Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture and faith from the Antipodes.
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More details are now available for the A Rocha conference, “Eden to Aotearoa: From Biblical Hope to Ecological Action”, being held at Raglan over 30 May to 2 June.
PowerUp the Game is a venture into creating an engaging 3D world to allow people (particularly children) to engage with environmental images. Looks interesting, though the specs to run it may be beyond everyone’s PC (and there’s no Mac version either).
Hat tip to: Derek’s Blog: Gaming with an environmental focus
Related links at Greenflame · Serious Games, Digital Storytelling and Public Perceptions
Some of the presentations at the creation care colloquium I mentioned back in May (See Greenflame · Environment Colloquium - TANSAA and A Rocha) have been written up and published in the November 2007 issue of Stimulus. A couple of the papers are available online.
If you’ve got a lot of old computer bits and pieces to get rid of then check out the eDay schedule for next week.
From the eDay 2007 web site:
Electronic waste (e-waste) can seriously harm the environment, wildlife and human health when dumped in landfills.eDay is a drive-through recycling event which gives you the opportunity to dispose of old computers or mobile phones in an environmentally sustainable way.
eDay 2007 is on Saturday 29 September (9am – 3pm) in 10 locations across the country and Sunday 30 September (10am – 2pm) in Auckland. It’s easy to get involved – and it’s free.
Fred, over at slacktivist: Green evangelicals, points to an interesting article ABC News: Saving God’s Earth: Evangelicals Go Green which looks at the swing within American evangelicalism to recover a biblical view of creation care. Fred’s also got his own extended commentary on the piece which is worth reading too.
Related links:
Various stuff in Greenflame · Environment including Greenflame · Churches and creation care and Greenflame · Evangelicals and the Environment.
MONDOLITHIC STUDIOS - EcoHome - Artist’s impression (and accompanying text) on sustainable dwellings produced for National Geographic Kids.
MONDOLITHIC STUDIOS - An Earth Without Us - Again, artistic representation (& text) about how our technologized landscape might change if all human beings suddenly disappeared.
In the past I’ve used (and adapted) various of the Connect Bible Studies that were originally produced by Damaris in the UK. The studies pick up the theme that intersects with various facets of popular culture and the everyday world and runs with that for a few weeks. One of the best things about the studies is that they are (relatively) cheap and downloadable (saving on postage halfway around the world).
Anyway, today I noticed that the new owners of the series, Scripture Union (UK), have some new studies out based on the themes of the iPod, Climate Change, and Beauty.
See: Scripture Union - Connect
A list of older Connect material can be found here.
Both links have sample PDFs available as well as ordering links.
I’ll going to get the Climate Change one and see if I can integrate it with other things such as those from the Churches’ Agency on Social Issues (CASI) environmental resources, The Social Justice Commission of the Anglican Church, and DVDs such as Sleeping Giants: Climate Change - Science, Policy & Action.
Links to a couple of images I saw recently on Mondolithic Studios’ web site.
Different Futures. The choices we make now affect those who follow.
Dark Energy. Resonates for me with William Blake’s lines from ‘Auguries of Innocence’, as well as with the dreams of the nanotechnologists.
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
Related stuff - Mondolithic search results on Greenflame.
The NZ Herald carried this piece in their religion and beliefs section yesterday looking at how mainstream (mostly Anglican) churches are responding with an increased environmental awareness. See Churches see their mission to care for creation - 02 Jul 2007 - Religion and beliefs news - NZ Herald.
Related links:
Anthony, over at The Social Justice Commission of the Anglican Church points out this new web site SmarterHomes.org.nz. It’s designed to answer questions about making warmer, safer, more efficient and affordable housing in NZ, and is produced by BEACON Pathway, Building Research, the Department of Building and Housing, the Ministry for the Environment New Zealand, and ConsumerBuild.
Received a copy of the Sleeping Giants: Climate Change - Science, Policy & Action DVD in the post on Saturday and I’m looking forward to viewing it soon. It’s a collection of interviews with speakers from the Climate Change Conference held in Wellington in March 2006. (See Greenflame » Bishops warn on global warming - 05 Apr 2006)
I got my copy free through the web site of The Social Justice Commission of the Anglican Church (though I can’t see the link to their shop at the moment so can’t provide the link), but it’s also available for free from other sources - e.g. Sustainable Business Network: enabling business to flourish through sustainable practice: Free DVD - SLEEPING GIANTS (Contents of DVD listed there too).
