Well, an excellent question. FASKIANOS: Thank you very much, Mary Evelyn Tucker. A similar attack from the right comes from Ray Evans, an Australian businessman, politician, and global-warming skeptic: Almost all of the attacks on the mining industry being generated by the environmentalist movement [in the 1990s] were coming out of Northern Europe and Scandinavia, and it didnt take me long to work out that we were dealing with religious belief, that the elites of Northern Europe and Scandinavia the political elites, the intellectual elites, even the business elites were, in fact, believers in one brand of environmentalism or another and regardless of the facts. The psychic solaces of myth, when limited to consoling those who need it, are not a problem. Church-sponsored Earth Day celebrations are widespread. I happen to come from the Catholic progressive tradition, I would say, and was very much affected by social justice teachings in my youth and especially in civil rights and the anti-Vietnam War and so on. Silent Spring is a metaphor, you know, that captures our our imagination and speaks to our whole person. But you can now assuage your guilt by buying carbon offsets. The notion is that this will create molecules that will cause solar energy to be reflected back into space, replacing the reflectivity of the melting polar ice caps. Its quite beyond our capacity. While many Israeli environmental organizations make limited use of Jewish religious teachings, a few do approach Israels environmental problems from a Jewish standpoint, includingthe Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership, named afterAbraham Joshua Heschel. Every family, every one of us has tremendous suffering in our own families, whether addiction or abuse or whatever it might be. In Latin America, I've mentioned this amazing movement of liberation theology and ecology. And there's an institute in California that is now setting up a collaborative project of counseling for Chinese, especially living in these cities of -- cities the size of thirty, thirty-four million people, some of them. For some individuals and societies, the role of religion seems increasingly to be filled by environmentalism. A landmark event was a series of ten conferences on Religion and Ecology organized byYale Universityprofessors Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim and held at theHarvard UniversityCenter for the Study of World Religions from 1996 to 1998. But unfortunately I am an old heretic. Pioneer of environmentalism John Muir was called the Taoist of the West. Parallels were found between Taoism and deep ecology. Whites essay caused a splash, to say the least, becoming the basis for countless conferences, symposia, and debates. The New School in New York just announced yesterday that they are divesting. So I do think there's lots that can be done by religious leaders and lay people. Kierkegaard argued that if we choose faith, we must suspend our reason in order to believe in something higher than reason. I want to ask one question. Chief Editor. My sense is that in virtually any area, you have probably 10 percent true believers that you just cannot reach. And to fast and pray, but also to use that time for some political activity to make a difference. A short summary of this paper. The global arms trade is big business and the United States accounts for more than 40 percent of the worlds weapons exports. I look at humans as probably having an evolutionary desire to have ideology, to justify their actions. Yet its a marvel the challenges Lovelock has created for himself in changing the minds of zealots. And Neuhaus makes the case that White misunderstands his own nominee for an ecological patron saint: What is underemphasized by White and others, and what was so impressive in Francis, is the unremitting focus on the glory of the Creator. Roots and Branches of Islamic Environmental Justice, Law, and Ethics 5. And the creativity of humans is remarkable, I think, frankly. I'm just always deeply grateful. Any dissenting point of view however moderate the dissent may be is punished as heresy. And we have them listen to his talks online and do the readings of his books. How does one preach about this issue of climate change, when in the U.S. and North America it's been so contested? Thank you very much, Evelyn Tucker, for this talk. Please join the forum. QUESTION: Hi. Is there a reward for us in serving the animals? He replied: There is a reward for serving any living being. [Bukhari], A woman entered the Fire because of a cat which she had tied, neither giving it food nor setting it free to eat from the vermin of the earth. [Bukhari], The world is beautiful and verdant, and verily God, be He exalted, has made you His stewards in it, and He sees how you acquit yourselves. [Muslim], Do not waste water, even if you are at a running stream. [Ibn Majah], If the Hour (the day of Resurrection) is about to be established and one of you was holding a sapling, let him take advantage of even one second before the Hour is established to plant it. [Al-Albani]. As I've mentioned a number of them; what Earth Ministry's doing, what Faith in Place is doing in urban communities in Chicago is just astounding. I dont look forward to the job., Of environmentalism increasingly being faith-based, Lovelock says, I would agree with you wholeheartedly. Denmark and Sweden float along like small, content, durable dinghies of secular life, where most people are nonreligious and dont worship Jesus or Vishnu, dont revere sacred texts, dont pray, and dont give much credence to the essential dogmas of the worlds great faiths, observes Phil Zuckerman in his 2008 book Society without God. Many Muslims have taken up climate activism. Consider the case of deep ecology, a term popularized by environmental activists Bill Devall and George Sessions in their environmental classic Deep Ecology, which was published in 1985. This state of affairs is especially unfortunate since American environmentalism itself, as Mark Stoll's fascinating new book, Inherit the Holy Mountain: Religion and the Rise of American . And the Earth, you know, is six billion years old, and we as humans are only about 200,000 years old. (Qur'an 30:30) This paper points out the chief characteristics of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi's philosophy and understanding of the this religion . And, of course, with limited resources it's why we all have to be asking it. This is a very interesting conversation so glad to be part of it. What advice or counsel or guidance can you give to religious congregations who continue to be invested in oil industry that are involved in the tar sands, even as we grow in our consciousness about them because these companies that we're invested in still pass our