Earth and Spirit: Bringing Ecology into Adult Religious Education

A New Resource for Adult Programs

Rev. Craig H. Scott, Editor
Reviewed by Rev. Sarah Gibb
Adult Programs Director
Lifespan Faith Development, UUA

Unitarian Universalist Ministry for Earth  (formerly known as the Seventh Principle Project) has created Earth and Spirit: Bringing Ecology into Adult Religious Education, a comprehensive manual for designing ecology-oriented programs for adults. This resource can not only assist your congregation in leading programs connected to the UUA's 2004–2006 Study/Action Issue, Threat of Global Warming, but also help you design relevant, justice-based, and spiritually-oriented adult programs in the years to come. Though the manual includes three sample course plans, the intent of Earth and Spirit is not to provide ready-made curricula. The specific design of workshops is left to program leaders, who can consult Earth and Spirit's wealth of resources to create relevant courses catered to their congregation and region.

Earth and Spirit has four sections: “Ecology and Faith,” “Resources,” “Sample Course Plans,” and “Guided Meditations.” In “Ecology and Faith,” editor Craig Scott draws together a wide-ranging sample of environment-related scripture and interpretation from the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, later Judeo-Christian traditions, Islam, and Buddhism. These readings can help ground a course in a religious context, illustrating that the way a culture treats the environment is connected to the meaning it makes of God and humans' relationship with the earth. The religious meanings that Unitarian Universalists make affect the actions we do or don't take for the earth. Scott includes a number of passages on theology and ecology from notable nineteenth-century Unitarian minister Thomas Starr King to provide ecological interpretations specific to Unitarian Universalist tradition. While Henry David Thoreau is perhaps the most famous nineteenth-century (quasi-) Unitarian nature writer, Starr King's writings on the subject are much less accessible in the public domain. Scott performs a valuable service by making Starr King's readings accessible.

Suggestions for supplementing the “Ecology and Faith” section include accessing Thoreau's work (see the Thoreau Society  website and the UUA Bookstore's books on Thoreau  for ideas) as well as resources that specifically relate to Judaism. Earth and Spirit's “Judeo-Christian” scriptural passages and interpretation do not adequately reflect Judaism's distinct traditions. Two resources mentioned in Earth and Spirit can help round out the manual's resources on religion and ecology: Harvard Divinity School's book Judaism and Ecology  and the bibliography posted on the website of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life . (Program leaders will find that their course is enriched by considering Judaism separately from Christianity. Many Jewish and Christian leaders today refrain from talking about a single “Judeo-Christian tradition,” since that designation often discounts the ways that Judaism has evolved over the past two thousand years.)

Earth and Spirit's second section, “Resources,” offers up several websites, curricula, and videos that give courses access to scientific, statistical, and advocacy resources. The resource list is semi-annotated and succeeds at being comprehensive while not overwhelming the reader.

Section three, the “Sample Course Plan,” gives just a taste of what a congregation can do with the materials in Earth and Spirit. It includes outlines and a sample flyer for a general six- to seven-week course on eco-theology, as well as specific outlines from courses led at Bull Run UU congregation in Manassas, Virginia, and the UU Church of Eugene, Oregon. The session outlines include more discussion questions than could be covered in a typical session, so leaders will need to make selections. In addition, leaders will need to determine what kind of learning and teaching methods are best for their group's age, interest, and size. The lecture/discussion style may not be the most effective format for all groups, and courses might benefit from writing exercises, small group sharing, and art projects that explore the content from different angles.

Section four, “Guided Meditation,” provides one of those other angles for learning. The two guided meditations can help participants relate to the interconnected web of all existence and connect with the wonder of life. This is the deeply spiritual work that undergirds all religious movements for ecology and the environment, including our own.

I commend UU Ministry for the Earth for providing our Unitarian Universalist congregations with such a wealth of resources for ecological adult programs. Earth and Spirit makes the prospect of leading a course far less daunting to the average lay leader, religious educator, or minister. Because of this resource, leaders need not be experts unto themselves. Earth and Spirit has the potential to spark programs that transform individual lives as well as our movement, helping us all to respond to the environmental crisis of the twenty-first century with vision, faith, and clarity. May it be so!

Earth and Spirit is available for purchase from Unitarian Universalist Ministry for Earth, P.O. Box 11, Lyme, NH 03768. Phone: (301) 588-0944. Web: http://www.uuministryforearth.org . Cost as of January 2006: $20.00.

Judaism and Ecology  (Religions of the World and Ecology Series), Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, ed. Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School, 2002.