BTW - the The Social Justice Commission of the Anglican Church operates a blog and has various news feeds and newsletters you can subscribe to.
TANSAA and A Rocha host an environmental colloquium next Tuesday (22nd May) at the Bible College of New Zealand in West Auckland, including a public lecture by Professor John Flenley - “For The Beauty of the Earth” (7:30pm)
Others speakers include Dr. Anthony Cole, Rev. Dr Anthony Dancer, Dr. Richard Storey, Dr. Carolyn King, Peter Wilcox, Dr. Winston Halapura, Andrew Shepherd and Dr. Nicola Hoggard Creegan.
All are welcome to attend during the day or evening sessions. A small charge will be made for meals ($25) for those attending the day sessions, for non-students. A koha will be taken at the evening lecture.
The most recent programme (including list of speakers and topics) can be found here: TANSAA-A Rocha Colloquium 2007.pdf (Updated 18 May 2007)
Contact details for the colloquium can be found here.
Jason has compiled a collection of (MP3) sermons relating to Christian environmental stewardship over at Vineyard Church Sutton Website - Environmental Stewardship / Social Justice Series.
Inspired me to create a new category Environment to collate together posts relating to creation, ecology, conservation and the wider world.
The “Uses of the Bible in Environmental Ethics” research project in the Department of Theology at the University of Exeter looks really interesting. My own research into historical and contemporary interpretation of the image of God motif interacted with human beings relationship with the natural world, so I’ll be looking to see what papers emerge from this project.
Auckland Zoo is hosting concerts to raise money and awareness about various conservation projects. Performers include Tim Finn, The Black Seeds and Anika Moa. More info at: Concerts for Conservation to feature top Kiwi musicians | Amplifier NZ Music and Events @ The Zoo.
Today I’ve been adding in some footnotes to articles about food aid to developing countries being linked with the requirement to accept genetically modified foodstuffs or crops. And also the attempts by some governments who supply aid for other problems (e.g. malaria) to make acceptance of GM crops as a condition for receiving that aid.
If you’re interesting in following the GM food topic then the Guardian special report section of their web site keeps track of news in that area (like the recent US GM rice debacle).
See Special report: GM food debate | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited.
Related links:
Nuffield Council on Bioethics : Genetically Modified Crops (includes material on GM crops in developing countries).
Christian Aid’s controversial paper: Selling suicide - farming, false promises and genetic engineering in developing countries (1999). Followed up in 2004 with Christian Aid and the GM crops debate.
Much food, many problems from the journal, Nature (402, 231-232 (18 November 1999)).
Report of the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification [New Zealand Ministry for the Environment].
A while back I wrote about viewing technology in ecological terms (Greenflame: Information ecologies). The outworking of this might be called appropriate technology. Ian Barbour, in Ethics in an Age of Technology puts it like this when he says “the welfare of humankind requires a creative technology that is economically productive, ecologically sound, socially just, and personally fulfilling.â€
Barbour argues for engagement in all of the following four areas briefly summarized below:
This latter point of scale is similar to Joel Garreau’s contention that human values can and do shape our future through the choices available to us. We don’t always pick the best choice technologically but we should not capitulate to technological determinism based on either overly optimistic or pessimistic perspectives of technology.
For the individual Christian, and Christian communities, the questions that arise include:
Looking at information technology, and technology in general, as an ecology is a stimulating idea, and one I’m thinking about in relation to the imago Dei. Much has been written on the relationship between the environment and interpretations of the imago Dei in Gen 1. Is it possible, if we think of technology ecologically, to connect that reflection with cyberspace and other technological dimensions of life?
Bonnie Nardi and Vicki O’Day look at how viewing information technology as an ecology might serve to shape engagement with it that goes beyond a focus upon means rather than ends. They write in their book Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart:
We define an information ecology to be a system of people, practices, values, and technologies in a particular local environment. In information ecologies, the spotlight is not on technology, but on human activities that are served by technology.
By focusing upon technology as an ecosystem they argue that (among other things) it:
Furthermore, while an ecology is complex it can be views at many different scales because:
I like their idea of librarians as ‘gardeners’ or ‘ecologists’ of information ecologies, and think the metaphor of the created co-creator (together with related metaphors of the cyborg and Incarnation) might connect well here.
