Ecological Solidarities

Operating on the premise that our failure to recognize our interconnected relationship to the rest of the cosmos is the origin of planetary peril, this volume presents academic, activist, and artistic perspectives on how to inspire reflection and motivate action in order to construct alternative frameworks and establish novel solidarities for the sake of our planetary home.

The selections in this volume explore ecologies of interdependence as a frame for religious, theological, and philosophical analysis and practice. Contributors examine questions of justice, climate change, race, class, gender, and coloniality and discuss alternative ways of engaging the world in all its biodiversity. Each essay, poem, reflection, and piece of art contributes to and reflects upon how to live out entangled differences toward positive global change.

Constructive and practical, global and local, communal and personal, Ecological Solidarities is an innovative contribution to the discourses on relational and liberative thought and practice in religion, philosophy, and theology. It will be welcomed by scholars of World Christianity and theology as well as seminary students, activists, and laity interested in issues of justice and ecology.

“With Ecological Solidarities, prophetic warnings awaken us to a new paradigm of perception, insight, and action: Discard not the tragic disintegration that a blind humanity inflicts on this planet! This important volume collects voices of theopolitical and ecotheological visions calling for the renewal of our care for the wounded planet that is our home.”—Roland Faber, author of The Garden of Reality: Transreligious Relativity in a World of Becoming

“A creative, provocative, and methodologically diverse set of essays, Ecological Solidarities occupies a useful niche in scholarly discourse, engaging theopolitics and contemporaneous notions of planetarity and ecological awareness within frames of social construction, social dynamics, and subjectivities. This volume offers substantially unique new work and important revisitations of historical ideas and events.”—Christiana Zenner, author of Just Water: Theology, Ethics, and Fresh Water Crises

“Ecological Solidarities commits itself to difference and solidarity as a compelling invitation. A reader will find themselves not only listening deeply to the creativity of these texts, but may likely find themselves offering their own unique voice in ever deeper solidarity as well.”—Jacob J. Erickson, Dialog: A Journal of Theology

Krista E. Hughes is Associate Professor of Religion and Director of the Muller Center at Newberry College.

Dhawn B. Martin is Executive Director of the Source of Light Center in San Antonio, Texas.

Elaine Padilla is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion and Latinx/Latin American Studies at the University of La Verne. She is the author of Divine Enjoyment: A Theology of Passion and Exuberance and coeditor of three volumes in the series Christianities of the World.

Acknowledgements

Painting The Light That Encircles Nothingness

Scott Neely

Introduction

Krista E. Hughes, Dhawn B. Martin, and Elaine Padilla

Chapter A Political Theology of Now

Catherine Keller

Poem How We Become

Crystal Tennille Irby

Poem What If?: A Spoken Word Poem

Sapient Soul

Chapter Jezebel and Indo-Western Women: Nation, Nationalism, and the Ecologies of Sexual Violence in Revelation 2:20–25

Sharon Jacob

Chapter Climate Change as Race Debt, Class Debt, and Climate Colonialism: Moral Conundrums, Vision, and Agency

Cynthia Moe-Lobeda

Activist Reflection The Mystery of Love in the Via Collectiva

Gail Worcelo, SGM, and Marg Kehoe, PBVM

Chapter Deep Solidarity: Dealing with Oppression and Exploitation Beyond Charity and Advocacy

Joerg Rieger

Chapter From Latin America with Love: Practices Sustaining Us at This Time of Great Turning

Mary Judith Ress

Painting TitoArt 8

José Ernesto Padilla

Chapter Spooky Love: Dwelling in the Face of Ecosystemic Annihilation

Elaine Padilla

Activist Reflection The Hummingbird Spirit and Care of Our Common Home: An Afro-Theo-Ethical Response to Laudato Si’

Teresia M. Hinga

Chapter An Ecological Theology for Asia: The Challenges of Pope Francis’s Encyclical Laudato Si’

Peter C. Phan

Painting TitoArt 12

José Ernesto Padilla

Chapter Plasticity and Change: Rethinking Difference and Identity with Catherine Malabou

Clayton Crockett

Chapter Prismatic Identities in a Planetary Context

Whitney A. Bauman

Activist Reflection Cultivating Listening as a Civic Discipline

Krista E. Hughes

Chapter Xtopia: An Alternative Frame for Ecosocial Justice

Dhawn B. Martin

Painting Ocean Circle

Scott Neely

Contributors

Index

Introduction

Nature

Religious Studies & Religion