existing social screen? So what we wanted to do in those Harvard conferences was bring forward values that were culturally grounded in the religious traditions of these areas, regionally connected and yet globally significant. And in the 15 years that I've been going to China, it's hard to describe what has happened. And so a question is, you know, with something like is happening in Paris, do we -- is this -- does this statement want to be we're not traveling there. All of this exists in the legends of environmentalismall of this is a fundamental part of most religious systems. There's no formal representations there. And you know what? The natural alliance between religious and secular environmentalists is happening in thousands of local contexts where secularists and people of faith work together to resist climate change, toxic waste disposal and destructive economic "development." Facing the same environmental crisis that their secular counterparts do, people of faith have been changing their basic attitudes towards nature . Yeah. This subfield is founded on the understanding that, in the words of Iranian-AmericanphilosopherSeyyed Hossein Nasr, the environmental crisis is fundamentally a crisis ofvalues, and thatreligions, being a primary source of values in anyculture, are thus implicated in the decisions humans make regarding theenvironment. More able to deal with problems like incoming asteroids, volcanic outbursts and so on. InIslam, the concept of ahimaor inviolate zone refers to a piece of land that has been set aside to prevent cultivation or any use other thanspiritualpurposes. Biblical and rabbinic texts have been enlisted for prayers about the environment, especially inOrthodox JudaismandJewish Renewalmovements. And (inaudible) all over the (inaudible) or fair trade guys did with this? Well, as many of you know I went to Japan in the early '70s and traveled extensively throughout Asia in the last forty years. And they don't know how to move past this problematic dimension of religion. In terms of saving Gaia, do you view carbon Calvinism as a net plus or a net minus? And that has been going for several years, and the WCC, of course, has led the way in these issues of especially of solidarity for the poor. How do we open that up to something that says they could be an incredible partner on this, and this is how we might be able to do some work with them? Writing just a few years after the publication of Rachel Carsons eco-blockbuster Silent Spring, White shared in the concern over techno-industrial cultures destruction of nature. We need communities, certainly, that can reinforce that. Now, I know all the NGOs who are working on this. I would just like any advice and any participation by anybody on this call. Meanwhile, the Judeo-Christian teachings about the natural world begin with the beginning: there is but one God, which means that there is a knowable order to nature; He created man in His image, which gives man an elevated place in that order; and He gave man mastery over the natural world: And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. Rosenfeld wrote Taoism is environmentalism. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION They're planting trees if they travel, and so on. So I try to engage them in a rational manner rather than in the religious manner. In 2006, Time, Newsweek, and Bill Moyers all focused on evangelical Christians involved. Thats really important. The data-driven and exploratory processes of science are choked off by inculcation of belief systems that rely on archetypal and emotive strength. We've already been getting calls for the media, which is why we have a frequently asked questions now up on our forum Web site. Many of those making the case that environmentalism has become a religion throw around the word religion as a pejorative. So the spirit of these Harvard conferences was very much a sense of theory and practice. And there are efforts to clean up sacred rivers like the Ganges and the Yamuna. I was in tears. So on the Web site, there's bibliographies that are annotated of all the books that have been published over these last twenty years, and it's an astonishing explosion, actually. And that is certainly being done in a lot of wonderful environmental education. And I'm going to a conference in Hong Kong this summer on Confucianism and the ecology. I can recommend any of Duay Ming's (ph) book books to you. It was a little unclear. Our uniquely Western approach to the natural world was shaped fundamentally by Athens and Jerusalem. Taylor also led the effort to form the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, which was established in 2006, and began publishing the quarterlyJournal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culturein 2007. There was a major celebration ritual at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine that evening. SeeKaitiakiinMori religion. And these are people who have to deal with this day in and day out. So thank you for the question, and let's keep going forward with careful discernment around that. If I was just a crazy guy ranting outside the religious gathering, then it might not matter. In terms ofenvironmentally friendlypolicies,The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saintshas a history of utilizing elements of conservationist policies for theirmeetinghouses. Building on scholarship that provides theological and ethical resources to support the "greening" of religion, God and the Green Divide examines religious environmentalism as it actually happens in the daily lives of urban Americans. Many traditional approaches to conservation . QUESTION: Yeah. And there's syllabi and teaching and video materials. So, you say to Lovelock: Youve succeeded in getting out this idea that the planet is a living organism. Thats why humans across the globe independently invented agriculture: so that they could control their food supply and provide the adequate nutrition that a fickle and cruel nature frequently stinted. Like Richard Louv, who is also inspired by Thomas Berry, Last Child in the in the Woods. That may be a stretch, but it does seem that this new religion has its share of excommunicated heretics. One could see Greenpeacers as crusaders, with the industrialist cast as the infidel, writes Richard North in New Scientist. Benedict simply took for granted that his audience would recognize the environment as an object of legitimate Christian interest. For Gore modern science is the culprit, particularly its intellectual forefathers Francis Bacon and Ren Descartes, whom Gore misrepresent as ensuring the gradual abandonment of the philosophy that humankind was one vibrant strand in an elaborate web of life, matter, and meaning. 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