Sponsor a Reading Group on books related to the environment
There are many books that could be suitable for conversation within a book group. Here are a few ideas that might fit into the needs of members of your congregation's book group on the environment. For a detailed bibliography, see the Earth Bible Bibliography
Abbey, Edward. Desert Solitaire (Ballantine Books, 1991) Abbey captures the lonely beauty of the Southwest with his passion for protecting the land and the impact of space on being.
Batchelor, Martine, and Kerry Brown, eds. Buddhism and Ecology. (London: Cassell Publishers Limited, 1992)
Bernstein, Ellen. Splendor of Creation. (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2005)
Berry, Wendell. Anything he has written would be a good bet for a reading group. His poetry, essays and novels are earthly, spirited and political, connected various aspects of our humanity and connection to land.
Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 1962, 1994). An ecological classic, Carson details the use and impact of pesticides, and fertilizers on songbird populations on the songbird population in the United States.
Clinebell, Howard. Ecotherapy: Healing Ourselves, Healing the Earth. (New York : Haworth Press, 1996)
Read: Review 1, Review 2
Diamond, Jared. Collapse – How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. (New York : Penguin Books, 2005)
Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Bantam Books, 1972) Dillard, a brilliant wordsmith, tells in this memoir of her relationship with her bioregional home.
Gore, Al. An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency Of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It. (Rodale Books, Emmaus, PA: 2006)
Gorringe, T.J. A Theology of the Built Environment: Justice, Empowerment, Redemption.(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002.)
Hessel, Dieter (ed.). Ecology for Earth Community: A Field Guide. (Markyknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1996)
Hessel Dieter and Larry Rasmussen (eds.). Earth Habitat: Eco-injustice and the Church’s Response. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001)
Kingsolver, Barbara, Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life.
(New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2007) Read: Review 1, Review 2, Review 3
Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac (Oxford University Press, 1949) Aldo writes of the connection of ethics and the land with a deep connection to spirituality and ecology.
Louv, Richard. Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 2006)
Moore, Mary Elizabeth. Ministering with the Earth. (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 1998.)
McFague, Sallie. Super, Natural Christians: How We Should Love Nature. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997)
Read: Review 1, Review 2, Review 3.
Ruether, Rosemary Radford. Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing. (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1992)
Ruether, Rosemary Radford, Ed. Women Healing Earth. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996)
Van Dyke, Fred, Raymond Brand, David Mahan, and Joseph Sheldon.Redeeming Creation: A Biblical Basis for Environmental Ethics. (InterVarsity Press, 1994.)
Weisman, Alan. The World Without Us. (New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2007)
Williams, Terry Tempest, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place (Pantheon Books, 1991). Williams tells of the flooding of the Great Salt Lake in 1983 and the loss of the wetlands which provides a habitat for hundreds of species of birds along with the losses in her family to cancer caused by nearby nucleur testing, a powerful and poignant book.
Wilson, E.O. The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2006)
Read: Review 1, Review 2, Review 3