, including but not limited to religious studies, environmental ethics, history, ecological science, philosophy, psychology, and anthropology. In practical terms, the ecological crisis to which White was responding has only worsened in the decades since the article was published. This collection of original essays by leading scholars in a variety of interdisciplinary settings, including religion and nature, environmental ethics, animal studies, ecofeminism, restoration ecology, and ecotheology, considers the impact of White’s arguments, offering constructive criticism as well as reflections on the ongoing, ever-changing scholarly debate about the way religion and culture contribute to both environmental crises and to their possible solutions. Religion and Ecological Crisis addresses a wide range of topics related to White’s thesis, including its significance for environmental ethics and philosophy, the response from conservative Christians and evangelicals, its importance for Asian religious traditions, ecofeminist interpretations of the article, and which perspectives might have, ultimately, been left out of his analysis. This book is a timely reflection on the legacy and continuing challenge of White’s influential article.
Download or read book Faith Traditions and Sustainability written by Nadia Singh and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-11-29 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Major religious traditions have begun to reflect on sustainability concerns in their theology and practice. Little research, however, has explored the implications of this development for organizational behavior as well as secular thinkers and practitioners of sustainable development. This book elucidates the varied ways in which faith traditions provide new forms of coping mechanisms to deal with environmental challenges confronting humanity through an integrative review and critical analysis of recent research. Bringing together a compendium of religious and faith traditions, rooted in both Eastern and Western approaches, the work provides a new perspective and presents alternative paradigms to deal with the contemporary ecological crises. The UN Interfaith Statement on Climate Change (2021) highlights the importance of faith traditions to foster “shared moral responsibility for the environment” and set an example for the “life-style of billions of people and political leaders around the world to act more boldly in protecting people and planet.” This interdisciplinary work examines the interaction between management/organizational settings and spirituality focusing on a range of contexts and spiritual traditions including Buddhism, Sikhism, Christianity, Confucianism, mindfulness practices and indigenous spiritual traditions. Featuring theoretical papers and case studies from different contexts and geographical regions, this book provides researchers, faculty, students, and practitioners with a broad overview of the field from a research perspective, while keeping an eye on building a bridge between scholarship and practice.
Download or read book Diversity and Dominion written by Kyle Schuyler Van Houtan and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2010 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Description: This book records a set of dialogues between scientists, theologians, and philosophers on what can be done to prevent a global slide into ecological collapse. It is a uniquely multidisciplinary book that exemplifies the kinds of cultural and scholarly dialogue urgently needed to address the threat to the earth represented by our super-industrial civilization. The authors debate the conventional account of nature conservation as protection from human activity. In contrast to standard accounts, they argue what is needed is a new relationship between human beings and the earth that recovers a primal respect for all things. This approach seeks to recover forgotten resources in ancient cultures and in the foundational narratives of Western civilization contained in the Bible and in the culture of classical Greece. Endorsements: ""A refreshing critique of both evangelical and liberal North American environmental discourse, a bold exercise in multi-disciplinary conversation, and a welcome retrieval of the virtues of creaturely humility and gratitude."" -Ernst M. Conradie University of the Western Cape, South Africa ""This wonderfully rich book is a model of deep conversation on crucial challenges we face. The most important issues are intrinsically interdisciplinary, yet we often settle for talking 'at' or 'to' one another. This is especially true among the 'environmental' and 'religious' communities. The conversations in this book show that deep interdisciplinary engagements offer opportunities to re-frame the questions and re-describe the challenges in more promising and life-giving ways, transforming participants and the issues alike. A terrific achievement."" -L. Gregory Jones Duke University ""Underlying the environmental movement are a set of mostly undiscussed ethical and theological assumptions about the nature of the world and our relationship to it. In this pioneering volume, scholars from various perspectives engage in a deep exploration of the relationship of ecology, theology, and ethics. The results are often illuminating, sometimes surprising, and uniformly worth engaging."" --Paul Root Wolpe Emory University ""Van Houtan and Northcott engage scientists, ethicists, theologians, and other thinking persons in dialogue, working to re-ligate the torn academic and social fabric, and bringing all to see and respond to the biosphere--the awesome creation that calls for our guardianship and respectful service. They have us join this dialogue, motivating us--guardeners all--toward nurturing the kind of wisdom and humility that brings good news to every creature."" --Calvin DeWitt University of Wisconsin About the Contributor(s): Kyle S. Van Houtan is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Program in Science and Society and a Research Fellow in the Center for Ethics at Emory University. He has served as a biologist with the Smithsonian Institution and the U.S. Geological Service. Michael S. Northcott is Professor of Ethics in the School of Divinity in the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He is the author of The Environment and Christian Ethics (1996)