Related links:
Greenflame: Appropriate technology
What you believe eschatologically affects how you live in the world today, and particularly how you treat the world around you. There’s a tendency that if you believe the return of Christ is imminent, or that the world will be ultimately be destroyed (rather than remade) by God at the end of time, for environmental issues to slip down the agenda (or even off it all together).
However, eschatology isn’t limited to Christianity, and here’s a short transhumanist blog entry that exposes a similar “Second Coming” tendency seen in the idea of the singularity.
Margaret Wertheim, in her book “The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet”, and in her essay Cybersociology #7: Is Cyberspace a Spiritual Space? expresses concern about this. I’m with her, when she says in the essay,
Behind the desire for cyber-immortality and cyber-gnosis, there is a not insignificant component of cyber-selfishness. Unlike “real religions that make ethical demands on their believers, cyber-religiosity has no moral precepts. Here, as I have said, one gets the payoffs of a religion without getting bogged down in reciprocal responsibilities. It is this desire for the personal pay-off of a religious system without any of the social demands that I find so troubling. In its quest for bodily transcendence, for immortality, and for union with some posited mystical cyberspatial All, the emerging “religion” of cyberspace rehashes many of the most problematic aspects of Gnostic-Manichean-Platonist dualism. What is left out here is the element of community and one’s obligations to the wider social whole.
Figure the individualized, “ticket to heaven”,” the earth is just a transit lounge”, Christianity might fit in here too.
A real “mish-mash” of ideas in this emotional outburst here. See Stuff.co.nz: Federated Farmers’ chief slams environmentalists.
Definitely falls towards the “Wise Use” end of the spectrum identified in the article: Jim Ball, “The Use of Ecology in the Evangelical Protestant Response to the Ecological Crisis”, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 50 (March 1998), 32-40.
The evangelical Protestants of the Wise Use type are providing a theological rationale for such exploitation. … Rather, those in this type seek to offer an alternative which actually works against caring for creation. God is indifferent to the rest of creation, and thus it has no moral status. Moreover, the best strategy for achieving the welfare of present and future generations is not conservation but economic growth and “resource substitution.” Thus, Wise Use’s co-optation potential has been fully realized.
“Wise Use” is, of course, in the eye of the beholder, and Ball notes that it has a measure of irony attached to it.
Working on refining the thesis section that notes people who have used the idea of co-creation independently of Philip Hefner’s work. Here’s a quote from Arthur Peacocke on co-creation which he frames within the topic of humanity, creation and concern for the environment:
to be co-creator with the ‘living God’ who always actualizes in his creation new possibilities, previously unimagined humanly speaking, is to be prepared always to adjust creatively and deliberately to the changes necessary for God’s purposes to be fulfilled—which includes maintaining the environment in such as way that it can go on being the medium through which life can continue and explore new modes of existence under the guidance of God. (p.316)
From: Peacocke, Arthur R. Creation and the World of Science: The Bampton Lectures, 1978. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.
Had a brief look at this today. Looks really interesting.
God’s Earth, Our Home || Social Justice Commission of the Anglican Church - 5 studies based on faith and the environment through the lens of ‘Ecology and Economy’, a lecture given by Rowan Williams.
Produced by Social Justice Commission of the Anglican Church (NZ).
One of the comments last week at the conference was about where the Church’s voice was concerning climate change and environmental issues. In the wake of the international climate change conference here in NZ last month NZ and Pacific Anglican bishops are calling for more government action in this area. See NZ Herald - Bishops warn on global warming - 05 Apr 2006 - Religion and beliefs.
Doesn’t appear to be a press release on the NZ Anglican web site but the Auckland Diocese carries this about the climate change conference.
Science and Theology News has a collation of articles relating to ecology and religion available in a new mini-portal at Science & Theology News - Ecology. This includes the 2001 article “Ted Peters Reflects on Making the World a Better Place” which is of interest for me at the moment as I work through ideas about the proleptic nature of the imago Dei.
PBS run an article on evangelicals reexamining their relationship with the environment over at Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly . COVER STORY . Evangelicals and the Environment . January 13, 2006 | PBS.
Related links:
On Thursday I posed a question in my seminar about whether the agrarian imagery we’re familiar with from the biblical material translates into theological resources and theological imagination for engaging with techno-culture. Then today over at Science & Theology News : Pastors in the pasture grow organic congregations there’s an interview with Jeffrey Hawkins of HOPE CSA who uses a real agrarian approach for pastoring pastors in their vocation in the contemporary world.
