Academic Term: Winter-Spring 2010

Will religions assume a disengaged pose as species go extinct, forests are exterminated, soil, air, and water are polluted beyond restoration, and human health and well-being deteriorate? " Mary Evelyn Tucker The connection among worldviews, religion and ecology, while perplexing for many, has been of growing academic and pragmatic concern in recent years. Scientists, policy makers, and activists have of late been frustrated with the longterm efficacy of their actions, and have begun to reflect on the underlying worldviews and core values of their work. Is the neoliberal economic model a worldview, for example? Is consumerism? This has led to a recrudescence of interest in religious worldviews as a source of environmental theory and practice. The fact that certain religious groups are beginning to take ecological systems seriously is a distinctive, important emergence within environmentalism. Given that approximately eighty-five percent of the human family reads their reality through a religious lens, any environmental policy or ethic that does not relate to religious concerns potentially ignores dialogue with ethical and moral traditions held by the majority of the world's peoples