ECO-THEOLOGY
By Celia Deane-Drummond
Darton, Longman & Todd. 240 pages. £14.95
ISBN 978-0-232-52616-5
Eco-theology sounds like a good project, aiming ‘to uncover the theological basis for a proper relationship between God, humanity and the cosmos’. The aim of Eco-Theology ‘is to offer a resource book that highlights ... different contemporary eco-theologies’; it attempts ‘to map out a burgeoning field ... to introduce the reader to critical debates’.
The book is an example of contextual theology. Before I go any further I had better explain. Contextual theology emerged around 40 years ago when academics began to take an interest in how different cultural contexts affected what people believed and did. They began to think of specific ‘theologies’: Latin-American liberation theology, or black theology. Now there is feminist theology, eco-theology, and many others, and contextual theology is the academic norm.
