A New Climate for Theology by Sallie Mcfague

A New Climate for Theology by Sallie Mcfague

Climate change promises monumental changes to human andother planetary life in the next generations. Yet government,business, and individuals have been largely in denial of thepossibility that global warming may put our species on the roadto extinction. Further, says Sallie McFague, we have failed to seethe real root of our behavioral troubles in an economic modelthat actually reflects distorted religious views of the person. At its heart, she maintains, global warming occurs because we lack anappropriate understanding of ourselves as inextricably bound tothe planet and its systems.

A New Climate for Theologynot only traces the distorted notionof unlimited desire that fuels our market system; it also paints analternative idea of what being human means and what a just andsustainable economy might mean. Convincing, specific, and wise,McFague argues for an alternative economic order and for ourrelational identity as part of an unfolding universe that expressesdivine love and human freedom. It is a view that can inspire realchange, an altered lifestyle, and a form of Christian discipleshipand desire appropriate to who we really are.

Sallie McFague spent thirty years as the Carpenter Professor of Theology at Vanderbilt Divinity School. She currently serves as Distinguished Theologian in Residence at the Vancouver School of Theology in Vancouver, British Columbia. Life Abundant: Rethinking Theology and Economics for a Planet in Danger (2000), Super, Natural Christians: How We Should Love Nature 1997), The Body of God: An Ecological Theology (1993), Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age (1987), which won the American Academy of Religion's Prize for Outstanding Metaphorical Theology