Spirit and Nature: Why the Environment is a Religious Issue--An Interfaith Dialogue

by Steven C. Rockefeller (Editor), John C. Elder (Editor)

As featured in Bill Moyers's PBS special "Spirit and Nature", leaders from major traditions around the world speak out in this volume about what spiritual resources we may turn to in our age of unprecedented danger to the planet.

Genres: Religion, Nonfiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1992

Reviews

[Joshua Glucksman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cool attempt to dialectically relate the individual and the collective: "and the closer in time and space entities are, the closer they are related. Thus, while we may rightly feel some distance from such "relatives" as exploding stars, we are "kissing cousins" with everything on Planet Earth and literally brothers and sisters to all other human beings. Such intimacy does not, however, undercut difference; in fact, one of the outstanding features of postmodern science's view of reality is that individuality and interdependence characterize everything. It is not just human beings that have indi-viduality, for the veins on every maple leaf, the configuration of every sun-set, and the composition of every pile of dirt is different from every other one. This portrayal of reality undercuts notions of human existence as separate from the natural, physical world; or of human individuality as the only form of individuality; or of human beings existing apart from radical interdependence and interrelatedness with others of our own species, with other species, and with the ecosystem. The continuity of nonliving and living matter displays another crucial feature: the inverse dependency of the most complex entities on the less complex. Thus, the plants can do very nicely without us, but we would perish quickly without them. The higher and more complex the level, the more vulnerable it is and the more dependent upon the levels that support it. Again, we see implications for recon-ceiving the "place" of human beings in the scheme of things. McFague 52"

[Kara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is collection of manuscripts from symposium lectures on the topic of religion & the environment. I liked their mood, which was generally forward-looking and not stuck in apologetics. But there's frequent reiteration so I'm not sure it's worth reading in entirety.