The religious environmental movement that Ellingson documents is not simply the faith-based component of the wider green movement. He shows that it first and foremost targets religious people and institutions, trying to instill in them new traditions, identities, and ways of fulfilling their sacred duties vis a vis God's creation. In doing so, Ellingson offers a theoretically integrated approach to studying social movement emergence and development by showing how the creativity and agency of movement actors are culturally and religiously embedded.
Rhys H. Williams director, McNamara Center for the Social Study of Religion, Loyola University Chicago This is a well-researched study with some spectacularly good interviews. It covers important terrain not only sociologically but also theologically. If American civil society
particularly the religious underpinnings of American political culture
cannot come to terms with climate change and the environmental insights necessary to act on it, then the struggle against some of the more dire future scenarios will be in vain. Ellingson's work represents an important sociological contribution needed to underpin long-term change.
Richard L. Wood, author of A Shared Future and Faith in Action Ellingson provides some good information on Catholic religious environmental movement organizations, including the Catholic Climate Covenant with its ties to the USCCB for good and ill. Ellingson closes with a survey of lessons learned from his study and the outlook for a movement with little history and less funding, but rich spiritual resources. This reasonably priced book with its fine scholarly apparatus is recommended for all academic libraries.
Catholic Library World Ellingson provides a sociological exploration of contemporary faith-based environmental movements in the US. Drawing especially on interviews with movement leaders, he concludes that these movements are as much concerned with the revitalization of religious traditions as they are with saving the environment. . . . In explaining how and why these movements have developed as they have, Ellingson places much emphasis on the realities of embeddedness within particular theological/symbolic/cultural traditions. This book will be valuable for those interested in sociological analysis of movement formation and development, specifically in the context of religion. Recommended.
Choice A fascinating account of the emergence of the religious environmental movement. . .A carefully researched and well-written book that skillfully interweaves case description and theoretical development. It will likely generate a wealth of conversation and future research.
Mobilization Does it matter why people care, or only that they care? Keenly attuned to how activists make use of their own religious traditions and attentive to the constraints imposed by religious authority and audiences, Ellingson illuminates the culturally-embedded emergence of new forms of engagement and new understandings of responsibility for the natural world. Simultaneously eloquent and accessible, To Care for Creation is a compelling model for movement scholarship that wrestles seriously with the content of belief.
Elisabeth S. Clemens, coeditor of Politics and Partnerships