Religion and Ecology

The last two decades have seen the emergence of a new field of academic study that examines the interaction between religion and ecology. Theologians from every religious tradition have confronted world religions past attitudes towards nature and acknowledged their own faiths complicity in the environmental crisis. Out of this confrontation have been born vital new theologies based in the recovery of marginalized elements of tradition, profound criticisms of the past, and ecologically oriented visions of God, the Sacred, the Earth, and human beings. The proposed handbook will serve as the definitive overview of these exciting new developments. Divided into three main sections, the books essays will reflect the three dominant dimensions of the field. Part one will explore traditional religious concepts of and attitudes towards nature and how these have been changed by the environmental crisis. Part II looks at larger conceptual issues that transcend individual traditions. Part III will examine religious participation in environmental politics.

Roger S. Gottlieb is Professor of Philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He is the author or editor of fourteen books and more than 50 articles on political philosophy, religious life, the Holocaust, environmentalism, and disability, including A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and Our Planet's Future (OUP 2006), This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature, Environment (second edition, 2003) and Joining Hands: Politics and Religion Together for Social Change (2002). He writes a column for the national magazine Tikkun and serves on the editorial boards of four scholarly journals.