A Spirituality of Resistance: Finding a Peaceful Heart and Protecting the Earth / Edition 1

by Roger S. Gottlieb author of A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and our Planet's Futu

Overview

With clarity, humor, detailed scholarship, and passionate eloquence, Roger S. Gottlieb uses a unique range of resources to portray a spiritual path keyed to caring for the earth.

This personal and powerful book speaks to anyone who has ever wondered how to be happy when there is so much suffering in the world-anyone who seeks a peaceful heart in a dark time. Its unique combination of spiritual insight, political commitment, and environmental knowledge reveals the deep ties between spiritual aspiration and ecological activism; and makes a critical contribution to both environmentalism and religious studies.

Gottlieb begins by describing the gifts which spirituality offers, and how those gifts cannot be realized if we flee into avoidance or denial in the face of ecological peril. In a startling and compelling comparison between the Holocaust and the environmental crisis, he shows how a psychic dependence on "work" can lead us-even against our wills-to take part in genocide or ecocide. Addressing questions about our obligations to the earth, he deepens our understanding of what it is to live an "environmentally correct" life and what we really mean by "nature." Finally, by connecting personal fulfillment to social activism, he shows how a truly peaceful heart is only possible if we devote some of our energies to resisting the forces of destruction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780742532830
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	06/18/2003
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	1,073,763
Product dimensions:	5.88(w) x 8.96(h) x 0.54(d)

About the Author

Roger S. Gottlieb is professor of philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and the author or editor of a dozen books on politics, religion, philosophy, and environmentalism.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Acknowledgements
Part 2 Introduction: A Peaceful Heart, and Angry Prayer
Part 3 Part One
Chapter 4 1. Spirituality and Resistance: A Beginning
Chapter 5 2. No Place to Hide: Spirituality, Avoidance, and Denial
Chapter 6 3. Working Ourselves to Death
Part 7 Part Two
Chapter 8 4. A Sleepless Ethicist and Some of His Acquaintances, Including the Monoculturalist, the Poetic Naturalist, and the Very Famous Biologist
Chaper 9 5. Finding a Peaceful Heart and Protecting the Earth
Part 10 Notes
Part 11 Index

What People are Saying About This

Elie Wiesel

Will touch the reader's heart and move it to moral commitment.

Holmes Rolston

A remarkable study of how people get caught up in forces that lead to genocide and ecocide. Gottlieb's intensity of resolution, coupled with forceful argument speaking the truth to power, is all too rare today, and urgently needed.

Bill McKibben

An important and possibly a landmark book.

Editorial Reviews

Roger Gottlieb has written an incredibly powerful book that reconciles the seemingly incompatible realms of politics and spirituality. Written with great lucidity and admirable intellectual honesty, this book is essential reading for those of us disillusioned by the sordid events surrounding the 2000 selection of a President. Among other things, Gottlieb shows us how honest anger is a powerful spiritual asset, something which enables us to steer a course between violent rage and impotent resignation when confronted with outrageous injustice. Both religious leaders and political activists could learn a great deal from this magnificent work. A fine mix of anecdotes and statistics, science and faith, I recommend this book to anyone regardless of their stance along the political spectrum.

Biologybooks.Net

A remarkable study of how people get caught up in forces that lead to genocide and ecocide. Gottlieb's intensity of resolution, coupled with forceful argument speaking the truth to power, is all too rare today, and urgently needed.

Holmes Rolston

Will touch the reader's heart and move it to moral commitment.

Elie Wiesel

A true spiritual guide for our day.

John Cobb

A brilliant and important challenge.

Rabbi Michael Lerner

An important and possibly a landmark book.

Bill McKibben

Praise for the hardcover edition: If you agree we have a global problem on our hands and you want to join the spiritual seeker and the political activist in yourself, this is the book for you.....

America: The Jesuit Review of Faith & Culture

Praise for the hardcover edition: Provides a bold new challenge for those who are serious about cultivating the spiritual dimension of life. In eloquent prose, Gottlieb demonstrates a mastery of both the pitfalls and possibilities for spiritual development in the face of the environmental crisis.

Environmental Ethics

Praise for the hardcover edition:
If you agree we have a global problem on our hands and you want to join the spiritual seeker and the political activist in yourself, this is the book for you.

America: The Jesuit Review of Faith & Culture

Praise for the hardcover edition:
If you agree we have a global problem on our hands and you want to join the spiritual seeker and the political activist in yourself, this is the book for you.

America

A remarkable study of how people get caught up in forces that lead to genocide and ecocide. Gottlieb's intensity of resolution, coupled with forceful argument speaking the truth to power, is all too rare today, and urgently needed.--Holmes Rolston

A true spiritual guide for our day.--John Cobb, Jr.

A brilliant and important challenge.--Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor, Tikkun Magazine; author of The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right

From the Publisher

Invoking the spirits of Dorothy Day, Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Luther King Jr., Gottlieb (This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature, Environment) strives to shape a personal spirituality marked by social justice. Most often, he says, people associate spirituality with personal happiness and inner peace. The author notes that most methods of spiritual practice encourage individual growth and spiritual self-esteem. Yet, says Gottlieb, this turn inward spiritually detaches people from the problems of the world where they live their everyday lives. Gottlieb argues that we must stop separating spirituality from social responsibility and instead recognize that our spirituality imbues all our political and social decisions. The author uses the massive evils of the Holocaust and the destruction of the environment to illustrate his thesis that religious people often separate the spiritual from the political. Urging spiritual seekers to identify resistance with spiritual fulfillment, Gottlieb asserts that in such an act "we encounter the face of God, awaken to the call of the Goddess, and realize our deepest connections to the mysteries of human life." Gottlieb's brand of spirituality promotes the achievement of true peace and oneness with all of reality through embracing evil and pain. Gottlieb's pleas for a spirituality that overcomes and resists evil even as it embraces it are eloquent and passionate. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly