Faith, Hope, and Sustainability

Faith, Hope, and Sustainability PDF Author: Cybelle T. Shattuck
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438482000
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
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 influence 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.

Faith, Hope, and Sustainability

Faith, Hope, and Sustainability PDF Author: Cybelle T. Shattuck
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438482000
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Get Book

Book Description
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 influence 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.

Christianity, Climate Change, and Sustainable Living

Christianity, Climate Change, and Sustainable Living PDF Author: Nick Spencer
Publisher: Brazos Press
ISBN: 9781587433061
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
What should Christians do to protect the Earth and its people? Amounts and patterns of consumption and production in the West have reached a level that cannot be maintained. Lifestyles based on our present way of creating and using energy are no longer environmentally sustainable--and are threatening the health and well-being of both planet and people. Our activities and the policies that shape them need to change. In light of those realities, Spencer, White, and Vroblesky offer serious Christian engagement with the emerging issue of Sustainable Consumption and Production. They analyze the scientific, sociological, economic, and theological thinking that makes a Christian response to these trends imperative and distinctive. And they offer practical conclusions that explore and explain what can be done at the personal, community, national, and international levels to ensure that next generations will have the resources necessary for life. Firmly rooted in the good news of the Christian faith, this is, above all, a constructive and hopeful book that offers a realistic vision of what the future could and should look like. This book is endorsed by A Rocha: Christians in Conservation, The Jubliee Centre, The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, and The Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies.

Sustainability and Spirituality

Sustainability and Spirituality PDF Author: John E. Carroll
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791484580
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
This groundbreaking book explores the inherent interconnectedness of sustainability and spirituality, acknowledging the dependency of one upon the other. John E. Carroll contends that true ecological sustainability, in contrast to the cosmetic attempts at sustainability we see around us, questions our society's fundamental values and is so countercultural that it is resisted by anyone without a spiritual belief in something deeper than efficiency, technology, or economics. Carroll draws on the work of cultural historian and "geologian" Thomas Berry, whose eco-spiritual thought underlies many of the sustainability efforts of communities described in this book, including particular branches of Catholic religious orders and the loosely organized Sisters of the Earth. The writings of Native Americans on spirituality and ecology are also highlighted. These models for sustainability not only represent the tangible link between ecology and spirituality, but also, more importantly, a vision of what could be.

The Earth Cries Out

The Earth Cries Out PDF Author: Gardner, Gary
Publisher: Orbis Books
ISBN: 1608338754
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
"The Earth Cries Out describes best practices in religious responses to the impending climate and sustainability emergency, and presents the next steps for faith communities in the years ahead"--

Green Christianity

Green Christianity PDF Author: Mark I Wallace
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1451413858
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
The central message of this book is that religion has a special role to play in saving the planet. Religion has the unique power to fire the imagination and empower the will to break the cycle of addiction to nonrenewable energy. The environmental crisis is a crisis not of the head but of the heart. The problem is not that we do not know how to stop climate change but rather that we lack the inner strength to redirect our culture and economy toward a sustainable future. Only a bold and courageous faith can undergird a long-term commitment to change. This book is a call to hope, not despair--a survey of promising directions and a call for readers to discover meaning and purpose in their lives through a spiritually charged commitment to saving the Earth.

Faith, Hope and the Global Economy

Faith, Hope and the Global Economy PDF Author: Richard Higginson
Publisher: IVP
ISBN: 9781844745807
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Richard Higginson argues that, rightly understood and applied, faith can be an enormous power for good -- stimulating enterprise, reducing poverty, promoting integrity, ensuring sustainability and making disciples. This ground-breaking book will help business men and women to think deeply about what they do and why they do it. It shows how every episode in the biblical story of salvation has something important, challenging and hopeful to say about business practice. It explores alternative business models that provide signs of hope, and also offers insight and encouragement to those working for mainstream companies."--Cover.

Sustaining Grace

Sustaining Grace PDF Author: Scott J. Hagley
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532687591
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
Sustaining Grace explores the dynamic between new faith communities and denominational systems through the lens of stewardship and sustainability. As a collection, these essays suggest that to facilitate ecologies for innovation in our current era, established congregations and new faith communities must model the sustaining grace of God to one another in creative ways. Thus, problems of sustainability are not for church planters to solve alone, but rather are related to the theologies of stewardship and the ecclesial system to which they belong. Issues of vision are not for denominational systems to theorize alone, but are given shape on their historic foundations in the creative and prophetic structures practiced in new faith communities. This book speaks to a central tension in the growing movement of church planting—the mutual need of and the mutual frustration between establishment leaders and innovators, conservators and risk takers. Standing at the contact point of that tension in one of the wealthiest mainline denominations, 1001 New Worshipping Communities and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary engage the question of faithful stewardship with voices reflecting and strategizing on each side of the tension, broadening the conversation to include those beyond the Presbyterian Church, and bringing both the academy and practitioners from church judicatories, church plants, and traditional church communities to offer a theologically grounded, practical, and generative conversation.

Sustainable Faith: A green gospel for the age of climate change

Sustainable Faith: A green gospel for the age of climate change PDF Author: Nicola L. Bull
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0244932042
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 76

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Book Description
Bible-based, this book demonstrates that an important element of 21st-century Christian faith is about engaging with the big challenges of climate change and sustainable living.

A Greener Faith

A Greener Faith PDF Author: Roger S. Gottlieb
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199884226
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
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.

The Power of the Periphery

The Power of the Periphery PDF Author: Peder Anker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108477569
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
Examines how Norway has positioned itself as an alternative, environmentally-sound nation in a world filled with tension and instability.