SUNY series on Religion and the Environment

Looks at how ecotheology has created a new vision of the natural world and the place of humans within it. Is there any hope for a more sustainable world? Can we reimagine a way of living in which the nonhuman world matters? Anne Marie Dalton and Henry C. Simmons claim that the ecotheology that arose during the mid-twentieth century gives us reason for hope. While ecotheologians acknowledge that Christianity played a significant role in creating societies in which the nonhuman world counted for very little, these thinkers have refocused religion to include the natural world. To borrow philosopher Charles Taylor's concept, they have created a new "social imaginary," reimagining a better world and a different sense of what is and what should be. A new mindset is emerging, inspired by ecotheological texts and evident in the many diverse movements and activities that operate as if the hope imparted by ecotheology has already been realized. While making this powerful argument, Dalton and Simmons also provide an essential overview of key ecotheological thinkers and texts.

Now that we have entered the Anthropocene, the geological age in which humans have altered the natural world to such an extent that nature and culture can no longer be separated, the modern dichotomies of mind versus body and culture versus nature have become implausible and need to be replaced. In Grounding God, Arianne Conty argues that it is in the field of religion where we can find a new ontology better suited for the Anthropocene. Conty calls this new religious ontology the grounding of the sacred, in that it seeks to deconstruct the binaries of modernity and provide in their place a revalorization of the immanent earth and the more-than-human beings that inhabit it. Such a grounding of the sacred is a potent means to overcome the exploitation and desecration of the earth and its nonhuman beings and, to provide in its stead, an inclusive cosmopolitics that extends mind into matter and culture into nature. Tracing such a grounding in the Christian, Buddhist, neopagan, and animist traditions, Conty seeks to elaborate an interdisciplinary ecosophy, one that uses philosophy, anthropology, and religious studies to provide new values for the present age.

Examines the role of plants in botanical mythology, from Aboriginal Australia to Zoroastrian Persia. Plants have a remarkable mythology dating back thousands of years. From the ancient Greeks to contemporary Indigenous cultures, human beings have told colorful and enriching stories that have presented plants as sensitive, communicative, and intelligent. This book explores the myriad of plant tales from around the world and the groundbreaking ideas that underpin them. Amid the key themes of sentience and kinship, it connects the anemone to the meaning of human life, tree hugging to the sacred basil of India, and plant intelligence with the Finnish epic The Kalevala. Bringing together commentary, original source material, and colorful illustrations, Matthew Hall challenges our perspective on these myths, the plants they feature, and the human beings that narrate them. Matthew Hall is Associate Director of Research Services at Victoria University of Wellington, in New Zealand. He is the author of Plants as Persons: A Philosophical Botany, also published by SUNY Press.

Offers practical and personal ways to help mitigate global climate change while sustaining an emotional and spiritual center through mindfulness practice. The inundation of terrifying environmental news in recent years has left many people exhausted and in despair about our planet's future. In Mindfulness as Sustainability, Maria Jaoudi addresses the need to take care of ourselves intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally during the current global climate crisis. Drawing on specific teachings, stories, and explorations of consciousness and reality from Buddhist, Christian, Daoist, Hindu, Indigenous, Islamic, and Jewish traditions, Jaoudi demonstrates that mindfulness is sustainability, and that mindfulness practice, applied both personally and politically, can help mitigate global climate change and rectify environmental injustice. Through illuminating discussions of primary scriptures, key spiritual figures, discoveries of modern science, and moments of social transformation, she offers practical ways to live our lives mindfully, ethically, and sustainably. Written for students and lay readers, the book makes the case that we can sustain our planet if we maintain our strength, increase our knowledge, and remain sensitive to the beauty and the sentience that is both within us and around us.

A cross-case analysis of fifteen faith communities striving to care for the earth and live more sustainably. Faith, Hope, and Sustainability explores the experiences of fifteen faith communities striving to care for the earth and live more sustainably. A church in Maine partners with fishermen to create the first community-supported fishery, so they can make a living without overfishing. A Jewish congregation in Illinois raises extra funds to construct a green synagogue that expresses their religious mission to heal the world. Benedictine sisters in Wisconsin adopt caring for the earth as part of their mission and begin restoring one hundred acres of prairie, reviving their community in the process. Presbyterians in Virginia, dismayed by air pollution in Shenandoah National Park, take courage from their conviction that "God does not call us to do little things" and advocate for improved national air pollution policies. Stories such as these highlight the variety of environmental actions that people of faith are enacting through congregational venues. Beyond simply narrating inspiring stories, however, this book compares these case studies to explore in detail the processes through which the communities took action. In addition to examining why faith communities engage in earth care, Cybelle T. Shattuck explores how they put intention into action and how the congregational context affects what they do. She introduces an analytical framework focusing on four domains of activity-champions, faith leaders, congregations, and organizations-to explicate the full range of factors that influences how initiatives develop and whether sustainability becomes embedded in these religious organizations. Both the framework and the information on process presented in this book will be highly useful to scholars and to people of faith interested in implementing an earth-care ethic through sustainability programs.

Examines religious communities as advocates of environmental stewardship and sustainable agriculture practices. Writing at the interface of religion and nature theory, US religious history, and environmental ethics, Todd LeVasseur presents the case for the emergence of a nascent "religious agrarianism" within certain subsets of Judaism and Christianity in the United States. Adherents of this movement, who share an environmental concern about the modern industrial food economy and a religiously grounded commitment to the values of locality, health, and justice, are creating new models for sustainable agrarian lifeways and practices. LeVasseur explores this greening of US religion through an extensive engagement with the scholarly literature on lived religion, network theory, and grounded theory, as well as through ethnographic case studies of two intentional communities at the vanguard of this movement: Koinonia Farm, an ecumenical Christian lay monastic community, and Hazon, a progressive Jewish environmental group. Todd LeVasseur teaches religious studies and environmental and sustainability studies at the College of Charleston. He is the coeditor (with Pramod Parajuli and Norman Wirzba) of Religion and Sustainable Agriculture: World Spiritual Traditions and Food Ethics and the coeditor (with Anna Peterson) of Religion and Ecological Crisis: The "Lynn White Thesis" at Fifty.