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, trans-disciplinary 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.
"The convenors and editors chose to focus on the relation between environmentalism and post-modernism, an increasingly important engagement for eco-theology."
ESSSAT-News
"This book is a rare combination of intelligence and vision. Its essays deserve to be read--and reread--by scholars of religion, environmentalists, students, and anyone who values the sacredness of the earth."
Author of A Greener Faith
"Ecospirit is best described as state-of-the-art in its field. All the essays in Ecospirit start at the cutting edge of the interdisciplinary responses to the ecological crisis and push critical questions about the effectiveness of contemporary scholarship and activism."