This way of farming offers a model for how churches should approach growth, Hawkins said. In 2003, he began bringing pastors to work on his farm through his ministry, HOPE CSA, which stands for Hands-On Pastoral Education using Clergy-Sustaining Agriculture. Pastors from several denominations and churches around the state visit once every month to work on the farm and participate in discussions with Hawkins and fellow pastors.Hawkins makes many parallels between factory farms and mega churches, and between sustainable farming — which doesn’t deplete natural resources or pollute the environment — and healthy churches.
“I don’t want to demonize church growth and factory farms,†Hawkins said. “I want to help us be honest about the consequences of choosing those models.â€
Sounds like interesting project - I wonder if there are any others like it around?
Looks like the local council, which already has a “zero waste” policy, is investigating the possibility of food recycling. Sounds like a good idea, though the implementation might be an issue. See: STUFF : NATIONAL NEWS : ENVIRONMENT - STORY : Food recycling trial to be considered for Waitakere.
Recently we switched from weekly plastics/cans recycling in small green bins to fortnightly in a large blue “wheelie” bin. In principle, I think its a good thing for the wider community but in practice it doesn’t work out as well for us. We used to put out two (mostly) full green bins a week and the new blue one only holds the equivalent of three green bins. So while it might encourage non or minimal recyclers to give it a go, it works against those who already were trying to do lots of recycling. And you can’t get a second bin - you have to store the excess for a later week (See here). So far jumping on the contents and more thorough flatting of material have made it (just) fit - but you’d think in “Eco-City Waitakere” (our city’s slogan) they’d be wanting to encourage more recycling and would make the option of getting extra recycling capacity an option.
I guess the next step for us is to look at ways of reducing acquiring the packaging & plastics etc. that we’re putting in the blue bin, on top of the normal reuse of plastic bags and bottles that we already do.
See also: WCC - Your Guide to Rubbish and Recycling at Home (PDF)
Following on from the previous posting on rejecting an ethical-doctrinal dualism, Theodore Jennings Jr’s comments on the ethical project seem apt.
In theological ethics, it is generally unwise to approach specific ethical dilemmas in the absence of a wider perspective that will help reveal what may be at stake or even how a particular issue may be helpfully framed. Moreover, theological ethics is productively conceived not as problem solving but as forming a worldview and a set of dispositions that enable believers to respond to their world in ways that embody basic faith values.Jennings, Theodore W., Jr. “Theological Anthropology and the Human Genome Project.” In Adam, Eve, and the Genome : The Human Genome Project and Theology, ed. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, 93-111. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003.
Often, it seems we’re looking for a Christian response to a specific problem that faces us - wisdom for the moment. If we reject the ethical-doctrinal dualism, then Jennings approach of an integrated worldview that the believer(s) operates within seems helpful. Determining a series of “cases” or “rules” of how to “behave” in various specific situations can lead to inflexibility in the face of new problems. We should instead develop a flexible framework that allows engagement quickly and consistently. This is not to say that the initial engagement may not need further refinement and theological reflection at a later date.
The “What Would Jesus Do?” approach is on attempt to do something like this. Effectively a form of imatatio Dei, it attempts to have the individual (primarily) ask what course of action to take based upon an understanding of what Jesus’ basic faith values were, and how they were manifested on earth. The effectiveness of the approach depends, of course, upon the understanding of what Jesus’ key values actually are. Which means that without “doctrinal” components - “What did Jesus say?”, “What did Jesus do?”, and “What did Jesus mean?” - the approach isn’t deep enough to be helpful and one might fall back on “folk theology” or “proof-texting“.
Furthermore, understanding Jesus Christ as moral example (if that’s how you’re going to treat WWDJ?) is rooted in wider theological reflection. For example, how does our understanding of the Incarnation supply wisdom for ethical living today? How do our understandings of creation, eschatology, humanity, sin, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ interact with WWJD?
Building a robust framework seems to me to be key for then engaging with situations both envisaged and not envisaged by the biblical writers. The problem then becomes making it simple enough to be applied in day-to-day life, while rich enough to handle highly specialised situations. (Not that I’m implying a “simple/rich” dualism.)
