Greener Faith Religious Environmentalism & Our Planets Future

In a time of darkening environmental prospects, frightening religious fundamentalism, and moribund liberalism, the remarkable and historically unprecedented rise of religious environmentalism is a profound source of hope. In A Greener Faith , Roger S. Gottlieb chronicles the promises of this critically important movement, illuminating its principal ideas, leading personalities, and ways of connecting care for the earth with justice for human beings. He also shows how religious environmentalism breaks the customary boundaries of "religious issues" in political life. Asserting that environmental degradation is sacrilegious, sinful, and an offense against God catapults religions directly into questions of social policy, economic and moral priorities, and the overall direction of secular society. Gottlieb contends that a spiritual perspective applied to the Earth provides the environmental movement with a uniquely appropriate way to voice its dream of a sustainable and just world. Equally important, it helps develop a world-making political agenda that far exceeds interest group politics applied to forests and toxic incinerators. Rather, religious environmentalism offers an all-inclusive vision of what human beings are and how we should treat each other and the rest of life.

Gottlieb deftly analyzes the growing synthesis of the movement's religious, social, and political aspects, as well as the challenges it faces in consumerism, fundamentalism, and globalization. Highly engaging and passionately argued, this book is an indispensable resource for people of faith, environmentalists, scholars, and anyone who is concerned about our planet's future.

"Roger S. Gottlieb has written a seminal book examining the emerging debate on environmental ethics among the world's great faith traditions and what that means for the future of environmental stewardship."

--Carl Pope, Executive Director, The Sierra Club

"This should be vital reading for anyone who thinks they know what the future of the environmental movement is. Gottlieb will show many people worlds they didn't even think existed! A timely book; a wonderful collection of stories; and some hard questions. Excellent."

--Martin Palmer, Secretary General of the Alliance of Religions and Conservation

"Roger S. Gottlieb presents a comprehensive view of the nexus of religion and the environment. The specific stories of faith-based environmentalism provide a bright picture of the faith community's capacity for caring for God's creation. If we actively follow his lead, we will go a long way toward being more effective stewards of our fragile planet."--Dr. Bob Edgar, General Secretary, National Council of Churches USA

"Gottlieb's depiction of globalization as a non-democratic system of commodification of humans and environment is incisive. ...Religious environmentalism needs to face both its profound diversity and the inequality which globalization produces. Eminently readable, this book would make student discussions far more knowlegable and sophisticated. It provides insights to religious environmentalists and helps broaden the views of the despirers of religion. Above all, this is a hopeful and wise book." --Environmental Ethics

"Roger S. Gottlieb is the foremost voice in joining spirituality, environmentalism, and progressive politics. In this critically important book, he creates a needed sense of community, engenders hope, gives us direction, and impels us to act on behalf of the earth and all its beings."--David Landis Barnhill, editor of At Home on the Earth: Becoming Native to Our Place

"Roger S. Gottlieb's A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and Our Planet's Future offers a superb insight into the larger issues of an integral Earth-human survival...a most needed guide."--Father Thomas Berry, author of The Great Work: Our Way into the Future

"Beautifully written, carefully researched, and insightful...A stunning achievement and must read for students and scholars interested in religiously inflected sustainable living in the face of eco-injustice and the loss of hope in our time."--Mark I. Wallace, author of Finding God in the Singing River: Christianity, Spirit, Nature

"A Greener Gaith does an excellent job of detailing the vast, diverse facets of contemporary religious environmentalism, drawing on the author's extensive knowledge and familiarity of the movement. In so doing, Gottlieb provides some impassioned and well-argued reasons for why religion (of a certain type) should play a prominent role in environmental politics."--H-Environment

"Roger S. Gottlieb has written a seminal book examining the emerging debate on environmental ethics among the world's great faith traditions and what that means for the future of environmental stewardship."--Carl Pope, Executive Director, The Sierra Club

