Religion And Sustainable Agriculture

Distinct practices of eating are at the heart of many of the world's faith traditions -- from the Christian Eucharist to Muslim customs of fasting during Ramadan to the vegetarianism and asceticism practiced by some followers of Hinduism and Buddhism. What we eat, how we eat, and whom we eat with can express our core values and religious devotion more clearly than verbal piety. In this wide-ranging collection, eminent scholars, theologians, activists, and lay farmers illuminate how religious beliefs influence and are influenced by the values and practices of sustainable agriculture. Together, they analyze a multitude of agricultural practices for their contributions to healthy, ethical living and environmental justice. Throughout, the contributors address current critical issues, including global trade agreements, indigenous rights to land and seed, and the effects of postcolonialism on farming and industry. Covering indigenous, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Muslim, and Jewish perspectives, this groundbreaking volume makes a significant contribution to the study of ethics and agriculture.

Religion is a powerful expression of culture that is most obviously expressed in our relationships with nature. As our major meeting point with nature is food, this provides a fertile field for cultivating the wisdom that Professor Falvey concludes is the essence of all sustainability. By bringing sustainability, agriculture, global issues, Buddhism, Christianity and a host of other factors into play, we see that our motivations belie our rhetoric -- in environmental actions through to trade and aid. This open-spirited book contains a wealth of analysis and alternative logics that make it essential to serious readers about nature, the environment, spirituality and religion, Asia and ourselves. Beginning with science and spirituality, the discussion moves from immortality to theology to literal misinterpretations and unifies these themes around unacknowledged Western core values. Shifting to philosophy, ethics, and rights, an ecological argument about our selective 'liberation' of nature is proffered as an introduction to global issues, including traditional values of poor countries and lost traditions in the West. An engrossing hybrid Oriental-Western dialectic allows chapters to be read alone or as part of an accumulating thesis. Thus Buddhist and Christian teachings are applied to agriculture and sustainability -- and they are found to be at one with each other. Whether it is biblical metaphor, karmic logic or enlightened self-interest, the continuous thread of a strong suture stitches a complex set of subjects into a coherent sutra that will vivify the current moribund dialogue between agriculture, science and religion. -- back cover.

Examines religious communities as advocates of environmental stewardship and sustainable agriculture practices. Writing at the interface of religion and nature theory, US religious history, and environmental ethics, Todd LeVasseur presents the case for the emergence of a nascent “religious agrarianism” within certain subsets of Judaism and Christianity in the United States. Adherents of this movement, who share an environmental concern about the modern industrial food economy and a religiously grounded commitment to the values of locality, health, and justice, are creating new models for sustainable agrarian lifeways and practices. LeVasseur explores this greening of US religion through an extensive engagement with the scholarly literature on lived religion, network theory, and grounded theory, as well as through ethnographic case studies of two intentional communities at the vanguard of this movement: Koinonia Farm, an ecumenical Christian lay monastic community, and Hazon, a progressive Jewish environmental group. Todd LeVasseur teaches religious studies and environmental and sustainability studies at the College of Charleston. He is the coeditor (with Pramod Parajuli and Norman Wirzba) of Religion and Sustainable Agriculture: World Spiritual Traditions and Food Ethics and the coeditor (with Anna Peterson) of Religion and Ecological Crisis: The “Lynn White Thesis” at Fifty.

This book . . . is an invitation to all Christians to begin constructing a food ethics; to the academic Christian ethicist, it presents an opportunity to join a discussion on a topic relevant in so many ways to the life of every American; to the Christian for whom the spark of the divine is detectable in the everyday life, it is a chance to begin making ethical sense out of something done every day for the entirety of one's natural life-participating in agriculture. -from the Introduction In Sustainable Agriculture, Mark Graham joins the vibrant, substantive discussion about the moral issues in American agriculture by revealing what is going on in current agricultural practices and analyzing them in light of morality and sustainability. Graham's constructive proposal for change is based on a moral vision that identifies a group of core values around which our agricultural system should be developed, including: a) a consistent, safe food supply; b) vital, sustainable communities; and c) personal and environmental health.

Research Paper from the year 2005 in the subject Sociology - Religion, language: English, abstract: Science and religion are natural bedfellows kept apart by the prissy maiden-aunt of modern convention to the detriment of the very culture of both. Nowhere is this more evident than in the long religious history of our self-understanding and the environmental manipulation that we term the science of agriculture. A means of redressing this is sometimes felt to exist in 'sustainability' - though we do not know what it really means. This book uses sustainability as the meeting point of science and religion. It does this by accepting that human knowledge is ontained in spiritual wisdom at least as much as in scientific insight and by using both to examine the elusive subject of sustainability. One purpose of this book is therefore to highlight forgotten human resources that are ever at our disposal. To this end, it brings Eastern and Western insights to the subject of science and sustainability through consideration of differen religious teachings. The approach of the book itself borrows from that Oriental discourse which treats a subject from multiple perspectives without dismissing conflicting views. From such an apporach, a higher level of understanding can be revealed - perhaps even truth - in which conflicts dissolve into unity.

Food, Farming, and Faith looks at agricultural sustainability and Christianity. Using scripture and science, Gary W. Fick—a Christian agricultural scientist—demonstrates that faith can inform decisions about creating, managing, even consuming our food. The book highlights such topics as food and celebration, environmental care, ecology and faith, soil and water stewardship, animal welfare, and the impact of poverty on women and our food supply. Throughout, Fick presents and discusses biblical passages that comment on these areas and provides insight from personal experiences growing up in a ranching family, in teaching sustainable agriculture, and as a scientist. Ultimately, Fick challenges the reader to think about eating more thoughtfully so that we have good food, a healthy environment, and a comfortable lifestyle all at the same time.

Although the religious and ethical consideration of food and eating is not a new phenomenon, the debate about food and eating today is distinctly different from most of what has preceded it in the history of Western culture. Yet the field of environmental ethics, especially religious approaches to environmental ethics, has been slow to see food and agriculture as topics worthy of analysis. This book examines how religious traditions and communities in the United States and beyond are responding to critical environmental ethical issues posed by the global food system. In particular, it looks at the responses that have developed within Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions, and shows how they relate to arguments and approaches in the broader study of food and environmental ethics. It considers topics such as land degradation and restoration, genetically modified organisms and seed consolidation, animal welfare, water use, access, pollution, and climate, and weaves consideration of human wellbeing and justice throughout. In doing so, Gretel Van Wieren proposes a model for conceptualizing agricultural and food practices in sacred terms. This book will appeal to a wide and interdisciplinary audience including those interested in environment and sustainability, food studies, ethics, and religion.

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Materiality provides a thoughtfully organized, inclusive, and vibrant project of the multiple ways in which religion and materiality intersect. The contributions explore the way that religion is shaped by, and has shaped, the material world, embedding beliefs, doctrines, and texts into social and cultural contexts of production, circulation, and consumption. The Companion not only contains scholarly essays but has an accompanying website to demonstrate the work of performers, architects, and expressive artists, ranging from musicians and dancers to religious practitioners. These examples offer specific illustrations of the interplay of religion and materiality in everyday life. The project is organized from a comparative perspective, highlighting examples and case studies from traditions originating in both East and West. To summarize, the volume: Brings together the leading figures, theories and ideas in the field in a systematic and comprehensive way Offers an interdisciplinary approach drawing together religious studies, anthropology, archaeology, history, sociology, geography, the cognitive sciences, ecology, and media studies Takes a comparative perspective, covering all the major faith traditions