Creation Corner Column, November 2020
Quotations, Pandemic and Climate Crisis titles, Audio Books, etc.
Opening Quotation
"Our worst response would be to plunge even more deeply into feverish consumerism" Pope Francis, writing about a postpandemic world in his third papal encyclical, a letter addressed to Catholics, published Oct. 4. Quote from Time magazine, Oct. 19, 2020, p. 8. Note that Oct. 4 is the feast day of his namesake, St. Francis of Assisi.
The social teachings document is entitled "Fratelli Tutti" (Brothers All); it follows his 2015 landmark environmental encyclical "Laudato Sii" (Praised Be), and the first major mission statement of his papacy, the 2013 "Evangelii Gaudium" (The Joy of the Gospel).
These documents also are critical of the "just war" theory, the nuclear arms race, the death penalty, and they urge all Catholics to divest from armament makers and fossil fuel companies.
Religious Titles on Pandemic Issues
Coronaspection: World Religious Leaders Reflect on Covid-19. Alon Goshen-Gottstein.
God and the Pandemic: A Christian Reflection on the Coronavirus and Its Aftermath. N.T. Wright.
Virus as a Summons to Faith: Biblical Reflections in a Time of Loss, Grief, and Uncertainty. Walter Brueggemann.
We Shall Be Changed: Questions for the Post-Pandemic Church. Mark D. W. Edington, editor.
Secular Books on Pandemics, Epidemics, etc.
Air Mail: Letters of Politics, Pandemics, and Place. Amy Irvine.
American Contagions: Epidemics and the Law, from Smallpox to COVID-19. John Fabian Witt.
Anti-vaxxers: How to Challenge a Misinformed Movement. Jonathan M. Berman.
The Pull of the Stars: A Novel. Emma Donoghue. Re: 1918 global flu epidemic.
Quarantine: East European Jewish Immigration and the New York City Epidemic of 1892. Howard Markel.
Vulnerable: The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19. Edited by Colleen H. Flood, Vanessa Macdonnell, Jane Philpott, Sophie Theriault, and Sridhar Venkatapuram.
When Germs Travel: Six Major Epidemics That Have Invaded America Since 1900 and the Fears They Have Unleashed. Howard Markel.
Books on Climate Crisis, the Environment, etc.
The Fragile Earth: Writing from The New Yorker on Climate Change. Edited by David Remnick and Henry Finder, with an afterword by Elizabeth Kolbert.
An Introduction to Christian Environmentalism: Ecology, Virtue and Ethics. Kathryn D. Blanchard and Kevin J. O'Brien. This book examines seven contemporary environmental challenges through the lens of classical Christian virtues:
...care for other creatures prudently
...develop new energy sources courageously
...choose our food temperately
...manage toxic pollution justly
...respond to climate change faithfully
...consider humanity's future hopefully
...engage lovingly in advocacy for God's earth
The Most Radical Thing You Can Do: The Best Political Essays from Orion Magazine (People and Nature). Essays by Rebecca Solnit, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Bill McKibben, Paul Kingsnorth, Glenis Redmond, Terry Tempest Williams, Winona La Duke and others. With a foreword by Gretel Ehrlich.
Tales of Two Planets: Stories of Climate Change and Inequality in a Divided World. John Freeman.
Vital Signs: The Environmental Trends That Are Shaping Our Future book series. Worldwatch Institute.
AUDIO BOOKS
The Age of Wood: Our Most Useful Material and the Construction of Civilization. Roland Ennos
Earth Keeper: Reflections on the American Land. N. Scott Momaday.
The Human Cosmos: A Secret History of the Stars. Jo Marchant, read by the author.
The Language of Butterflies. Wendy Williams; read by Angela Brazil.
Our Only Home: A Climate Appeal to the World. His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Franz Alt.
Under the Open Skies: Finding Peace and Health Through Nature. Markus and Frida Torgeby, translated by Christian Gullette; read by Steven Jay Cohen.
Closing Quotations
"If there is one thing we can learn from the gathering storm of zoonotic disease and the impending destruction of the natural world, it's that the harbinger of the end times is not God, but man." John Merrick, an editor at Verso Books, on the way pestilence and pandemics have called into question the steady march of human progress, quoted in The Christian Century (10/7/2020), originating in the Boston Review of September 4).
"There is a fundamental shift taking place now, from 'What is business doing to the climate?' to 'What is climate doing to business?" Joel Makower, chair and executive editor of GreenBiz Group. from the Sierra Magazine of May/June 2019, p. 19.
