Concept

Ecotheology

Overview

Ecotheology is a form of constructive theology that focuses on the interrelationships of religion and nature, particularly in the light of environmental concerns. Ecotheology generally starts from the premise that a relationship exists between human religious/spiritual worldviews and the degradation or restoration and preservation of nature. It explores the interaction between ecological values, such as sustainability, and the human domination of nature. The movement has produced numerous religious-environmental projects around the world.

The burgeoning awareness of environmental crisis has led to widespread religious reflection on the human relationship with the earth. Such reflection has strong precedents in most religious traditions in the realms of ethics and cosmology, and can be seen as a subset or corollary to the theology of nature.

Ecotheology explores not only the relationship between religion and nature in terms of degradation of nature, but also in terms of ecosystem management in general. Specifically, ecotheology seeks not only to identify prominent issues within the relationship between nature and religion, but also to outline potential solutions. Many supporters and contributors of ecotheology argue that science and education are simply not enough to inspire the change necessary in the current environmental crisis.

There is not a clear distinction between environmental theology and ecotheology, though the term environmental theology might indicate a theology in which environmental ethics is established prior to one's understanding of the meaning of God.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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In this alternative scheme, the notion of material, as fundamental, has been replaced by that of organic synthesis. But the approach has always been from the consideration of the actual intricacies of scientific thought, and of the peculiar perplexities which it suggests. In the present chapter, and in the immediately succeeding chapter, we will forget the peculiar problems of modern science, and will put ourselves…
Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the modern world
States what Ecotheology is; the author is tied to Ecotheology in the knowledge graph.
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What I am denying is that anyone of these factors is posited for us in sense-awareness in concrete independence. We perceive one unit factor in nature; and this factor is that something is going on then--there. For example, we perceive the going-on of the Great Pyramid in its relations to the goings-on of the surrounding Egyptian events. We are so trained, both by language and by formal teaching and by the resulting…
Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919
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But the fact is that pure Atheism even in the present day is very rare. What is called Atheism is usually a phase of Pantheism, which is really nothing but a relapse disguised under learned terms, into a vague and abstract form of Fetichism. And it is not impossible that it may lead to the reproduction in one form or other of every theological phase as soon as the check which modern society still imposes on…
Auguste Comte, A General View of Positivism Or, Summary exposition of the System of Thought and Life
States what Ecotheology is.
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Philosophers who discussed Ecotheology

Maimonides

Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Environmental ethics.

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