The “sparks” lead to two different ingnitions: The all too common right wing knee-jerk, auto-pilot echo of the political right wing’s dismissal and rage against the idea that climate change poses an existential danger to us. Then there is the igniting of the long and rich history of ecotheological depth in the Judeo-Christian tradition, and in “other” theological traditions (especially Native/Indigenous ones) I call it the Ecology of the Kingdom of God (as I’m sure others have before me; may have even heard it before because I know that my theological sensitivities have largely evolved in me as I stand on the shoulders of many others that have come to me throughout my formation.

I want to see a full-throttled dialog in the churches, and in the halls of theological academia. Just as I longed to see the churches jump into the fray with Occupy and talk about the economics of the Kingdom of, I also hope that we will explore the deep ecology of the Kingdom of God. I think of my Matthew Fox books that I read in the 90s. His “Creation Spirituality” was an early eco-theology, as was the Ethics class of Glenn Stassen when I was a student at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (and again, yes, you heard that right. The present home of Al Mohler, whose arrival preceded a mass exodus over the next decade of most (if not all) of the faculty who brought the rich diversity that seminary had enjoyed and endowed for numerous students in decades prior).