The print edition of Reality Magazine may now be defunct but some articles from the last issue have been put online, including an interesting article on God, nature and Christian engagement with the environment. See: Reality. Issue 69: Springs of Living Water, by Nicola Hoggard Creegan,
In Christianity today one of our problems is that there are very starkly different stories out there. We don’t agree about origins; we don’t agree about God’s connection to the world; nor about how the story will end. Christians have set our story over against the scientific story, forcing many to choose between science and faith, even between being educated and being a Christian. Looking at nature within a theological perspective often becomes very painful; ecological/theological reflection is not done.
From Jesus Creed: Emergent Reaction the second point leapt out at me.
Second, and because what we experience in England or Australia or Canada or the USA differs we need to be careful in generalizing, but still here it is: second, what they see in current Evangelical churches is too much Bible study without changed lives and churches, too much money spent on church buildings and not enough in missional work, too much apologetical articulation and not enough apologetical embodiment, too much old music and not enough edgy music, too much superficiality and not enough honest-to-goodness radical confession and admission of where we really are, too much “get me to heaven” gospel and not enough “Shalom is for the world too” gospel, and too much hierarchy and not enough spreading the gifts to the people. I could go on. For me, the irony of it is that many see too much “modern worldliness” in the current Evangelical Church and not enough “postmodern worldliness.” I wish I understood that statement better.
Teaching on Tuesday and trying to get more of a sense of praxis, mission, confession and “Shalom” into my notes on the image of God, penguins, ecology, anthropology, embodiment, technology, creation and xenotransplantation.
Picked up a flyer yesterday for Creation, Crisis and Conservation : A Christian response to a suffering planet, a conference here in Auckland in two weeks time (18-20 Feb). I probably won’t be able to go to it but here’s the link if you want to find out more.
The web site isn’t great (they are piggybacking off VisionNet) and the conference brochure is in Word format rather than PDF (which meant I had to do some font munging to get it to display right as I didn’t have the fonts installed on my computer) but all the information is there if you hunt around.
Came across this essay in Crux today while searching for something else written by Steven Bouma-Prediger.
The Peace of Creation: Recovering a Theological Balance by Jonathan R. Wilson. (Crux September 2004/Vol. XL, No. 3).
It’s exactly the sort of essay I could give to my theology students when we’re talking about creation and how other aspects of theology (incarnation, atonement and eschatology) interact with it and how we live today. It’s not a radical piece for many of us but it would hopefully start some on a journey of looking at creation with new eyes. Wilson opens his essay,
In the midst of rising concern about care for creation, conservative Christians present various responses. Some are deeply involved in the environmental movement; others are profoundly opposed to policies that protect and preserve the environment. My own view is that Christian doctrine, properly understood, commits Christians to care for the environment. In this article I will identify the (mistaken) theological basis for conservative Christian opposition to the environment and propose some theological correctives that would lead to support for environmental concern. Of course, political, sociological and economic interests are interwoven with theology in this opposition. But theological analysis is important, because conservative Christianity is most deeply formed by a commitment to biblical faithfulness. If we are able to identify a more faithful theology, then we may be able to find ways of forging a theological consensus on care for creation that crosses other boundaries.
Also have a look at RCA: Resources on Caring for the Earth an “Annotated Resource List on Caring for the Earth” compiled by Steven Bouma-Prediger.
Thought provoking article at Seed Magazine: Science is Culture - Collapse on ecological suicide–ecocide.
At first, a critic, noting the obvious differences, might be tempted to object: “It’s ridiculous to suppose that the collapses of all those ancient peoples could have broad relevance today, especially to the modern United States. Those ancients didn’t enjoy the wonders of modern technology, which benefits us and which lets us solve problems by inventing new environment-friendly technologies. Those ancients had the misfortune to suffer from effects of climate change. They behaved stupidly and ruined their own environments by doing obviously dumb things, like cutting down their forests, overharvesting wild-animal sources of protein, watching their topsoil erode away, and building cities in dry areas likely to run short of water. They had foolish leaders who didn’t have books and so couldn’t learn from history, and who embroiled them in expensive and destabilizing wars, cared only about staying in power, and didn’t pay attention to problems at home. They got overwhelmed by desperate, starving immigrants as one society after another collapsed, sending floods of economic refugees to tax the resources of the societies that weren’t collapsing. In all those respects, we moderns are fundamentally different from those primitive ancients, and there is nothing that we could learn from them. Especially in the U.S., the richest and most powerful country in the world today, with the most productive environment and wise leaders and strong, loyal allies and only weak, insignificant enemies–none of those bad things could possibly apply.”
Via: Nouslife: Ecocide.
