Inspired Sustainability

Overview

"This pastoral and rigorously researched book is unique in method and aim.... It digs with honesty and compassion into our soils of questionable health and identifies there, within us, many places where generations of faith-filled action will germinate." --Journal of Catholic Social Thought

"An amazing body of research. The author moves brilliantly between the mundane world of focus groups and that of detailed discussion of human fallibility and finitude." --Catholic Books Review

"Erin Biviano has collected the thoughts and ideas of Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, and Jews on what stands between religious communities and full commitment to a 'green lifestyle.'... The accounts of personal triumphs and daily struggles can help groups and denominations beginning conversations on creation care." --Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER)

This book asks (and answers) an important question: How do we encourage and empower activists and scholars to work for environmental sustainability? Lothes Biviano combines empirically-based focus group data with interdisciplinary research and theological interpretation to offer a unique analysis of what encourages and what discourages sustainable decision making, including the cognitive, behavioral, and emotional conflicts inherent in confronting climate change. A must-read for anyone searching for the spark that drives spiritual Americans to feel the environmental crisis as a sacred loss, and who are re-imagining their faith and life through environmental advocacy.

Erin Lothes Biviano is assistant professor of Theology at the College of Saint Elizabeth, NJ, and an Earth Institute Fellow at Columbia University. She is the author of The Paradox of Christian Sacrifice: The Loss of Self, the Gift ofSelf (2007).