Environmentalism

Winner of the 2010 Heartland Prize, Anthill follows the thrilling adventures of a modern-day Huck Finn, enthralled with the "strange, beautiful, and elegant" world of his native Nokobee County. But as developers begin to threaten the endangered marshlands around which he lives, the book's hero decides to take decisive action. Edward O. Wilson--the world's greatest living biologist--elegantly balances glimpses of science with the gripping saga of a boy determined to save the world from its most savage ecological predator: man himself.

Behold the Lilies draws from the riches of the author's long-standing work in the theology of nature and ecological spirituality, especially from his classic historical study, The Travail of Nature (1985), and from his Franciscan exploration in Christian spirituality, Before Nature (2014). In this new volume, Santmire maintains that those who would follow Jesus are mandated not just to care for the earth and all its creatures but also to contemplate the beauties of the whole creation, beginning with ""the lilies of the field."" His first-person reflections range from ""Scything with God"" to ""Rediscovering Saint Francis in Stone,"" from ""Taking a Plunge in the Niagara River"" to ""Pondering the Darkness of Nature."" Behold the Lilies offers brief spiritual reflections that can be read in any order, over a period of time. This accessible primer will be welcomed not only by those who have already identified themselves with the way of Jesus but also by others who are searching for a contemplative spirituality attuned to global ecological and justice issues. ""What a lovely small book, and what a powerful antidote to Twitter, Facebook, and all the rest. To be immersed in the world around us is one of the greatest of gifts!"" --Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth ""H. Paul Santmire's Behold the Lilies is shocking theology. In a day when theology is responding to crises on every side, up and down, he commands us (as Jesus did) to look at creation and see its beauty, God's beauty, in nature. The power of beauty to move us is greater than the power of worry, fear, and rage at injustice to draw us into a more graceful relation to God, nature, and each other. Santmire's beautiful meditations are among the beauties through which we are brought into a better state as good creatures."" --Robert Cummings Neville, Professor of Philosophy, Religion, and Theology, Boston University; author of Seasons of the Christian Life ""By contemplating the lilies as Jesus would ask us to, our creator God shines through the beauty of nature. Veteran theologian of nature H. Paul Santmire evokes in his reader wonder, awe, and grace."" --Ted Peters, coeditor, Theology and Science and Nurture in Time and Eternity ""One of the pioneers of Christian eco-theology, H. Paul Santmire has blessed us with a delightful new book. As the subtitle indicates, it is full of wise reflections on following Jesus and contemplating the natural world. How do we take seriously the summons to behold the world around us? Paul shows us how. Insightful, honest, hope-filled, and engagingly written. I highly recommend it."" --Steven Bouma-Prediger, author of For the Beauty of the Earth: A Christian Vision for Creation Care H. Paul Santmire has been a pioneer in the field of ecological theology and spirituality. His works include Brother Earth (1970), The Travail of Nature (1985), Nature Reborn (2000), Ritualizing Nature (2008), and Before Nature (2014

Award-winning theologian Sallie McFague here develops a striking and novel vision of the universe, one that takes seriously and radically both contemporary science and the incarnational commitments of the Christian tradition.

Important ecclesiastical documents have stressed the urgency of addressing world hunger and put in the foreground its natural and historical causes, from famine to global austerity measures and welfare. Here biblical scholars examine passages from the Old and New Testaments, exploring the dynamics of hunger and its causation in ancient Israel and the Greco-Roman world and revealing the centrality of hunger concerns to the Bible.

Generation Anthropocene. Storms of My Grandchildren. Our Children's Trust. Why do these and other attempts to imagine the planet's uncertain future return us--again and again--to the image of the child? In The Child to Come, Rebekah Sheldon demonstrates the pervasive conjunction of the imperiled child and the threatened Earth and blisteringly critiques the logic of catastrophe that serves as its motive and its method.

Sheldon explores representations of this perilous future and the new figurations of the child that have arisen in response to it. Analyzing catastrophe discourse from the 1960s to the present--books by Joanna Russ, Margaret Atwood, and Cormac McCarthy; films and television series including Southland Tales, Battlestar Galactica, and Children of Men; and popular environmentalism--Sheldon finds the child standing in the place of the human species, coordinating its safe passage into the future through the promise of one more generation. Yet, she contends, the child figure emerges bound to the very forces of nonhuman vitality he was forged to contain.

Bringing together queer theory, ecocriticism, and science studies, The Child to Come draws on and extends arguments in childhood studies about the interweaving of the child with the life sciences. Sheldon reveals that neither life nor the child are what they used to be. Under pressure from ecological change, artificial reproductive technology, genetic engineering, and the neoliberalization of the economy, the queerly human child signals something new: the biopolitics of reproduction. By promising the pliability of the body's vitality, the pregnant woman and the sacred child have become the paradigmatic figures for twenty-first century biopolitics.

