Earth-honoring Faith: Religious Ethics in a New Key

Grand Winner of the 2014 Nautilus Book Awards Thoughtful observers agree that the planetary crisis we now face-climate change; species extinction; the destruction of entire ecosystems; the urgent need for a more just economic-political order-is pushing human civilization to a radical turning point: change or perish. But precisely how to change remains an open question. In Earth-honoring Faith, Larry Rasmussen answers that question with a dramatically new way of thinking about human society, ethics, and the ongoing health of our planet. Rejecting the modern assumption that morality applies to human society alone, Rasmussen insists that we must derive a spiritual and ecological ethic that accounts for the well-being of all creation, as well as the primal elements upon which it depends: earth, air, fire, water, and sunlight. He argues that good science, necessary as it is, will not be enough to inspire fundamental change. We must draw on religious resources as well to make the difficult transition from an industrial-technological age obsessed with consumption to an ecological age that restores wise stewardship of all life. Earth-honoring Faith advocates an alliance of spirituality and ecology, in which the material requirements for planetary life are reconciled with deep traditions of spirituality across religions, traditions that include mysticism, sacramentalism, prophetic practices, asceticism, and the cultivation of wisdom. It is these shared spiritual practices that can produce a chorus of world faiths to counter the consumerism, utilitarianism, alienation, oppression, and folly that have pushed us to the brink. Written with passionate commitment and deep insight, Earth-honoring Faith reminds us that we must live in the present with the knowledge that the eyes of future generations will look back at us.

Politics & Social Sciences

Rasmussen, Larry L.

Philosophy

Oxford University Press

What led Dietrich Bonhoeffer to his momentous decision to be involved in the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944? What is the relation between his resistance activities and his theological and ethical reflections? Exploring these and other intriguing and complex relationships in Bonhoeffer's life and throughout the turbulent 1930s and 1940s, Larry Rasmussen characterizes Bonhoeffer's resistance as an enactment of his Christology lived out with utter seriousness. Originally published in 1972 and now updated with a new introduction by the author, Dietrich Bonhoeffer remains the defining study of Bonhoeffer's views of Jesus Christ, his ethics, and his resistance against Hitler and the Nazi regime.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Reality and Resistance

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Westminster/John Knox Press

How can a church in the richest and most powerful nation on earth respond to the needs of the poor, the hungry, and the oppressed? The authors of this book describe this issue with clarity and power, and explore the biblical perspectives that offer guidance toward a viable and more equitable future for both church and society.The authors call for a radical change in life-style based on a revolution in perspective and basic values.

The Predicament of the Prosperous (Biblical Perspectives on Current Issues)

History

Birch, Bruce C.

World

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Reality and Resistance (Studies in Christian Ethics) [paperback] Rasmussen, Larry L [Jan 01, 1972]

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Reality and Resistance (Studies in Christian Ethics)

Europe

ABINGDON PRESS *

A radical new look at the religious, economic, and political roots of terracide and how things can change for the better. This book offers an original assessment of the crisis caused by the combined impact of overpopulation, overconsumption, and economic and political injustice. It summons religious scholarship into urgent dialogue with the other disciplines and with the world’s policymakers. The authors seek a new understanding of religion and its power since, for good or for ill, the world’s religions will be players in the crises relating to population and the threat of ecocide. Two-thirds of the world’s people affiliate with these religions and the other third cannot escape the influence of these symbol-filled cultural powerhouses. Ethics for a Small Planet offers complementary studies by two major social ethicists on these issues. Daniel C. Maguire indicts our male-dominated religions for the problems they have caused for our ecology and reproductive ethics. He raises the controversial questions of whether the very concept of God is a problem and whether Christianity’s notions of afterlife and a divinized male have done more harm than good. Larry L. Rasmussen also recognizes that the problems of our planet are largely male-made and rich-dominated. He writes that Europeans packaged a form of earth-unfriendly capitalism and shipped it all over the world with missionary zeal. He ably scans the long history that led to the current manic rush to push the earth beyond its limits, and goes on to suggest moral norms and policy guidelines for sustainable communities and genuinely shared power. Both authors argue that there are positive and renewable moral energies in the world’s religions and that unless religion, understood as a response to the sanctity of life, animates our ethical debates, the prospects for the world are grim. The sense of the sacred is presented here as the nucleus of the good and the only force that can bring about the lifestyle changes and power reallocations that are necessary to prevent terracide.

