The Lost Gospel of the Earth: A Call for Renewing Nature, Spirit, and Politics

by Tom Hayden, B. Ras (Editor)

From Tom Hayden - a 1960s radical and longtime progressive California legislator - here is an impassioned plea for reclaiming our spiritual bond with the earth. Hayden argues that the basis of our present environmental crisis was laid long ago, when tribal systems of belief were replaced by formal religions. Nature-based mysticism gave way to human-centered theologies that desanctified the earth and taught people to see themselves as dominant over nature. If we want to heal the destructive divide that exists between the human spirit and the natural world, we must retrieve the "lost gospel of the earth" by which people live in kinship with a sacred natural world.
Hayden finds that Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism have defaulted on the environmental crisis, but believes that their earlier currents of native mysticism can be restored and applied to the present. Technical fixes and economic incentives will not cure our pathological addiction to making progress at the expense of the earth.
Hayden blends personal spirituality with concrete political vision into a new politics that is grounded in environmental economics with a moral core. This new "politics of the spirit," drawing on the tradition of participatory democracy as well as the theories of ecotheology, calls for nothing less than the transformation of our entire political culture.

Genres: Nature

280 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2006

About the author

Thomas Emmet Hayden was an American social and political activist, author, and politician.

Reviews

[Judith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is now one of my all-time favorite books (see Comment added later). It was published in 1996, but it is as relevant, maybe even more, when I read it in 2022. I wish everyone on Earth would read it, absorb it, and act accordingly. If there were ever a case for not separating religion and politics, this is it (although that's not what he advocates in the book).

Here's the description from the front flap of the dust cover:

From Tom Hayden, a 1960s radical and long-time progressive California legislator, here is an impassioned plea for reclaiming our spiritual bond with the Earth. Hayden argues that the basis of our present environmental crisis was laid long ago, when tribal systems of belief were replaced by formal religions. Nature-based mysticism gave way to human-centered theologies that desanctified the Earth and taught people to see themselves as dominant over nature. If we want to heal the destructive divide that exists between the human spirit and the natural world, we must retrieve the “lost gospel of the Earth” by which people live in kinship with a sacred natural world.

Hayden finds that Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism have defaulted on the environmental crisis, but he believes that their earlier currents of native mysticism can be restored and applied to the present. Technical fixes and economic incentives will not cure out pathological addiction to making progress at the expense of the Earth.

Hayden blends personal spirituality with concrete political vision into a new politics that is grounded in environment economics with a moral core. This new “politics of the spirit,” drawing on the tradition of participatory democracy as well as the theories of ecotheology, calls for nothing less than the transformation of our entire political culture.
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From his grave marker: "Only when we believe the sacred is present in the living Earth will we revere our world again." --- Tom Hayden

[Milt · Rating 3 out of 5]

global warming, warning et al.

[Barbc]

#8