This collection gathers a set of seminal papers from the emerging area of ethics and climate change. Topics covered include human rights, international justice, intergenerational ethics, individual responsibility, climate economics, and the ethics of geoengineering. Climate Ethics is intended to serve as a source book for general reference, and for university courses that include a focus on the human dimensions of climate change. It should be of broad interest to all those concerned with global justice, environmental science and policy, and the future of humanity.

Debunking myths behind what is known collectively as the new cosmology--a grand, overlapping set of narratives that claim to bring science and spirituality together--Lisa H. Sideris offers a searing critique of the movement's anthropocentric vision of the world. In Consecrating Science, Sideris argues that instead of cultivating an ethic of respect for nature, the new cosmology encourages human arrogance, uncritical reverence for science, and indifference to nonhuman life. Exploring moral sensibilities rooted in experience of the natural world, Sideris shows how a sense of wonder can foster environmental attitudes that will protect our planet from ecological collapse for years to come.

Until now, no single work has been devoted to both a scholarly understanding of the complexities of the Daoist tradition and a critical exploration of its contribution to recent environmental concerns. The authors in this volume consider the intersection of Daoism and ecology, looking at the theoretical and historical implications associated with a Daoist approach to the environment. They also analyze perspectives found in Daoist religious texts and within the larger Chinese cultural context in order to delineate key issues found in the classical texts. Through these analyses, they assess the applicability of modern-day Daoist thought and practice in China and the West, with respect to the contemporary ecological situation.

"We want to live as if there is no other place," Hogan tells us, "as if we will always be here. We want to live with devotion to the world of waters and the universe of life." In offering praise to sky, earth, water, and animals, she calls us to witness how each living thing is alive in a conscious world with its own integrity, grace, and dignity. In Dwellings, Hogan takes us on a spiritual quest borne out of the deep past and offers a more hopeful future as she seeks new visions and lights ancient fires.

As climate change and development pressures overwhelm the environment, our emotional relationships with Earth are also in crisis. Pessimism and distress are overwhelming people the world over. In this maelstrom of emotion, solastalgia, the homesickness you have when you are still at home, has become, writes Glenn A. Albrecht, one of the defining emotions of the twenty-first century.

Earth Emotions examines our positive and negative Earth emotions. It explains the author's concept of solastalgia and other well-known eco-emotions such as biophilia and topophilia. Albrecht introduces us to the many new words needed to describe the full range of our emotional responses to the emergent state of the world. We need this creation of a hopeful vocabulary of positive emotions, argues Albrecht, so that we can extract ourselves out of environmental desolation and reignite our millennia-old biophilia--love of life--for our home planet. To do so, he proposes a dramatic change from the current human-dominated Anthropocene era to one that will be founded, materially, ethically, politically, and spiritually on the revolution in thinking being delivered by contemporary symbiotic science. Albrecht names this period the Symbiocene.

With the current and coming generations, Generation Symbiocene, Albrecht sees reason for optimism. The battle between the forces of destruction and the forces of creation will be won by Generation Symbiocene, and Earth Emotions presents an ethical and emotional odyssey for that victory.

Grand Winner of the 2014 Nautilus Book Awards

Thoughtful observers agree that the planetary crisis we now face-climate change; species extinction; the destruction of entire ecosystems; the urgent need for a more just economic-political order-is pushing human civilization to a radical turning point: change or perish. But precisely how to change remains an open question.

In Earth-honoring Faith, Larry Rasmussen answers that question with a dramatically new way of thinking about human society, ethics, and the ongoing health of our planet. Rejecting the modern assumption that morality applies to human society alone, Rasmussen insists that we must derive a spiritual and ecological ethic that accounts for the well-being of all creation, as well as the primal elements upon which it depends: earth, air, fire, water, and sunlight. He argues that good science, necessary as it is, will not be enough to inspire fundamental change. We must draw on religious resources as well to make the difficult transition from an industrial-technological age obsessed with consumption to an ecological age that restores wise stewardship of all life. Earth-honoring Faith advocates an alliance of spirituality and ecology, in which the material requirements for planetary life are reconciled with deep traditions of spirituality across religions, traditions that include mysticism, sacramentalism, prophetic practices, asceticism, and the cultivation of wisdom. It is these shared spiritual practices that can produce a chorus of world faiths to counter the consumerism, utilitarianism, alienation, oppression, and folly that have pushed us to the brink.

Written with passionate commitment and deep insight, Earth-honoring Faith reminds us that we must live in the present with the knowledge that the eyes of future generations will look back at us.