Yesterday I spent the morning teaching a module on the doctrine of creation to my introductory theology students. On going beyond “origins” discussions to a fuller understanding of creation that is interlinked with our christology, our doctrines of God and the Trinity, eschatology and Christian living.
Tonight I’m off to hear Steven Bouma-Prediger speaking on the topic “Eschatology and Environmental Ethics.” Similar topic but it will be nice to be the student for the evening.
Kingdom Builders 04 finished yesterday and Steve and I wrapped up the “Theology and Real Life” stream looking at Jesus and technology. Over the past three days we’d run sessions on Jesus & the environment, Jesus and the foreshore, and Jesus and technology using Karl Barth’s quote “Tell me your Christology, and I’ll tell you who you are” to weave them together.
It was good to work with Steve and see him in action. His presentation on the foreshore issue here in NZ, where he worked strands of exclusion & embrace, theologies of land and place, and meeting Christ on the foreshore, was outstanding in my opinion. Hopefully it will see publication at some point in the near future.
I learnt a lot in the process about collaboration, presenting outside of the “ivory tower” and also about myself and how I cope (or don’t cope) with stress. (Big “thumbs up” to Kim and Steve there.)
Still thinking about creation I went back through some back issues of Reality Magazine just skimming and came across the following article.
Reality. Issue 52: “The Green-Fingered God” by�David�Crawley
I appreciated David’s teaching and guidance while studying for my BD a few years back, and in my final year combined the theology major with spiritual formation fieldwork to help me balance the rational and experiential. He also introduced me to Hildegard.
Another interesting article on a similar theme I came across as well is Reality. Issue 39: Is God Green? by Mark Laurent
“A mistake about creation will lead to a mistake about God.” (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles II. 2. 3)
I’ve been spending a bit of time finding some articles for a couple of lectures I’m giving in a week or two on cosmic eschatology (”End times” for the non-theological). My co-lecturer is dealing with personal eschatology and things like heaven and hell, intermediate states (what happens when we die but before the final resurrection) and like. I get to look at the eschatological implications for creation and the wider world, including how eschatology shapes our interaction with the world now with respect to things like mission, social justice and environmentalism.
In reading around I came across the following article by Telford Work called Once Upon a Tribulation originally published in the now defunct Re:generation Quarterly.
Work argues that evangelical apocalyptic fiction and other similar writing acts like a legitimized Harry Potter or Dungeons and Dragons for Christians. It’s the fantasy or science fiction that you can read without feeling guilty about enjoying it.
Read the rest of this entry »
Saw this the other day. I’ve been thinking (& lecturing) about the imago Dei recently and its implications for humanities relationship with the world and this seemed helpful possibility if they finish it. And it has an Antipodean flavour.
From their web site at: Earth Bible
The basic aims of the Earth Bible Project are to
- develop ecojustice principles appropriate to an earth hermeneutic for interpreting the Bible and for promoting justice and healing of Earth;
- publish these interpretations as contributions to the current debate on ecology, ecoethics and ecotheology;
- provide a responsible forum within which the suppressed voice of Earth may be heard and impulses for healing Earth may be generated.”
Following up on the ecology theme from yesterday I’ve been reading some of Andrew Linzey’s stuff (e.g. Animal Theology) recently as part of looking at how the doctrine of the image of God might relate beyond the normal “domination/stewardship” model normally discussed in that context. An accessible article by Linzey on the gospel and its implications for the redemption of creation and relationship, in particular, with animals can be found at:
Any references to articles containing on the widening of the imago Dei to non-human species would be appreciated. I have a few relating to artificial intelligence research already in the file.
A couple of links for people thinking about the integration of faith and ecology (including the socio-economic issues that go with that).
Creation Care Study Program: “CCSP readily awaits adventure seeking, Biblically minded students, who want to take on the challenge of learning how to care for God’s earth and all its creatures - both human and non-human.” (Current Asia-Pacific directors are Kiwis and the South Pacific programme includes time in Samoa, Great Barrier Island and the South Island.)
Also the “Certificate in Science and Spirituality” offered by Union I&U and the Oxford Institute includes a travel course on “Wilderness and Imagination” based in the South Island. More details at: Union I&U - Certificate in Science and Spirituality - Course 676. (I have no knowledge about the overall programme - just interested in seeing NZ appear in a course like this).
The journal Pacifica (Volume 13 Number 2 June 2000) also contains papers from the NZATS conference on ecotheology. Abstracts here.
