Laurel Kearns - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Laurel Kearns

Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Nature: The Elements. Ed. Laura Hobgood and Whitney Bauman . London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. 117–130, 2018

Grassroots to Global, 2018

In the Bloomsbury Handbook on Religion and Nature: The Elements, edited by Laura Hobgood and Whit... more In the Bloomsbury Handbook on Religion and Nature: The Elements, edited by Laura Hobgood and Whitney Bauman. 2018. This chapter weaves together biblical scholarship on ruach as breath, tree respiration, the science of planetary respiratory cycles with environmental justice, Black Lives Matter, climate change, interfaith work and meditation.

Bloomsbury Religion in North America, 2021

Religion in Environmental and Climate Change, 2012

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion, 2018

Any discussion of ecology, environment, and religion in America rightly begins with the American ... more Any discussion of ecology, environment, and religion in America rightly begins with the American landscape itself. It also properly begins with a reflection on the terms and metaphors that have been used to describe it. Although the term ecology was not coined until the mid-19th century, it is a preferred starting term in the sense that it denotes integrated natural systems within which humans are just one species among many. The word environment, however, is a particularly fitting term for any 21st-century discussion of religion and nature in America, for it frequently implies the conceptual separation of humans from the biophysical world, a separation often driven by economic interests and technological hubris whose consequences are strongly reverberating in the environmental injustices and climate change impacts we are facing today. This inquiry into the relationship between religion, nature, ecology, and environment necessarily includes the use of all three of these terms, all o...

Religion, Globalization, and Culture, 2007

RELIGION AND ECOLOGY IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBALIZATION Laurel Kearns While most scholars of globali... more RELIGION AND ECOLOGY IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBALIZATION Laurel Kearns While most scholars of globalization focus on the economic, political, communicative and cultural realms of 'the world becoming one place', many also mention, at least in an aside, ...

The New Evangelical Social Engagement, 2013

Jones/The Blackwell, 2007

The Context of Eco-theology Laurel Icearns The phrase "I'm a tree-hugging Jesus freak," a self-de... more The Context of Eco-theology Laurel Icearns The phrase "I'm a tree-hugging Jesus freak," a self-description uttered recently by a Pentecostal environmentalist, demonstrates the complexity of contemporary ecotheology and religious ecological activism. For the past two decades or more, the combination of these two identities seemed unthinkable, for Christians were still struggling to articulate a response, much less a response that would appeal to Pentecostals, usually viewed as un-ecological. This chapter examines many of the historical and more contemporary contexts that shape what is now a rich eco-theological conversation. Although the chapter tries to give a broad international sense of the movement, it draws heavily upon the US context where a diverse and multi-faceted conversation about eco-theology has been going on for over three decades. Furthermore, while there are now ecological voices within all the major religious traditions, this chapter will primarily focus on Christianity as the context of eco-theology. While there are many historical precedents that one could acknowledge leading into the contemporary environmental movement, such as Aldo Leopold's Sand Country Almanac (1949), most scholars agree it began in the 1960s, marked by a variety of publications that brought attention to the issues at hand. In fact, many historians of the movement date the birth of the modern environmental movement to Rachel Carson's 1962 paradigm-changing book Silent Spring, which detailed the damage wrought by pesticides throughout the ecological web. Garrett Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons" (1968), a doomsday scenario about population growth, was published toward the end of the decade. Taken together, these two works exemplify the dominant concerns of the early movementpesticides, pollution, and population. Also in the late sixties, Lynn White's infamous article "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis" appeared in Science (White 19 6 7), in which White concluded that "Christianity bears a huge burden of guilt for the ecologic crisis." Certainly there were plenty more forces in the sixties that shaped the environmental movement, and to this we will return, but ideas alone do not produce social movements. It was in the sixties, however, that widespread activist and scholarly concern coalesced, and the response from Christian thinkers started to % x\acicweli ~o v w p o n i h z & W-d < r w x < o (o %I

Ecospirit, 2007

This appeared in EcoSpirt: Religions and Philosophies for the Earth, eds, Laurel Kearns and Cathe... more This appeared in EcoSpirt: Religions and Philosophies for the Earth, eds, Laurel Kearns and Catherine Keller

Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2014

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2011

Such are the responses of Palmer in a November 2009 interview to the frequently heard questions: ... more Such are the responses of Palmer in a November 2009 interview to the frequently heard questions: What has religion to do with the environment? Why would religious groups go to the 2009 Copenhagen international climate talks? What difference does it make if ...

Sociology of Religion, 2002

... Laurel Keams DrewUniversity Good Sex: Feminist Perspectives from the World's Religions, ... more ... Laurel Keams DrewUniversity Good Sex: Feminist Perspectives from the World's Religions, by PATRICIA BEATTIE~ JUNG, MARY E. HUNT, and RADHIKA BALAKRISHNAN, (eds.) New Brunswick, NJ: RutgersUniversity Press, 2000, 207+ pp., $20. (paper). ...

Sociology of Religion, 2000