Of course I’m a public champion of Earth Day! Many decades ago, privately, I took it as a heavenly sign – not just as a coincidence – that my first book, Brother Earth: Nature, God, and Ecology in a TimeRead More →
A spell of ecojustice excitement is already rising in my heart. SunDay, September 21, is going to be a great day for the good olde U.S. of A! But my dear wife of more than sixty years has already toldRead More →
This global celebration began September 1st and will end October 4th, the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of ecology beloved by many of the world’s 2.2 billion Christians. This year the ecumenically promoted biblical textRead More →
By Isabella H. de Carvalho (Vatican News Service) [Ed. Note: Since Pope Francis’ 2015 Encyclical, Laudato Si’, the Church of Rome has thankfully taken the lead, among many ecumenical bodies, in addressing our global ecojustice crisis from a theological perspective.Read More →
A friend of mine told me that he and some friends at his Church keep bumping into this kind of inner dilemma: 1) We’re privileged. 2) We feel guilty about that. 3) Yet we know that we’ve got to getRead More →
They asked me what I thought. An academic and church consortium brought me to lovely Adelaide in southern Australia in March of 2015 to present a paper on ecotheology and spirituality. Along the way they also asked each of theRead More →
The theology that shaped my world more than fifty years ago had no room for any Holy Place. Back then in the second half of the last century the theme Holy People was all the rage. The Old Testament, asRead More →
The NY Times recently provided a pop-quiz to invite answers to this now familiar question (12/15/22). It cited a dozen oft-discussed eco-acts aimed to help with that shrinking, such as turning down the heat at night during the winter. WhichRead More →
On Sunday November 13, 2022, a group of world religious leaders held a gathering to jointly announce 10 Spiritual Principles for Climate Repentance that they hope will guide our work on behalf of our planet. This took place in London,Read More →
The eminent twentieth-century American historian, Perry Miller, once published a study in American history entitled Nature’s Nation. Woody Guthrie gave expression to that theme in his own memorable way: “This land is your land and this land is my land…Read More →
For some time, I have considered ours to be the golden age of ecological theology and Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si’, to be perhaps the best single expression of this golden age. I have also long respected the contributionsRead More →
Note: I’m repositioning these thoughts here both for card-carrying Christians and for some of my readers who don’t identify with the mission of the Christian Church or perhaps not with any particular faith tradition at all. For thoseRead More →
When you were sitting through your last graduation ceremony, your own or a child’s, say, as you were dutifully trying to listen to the commencement speaker, did your mind ever wander? Of course it did. More particularly, did youRead More →
Back in the day, when I served for a score of years as what we used to call an “urban minister,” I and my neighborhood pastoral partners sometimes used to muse: what makes an urban church urban? Best answer atRead More →
I began talking publicly about caring for creation in my first book, Brother Earth (1970). As the ecotheology movement grew in succeeding decades, that construct, which was never just mine by any means, found a place in the then growing discussionsRead More →