Redeeming the time: a political theology of the environment

Abstract

What is the proper role of the in light of the ecological crisis? After a sympathetic and critical analysis of the principal answers to that question, Stephen Scharper argues that only a religious perspective -- viewing agency as central to both the devastation and the reclamation of planetary life -- is viable. Such a perspective must include social, economic, cultural, as well as theological transformation in order to be effective in confronting threats to the ecosystem.Among the principal answers or assessed by this book are the new cosmology, ecofeminism, process thought, Gaia theory, and liberation theology. Each of these recognizes the role of the in the present environmental crisis. But each of these also approaches the human problematic in incomplete or inadequate ways. Thus Redeeming the Time is both an examination of the state of the question, and a constructive effort at building bridges among the various current paradigms and remedying, or redeeming, their inadequacies.