BookTalk.org

Suggestions for our Oct. & Nov. non-fiction discussion

Please use this thread for making suggestions for our Oct. & Nov. 2008 non-fiction discussion.

The Cry for Myth by Rollo May.

Here are useful reviews:
http://bookreviewpot.blogspot.com/2005/ ... -myth.html

http://www.amazon.com/Cry-Myth-Rollo-May/dp/0385306857

Thanks, Ophelia.

If sociology of religion, comparative religion, religion and politics, science and religion, and religious environmentalism pique your interest, then I suggest we read Roger Gottlieb's A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and Our Planet's Future http://www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/genera ... E3NjQ4Mw== .

Intelligent, balanced, pertinent, passionate and wise: a great book for today and a watershed publication for the future of environmentalism...especially those who see the integral value of religion in the struggle for ecological sustainability and care of the planet.

From Publishers Weekly
The argument of Gottlieb's hopeful, surprising book is that today, religious people and organizations are among the most committed, and most persuasive, environmental activists. Gottlieb's view is global, principally examining religious green activism in the U.S., but also looking at Zimbabwe, Taiwan and the Vatican. And his approach is ecumenical, encompassing Jewish and Christian theologians who have found a powerful biblical call to stewardship of God's creation, and Buddhist teachers who are prompted by their belief in compassion to extend care to the natural world. Church groups have participated in peaceful demonstrations against the Bush administration's energy policy; Jews, inspired by the holiday of Tu B'Shvat, the birthday of the trees, have planted redwoods in denuded stream banks owned by grasping corporations; and interfaith groups have petitioned lawmakers to address global warming. Sometimes religious groups cooperate with secular organizers, as when the Sierra Club and the National Council of Churches co-sponsored a proconservation TV ad. Not only have religious activists helped energize the environmental movement, but environmentalism has reinvigorated religious practice: Lay people and clerics alike have crafted new religious rituals that celebrate the Earth, such as Buddhist gathas (short verbal formulas) for recycling and Christian liturgies for Earth Day. Gottlieb keeps academic jargon to a minimum, so this timely book should have crossover appeal. (May)
Copyright

I've suggested Booktalk read Gottlieb's "A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and Our Planet's Future" in the past, and have found little success in getting much support for it. Actually, there was a time at Booktalk when to even suggest a book like Gottlieb's was anathema to the mission of the site....somewhere in the annals you can find how the contentious conversation unfolded.

Still, I'm hoping to find a smattering of smart readers who are interested in a very fine piece of scholarship that, I think, engages the most important issues of our contemporary world...environmental ethics, economic practice, industrial planning and how to redirect the course of impending ecological devastation: with a central focus upon how religion can and does provide solutions...at least as far as religious environmentalism participates on the local and world stages.

This book will not debate the existence of God, nor will it offer reasons for why God exists: it will offer multiple examples of how religious individuals and communities mobilize the transformation of their traditions and lifestyles into something more ecologically responsible and caring of the earth. It will not argue that one religion is better than the rest, or that all are the same: it will show ways that different religions are struggling to be more environmentally accountable and politically engaged in shaping saner ecological policies.

All readers, religious or not, will be challenged to find new ways of living that reconnects individuals to communities and to their ecosystems...in more moral and, yes, even spiritual ways. The book is also a powerful critique of religious fundamentalism, corporate globalization, and blind consumerism...carefully identifying the ways in which these interconnected threats converge upon our lives and the planet in devastating ways.

It is a book about solutions: showing countless examples from across the planet and from the many world religions where lives can change, practices can develop, and fundamental alteration to planetary damage can cease.

I hope more are interested in the book. I think it will be worth all of our efforts to read it.

I would love a great excuse to read and own some more of Rollo May's work.

I mentioned The Cry for Myth at http://www.booktalk.org/what-purposes-d ... 15-20.html, and feel it may be more accessible and useful for a broader group to discuss than A Greener Faith. Rollo May presents an interesting platform to discuss a range of mythic topics, whereas A Greener Faith, from Dissident Heart's summary, does not seem to engage adequately with the underlying principles which determine ecological policy. The book I am reading now is Wonderful Life by Stephen Jay Gould. This is a wonderful book, showing how the diversity of Cambrian phylla was decimated, leaving the small number which survived to the modern world, and what extraordinarily weird creatures lived on our planet 500 million years ago. Wonderful Life would in my opinion be an even more educational book for people to read and discuss than either The Cry for Myth or A Greener Faith.

I think Rollo May would be a very good choice, if our objective is to gather a greater understanding of how myth influences and shapes our lives. I for one think this is a subject that rarely gets old because it is very difficult to get to the bottom of what, exactly, it is getting at. I think it could be very useful in challenging Booktalk members to identify what myths direct and inform their belief systems...something I think some Booktalk members will find, well, insulting....considering they are among the 'myth-free' crowd of enlightened minds who no longer cling to outworn superstition...they might approach May's book with patronizing curiosity at best- but I suspect there will be little interest in learning anything positive about the homo mythos.

I do think Gottlieb's book goes a great distance in bringing environmentalism and ecological ethics to a general audience...keeping in mind the many ways that religious traditions and communities are embracing an ecotheological ethic and reverence for creation. I think the crises he presents are pertinent and demand responses from each of us. I also think the anti-religion crowd at Booktalk may be in for a very pleasant surprise to see just how many religious folk are doing their very best to live righteously and religiously in an ecologically responsible way....and I think it will become obvious, that if we want to take ecological transformation seriously- then the religious crowd has got to get on board....and a Greener Faith is one very smart way to do it.

Yes, and perhaps it is the modern myths that require the greatest objectification.

Why is being religous and green such an abstract idea?

Why not read something like the The Little Green Handbook: Seven Trends Shaping the Future of Our Planet, that inform us as to what we all can do to help the planet beside carrying on like these organizations with the lofty mission statements can actually do what is needed at an individual level for the planet?

I would like to recommend James Lovelock's The Revenge of Gaia, so everyone can get a better idea of how urgent this "climate change thing" all is. He outlines how the concentration of pollutants, depletion of natural resources, the accumulation of waste, abuses of technology, factors climate change, and how the living earth may reach a tipping point where it becomes a failing system.