Religion and Sustainability: Interreligious Resources, Interdisciplinary Responses : Intersection of Sustainability Studies and Religion, Theology, Philosophy

This volume brings sustainability studies into creative and constructive conversation with actions, practices, and worldviews from religion and theology supportive of the vision and work of the UN SDGs. It features more than 30 chapters from scholars across diverse disciplines, including economics, ethics, theology, sociology, ritual studies, and visual culture. This interdisciplinary content presents new insights for inhibiting ecospheric devastation, which is inextricably linked to unsustainable financial, societal, racial, geopolitical, and cultural relationships. The chapters show how humanistic elements can enable the establishment of sustainable ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. This includes the aesthetic and emotive dimensions of life. The contributors cover such topics as empowering women and girls to systemically reverse climate change; nurturing interreligious peace; decolonizing landscapes; and promoting horticulture, ecovillages, equity, and animal ethics. Coverage integrates a variety of religious and theological perspectives. These include Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, and other traditions.





To enable the restoration and flourishing of the ecosystems of the biosphere, human societies need to be reimagined and reordered in terms of economic, cultural, religious, racial, and social equitability. This volume illustrates transformative paradigms to help foster such change. It introduces new principles, practices, ethics, and insights to the discourse. This work will appeal to students, scholars, and professionals researching the ethical, moral, social, cultural, psychological, developmental, and other social scientific impacts of religion on the key markers of sustainability.
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Part 1. Social Justice and Harmony.- Chapter 1. Martin Luther King, Jr's Religious Primordium (Aaron Grizzell).- Chapter 2. Betrayed by Accent: Theological Notes on a Racist Worldsound (Filipe Maia).- Chapter 3. Baby Suggs and the Clearing Rock of Ages: Womanist Theoethic of Survival Justice (Valerie Miles-Tribble).- Chapter 4. Climate Colonialism, Subversive Moral-Spiritual Power, and Religious Ethics (Cynthia Moe-Lobeda).- Chapter 5. Lift Up to Drawdown: Empowering Women and Girls to Systemically Reverse Climate Change, and Relevance to Religious Communities (Felicia Chavez).- Part 2. Religion and Sustainable Economics.- Chapter 6. Buddhist Sustainable Economics (Clair Brown).- Chapter 7. A Critique of Economic Reason Between Tradition and Modernity (Purushottama Bilimoria).- Chapter 8. A Threefold Approach of Ecology, Economy, and Theology to Face Climate change with Respect and Kindness (Myoung Ho-Sin).- Chapter 9. Industrial Agriculture and Hindu Vaisnava Animal Ethics Cogen Bohanec).- Part 3. Philosophical and Theological Insights on Sustainability in Global Traditions.- Chapter 10. Tulsidas and Sustainability Through Respect of All Creation (Ramdas Lamb).- Chapter 11. Awareness is Our Birthright: Mindfulness and the Sustainability of the Present (Thomas Calobrisi).- Chapter 12. Chinese Images of Nature, Body, and Cosmos: Visualizing Human Physiology and Homeostasis with the Natural World (Anna Hennessy).- Chapter 13. The Environmental Crisis of our Time: A Muslim Response (Yasin Dutton).- Chapter 14. Relating to Nature: Rendering Nature Visible through Rituals in South Asia (Meera Baindur).- Chapter 15. Environmental Philosophy of Buddhism (Padmasiri De Silva).- Chapter 16. The Deified Cosmos: Maximos the Confessor and Sylouan the Athonite on the Deification of the Natural Order and the Love of Self (Thomas Cattoi).- Part 4. Theoethics for a Sustainable World.- Chapter 17. The Ethics of Enchantment: Spirituality and Ecological Ethics (William O'Neill).- Chapter 18. Justice and Salvation: Towards a Synergetic Sustainability (Andrea Vestrucci).- Chapter 19. Come with Old Khayyam and Leave the Wise to Talk (Freya Matthews).- Chapter 20. Healing Creation or Hearing Confession: The Role of Agency, Sickness and Repentance in the Current Ecological Crisis (Kyle Schiefelbein-Guerrero).- Chapter 21. The Eschatological Family of Life on Earth: A Christian Response to Global Climate Change (Bob Russell).- Chapter 22. Environmental Ethics and Sustainability in Indian Thought: Vision of Mahatma Gandhi (Rana P.B. Singh).- Part 5. Art, Aesthetics, and Ecological Praxis.- Chapter 23. Cultivating Atmoshakti in Indian Villages: Rabindranath Tagore's Holistic, Grass-roots Model for Developing Sustainable Rural Communities (Colette Walker).- Chapter 24. From the "Gardens" of the Qur'an to the Gardens of Lahore (James Wescoat).- Chapter 25. Decolonizing Landscapes: Artistic Activism and Eco-religious Imagination (Yohana Junker).- Chapter 26. Auroville: Land, Technology and the Micropolitics of Integral Living (Debashish Banerji).- Chapter 27. Narrative, Imagination, Transformation: Towards an Engaged Hindu Eco-Aesthetic (Rita D. Sherma).- Chapter 28. Ecocritism and Ecological Intentional Communities (Devin Zuber).- Part 6. Sustainable Relations: Towards Interreligious Spiritual Hospitality.- Chapter 29. Interreligious Relations as Friendship: M.K. Gandhi and Charles Freer Andrews (Anantananda Rambachan).- Chapter 30. Advaita Vedanta, Swami Vivekananda, and Sustainability (Jeffrey D. Long).- Chapter 31. Complete Communion As Means To A Symbiotic Religious Identity (Pravina Rodrigues).- Chapter 32. The Conditions of Hospitality in Interreligious Encounters (Joseph Prabhu).
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Rita D. Sherma, PhD, is Director of the Graduate Theological Union's Shingal Center for Dharma Studies, Chair of the CDS Sustainable Societies Initiative, Associate Professor and Core Doctoral Faculty at the GTU, Berkeley, CA. She is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Dharma Studies (Springer Publ.); publications include Hermeneutics and Hindu Thought:Toward a Fusion of Horizons * Contemplative Studies & Hinduism: Meditation, Devotion, Prayer, & Worship * Contemplative Studies & Jainism * Ecology & Indian Philosophy (forthcoming).

Purushottama Bilimoria is Distinguished Teaching Fellow and Core Doctoral Faculty at Graduate Theological Union; he is honorary professor at the Deakin University and senior fellow at Melbourne University in Australia. Publications: Indian Ethics Vols. I, & Vol II Gender Justice and Ecology (forthcoming) * Globalization, Transnationalism, Gender and Ecological Engagement * Routledge History of Indian Philosophy.
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