Saving the Earth

Nature Spirituality

It is fitting that the story of the Bible begins with the creation of the natural world. Most cultures have stories that tell how the world began and explain man’s relationship to the animals. Continue reading "Nature Spirituality " essay »

The books recommended in this section emphasize the mystery, wonder, stewardship and accountability implicit in a spirituality that honors Nature. They uphold the necessity of embracing all of the environment, in a sacramental ecology. Here you will find a variety of perspectives, including most of the world’s major religions, Native American and other indigenous practices, deep ecology and other philosophical traditions concerning nature, depth psychology and New Age thinking.

Recommended Books on Sustainable Agriculture

The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth
Edward O. Wilson

Addressing a hypothetical "Dear Pastor," Pulitzer Prize-winning biologist issues a forthright call for unity between religion and science in order to save the creation - living nature which is in deep trouble. Forget about arguing over life's origins, Wilson suggests, and focus on the fact that while nature achieves sustainability through complexity, human activities are driving myriad species into extinction, thus depleting the biosphere and jeopardizing civilization. Wilson celebrates individual species, each a masterpiece of biology, and acutely analyzes the nexus between nature and the human psyche. He refutes fantasies about humanity's ability to recreate nature's intricate web, and deplores the use of religious belief (God will take care of it) as an impediment to conservation.
2007, W. W. Norton

Deep Ecology for the Twenty-First Century
George Sessions, ed.

Deep Ecology calls for a paradigm shift - a shift in perception, values, and lifestyles - as a basis for redirecting the ecologically destructive path of modern industrial growth societies. This anthology addresses a broad range of issues by leading deep ecologists: Glendinning argues that psychological distress results from our alienation from nature; Turner profiles Gary Snyder's efforts to practice his vision of "living as part of a larger system of plant and animal communities governed by reciprocity;" McLaughlin clarifies Deep Ecology founder Naess's eight-point platform for change; and Snyder proposes specific action on several levels in the areas of population, pollution, consumption, and transformation of society. Editor Sessions discusses the roots of ecocentrism, the ecocentric philosophers, and modern writers with an ecocentric message.
1995, Shambhala

The Dream of the Earth
Thomas Berry

Berry explores human - Earth relations and seeks a new, non-anthropocentric approach to the natural world. He says that our immediate danger is not nuclear war but industrial plundering. He urges movement and education toward a "biocracy" that will heal the earth. "This volume quite possibly is one of the ten most important books of the 20th century." Dr. Donald B. Conroy
2006, Sierra Club Books

The Earth Has a Soul: The Nature Writings of C.G. Jung
Meredith Sabini, ed.

In these writings from his Collected Works, pioneering psychoanalyist C.G. Jung speaks for the natural mind, the source of the evolutionary experience and accumulated wisdom of our species. Through examples from his own life, he shows how healing one's living connection with Nature contributes to a sense of wholeness. In this book Jung shows us what we have lost and how we might find it again.
2002, North Atlantic Books

Ecospirit: Religions and Philosophies for the Earth
Laurel Kearns and Catherine Keller, eds.

With a fresh, transdisciplinary approach, Ecospirit probes the possibility of a green shift radical enough to permeate the ancient roots of our sensibility and the social sources of our practice. From new language for imagining the Earth as a living ground to current constructions of nature in theology, science, and philosophy; from environmentalism's questioning of postmodern thought to a garden of green doctrines, rituals, and liturgies for contemporary religion, these original essays explore and expand our sense of how to proceed in the face of an ecological crisis that demands new thinking and acting. In the midst of planetary crisis, they activate imagination, humor, ritual, and hope.
2007, Fordham University Press

Evening Thoughts: Reflecting on Earth as Sacred Community
Thomas Berry

Noted cultural historian Thomas Berry opens our eyes to the full dimensions of the ecological crisis facing us, framing it as a crisis of spiritual vision. Applying his formidable erudition in cultural history, science, and comparative religions, he forges a compelling narrative of creation and communion that reconciles modern evolutionary thinking and traditional religious insights concerning our integral role in Earth's society. While sounding an urgent alarm at our current dilemma, Berry inspires us to reclaim our role as the consciousness of the universe and thereby begin to create a true partnership with the Earth community.
2006, Sierra Club Books

