Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to Christianity and the Environment
- Cambridge Companions to Religion
- The Cambridge Companion to Christianity and the Environment
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Concepts
- Part II Histories
- 8 Environmental Perspectives in Ancient Greek Philosophy and Religion
- 9 Medieval Nature and the Environment
- 10 Natural Philosophy in Early Modernity
- 11 Protestantism, Environmentalism,and Limits to Growth
- 12 Romanticism, Transcendentalism, and Ecological Thought
- 13 Contemporary Religious Ecology
- Part III Engagements
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to Religion
- References
13 - Contemporary Religious Ecology
from Part II - Histories
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 July 2022
Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to Christianity and the Environment
- Cambridge Companions to Religion
- The Cambridge Companion to Christianity and the Environment
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Concepts
- Part II Histories
- 8 Environmental Perspectives in Ancient Greek Philosophy and Religion
- 9 Medieval Nature and the Environment
- 10 Natural Philosophy in Early Modernity
- 11 Protestantism, Environmentalism,and Limits to Growth
- 12 Romanticism, Transcendentalism, and Ecological Thought
- 13 Contemporary Religious Ecology
- Part III Engagements
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to Religion
- References
Summary
The landscape of contemporary religious ecology is presented in this article as a variety of responses to disenchantment and what Lynn White identified as the theological roots of environmental ruin (Biblical divine transcendence and human exceptionality). The various positions are mapped in terms of those who deny divine transcendence and make nature, either as actually or only potentially infinite, the highest (pantheists); those who deny divine unicity and return to a pre-Christian, “enchanted” nature (neo-pagans); and those who defend in various ways the ecology of the Biblical account of creation (Jewish, Muslim, and Christian monotheists).
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Christianity and the Environment , pp. 197 - 214Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022
References
Selected Bibliography
Clifton, Chas, ‘Contemporary Paganism’. In The Cambridge Handbook of Mysticism and Esotericism. Edited by Magee, Glenn Alexander, pp. 334–343. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Francis, I. Laudato Si’. Encyclical on Climate Change and Inequality: On Care for Our Common Home Brooklyn, NY: Melville, 2015.Google Scholar
Gauchet, Marcel. The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion. Translated by Oscar Burge. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Hampton, Alexander J. B., ed. Pandemic, Ecology and Theology: Perspectives on COVID-19. London: Routledge, 2021.Google Scholar
Hampton, Alexander J. B. Romanticism and the Re-invention of Modern Religion: The Reconciliation of German Idealism and Platonic Realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latour, Bruno. Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy. Translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
McGrath, Sean J. Thinking Nature: An Essay in Negative Ecology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018.Google Scholar
Moltmann, Jürgen. God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Morton, Timothy. Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Otten, Willemien. Thinking Nature and the Nature of Thinking: From Eriugena to Emerson. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2020.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Bron. Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future. Oakland: University of California Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Walls, Laura Dassow. Emerson’s life in Science: The Culture of Truth. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
WhiteJr., Lynn. ‘The Historical Roots of Our Environmental Crisis’. Science 155 (1967): 1203–1207.Google Scholar