Ecologies of Grace: Environmental Ethics and Christian Theology

by Willis Jenkins

Christianity struggles to show how living on earth matters for living with God. While people of faith increasingly seek practical ways to respond to the environmental crisis, theology has had difficulty contextualizing the crisis and interpreting the responses.

In Ecologies of Grace, Willis Jenkins presents a field-shaping introduction to Christian environmental ethics that offers resources for renewing theology. Observing how religious environmental practices often draw on concepts of grace, Jenkins maps the way Christian environmental strategies draw from traditions of salvation as they engage the problems of environmental ethics. He then uses this new map to explore afresh the ecological dimensions of Christian theology.

Jenkins first shows how Christian ethics uniquely frames environmental issues, and then how those approaches both challenge and reinhabit theological traditions. He identifies three major strategies for making environmental problems intelligible to Christian moral experience. Each one draws on a distinct pattern of grace as it adapts a secular approach to environmental ethics. The strategies of ecojustice, stewardship, and ecological spirituality make environments matter for Christian experience by drawing on patterns of sanctification, redemption, and deification.

He then confronts the problems of each of these strategies through critical reappraisals of Thomas Aquinas, Karl Barth, and Sergei Bulgakov. Each represents a soteriological tradition which Jenkins explores as an ecology of grace, letting environmental questions guide investigation into how nature becomes significant for Christian experience.

By being particularly sensitive to the ways in which environmental problems are made intelligible to Christian moral experience, Jenkins guides his readers toward a fuller understanding of Christianity and ecology. He not only makes sense of the variety of Christian environmental ethics, but by showing how environmental issues come to the heart of Christian experience, prepares fertile ground for theological renewal.

Genres: Theology, Religion

376 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Willis Jenkins studies intersections of environmental and cultural change. He focuses in his own research on ethical and religious dimensions, while directing several multi-disciplinary research collaborations that engage local knowledges, including a major project on coastal change in Virginia.

Reviews

[Dane Radigan]

Didn’t read all of it, but would like to return to it in the future. Fascinating use of aquinas to make an ecological theology. Felt very Maximus logos/logoi vibes. He does get to Maximus later on, but I didn’t read that part. However, I do wish Jenkins was more consistent in his terminology, as his categories had multiple names they went by, and then he also sometimes used synonyms. That made it slightly confusing at times. So thankful for classroom settings for books like these, as so much more came out of it when we were able to talk about it

[Martin]

One of the few voices in the eco-theological debate that questions the cosmological focus in environmental ethics. Well-written and highly readable.

[Jill]

Wow, that was dense. Very informative, if you can get past the rather ostentatious academic language.