Earth-honoring Faith

Larry L. Rasmussen offers a dramatic new way of thinking about human society ethics and the health of our planet. Rejecting the modern ethical assumption that morality applies to human society alone Earth-honoring Faith argues that we must derive a system of ethics and morality that accounts for the wellbeing of all creation on Earth as well as the primal elements upon which it depends: earth air fire water and sunlight. Rasmussen shows that religious resources are essential in the difficult transition from an industrial-technological age to an ecological one. He advocates an alliance of spirituality and ecology in which the requirements for planetary life are reconciled with the deep traditions of spirituality across religions -- mysticism sacramentalism asceticism prophetic/liberative practices and wisdom. These millennial cross-cultural traditions are in need of their own conversion however if they are to be Earth-healing. Rasmussen poses critical questions: Are moral-spiritual traditions as we know them Earth-honoring or not? If not how might they be? How might religious imagination expand the measure of the mind and heart in the service of planetary health? Who is leading the way? Rasmussen shows that by seeking to answer these questions we can cease confining our moral views and daily habits to human society instead placing them in the full community of earthly life. Joined to science and technology religious ethics can find a new key for a new geological age: the Anthropocene. As Rasmussen demonstrates fidelity to God can be lived more fully as fidelity to God and Earth.