"Will religions assume a disengaged pose as species go extinct, forests are exterminated, soil, air, and water are polluted beyond restoration, and human health and well-being deteriorate?" -Mary Evelyn Tucker.

The connection among worldviews, religion, and ecology, while perplexing for many, has been of growing academic and pragmatic concern in recent years. Scientists, policy makers, and activists have of late been frustrated with the long-term efficacy of their actions, and have begun to reflect on the underlying worldviews and core values of their work. Is the neoliberal economic model a worldview, for example? Is consumerism? This has led to a recrudescence of interest in religious worldviews as a source of environmental theory and practice.

The fact that certain religious groups are beginning to take ecological systems seriously is a distinctive, important emergence within environmentalism. Given that approximately eighty-five percent of the human family reads their reality through a religious lens, any environmental policy or ethic that does not relate to religious concerns potentially ignores dialogue with ethical and moral traditions held by the majority of the world's peoples.

Religions traditionally challenge their members to ask foundational questions of human existence; such as what is the place or role of the human in the universe? What are the ethical and moral imperatives of being human? What responsibilities do humans have, if any, to other aspects of creation? As the ecological challenge forces the human family to deeply query social, economic, political, cultural, and ethical traditions, many are beginning to argue that the reading assistance of the world's religious traditions in - 2 - 2, answering such queries might be helpful, and perhaps necessary, for an informed and effective response to the world's current ecological plight.

The participation of religions in environmental movements is of course not unproblematic. Certain religions have been fingered and faulted for their accent on transcendence, and for their patriarchal, hierarchical systems, which help engender a disregard for the earth and the women who have been historically associated with it--as ecofeminism suggests. Moreover, religions, as institutions, have not been at the vanguard of the environmental movement, and many potential pitfalls, such as sectarianism, fundamentalism, and triumphalism, surround the involvement of the world's religions in environmental questions.

While much of the religious discourse around ecology has entailed ontological, doctrinal, and cosmological or "worldview" questions, there have also been religious responses that take issues of class, race, gender, poverty, and justice seriously. Indeed, many tensions have surfaced and continue to exist between these two broadly outlined ecological approaches. Thus, the question has emerged whether the ecological contributions of the world's religions are chiefly in the realm of worldviews, doctrine, and cosmology, or in the realm of a political and economic critique.

Through weekly seminars, we will probe sundry ecological worldviews, religious and otherwise, and how they help shape environmental discourse, practice, and theory.