Tucker Grim R&E Talks

Three women leaders of Interfaith organizations that focus on the environment discuss the many challenges and opportunities that have helped shape their leadership styles. How does each one describe leadership?  What led them to choose climate change and environmental justice as their focus? What kinds of obstacles have they had to overcome and where have they found support and encouragement? Each will offer their own personal philosophy and style of what leadership means to them as a way of encouraging the next generation to step into leadership roles in any profession.

The United Nations Association of Southwestern Connecticut presents the first Ruth Steinkraus Cohen Memorial Lecture. Dr. Mary Evelyn Tucker will discuss how to inspire people to preserve, protect and restore the Earth community. As co-founder of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, Dr. Tucker seeks to identify different perspectives among the religions of the world to find comprehensive and collaborative solutions to our global environmental crisis in partnership with scientists and policy makers.

In Laudato Si', Pope Francis has called for an ecological spirituality that embraces ecological justice. This talk will explore such a spirituality within the context of an “integral ecology” that brings together people and planet. Up to the present, secular environmentalism has been a dominant force in many academic departments and in the larger environmental movement. This form of environmentalism focuses on science and policy along with economic and technological solutions. However, there is a need for a broader ecospirituality and ecojustice that highlights values, ethics, and spiritual perspectives. This is what Jesuit colleges, universities, and secondary schools can contribute at this critical moment in our planetary history. View the slides for this presentation here.

Speakers: Gerald L. Durley, Rosalyn LaPier, Kilaparti Ramakrishna
(Follow the link to view the video)

Mary Evelyn Tucker, Yale University; Wu Ruihan, Peking University. The word “environment” implies something outside of ourselves – something that surrounds us but is not a part of us. Modern science has also tended to create a distinction between humans and the ecological processes being studied. However, in a world of multiplying ecological challenges, Mary Evelyn Tucker, senior lecturer and researcher at Yale University, believes such a detached viewpoint is insufficient. Her work challenges this distinction between human and environment. As a pioneer in the field of ecological humanism, Tucker’s current project draws on both evolutionary science and the wisdom of world religious traditions to inform a new model of ecological stewardship. This project is, in Tucker’s words, “an intergenerational handshake” to a younger generation who will inherit the monumental task of reviving and revitalising a dying earth.

Mary Evelyn Tucker, co-founder of Yale’s Forum on Religion and Ecology and noted scholar on world religions at Yale’s Divinity School and Department of Religious Studies, reveals exciting news about how the religious grassroots environmental movement is taking off in all of the world’s religions through both theory and practice.

Terry Tempest Williams and Wangari Maathai are two women who have blazed paths into new modes of being human in a living Earth community. Both have been fierce activists for their bioregions—Terry in Utah and Wangari in Kenya. Their spiritual paths—Terry with her writing and Wangari with her tree planting—have empowered other women to develop a sense of grounded engagement with and for life. This talk will explore this engagement as Eros for Earth.

Closing keynote lecture by Dr. Mary Evelyn Tucker on “Religion and Ecology Moving Forward” at the second annual “Religion & Ecology Summit” at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) on March 10, 2017. Summary of talk: In 20 years a new field of religion and ecology has emerged, but our environmental and social challenges are ever more pressing. How do we find ways to make a difference in our world? We will explore new directions for both research and engagement in a period of unprecedented uncertainty.

Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim are invited to the Care of the Earth Conference organized by Immaculate Conception Monastery Parish, Jamaica, NY. In this video, Tucker talks about religious and secular education, intercultural life, and youth. She raises the need to expand human ethics and integrate justice and ecology to deal with environmental issues. She shares how the conversations of religion and ecology have broadened in the academic field and brought educational change. Addressing Green Faith movements from various religious communities, Tucker highlights the responding of the religious community to ecological crises.

A panel discussion with Joanne Campbell, Diana Beresford-Kroeger, and Mary Evelyn Tucker, moderated by Wendy Johnson, on the relationship between the land and spirit.

Mary Evelyn Tucker speaks on “Nourishing Community: Ecology, Economics, Equity” at the 2015 Prairie Festival. She shares her journey of religion and ecology, where she witnessed how the different culture says about nature, humans, and the value of lives. Living in the Anthropocene or Ecozoic era, Tucker suggests the human spirit of human energy can make changes. Her main discussion is Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si' calling for ecological conversion grounded on comprehensive compassion for the Earth community.

This video is of the entire conference and runs 8 hours, 47 min.

Presentations from the 2015 Grad & Professional School Winners of InspiringYale.

Mary Evelyn Tucker discusses with youth on the topic of ecology and religion.

Panelists: John Rashford – College of Charleston; David Shi – President Emeritus of Furman University; Mary Evelyn Tucker – Yale University; Moderator: Ceara Donnelley, Center for Humans and Nature.

