Eco-Reformation

Lisa E. Dahill is Associate Professor of Religion at California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, California. From 2005 to 2015 she served on the faculty of Trinity Lutheran Seminary, Columbus, Ohio. She is a scholar and translator of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the author of Reading from the Underside of Selfhood: Bonhoeffer and Spiritual Formation (Pickwick, 2007) and many other works on spirituality, worship, eco-theology, and the larger ecological expression of Christian life.

In 2017 Christians around the world will mark the five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation. In the midst of many appeals for reformation today, a growing number of theologians, scholars, and activists around the world believe Reformation celebrations in 2017 and beyond need to focus now on the urgent need for an Eco-Reformation. The rise of industrial, fossil fuel-driven capitalism and the explosive growth in human population endanger the fundamental planetary life-support systems on which life as we know it has evolved. The collective impact of human production, consumption, and reproduction is undermining the ecological systems that support human life on Earth. If human beings do not reform their relationship with God's creation, unspeakable suffering will befall many--especially the weakest and most vulnerable among all species.The conviction at the heart of this collection of essays is that a gospel call for ecological justice belongs at the heart of the five hundredth anniversary observance of the Reformation in 2017 and as a--if not the--central dimension of Christian conversion, faith, and practice into the foreseeable future. Like Luther's Ninety-Five Theses, this volume brings together critical biblical, pastoral, theological, historical, and ethical perspectives that constructively advance the vision of a socially and ecologically flourishing Earth.