As I did back in 2011 when Occupy Wall Street put the issue of income inequality and the 1% on the public agenda, I am looking once again at the voice of the mainline denominations on the issue of the Climate Crisis. I have thus far looked at the home pages of the United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church USA, Evangelical Continue Reading
Kathryn Hayhoe is an extremely valuable voice in mainstream evangelicalism (even though her climate knowledge and convictions place her outside of that mainstream)…she has the healthy, undiluted theology (probably helped by the fact that she was outside of the American Religious Right for so long and never “learned” those outrageous associations with Right Wing political ideology.) It is sad that Continue Reading
This is a thread of comments under the article “Head Of The Episcopal Church Says It’s ‘Sinful’ To Ignore Climate Change” A commenter posted about how “nothing will happen until China does something” (a typical argument against taking any action at all) So I chimed in: Dale Lature · Top Commenter · Freelance Web Community developer/researcher at Freelance Web Community Researcher/Developer Continue Reading
How could it be that so many Republicans view global warming as a problem, but so few on the right are pressuring the government to take action to address it? – Robb Willer, Contributor to The New York Times via Increasing Moral Engagement on Climate Change | ecoAffect. The “gap” is actually believing it. As in, if you BELIEVE something, you Continue Reading
Just read this headline: “How religion and American exceptionalism are undermining our future.” What I immediately notice is that “American” has a qualifier, and “Religion” does not. Interesting. Why? It would seem to me that a PARTICULAR approach to religion (one which is actually dominated by the same “American exceptionalism”), is what is being described. Imhofe is but one Continue Reading
[Forida Governor] Scott told reporters who asked about his views on climate change that he had “not been convinced,†and that he would need “something more convincing than what I’ve read.†via In Florida, officials ban term climate change | Miami Herald Miami Herald. You mean , like, SCIENCE? That’s what you need to read. I am amazed at the Continue Reading
During my tenure on the Council on Environmental Quality(CEQ) from 2001 to 2003, I witnessed firsthand the fight to protect scientific integrity in government documents. – Alan Hecht Director for sustainable development in the Office of Research and Development at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Since 2003 he has led ORD’s planning on sustainability research. via Protecting the Science of Continue Reading
Bill McKibben ‘s Deep Economy yields the subtitle: The Weath of Communities and the Durable Future. “Communities” there is pretty clearly a substitution for “Nations” in Adam Smith’s classic economics title. The “Limits to Growth” has apparently overtaken “Nations”, and so “Communities”, smaller, local, interdependent co-ops, seem to be the necessary alternative to nations and economies seemingly intent on proving Continue Reading
With all the theological “specialties” that the various denominations and certain Christian communities emphasize, it seems the time has come for churches to call themselves “EcoTheological” Communities/Churches. I see “Bible-centered” all the time; I see “justice” centered, so why not “Eco-centered”. Why not the VERY BIBLICAL message of the close and dependent relationship of creature to creation? Why not catch Continue Reading
the paradigm for @OccupyTheology has shifted. It now recognizes that the the health of the economy depends upon a radical #ecoTheology. The time has come, and has for quite some time, that a just economy has to centered in an healthy ECOLOGY. And a faithful theology had better tell this story. Larry Rasmussen’s wonderful work of #ECOTheology , Earth Honoring Faith: Continue Reading
Since reading Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate, I have been captured by the gravity of the issue of the Climate Crisis. Just as with the beginnings of the Occupy Wall Street movement (and for some time before that, about when the “Arab Spring” happenings were being broadcast around the world and on the Internet), I was Continue Reading
Post by Workers Solidarity Movement (Ireland).
There is also work to be done in study. Every revolutionary movement needs people who think and study and write and analyze. A revolution is not sustainable if there are only people on the street. via Models and Authorizations: An Interview with Walter Brueggemann. — Theology of Ferguson — Medium. Somewhere in this mention I find myself, or wish to Continue Reading
A devastating neglect of nature and its requirements, matched to unprecedented wealth , are the “strongest†marks of modernity as the triumph of free-market magic. Here an irony surfaces: “Free riders†are scorned by capitalist industrial orders, yet these same orders are saddled with a free-rider problem they barely recognize. “Free riders†are those who consume more than their share Continue Reading
Creation justice is not bereft of antecedents. Indigenous peoples across the globe have tried their best since the onset of colonization, conquest, and the Industrial Revolution to say that the community of life’s own integral functioning was being violated by foreign notions of justice and human organization that did not recognize that peoples and their lands were inextricably linked together. Continue Reading