This year marks the 30th anniversary of Worldviews and Ecology: Religion, Philosophy, and the Environment, one of the first books in the Orbis Ecology and Justice Series.
This important early work in the field, edited by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, includes a section with essays on the perspectives of different world religions; a section on contemporary ecological perspectives with contributions by such notables as Thomas Berry, Brian Swimme, George Sessions, and Larry Rasmussen; introductory essays by Tu Weiming and J. Baird Callicott; and a foreword by former UNEP director, Noel Brown.
First published by Bucknell University in 1993 and reprinted by Orbis Books in 1994, the volume is still in print today. Though the field has grown and transformed over these last 30 years, the essays remain deeply resonant and eminently applicable to our work today.
From the publisher:
Amidst the many voices clamoring to interpret the environmental crisis, some of the most important are the voices of religious traditions. Long before modernity's industrialism began the rape of Earth, premodern religious and philosophical traditions mediated to untold generations the wisdom of living as a part of nature. These traditions can illuminate and empower wiser ways of postmodern living. The original writings included in Worldviews and Ecology creatively present and interpret worldviews of major religious and philosophical traditions on how humans can live more sustainably on a fragile planet. Insights from traditions as diverse as Jain, Jewish, ecofeminist, deep ecology, Christian, Hindu, Bahai, and Whiteheadian will interest all who seek an honest analysis of what religious and philosophical traditions have to say to a modernity whose consciousness and conscience seems tragically narrow, the source of attitudes that imperil the biosphere. Contributors include Charlene Spretnak, Larry Rasmussen, Noel Brown, Jay McDaniel, Tu Wei-Ming, Thomas Berry, David Ray Griffin, J. Baird Callicott, Eric Katz, Roger E. Timm, Robert A. White, Christopher Key Chapple, Brian Swimme, Brian Brown, Michael Tobias, Ralph Metzner, George Sessions, and Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim.
Testimonials for the book include the following, and below you'll find the full Table of Contents:
“In this important collection of essays, the work of plumbling the world's many spiritual traditions to shape a new planetary consciousness has begun.”
Rosemary Radford Ruether
“This book offers us an example of a new religious wisdom which, without throwing away the riches of human tradition, provides us with some clues for the 'wisdom of the earth.'”
Raimon Panikkar
