The environmental crisis represents a serious challenge to contemporary religion. In order to save nature, religions are re-evaluating their relationship to nature both in practice and scripture. In the past twenty-five years, especially after the 1986 Assisi meeting of religious leaders, many churches, synagogues, temples and informal congregations of organized religions (e.g. Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism) have returned to their scriptures and rituals to better understand how faith and religious practices work together with caring for the earth. Many have encouraged projects from environmental cleanups to working in crisis areas as part of their religious obligations.
Keywords
Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, indigenous practices, Christianity, Shintoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Bahai, Daoism, Jainism, Earth care, environment and religion, faith, interfaith tolerance
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The environmental crisis represents not just a challenge to religion as such, but begs the greater and more difficult question, how can a species such as ours, who are on the brink of destroying the very capacity of the earth to sustain existence by its excess and gross materialism, even claim to be spiritual at all? or is our 'spirituality' just an illusion of wishful thinking?
Certainly we may all share an aspiration for a greater good than what is reflected by the world. But that reflected image that makes us so uncomfortable, also reminds us that we have yet to evolve or discover the values necessary to realize those higher aspirations.
For those who can ask the harder questions about human nature itself, an intellectual and moral revolution has already started with the most potent progressive, Non Violent Direct Action any human being can take for peace, justice, change. links: http://www.energon.org.uk