The Great Work: Our Way into the Future
Thomas Berry

The future can exist only if humans understand how to commune with the natural world rather than exploit it. Berry says, "Already the planet is so damaged and the future is so challenged by its rising human population that the terms of survival will be severe beyond anything we have known in the past." Berry reveals why we need to adore our blessed planet, while also examining why we are culturally driven toward exploiting nature.
2000, Harmony/Bell Tower

A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and Our Planet's Future
Roger S. Gottlieb

The argument of Gottlieb's hopeful, surprising book is that today, religious people and organizations are among the most committed, and most persuasive, environmental activists. Gottlieb's view is global, principally examining religious green activism in the U.S., but also looking at Zimbabwe, Taiwan and the Vatican. His approach is ecumenical, encompassing Jewish and Christian theologians who have found a powerful biblical call to stewardship of God's creation, and Buddhist teachers who are prompted by their belief in compassion to extend care to the natural world.
2006, Oxford University Press

Holy the Firm
Annie Dillard

Pulitzer Prize-winner Annie Dillard spent two years in a cabin on an island in Puget Sound, asking herself questions about time, reality, sacrifice, death, and the will of God. In Holy the Firm she writes about a moth consumed in a candle flame, a seven-year-old girl burned in an airplane accident, a baptism on a cold beach. But behind the moving curtain of what she calls "the hard things - rock mountain and salt sea," she sees, sometimes far off and sometimes as close by as a veil or air, the power play of holy fire.
1998, Harper Perennial

At Home in Nature: Modern Homesteading and Spiritual Practice in America
Rebecca Gould

Motivated variously by the desire to reject consumerism, to live closer to the Earth, to embrace voluntary simplicity, or to discover a more spiritual path, homesteaders have made the radical decision to go "back to the land," rejecting modern culture and amenities to live self-sufficiently and in harmony with nature. Drawing from vivid firsthand accounts as well as from rich historical material, this gracefully written study of homesteading in America from the late 19th century to the present examines the lives and beliefs of those who have ascribed to the homesteading philosophy, placing their experiences within the broader context of the changing meanings of nature and religion in modern American culture.
2005, University of California Press

Making Nature Sacred: Literature, Religion, and Environment in America from the Puritans to the Present
John Gatta

Since colonial times, the sense of encountering an unseen, transcendental Presence within the natural world has been a characteristic motif in American literature and culture. American writers have repeatedly perceived in nature something beyond itself - and beyond themselves. They have perennially construed the nonhuman world to be a source, in Rachel Carson's words, of "something that takes us out of ourselves." Making Nature Sacred explores how the quest for "natural revelation" has been pursued through successive phases of American literary and intellectual history.
2004, Oxford University Press

Nature Religion in America: From the Algonkian Indians to the New Age
Catherine L. Albanese

This ground-breaking study reveals an unorganized and previously unacknowledged religion at the heart of American culture. Nature, Albanese argues, has provided a compelling religious center throughout American history. She traces its development from Native cultures, through early European perceptions of a bounteous New World, to political meanings expressed via nature-related ideas (Manifest Destiny), emphasizing the importance of nature in Transcendentalism, and seeing new expression of religious ideas about nature in New Age thinking.
1991, University Of Chicago Press

The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Ecology
Roger S. Gottlieb, ed.

Theologians from every religious tradition have confronted world religions' past attitudes towards nature and acknowledged their own faith's 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. This handbook is the definitive overview of these exciting new developments.
2006, Oxford University Press

The Paradise of God: Renewing Religion in an Ecological Age
Norman Wirzba

In this provocative book, Norman Wirzba argues that the doctrine of creation - as presented in the Bible and as developed through the centuries - actually holds the key to a true understanding of our place in the environment and our responsibility toward it. Wirzba contends that an adequate response to environmental destruction depends on a new formulation of ourselves as part of a larger whole, rather than as radically free individuals. This compelling and comprehensive worldview grows out of the idea that the world is God's creation.
2007, Oxford University Press

