Engaging Culture, Nature, and Religion

Building on a shared foundation of the lifework of the late Forrest Clingerman, this book considers how to influence environmental change through thoughtful interventions in the natural and cultural spheres.Following Clingerman's unexpected death in 2024, Daniel Boscaljon and Verna Marina Ehret's collection brings Clingerman’s methods and visions together into a world that has become increasingly desperate for this message of hope. Taking further inspiration from Clingerman's theory of "emplacement," or the nature of place, Boscaljon and Ehret use discussions of place as an orienting topic for theology, ethics, and philosophy. In doing so, this volume's contributors explore how religion, hermeneutics, and culture interconnect, foregrounding the meaningful treasures of human experience. The essays included in this work consider how we might learn to think and teach in ways informed by a far reaching and transformative vision for living meaningfully, enriched by beauty, with others in community and within the natural world.