Earth Habitat: Eco-Injustice and the Church's Response. .

Earth Habitat: Eco-Injustice and the Church's Response. Edited by Dieter Hessel and Larry Rasmussen. Fortress Press, 2001. 272 pages. Paper. $20.00.

Earth Habitat is an ecumenical work that falls under the category of religion and ecology. This book is a collection of essays from nineteen different authors focusing on the major themes of the Ecumenical Earth Conference on justice, ecology, and church held at Union Seminary in New York. The authors focus on three questions: How can Christianity and Christian churches rethink themselves and their roles in light of the endangered Earth? What Earth-honoring elements does justice-oriented Christianity have to contribute to the common good? How can communities and churches respond creatively and constructively on a local level to these vast global forces? The authors speak of Eco-justice or habitat Earth as where the church and the community work together to "designate the kind of partnership required for the pursuit of Earth community by Christian believers" (p. 6).

The authors in this collection speak not only of justice in terms of the environment but also justice of the creation of Earth. This is done by taking the traditions of Christianity together with Scripture and revaluing nature and culture together to prevent destruction and sustain peacefulness. For example, James Cone in a chapter entitled "Whose Earth Is It, Anyway?" claims that "people who fight against white racism but fail to connect it to the degradation of the earth are anti-ecological" (p. 23). Cone goes on to say that this fight for justice cannot be segregated but must be integrated with the fight for life in all its forms. He also states our indebtedness to ecologists who have sounded the alarm about the earth's distress through an awareness that humankind has the knowledge and power to destroy all life, either with a nuclear bomb or by slowly poisoning the land, air, and sea. Cone concludes his section with the links between the earth's crisis and the crises in the human family.

Hessel concludes the book with an "effort to share normative common ground." He includes solidarity with other people and creatures in Earth Community, ecological sustainability, sufficiency as a standard of organized sharing, and socially just participation in decisions about how to obtain sustenance and manage the common good.

The authors raise many new issues, not only ecological but also theological. They remind us that Eco-justice needs to be a new vision with strong ecumenical roots.