The Power of Trees: The Reforesting of the Soul
Michael Perlman

This founding text in eco-psychology goes beyond the psychological interpretation of trees in myths and legends. It is a beautiful, lyrical inquiry into the place of trees in the everyday soul, a heart-rending lament for the lost forests, and a brilliant reportage of the after-effects of hurricanes and other disasters, both natural and man-made. Published shortly after Michael Perlman's death, The Power of Trees is an extraordinary testimony to his passion for the planet.
1994, Spring Publications

The Practice of the Wild: Essays
Gary Snyder

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and environmentalist Gary Snyder here reflects upon his deep and profound connection with nature. His language is written to be savored, his thoughts to be reflected upon. He addresses the idea of the commons, the public land that all share and that lies in harm's way at the hands of commercial interests. He urges his readers to dwell upon the places on Earth that have sacred power to move and to hold them. He celebrates the connections we share with the natural world of which we are a part.
2003, Shoemaker & Hoard

Profiles in Wisdom: Native Elders Speak About the Earth
Steven McFadden

McFadden presents the stories and thinking of 17 Native American spiritual teachers. The Iroquois shieldmaker, the Inca Gnostic, the Apache Theosophist, the Wampanoag storyteller, the Huichol shaman, the Maya prophet, the Penobscot Ph.D., the Cherokee Buddhist - this is a fascinating and eclectic group of men and women, each with a passionate vision of spirituality based on the concepts of respect, balance, and harmony found in Native American traditions. The thread that runs through each interview is that humanity is on the edge of a new world, and the need to have a new political outlook, ecology, sociology and spirituality is imperative.
2000, Authors Choice Press

Redeeming Creation: The Biblical Basis for Environmental Stewardship
Fred Van Dyke, David C. Mahan, Raymond Brand and Joseph K. Sheldon

Redeeming Creation brings an evangelical awareness to address the ecological crisis we face today: population growth, deforestation, habitat destruction, species extinctions, ozone layer depletion and global warming. The authors, four biologists and teachers, believe that we can face these dilemmas with hope. Moving beyond a mere survey of the planet's ills, they bring Scripture into fruitful dialogue with current scientific findings and commitments. They both inspire and inform our individual and corporate response to God's creation.
1996, InterVarsity Press

Religion And the New Ecology: Environmental Responsibility in a World in Flux
David M. Lodge and Christopher Hamlin, eds.

The contributors to this volume address how the new paradigm of "flux of nature" fits into the broader history of ecological science and the cultural history of the West and, in particular, how environmental ethics and ecotheology should respond to it. They ask us to reconsider the intellectual foundations on which theories of human responsibility to nature are built. The provisional answer that develops throughout the book is to reintegrate scientific understanding of nature and human values, two realms of thought severed by intellectual and cultural forces during the last two centuries.
2006, University of Notre Dame Press

The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature
David Suzuki and Amanda McConnell

Author Suzuki reflects on the increasingly radical changes in nature and science - from global warming to the science behind mother/baby interactions - and examines what they mean for humankind's place in the world. He presents the concept of people as creatures of the Earth who depend on its gifts of air, water, soil, and sun energy - and explains how people are genetically programmed to crave the company of other species, and how people suffer enormously when they fail to live in harmony with them. The Sacred Balance analyzes those deep spiritual needs, rooted in nature, that are a crucial component of a loving world.
2006, Greystone Books

The Sacred Balance: A Visual Celebration of Our Place in Nature
David Suzuki

This visual feast celebrates the forces that unite all living things, in spectacular photographs, beautiful reproductions of artwork, and amazing electron micrographs and satellite photographs. These images - by Galen Rowell, Art Wolfe, and others - lovingly explore dewdrops on a spider web, a field full of wildflowers, vast herds of zebra, rock paintings, Inuit artwork, and much more. The text presents Suzuki's inspiring view of the human place on Earth, describing the seven elements - earth, air, fire, water, biodiversity, love, and spirituality - that all human beings need to lead full, rich lives. The exquisite balance of these elements creates and maintains the web of life on Earth.
2004, Greystone Books

This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature, and Environment
Roger S. Gottlieb

This Sacred Earth begins with spiritual reflections by naturalists. Surveying traditional religious myths, creation stories, and conceptions of nature -- with extensive selections from Jewish, Christian, Native American, Indian, African, Chinese, and indigenous texts and commentators, the contributors focus on religion in the age of environmental crisis. We see how individuals and institutions are reinterpreting and transforming old traditions, and eco-feminists are challenging patriarchal perspectives.
1995, Routledge

Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution
Ken Wilber

Wilber, a transpersonal psychologist, offers an overview of spiritual practices that can lead to an evolved "omega point" of consciousness. He critiques the materialist flattening of evolutionary and developmental theories in Western tradition. Wilber follows earlier devotees of Plotinus in insisting on a world composed not of parts and wholes but of wholes that are also parts and parts that are also wholes - wholes within wholes. He offers an enticing alternative for those who hunger for an intelligent, engaged spirituality.
2001, Shambhala

Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche
Bill Plotkin

For millenia, ceremonies and initiation rites have helped societies survive and thrive by marking life transitions. Soulcraft restores Nature ritual to its rightful place as a crucial part of personal growth and self-empowerment. Drawing on ancient traditions immersed in the natural world, the vision quest ritual serves as a modern rite of initiation that helps people find their life purpose.
2003, New World Library

The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World
David Abram

David Abram's writing casts a spell of its own as he weaves the reader through a meticulously researched work, gently addressing such daunting topics as where the past and future exists, the relationship between space and time, and how the written word serves to sever humans from their primordial source of sustenance: the Earth. "Only as the written text began to speak would the voices of the forest, and of the river, begin to fade."
1997, Vintage

Way of the Earth
T.C. McLuhan

McLuhan offers a stimulating survey of how the world's cultures have struggled to make sense of their place in the Universe. She identifies underlying common themes in six disparate traditions: Greece, where Gaia, the Earth Mother, dominated pre-Hellenic myths; Japan, whose ancient ethos emphasized an emotional conjunction with nature and ecological awareness; aboriginal Australia, where "The Dreaming" - an otherworld peopled with mythic spirit-beings - gives meaning to life; Africa, where many inhabitants recognize a spiritual force-field linking humans, nature, gods, ancestors; the Kogi tribe of Colombia, who believe they are guardians of life on Earth; and Native North Americans, who "enter sacredness" via rituals and holy sites. Through these many voices, McLuhan shows how empathy with the Earth can take precedence over the impulse to exploit.
1995, Touchstone

Wisdom of the Elders: Sacred Native Stories of Nature
David Suzuki, Peter Knudtson

Wisdom of the Elders compares primitive, aboriginal modes of perceiving the natural world with "Western culture's ecologically destructive worldview." Chapters focused on humans' relationships with, for instance, animals, vegetation and the universe begin with brief summaries of scientific explanation and continue with relevant myths and accounts of daily rituals of such societies as the Chewong in Malaysia, Alaska's Inuit and the Kayapo of the Amazon. Overpopulation, deforestation, solar energy and cyclic and linear approaches to time are considered. Suzuki and Knudtson present an eloquent plea for modern society to more considerately interact with nature.
1993, Bantam

Worldviews and Ecology: Religion, Philosophy, and the Environment
Mary Evelyn Tucker

This book of essays addresses the philosophical and theological underpinnings of current worldviews as they relate to the environment. In the first section on traditional world religions, Tucker casts a wide net, with chapters on Native American worldviews and ecology; Judaism and the ecological crisis;followed by Christian, Islamic, Baha'i, Hindu, Buddhist, Jainist, Taoist and Confucian perspectives on ecology. The final section of the book offers essays on contemporary philosophical concerns, including cosmology and ethics; eco-feminism; deep ecology; ecological geography; and cosmogenesis.
1994, Orbis Books

Worldly Wonder: Religions Enter Their Ecological Phase
Mary Evelyn Tucker

What is humankind in relation to 13 billion years of universe history? What is our place in the framework of 4.6 billion years of Earth history? How can we foster the stability and integrity of life processes? Just as humankind is beginning to comprehend the vastness and complexity of the evolutionary story of the universe, we are also becoming conscious of the growing environmental crisis and of the rapid destruction of species and habitat taking place around the globe. The challenge for the world's religions, argues Mary Evelyn Tucker, is both to re-envision our role as citizens of the universe and to reinvent our niche as members of the Earth community.
2003, Open Court