Ethics for a Small Planet: New Horizons on Population, Consumption, and Ecology (Suny Series in Religious Studies)

Maguire, Daniel C.

Sociology

State Univ of New York Pr

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) remains the most seminal theologian of those whose work was forged and tested in the worst years of the twentieth century. A German who loved his country and culture, and who mourned its crimes and actively resisted them, his ethic was wholly contextual, attuned to what he must do in his own land as a disciple of Jesus Christ. He might have been surprised to find that a half-century and more later his work has been widely appropriated by others in different circumstances for their exercise of Christian responsibility. This volume of essays is one example of Bonhoeffer's ongoing relevance. Rasmussen engages Luther, Barth, Niebuhr, Hauerwas, Yoder, and Berrigan as a way to illuminate aspects of Bonhoeffer's ethics. He also compares the post-holocaust theology of Rabbi Greenberg with Bonhoeffer's own treatment of divine presence and human responsibility in a world that has "come of age." One essay, "The Meaning of the Theology of the Cross for Social Ethics in the World Today," pulls the main themes of the book together. This 2016 edition also includes a new chapter, which relates Bonhoeffer's ethics to the current environmental crisis.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: His Significance for North Americans (English and German Edition)

Leaders & Notable People

Fortress Press

Reinhold Niebuhr, the most significant North American theologian since the 18th century, has decisively influenced the shape of Christian thought and action in the United States for much of the 20th century. Neibuhr addressed social and political issues from the perspective of "Christian Realism." This was his blend of liberalism, shrewd social analysis and elements within the Augustinian tradition. His legacy continues to be influential through his writings and the work of many of his distringuished students. Larry Rasmussen's introductory essay and notes on the selected texts set Niebuhr in his historical context, chart the development of his thought and indicate the significance of his theology in the development of Christian theology as a whole. Substantial selections from Theologian of Public Life (Making of Modern Theology) illustrate key themes, including: the disorders of a technical civilization, morality and power, preachers and prophets, Augustine and Christian realism, grace and sin, justice and love, nature and destiny and more.

Reinhold Niebuhr: Theologian of Public Life (Making of Modern Theology)

Religion & Spirituality

Christian Books & Bibles

"Then came the crisis of 1933." This is Bonhoeffer's own phrase in a letter that documents a turning point in his own life as well as that of the nation. Of Bonhoeffer s own life at this time, his biographer writes, "The period of learning and roaming" from 1928 until 1931 "had come to an end" as the young lecturer, age 26, began to teach "on a faculty whose theology he did not share" and to preach "in a church whose self-confidence he regarded as unfounded." Bonhoeffer was becoming part of a society that was moving toward political, social, and economic chaos." Events moved quickly at the onset of 1933 in Berlin. In only one hundred days the path was cleared by the German Parliament and the Nazi Party for the establishment of the fascist dictatorship. These one hundred days, as well as the preceding and succeeding months, are reflected in the materials in this volume: in letters, in sermons, in Bonhoeffer's university teaching, in manifestos and a church confession, and in his proactive engagement in the developing church struggle. The vast majority of these are translated here for the first time.

Berlin: 1932-1933 (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 12)

Higgins, David

Stott, Douglas W.

BONHOEFFER, DIETRICH

Best, Isabel

Earth is changing in ways it hasn't for hundreds of thousands of years. At the same time, Christianity is breaking away from its millennium-long geographical and cultural center in the Euro-West. Its growth is in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, primarily in Pentecostal, evangelical, and independent churches. These dramatically changed planetary and ecclesial landscapes have led many to conclude that we need a new way of thinking about our collective existence: who are we and what is the nature of our responsibility in this deeply altered world? To address that question, biblical scholars Bruce C. Birch and Jacqueline E. Lapsley and Christian ethicists Larry L. Rasmussen and Cynthia Moe-Lobeda carry on "a new conversation" that engages how Christians are to understand the authority and use of Scripture, the basic elements of any full-bodied Christian ethic attuned to our circumstances, and the nature of our responsibility to our planetary neighbors and creation itself.

Bible and Ethics in the Christian Life: A New Conversation

Lapsley, Jacqueline E.

Moe-Lobeda, Cynthia D.

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