Religion and Ecology

Whitney A. Bauman is assistant professor of religious studies and an Honors College Fellow at Florida International University. His books include Theology, Creation, and Environmental Ethics; Grounding Religion: A Field Guide to the Study of Religion and Ecology; Inherited Land: The Changing Grounds of Religion and Ecology; and Voices of Feminist Liberation: Writings in Celebration of Rosemary Radford Ruether.

• Acknowledgments Introduction: The Emergence of Planetary Identities 1. Religion and Science in Dialogue 2. Destabilizing Nature: Natura Naturans, Emergence, and Evolution's Rainbow 3. Destabilizing Religion: The Death of God, a Viable Agnosticism, and the Embrace of Polydoxy 4. Destabilizing Identity: Beyond Identity Solipsism 5. The Emergence of Ecoreligious Identities 6. Developing Planetary Environmental Ethics: A Nomadic Polyamory of Place 7. Challenging Human Exceptionalism: Human Becoming, Technology, Earth Others, and Planetary Identities Notes Glossary Works Cited Index

A very impressive book; a visionary synthesis of the most important issues concerning the intersection of science, religion, politics, and philosophy. Bauman weaves a complex and powerful narrative in his constitution of a planetary community. Religion and Ecology is a unique contribution to a growing body of work that critically rethinks our ideas of nature to vitalize the possibilities of material and ecological thinking. -- Clayton Crockett, University of Central Arkansas Scholarship has needed this book for quite a while, one that boldly synthesizes new materialism, queer theory, ecology, and spirituality. -- Tim Morton, Rice University If I could send Obama, Xi Jinping, and Angela Merkel a book (and they would promise to study it), this would be it. These powerful politicians need to understand that their ethical obligations in the twenty-first century will not be toward globalized beings but rather planetary Being, that is, people, animals, and plants who perform their identities rather than submit to them. These are also Beings who know there is no certainty when it comes to performance because, as Bauman says, 'the only certainty is that when certainty is imposed on the world love is impossible and violence is inevitable.' This is a book philosophers, theologians, and scientists will debate for a very long time. -- Santiago Zabala, ICREA Research Professor at the University of Barcelona and coautho,r with Gianni Vattimo, of Hermeneutic Communism Any self-respecting earthling will love this book. Bauman invites us to the 'polyamoury of place' for a new powow of science, religion, and nature. His dazzlingly engaging investigation does not close in our possibilities; deftly subversive, queerly erudite, it does not just analyze, it activates our 'becoming with earth others.' -- Catherine Keller, Drew University Bauman's book [is] the best available book on the subject. -- Andrew J. Spencer Environmental Ethics