Living Beyond the End of the World

Overview

"Our way of life is dying, or rather it is killing us and our planet. But we can and must craft a spirituality for a new way of living on earth. This is the stark but critically important message of Living Beyond the End of the World."--Rosemary Radford Ruether

Melting polar ice-caps, rising and warming seas, Hurricane Katrina and the destruction of New Orleans--are these signs of things to come?

In this bracing lamentation, Margaret Swedish outlines a series of interrelated forces that could well undermine the fabric of life as we know it: global warming and climate change; the depletion of petroleum resources; overpopulation and the exhaustion of natural resources; the collapse of a debtor economy; and the ominous escalation of global violence.

While letting these current and pending threats speak for themselves, Swedish poses a challenge to people of faith: What kind of human beings will we be as we approach this difficult period in human history? Finally, she outlines the values, the vision, and the spiritual resources that might nurture a new human community and thus ensure a future for coming generations.

Margaret Swedish served for 25 years as co-coordinator, then director of the Religious Task Force on Central America and Mexico in Washington, DC.