ERSEH is a two-day international conference highlighting works-in-progress of ongoing research conducted by over 40 international scholars and experts. The conference takes an open approach to the understanding of geographic boundaries and demarcations of the Himalaya and it centers instead on linkages between everyday religion and environmental sustainability in rapidly developing Himalayan urban centers, which are loci of increasing importance and scholarly attention. This session contained the following papers: “Water Connection: Everyday Religion and Environment in The Kathmandu Valley”; “Everyday Religion and Sustainable Environments in the Himalayas - Shangri-la”; “De-Mystifying 'Choko Pani' as the Interface between Society, Religion and Environment;” “Everyday Religion in Kangding: The Natural, Social and Religious Life of Water and the Politics of Production”; “Beyond Contradiction: Sacred Waters, Relational Ecologies, and the Dialogism of Everyday Religion.”

Mary Evelyn Tucker, Senior Research Scholar at Yale University, says that the most renewable source of energy is “the dynamizing human energies” that fuel our movement of ecological renewal.

Earth Charter Commissioner and Co-Founder of the Yale Forum on Religions and Ecology Mary Evelyn Tucker strongly believes humanity and the earth have reached a critical turning point in history. Likewise, according to Native American Onondaga Chief Oren Lyons, we need a “values change for survival.” From mass extinction to the calamity of the Gulf oil spill, Tucker reminds us, the human decimation of earth threatens to shut down an historical era—soon we will have reached a point of no return. The Feather Project is a collaborative effort to build intergenerational collaboration and cooperation between elders and youth, and to draw upon the wisdom of indigenous cultures to find solutions to this impasse that lies ahead. The key to mobilizing the masses to move from awareness to action, Earth Charter Commissioner and Founder of the Feather Project Rabbi Soetendorp believes lies in the hopes and dreams of the youth. They need guidance, and it is our moral and spiritual leaders who can bring out those leadership capacities of the next seven generations who will inherit this earth in the future. There is a challenging road ahead—the sooner a shift takes place, the more likely there will be something left—for the next generation. Join the Feather Project. Encourage young people everywhere to upload their “feather messages” and to join the effort to turn dreams into reality—for those who work while they dream, dreams do come true.

Professor Mary Evelyn Tucker, Senior Lecturer and Senior Scholar, Yale University, offers closing remarks for the Third Plenary Part 11 of the Third Plenary of the 8th Religion Science and the Environment Symposium under the auspices of His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew held in New Orleans, LA on October 23, 2009.

Professor Mary Evelyn Tucker on 350.org, an international campaign dedicated to building a movement to unite the world around solutions to the climate crisis - the solutions that science and justice demand. Part 11 of the Fourth Plenary of the 8th Religion Science and the Environment Symposium under the auspices of His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew held in New Orleans, LA on October 24, 2009.

Mary Evelyn Tucker speaks about RENEWAL, the documentary film about the religious-environmental movement, and this hope-filled moment in history when religious people of all faiths are coming forward for the environment. Her talk was part of the interfaith service and screening of RENEWAL at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, NYC. Tucker is co-coordinator of Yale University's Forum on Religion and Ecology.

(See part 1 for talk description)

(See part 1 for talk description)

At the Parliament of World's Religions in 2009, Mary Evelyn Tucker gives a talk on what religions contribute to the conversations and action around climate change. She comments that religions have a unique response to climate change, as they offer a sense of awe, wonder, and beauty in how people think about the earth and as they bring spiritual energy that can sustain action. Even though religions are late in coming to the issue of climate change, Tucker gives various examples of religious groups around the world rethinking their environmental ethics and taking action towards a more resilient future.

Click here to view video.
In this video, Mary Evelyn Tucker gives a lecture at Oregon State University Library on “The Emerging Alliance of Religion and Ecology.” Raising the problems of the Englightenmentality that isolated humans from nature by privileging rational consciousness, Tucker suggests a reconfiguration of Engligtenmentality and its values of liberty, equality, and fraternity from a planetary sensibility. Activating the world's religions is a critical task in the Sixth Extinction period because religions are the traditions that form and formulate communities, cultures and countries for millenniums. As Pope Francis acknowledges climate change as a moral issue and moral obligation, the religion and ecology project creates a multiform foundation of planetary civilization.

Moderator: Emilie Townes, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of African American Religion and Theology; Panelists: Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, Jonathan F.P. Rose, Mary Evelyn Tucker, David Wellman.

Dr. Mary Evelyn Tucker discusses Confucian teachings on humans’ relationship to the Earth and cosmos, invoking the commentaries of Wang Yangming (1472-1529) on innate knowledge, the unity of knowledge and action, and the kinship of all beings. For Tucker, the emergent field of Religion and Ecology offers an opportunity to retrieve, reevaluate, and reconstruct our understandings of the world’s wisdom traditions in order to confront the challenges of our time.