This book is about the extent, origins and causes of the environmental crisis. Dr Northcott argues that Christianity has lost the biblical awareness of the inter-connectedness of all life. He shows how Christian theologians and believers might recover a more ecologically friendly belief system and life style. The author provides an important corrective to secular approaches to environmental ethics, including utilitarian individualism, animal rights theories and deep ecology. He contends that neither the stewardship tradition, nor the panentheist or process ecological theologies have successfully mobilised the Christian tradition. He demonstrates that the Hebrew Bible contains an ecological message which is close to the traditions of many primal and indigenous peoples and which provides an important corrective to instrumental attitudes to nature in much modern philosophy and Christian ethics.
• Brings together philosophical and theological approaches to environmental ethics • New anthropological reading of the Hebrew Bible, and relates to indigenous people and their life styles • Argues for an ecological revision of natural law ethics
Contents
1. Frogs, floods and famines; 2. The origins of the environmental crisis; 3. The turn to nature; 4. The flowering of ecotheology; 5. The order of creation; 6. Creation, redemption and natural law ethics; 7. Natural law and ecological society.
Reviews
‘Northcott does an extremely competent job of summary and selection in working his way through these huge topics - so much so that one could well imagine this book becoming established as a useful introductory textbook on Christianity and ecology.’ Linda Woodhead, Church Times
‘... a valuable contribution to one of the more important debates around.’ Bernard Hoose, The Tablet
‘Michael Northcott has succeeded in producing a real and significant work of scholarship … In places I found it almost inspirational and I would have no hesitation in recommending it to any intelligent person to read, whatever their academic background and view of Christianity.’ Michael Reiss, Crucible
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