Fugitive Faith: Conversations on Spiritual, Environmental, and Community Renewal (Ecology and Justice.)

In a series of candid interviews with some of the world's most insightful thinkers Fugitive Faith provides insights on the ecological, spiritual, and social challenges we face today. Political and spiritual leaders, naturalists and scientists, writers and poets: all convey their passionate conviction about the decisive interface between nature and human spirituality, and the practical relationship of spiritual, environmental and community renewal.Most striking in Fugitive Faith is the solid note of hope that these thinkers all share. The basic elements of solutions to our problems are at hand. Taking them up is at once as simple and as difficult as incorporating them in our lives, and working to implement them strategically in society at large. For all those concerned with earth, faith, and culture, Fugitive Faith offers visions and solutions.

Most Jews and Christians are so absorbed by social life that they almost never get around to thinking how to bear themselves faithfully in nature. Benjamin Webb, an Episcopal priest in Iowa, decided that as long as religious institutions were ignoring ecology, he needed to seek out some mentors for inspiration. His interviews with these folks--including Robert Bellah, Wes Jackson, Kathleen Norris, Steven Rockefeller, and many of the other people who are effectively integrating theology and ecology--are collected in Fugitive Faith. This book discusses the relationship between prayer and social change, the tensions and harmonies between ecological and biblical teachings, and dirt-practical stuff like the best ways to plow a soybean field. It's a fine introduction to some of the most pressing issues in the area of theology and ecology, an easy read, and best of all, it's split up into tidy, bedtime-reading-length chapters. --Michael Joseph Gross