Week One — June 23–29

Journey of the Universe

The history of the Universe is both a scientific and a spiritual story. It is the scientific story of a 14-billion-year continuum from a speck of pure energy to everything we can see around us. It is also a spiritual story, one that transcends individual, human and geo-political boundaries. This understanding brings us into the present urgent need to protect our planet’s future and ensure a flourishing and spiritually connected Earth community.

Week One of the 2013 Season features a roster of interfaith scholars, led by Yale University professor and historian of religions Mary Evelyn Tucker, exploring the themes of Tucker’s Emmy-winning documentary “Journey of the Universe.” The film (based on her book with evolutionary philosopher Brian Thomas Swimme) draws together scientific discoveries in astronomy, geology and biology with humanistic insights concerning the nature of the universe.

Click here to learn more about “Journey of the Universe,” which will be screened throughout Week One.A 20-part educational series is also available that integrates the perspectives of the sciences and the humanities into a retelling of our almost 14-billion-year story.

Confirmed Lecturers

Monday 6/24	Tuesday 6/25	Wednesday 6/26	Thursday 6/27	Friday 6/28
Our Unfolding Universe and the Earth Community Mary Evelyn Tucker	Native American Response John Grim	Abrahamic Response Judaism Rabbi Lawrence Troster Christianity Heather Eaton Islam Safei Eldin Hamed	South Asian Response Hinduism David Haberman Jainism Christopher Chapple Buddhism Christopher Ives	East Asian Response Daoism James Miller Confucianism Mary Evelyn Tucker Environmental Ethics Lisa Sideris

Monday, June 24

Mary Evelyn Tucker

senior lecturer and senior research scholar, Yale University

Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim

Our Unfolding Universe and the Earth Community
Mary Evelyn Tucker is a Senior Lecturer and Senior Research Scholar at Yale University where she has appointments in the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies as well as the Divinity School. She is a co-founder and co-director with John Grim of the Forum on Religion and Ecology. Together they organized a series of ten conferences on World Religions and Ecology at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School, and they are series editors for the ten volumes from the conferences distributed by Harvard University Press. In 2011 Tucker completed the Journey of the Universe with Brian Swimme, which includes a book from Yale University Press, a film on PBS, and an educational DVD series of interviews. She is also the author of Worldly Wonder: Religions Enter Their Ecological Phase (Open Court Press, 2003), Moral and Spiritual Cultivation in Japanese Neo-Confucianism (SUNY, 1989) and The Philosophy of Qi (Columbia University Press, 2007). She co-edited Worldviews and Ecology (Orbis, 1994), Buddhism and Ecology (Harvard, 1997), Confucianism and Ecology (Harvard, 1998), Hinduism and Ecology (Harvard, 2000), and When Worlds Converge (Open Court, 2002). With Tu Weiming she edited two volumes on Confucian Spirituality (Crossroad, 2004). She also Co-editor of a Daedalus volume titled Religion and Ecology: Can the Climate Change? (2001), she also edited several of Thomas Berry's books: Evening Thoughts (Sierra Club Books and University of California Press, 2006), The Sacred Universe (Columbia University Press, 2009), Christian Future and the Fate of Earth (Orbis Book, 2009). A member of the Interfaith Partnership for the Environment at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), she served on the International Earth Charter Drafting Committee from 1997-2000 and is a member of the Earth Charter International Council.

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Tuesday, June 25

Native American Responses to Journey of the Universe: John Grim, Yale University

John Grim

senior lecturer and senior research scholar, Yale University

John Grim is currently a Senior Lecturer and Senior Research Scholar at Yale University teaching courses that draw students from the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, Yale Divinity School, the Department of Religious Studies, the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, and Yale College. He is Coordinator of the Forum on Religion and Ecology with Mary Evelyn Tucker, and series editor of “World Religions and Ecology,” from Harvard Divinity School’s Center for the Study of World Religions. In that series he edited Indigenous Traditions and Ecology: the Interbeing of Cosmology and Community (Harvard, 2001). He has been a Professor of Religion at Bucknell University, and at Sarah Lawrence College where he taught courses in Native American and Indigenous religions, World Religions, and Religion and Ecology. His published works include: The Shaman: Patterns of Religious Healing Among the Ojibway Indians (University of Oklahoma Press, 1983) and edited a volume with Mary Evelyn Tucker entitled Worldviews and Ecology (Orbis, 1994, 5th printing 2000), and a Daedalus volume (2001) entitled, Religion and Ecology: Can the Climate Change? John is also President of the American Teilhard Association.

