Connecting Ecologies: Integrating Responses to the Global Challenge

Connecting Ecologies focuses on the environmental aspects of Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’ and the challenge to care for our common home. It considers how best to devise and implement the new societal models needed to tackle the ecological problems facing the world today. The book addresses the need for and complexity of an integral ecology, one that looks not only at physical and biological processes but also allows for the contributions of theology, philosophy, spirituality, and psychology, including the implications for the human and social sciences. The contributions document four categories of resonances, resources, requirements, and responses evoked by a reading of Laudato Si’ and include consideration of other faith traditions. They reflect on how care for our common home motivates people in different places, cultures, and professions to cooperate for myriad goods in common. The volume is particularly relevant for scholars working in religious studies and theology with an interest in ecology, the environment, and the Anthropocene.

Patrick Riordan SJ is Senior Fellow for Political Philosophy and Catholic Social Thought at Campion Hall, University of Oxford. His work is focused on the topic of the common good, as in the 2021 D’Arcy Lectures and in his books Global Ethics and Global Common Goods (2016) and Human Dignity and Liberal Politics: Catholic Possibilities for the Common Good (2023).

Gavin Flood FBA is Professor of Hindu Studies and Comparative Religion at Oxford University, a Senior Research Fellow of Campion Hall, and the Piramal Dean of Academic Affairs at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. Among his books are Religion and the Philosophy of Life (2019) and The Truth Within (2014).