"Roger S. Gottlieb presents a comprehensive view of the nexus of religion and the environment. The specific stories of faith-based environmentalism provide a bright picture of the faith community's capacity for caring for God's creation. If we actively follow his lead, we will go a long way toward

being more effective stewards of our fragile planet."--Dr. Bob Edgar, General Secretary, National Council of Churches USA

"At last someone has not only noticed the extraordinary story of the rise of religious participation in the environemnetal movement, but has written a book which tells this story in an engaging way. Gottlieb chronicles the increasing role played by faith groups but is also very good at pinpointing

the areas of disagreement and tension with an often dismissive secular world. This should be vital reading for anyone who thinks they know what the future of the environmentalmovement is. Gottlieb will show many people worlds they didn't even think existed! A timely book; a wonderful collection of

stories; and some hard questions. Excellent."--Martin Palmer, Secretary General of the Alliance of Religions and Conservation

"Roger S. Gottlieb is the foremost voice in joining spirituality, environmentalism, and progressive politics. In this critically important book, he creates a needed sense of community, engenders hope, gives us direction, and impels us to act on behalf of the earth and all its beings."--David Landis

Barnhill, editor of At Home on the Earth: Becoming Native to Our Place

"Roger S. Gottlieb's A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and Our Planet's Future offers a superb insight into the larger issues of an integral Earth-human survival...a most needed guide."--Father Thomas Berry, author of The Great Work: Our Way into the Future

"This should be vital reading for anyone who thinks they know what the future of the environmental movement is. Gottlieb will show many people worlds they didn't even think existed! A timely book; a wonderful collection of stories; and some hard questions. Excellent."--Martin Palmer, Secretary

General of the Alliance of Religions and Conservation

"Beautifully written, carefully researched, and insightful...A stunning achievement and must read for students and scholars interested in religiously inflected sustainable living in the face of eco-injustice and the loss of hope in our time."--Mark I. Wallace, author of Finding God in the Singing

River: Christianity, Spirit, Nature

In merely two decades, a small number of resource-poor religious organizations have created a new ethic, and a new set of green religious traditions, with an infrastructure in place to educate and mobilize individuals and organizations. To Care for Creation explains how religious environmentalism has emerged despite various institutional and cultural barriers, and why the new movement organizations follow a logic and set of practices that set them apart from the secular movement. In addition to the new ethic and green religious traditions, Ellingson shows how the movement launches programs to make religious building environmentally, friendly, fight toxic waste and mountain-top removal, protect watersheds, and promote sustainable agriculture. His book research involved him in six dozen interviews with key players in the 70 or so extant religious environmental movement organizations, which are set against secular environmental organizations; the difference is between a message of hope for the religious movement vs. one of doom and gloom for the secular movement. The religious movement is sorely understudied, and it addresses a crucial issue of the dayand#151;climate change.

Controversial megachurch pastor Mark Driscoll proclaimed from a conference stage in 2013, andldquo;I know who made the environment and heandrsquo;s coming back and going to burn it all up. So yes, I drive an SUV.andrdquo; The comment, which Driscoll later explained away as a joke, highlights what has been a long history of religious anti-environmentalism. Given how firmly entrenched this sentiment has been, surprising inroads have been made by a new movement with few financial resources, which is deeply committed to promoting green religious traditions and creating a new environmental ethic.

To Care for Creation chronicles this movement and explains how it has emerged despite institutional and cultural barriers, as well as the hurdles posed by logic and practices that set religious environmental organizations apart from the secular movement. Ellingson takes a deep dive into the ways entrepreneurial activists tap into and improvise on a variety of theological, ethical, and symbolic traditions in order to issue a compelling call to arms that mobilizes religious audiences. Drawing on interviews with the leaders of more than sixty of these organizations, Ellingson deftly illustrates how activists borrow and rework resources from various traditions to create new meanings for religion, nature, and the religious personandrsquo;s duty to the natural world.

Roger S. Gottlieb is Professor of Philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Mass. Among his many books are This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature, and Environment, now in its Second Edition, A Spirituality of Resistance: Finding a Peaceful Heart and Protecting the Earth and Joining Hands: Politics and Religion Together for Social Change.