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Wednesday, June 26

Abrahamic Responses: Larry Troster, co- founder of GreenFaith – Judaism; Heather Eaton, St Paul's University, Ottawa – Christianity; Safei Eldin Hamed, Chatham College – Islam

Rabbi Lawrence Troster

Rabbi Troster is a nationally recognized religious-environmental scholar and leader. A co-founder of the GreenFaith Fellowship Program, through which he trained over 40 Fellows from around the country, he has also worked as the Rabbinic Fellow of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL), an Adjunct Lecturer at the Jewish Theological Seminary, a Steinhardt Fellow at the Center for Life and Learning, a Program Officer at the Jewish Life Network, and as a rabbi of congregations in Toronto and New Jersey. He is on the editorial board of Conservative Judaism and he has published and lectured widely on theology, environmentalism, liturgy, bioethics, modern cosmology and Judaism. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto and the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Heather Eaton

St Paul's University, Ottawa

Heather Eaton is professor of theology at Saint Paul University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. She holds an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in ecology, feminism and theology from the University of St. Michael's College, Toronto School of Theology, and a Master's of Divinity. She is engaged in religious responses to the ecological crisis, particularly the relationship between ecological, feminist and liberation theologies. She is committed to inter-religious responses to ecological crisis. She is the author of Ecofeminism and Globalization: Exploring Culture, Context, and Religion (with Lois Ann Lorentzen, Rowman & Littlefield, 2003) and Introducing Ecofeminist Theologies (London: T & T Clark, 2005). She is involved in numerous conferences, workshops, teaching and publishing in these areas. Dr. Eaton is the co-founder of the Canadian Forum on Religion and Ecology.

Safei Eldin Hamed

Chatham University

Safei-Eldin Hamed is a scholar of environmental planning, an educator of landscape architecture, and a consultant for international development. He practices primarily in the United States and the Middle East. Professor Hamed has taught at the University of Guelph and The University of Nova Scotia in Canada; King Faisal University in Saudi Arabia; and the University of Georgia, Virginia Tech, the University of Maryland, Texas Tech University, and Chatham University. He has been invited to lecture in different universities around the world, including Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, DePaul, Creighton, Cairo, Kuwait, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Dr. Hamed has served as a consultant for the State Department, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) , the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Agency for International Development (USAID), the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, the Smithsonian Institute, the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, the Arab Development Institute, Yemen Ministry of Environmental Affairs, and the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism. He has worked also as an Environmental Assessment Specialist at the World Bank in Washington, DC (1994–1997).

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Thursday, June 27

Responses from South Asian Religions: David Haberman, Indiana University – Hinduism; Christopher Chapple, Loyola Marymount University – Jainism; TBA – Buddhism

David Haberman

Indiana University

David Haberman is a Professor and former Chair of Religious Studies at Indiana University-Bloomington who specializes in the Hindu religious traditions of India. Receiving a B.A. in Religious Studies from the University of Colorado and a Ph.D. in History of Religions from the University of Chicago, he taught at the University of Arizona and Williams College before joining the faculty at Indiana University.

Although his interests include religion as a worldwide phenomenon and vital feature of human experience, his research concentrates on the medieval and modern religious movements of northern India. Much of his work has focused on the culture of Braj, an active pilgrimage site known for its lively temple festivals, performative traditions, and literary creations. As a student of the religious cultures of India, Haberman is interested in investigating the effects that current environmental degradation is having on the traditional religious culture which views the immanent world of nature as permeated with divine presence; he is also interested in learning how this traditional theology is being marshaled by Indian environmental activists to resist environmental degradation. His publications include Acting as a Way of Salvation (1988); Journey Through the Twelve Forests (1994); The Bhaktirasamrtasindhu of Rupa Gosvamin (2003); River of Love in an Age of Pollution (2006); and People Trees (2013). His current research is on sacred mountains.

Christopher Chapple

Loyola Marymount University

Christopher Key Chapple is the Navin and Pratima Doshi Professor of Indic and Comparative Theology at Loyola Marymount University. Dr. Chapple received his undergraduate degree in Comparative Literature and Religious Studies from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and his doctorate in the History of Religions through the Theology Department at Fordham University. He served as Assistant Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies of World Religions and taught Sanskrit, Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism for five years at the State University of New York at Stony Brook before joining the faculty at LMU. Dr. Chapple's research interests have focused on the renouncer religious traditions of India: Yoga, Jainism, and Buddhism. He has published several books, including Karma and Creativity (1986), a co-translation of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (1991) and Nonviolence to Animals, Earth, and Self in Asian Traditions (1993), Hinduism and Ecology (2000), a co-edited volume, Jainism and Ecology: Nonviolence in the Web of Life (2002) and Reconciling Yogas (2003).

Christopher Ives

Stonehill College - Buddhism

Christopher Ives is Professor and Chair of Religious Studies at Stonehill College. His scholarship focuses on Zen Buddhist ethics, and he is currently working on Buddhist approaches to environmental issues and to violence and war.

