Mary Evelyn Tucker
The Ecological Challenge: Our Contemporary Burning Bush
Ecologist, religious scholar, Teilhardian, and passionate advocate for the earth, Mary Evelyn Tucker articulates her energetically optimistic outlook on the future of religion. She maintains that the religious traditions, as they grow and evolve to meet the demands of a changing world, will provide the ground from which real leadership—spiritually based and cosmologically oriented—can emerge.
“The key challenge is the environment. If religions don’t speak to the fact that life is sacred, in all its forms and how we have emerged out of a vast process—then religions are going to lose their own relevance.”
Biography
Mary Evelyn Tucker is a Senior Lecturer in Religion and the Environment at Yale University, holding joint appointments as a Research Scholar in the Divinity School, the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, and the Department of Religious Studies. With John Grim, she cofounded the Forum on Religion and Ecology (FORE). Tucker and Grim also coordinated a ten-conference series on World Religions and Ecology at Harvard's Center for the Study of World Religions. Tucker has been a committee member of the Interfaith Partnership for the Environment at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) since 1986 and is vice president of the American Teilhard Association.
Author of many books on religion and ecology, she has recently published Worldly Wonder: Religions Enter Their Ecological Phase (Open Court Press, 2003). She is the co-editor of books on ecological views of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Hinduism and published the volume Confucian Spirituality co-edited with Tu Weiming, and, The Philosophy of Qi:The Record of Great Doubts.
Mary Evelyn Tucker is a Senior Lecturer in Religion and the Environment at Yale University, holding joint appointments as a Research Scholar in the Divinity School, the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, and the Department of Religious Studies. With John Grim, she cofounded the Forum on Religion and Ecology (FORE). Tucker and Grim also coordinated a ten-conference series on World Religions and Ecology at Harvard's Center for the Study of World Religions. Tucker has been a committee member of the Interfaith Partnership for the Environment at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) since 1986 and is vice president of the American Teilhard Association.