Download or read book Ecology and Religion written by John Grim and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2014-01-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Psalms in the Bible to the sacred rivers in Hinduism, the natural world has been integral to the world’s religions. John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker contend that today’s growing environmental challenges make the relationship ever more vital. This primer explores the history of religious traditions and the environment, illustrating how religious teachings and practices both promoted and at times subverted sustainability. Subsequent chapters examine the emergence of religious ecology, as views of nature changed in religious traditions and the ecological sciences. Yet the authors argue that religion and ecology are not the province of institutions or disciplines alone. They describe four fundamental aspects of religious life: orienting, grounding, nurturing, and transforming. Readers then see how these phenomena are experienced in a Native American religion, Orthodox Christianity, Confucianism, and Hinduism. Ultimately, Grim and Tucker argue that the engagement of religious communities is necessary if humanity is to sustain itself and the planet. Students of environmental ethics, theology and ecology, world religions, and environmental studies will receive a solid grounding in the burgeoning field of religious ecology.
Download or read book Religion and Ecology in the Public Sphere written by Celia Deane-Drummond and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2011-06-30 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: >
Download or read book Faiths in Green written by Lukas Szrot and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-05-03 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Faiths in Green addresses the complex and fraught relationship between religious identity and environmental concern in the United States, particularly how that relationship has changed over time. Examining the effects of religious upbringing, belonging, and disaffiliation on environmental concern across multiple religious groups over several decades, the author shows where, when, how, and why religious groups and their memberships have responded constructively to environmental change over time. The author also visits the effects of gender, social class, race, and politics on both religion and environmental concern in the U.S. Faiths in Green offers an in-depth and accessible guide to understanding the at-times incongruous relationship between religious beliefs and motivations, as well as ways to follow cultural shifts that both drive and are driven by religious persons and institutions. In examining how religious and cultural factors are linked to environmental concern over time, Faiths in Green demonstrates the importance of morality and worldviews in confronting global hazards of unprecedented scale.
Download or read book A Greener Faith written by Roger S. Gottlieb and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-06-15 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a time of darkening environmental prospects, frightening religious fundamentalism, and moribund liberalism, the remarkable and historically unprecedented rise of religious environmentalism is a profound source of hope. In A Greener Faith , Roger S. Gottlieb chronicles the promises of this critically important movement, illuminating its principal ideas, leading personalities, and ways of connecting care for the earth with justice for human beings. He also shows how religious environmentalism breaks the customary boundaries of "religious issues" in political life. Asserting that environmental degradation is sacrilegious, sinful, and an offense against God catapults religions directly into questions of social policy, economic and moral priorities, and the overall direction of secular society. Gottlieb contends that a spiritual perspective applied to the Earth provides the environmental movement with a uniquely appropriate way to voice its dream of a sustainable and just world. Equally important, it helps develop a 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 deftly 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. Highly engaging and passionately argued, this book is an indispensable resource for people of faith, environmentalists, scholars, and anyone who is concerned about our planet's future.
Download or read book The Earth Cries Out written by Gardner, Gary and published by Orbis Books. This book was released on 2021-06-16 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Earth Cries Out describes best practices in religious responses to the impending climate and sustainability emergency, and presents the next steps for faith communities in the years ahead"--
Download or read book Visions of a New Earth written by Professor Harold Coward and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brings together world religion scholars and creative international economists to address the current eco-crisis.