His publications include Imperial-Way Zen: Ichikawa Hakugen’s Critique and Lingering Questions for Buddhist Ethics (2009); Zen Awakening and Society (1992); a translation of philosopher Nishida Kitarō’s An Inquiry into the Good (co-translated with Abe Masao, 1990); a translation of Hisamatsu Shin’ichi’s Critical Sermons of the Zen Tradition (co-translated with Tokiwa Gishin, 2002); The Emptying God (co-edited with John B. Cobb, Jr., 1990); and Divine Emptiness and Historical Fullness (edited volume, 1995), as well as book chapters and articles in the Journal of Buddhist Ethics, the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, the Eastern Buddhist, and elsewhere. He is also on the editorial board of the Journal of Buddhist Ethics and is serving as co-chair of the Buddhist Critical-Constructive Reflection Group of the American Academy of Religion.

Originally from Litchfield, Connecticut, he received his B.A. in Psychology from Williams College and his Ph.D. in Philosophy of Religion from Claremont Graduate School. He currently resides in Watertown, Massachusetts.

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Friday, June 28

Responses from East Asian Religions: James Miller, Queens University – Daoism; Mary Evelyn Tucker, Yale University – Confucianism; Lisa Sideris, Indiana University – Environmental Ethics

James Miller

Queens University - Daoism

James Miller is associate professor of religious studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. His research has focused mainly on traditional Chinese views of nature and environment, and he has published several works on this subject: Daoism and Ecology: Ways within a Cosmic Landscape (Harvard University, 2001 with N.J. Girardot, James Miller, and Liu Xiaogan); Daoism: A Beginner’s Guide, (Oxford, 2008); Chinese Religions in Contemporary Societies (ABC-CLIO, 2006); and The Way of Highest Clarity: Nature, Vision and Revelation in Medieval China (Three Pines Press, 2008). He directed the MA program in religion and modernity at Queens University, where students research the impact of modernity on religions across the world. He maintains www.daoiststudies.org, the largest academic website on Daoist Studies, with over 10,000 pages of information.

Mary Evelyn Tucker

senior lecturer and senior research scholar, Yale University

Mary Evelyn Tucker is a Senior Lecturer and Senior Research Scholar at Yale University where she has appointments in the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies as well as the Divinity School. She is a co-founder and co-director with John Grim of the Forum on Religion and Ecology. Together they organized a series of ten conferences on World Religions and Ecology at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School, and they are series editors for the ten volumes from the conferences distributed by Harvard University Press. In 2011 Tucker completed the Journey of the Universe with Brian Swimme, which includes a book from Yale University Press, a film on PBS, and an educational DVD series of interviews. She is also the author of Worldly Wonder: Religions Enter Their Ecological Phase (Open Court Press, 2003), Moral and Spiritual Cultivation in Japanese Neo-Confucianism (SUNY, 1989) and The Philosophy of Qi (Columbia University Press, 2007). She co-edited Worldviews and Ecology (Orbis, 1994), Buddhism and Ecology (Harvard, 1997), Confucianism and Ecology (Harvard, 1998), Hinduism and Ecology (Harvard, 2000), and When Worlds Converge (Open Court, 2002). With Tu Weiming she edited two volumes on Confucian Spirituality (Crossroad, 2004). She also Co-editor of a Daedalus volume titled Religion and Ecology: Can the Climate Change? (2001), she also edited several of Thomas Berry's books: Evening Thoughts (Sierra Club Books and University of California Press, 2006), The Sacred Universe (Columbia University Press, 2009), Christian Future and the Fate of Earth (Orbis Book, 2009). A member of the Interfaith Partnership for the Environment at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), she served on the International Earth Charter Drafting Committee from 1997-2000 and is a member of the Earth Charter International Council.

Lisa Sideris

Indiana University

Lisa Sideris is associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University. She is interested in the value and ethical significance of natural processes. Much of her recent research focuses on the intersection of religion, science and environmental ethics. She studies how religious environmental thought incorporates, or fails to incorporate, knowledge gained from the natural sciences, particularly evolutionary theory and ecology. Professor Sideris is the author of Environmental Ethics, Ecological Theology, and Natural Selection (Columbia, 2003). She co-edited (with Kathleen Dean Moore) a volume of interdisciplinary essays on Rachel Carson's life and work: Rachel Carson: Legacy and Challenge (SUNY, 2008). Her current research centers on two projects. The first pertains to the role of wonder and enchantment in (and with) science, nature, and religion, and the variety of ways in which scientific narratives, particularly those involving evolution, are being "re-enchanted" and recast as mythopoeic stories with moral content. A second project examines nature-study movements for children, from the 19th century to the present, and the way in which scientific and religious perspectives have given, and are giving, impetus to these initiatives.

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