EARTHKEEPING NEWS A NEWSLETTER OF THE NORTH AMERICAN COALITION FOR CHRISTIANITY AND ECOLOGY Volume Fifteen, Number Two March / April 2006 Economics As A Religious Issue We come to the essential problem of economics as a religious issue when we consider that the present threat to both economics and religion is from a single source: the disruption of the natural world. If the water is polluted, it can neither be drunk nor used for baptism. Both in its physical reality and in its psychic symbolism, it is a source not of life, but of death. Obviously, economics and religion are two aspects of a single earth process. We are radically oriented away from the natural world. It has no rights; it exists for human utility, even if for spiritual utility. The natural world is the larger sacred community to which we belong. To be alienated from this community is to become destitute in all that makes us human. To damage this community is to diminish our own existence. From The Dream 0f the Earth, p.80, by Thomas Berry; 1988, Sierra Club Nature and Natural Philosophy Library. Home     Table of Contents