We hope—even as we doubt—that the environmental crisis can be controlled. Public awareness of our species’ self-destructiveness as material beings in a material world is growing—but so is the destructiveness. The practical interventions needed for saving and restoring the earth will require a collective shift of such magnitude as to take on a spiritual and religious intensity.
This transformation has in part already begun. Traditions of ecological theology and ecologically aware religious practice have been preparing the way for decades. Yet these traditions still remain marginal to society, academy, and church.
With a fresh, transdisciplinary approach, Ecospirit probes the possibility of a green shift radical enough to permeate the ancient roots of our sensibility and the social sources of our practice. From new language for imagining the earth as a living ground to current constructions of nature in theology, science, and philosophy; from environmentalism’s questioning of postmodern thought to a garden of green doctrines, rituals, and liturgies for contemporary religion, these original essays explore and expand our sense of how to proceed in the face of an ecological crisis that demands new thinking and acting. In the midst of planetary crisis, they activate
imagination, humor, ritual, and hope.
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: Grounding Theory—Earth in Religion and Philosophy
- ECOGROUNDS: LANGUAGE, MATRIX, PRACTICE
- Ecotheology and World Religions
- Talking the Walk: A Practice-Based Environmental Ethic as Grounds for Hope
- Talking Dirty: Ground Is Not Foundation
- Ecofeminist Philosophy, Theology, and Ethics: A Comparative View
- ECONATURES: SCIENCE, FAITH, PHILOSOPHY
- Cooking the Truth: Faith, Science, the Market, and Global Warming
- Ecospirituality and the Blurred Boundaries of Humans, Animals, and Machines
- Getting Over ‘‘Nature’’: Modern Bifurcations, Postmodern Possibilities
- Toward an Ethics of Biodiversity: Science and Theology in Environmentalist Dialogue
- Indigenous Knowing and Responsible Life in the World
- ECONSTRUCTIONS: THEORY AND THEOLOGY
- The Preoriginal Gift—and Our Response to It
- Prometheus Redeemed? From Autoconstruction to Ecopoetics
- Toward a Deleuze-Guattarian Micropneumatology of Spirit-Dust
- Specters of Derrida: On the Way to Econstruction
- ECODOCTRINES: SPIRIT, CREATION, ATONEMENT, ESCHATON
- Sacred-Land Theology: Green Spirit, Deconstruction, and the Question of Idolatry in Contemporary Earthen Christianity
- Grounding the Spirit: An Ecofeminist Pneumatology
- Hearing the Outcry of Mute Things: Toward a Jewish Creation Theology
- Creatio ex Nihilo, Terra Nullius, and the Erasure of Presence
- Surrogate Suffering: Paradigms of Sin, Salvation, and Sacrifice Within the Vivisection Movement
- The Hope of the Earth: A Process Ecoeschatology for South Korea
- ECOSPACES: DESECRATION, SACRALITY, PLACE
- Restoring Earth, Restored to Earth: Toward an Ethic for Reinhabiting Place
- Caribou and Carbon Colonialism: Toward a Theology of Arctic Place
- Divining New Orleans: Invoking Wisdom for the Redemption of Place
- Constructing Nature at a Chapel in the Woods
- Felling Sacred Groves: Appropriation of a Christian Tradition for Antienvironmentalism
- ECOHOPES: ENACTMENTS, POETICS, LITURGICS
- Ethics and Ecology: A Primary Challenge of the Dialogue of Civilizations
- Religion and the Earth on the Ground: The Experience of GreenFaith in New Jersey
- Cries of Creation, Ground for Hope: Faith, Justice, and the Earth Interfaith Worship Service
- The Firm Ground for Hope: A Ritual for Planting Humans and Trees
- Musings from White Rock Lake: Poems
- Notes
- Contributors