NASHVILLE, Tenn. ñ The role of religion in ecology will be explored by a leading proponent of ecofeminism during a lecture on Thursday, April 7, at Vanderbilt University.
Catherine Keller, professor of constructive theology at Drew University Theological School, will speak on “Dark Vibrations: Ecofeminism and the Democracy of Creation,” at 7:30 p.m. in Benton Chapel on the Vanderbilt campus.
The event is the spring lecture of the Vanderbilt Center for the Study of Religion and Culture and sponsored by its faculty research project, “Ecology and Spirituality in America: Possibilities for Cultural Transformation.” Keller‘s speech is also the 2005 Vanderbilt Divinity School Howard L. Harrod Lecture.
It is free and open to the public.
“Our assault on the earth seems to grow more epic, deliberate and irreversible,” Keller said. “The spiritual traditions of the world have been attempting to come to terms with this planetary crisis, to translate their own sometimes detached or otherworldly concerns into ecological responsibility for this world ñ a greening of faith.”
Keller is author of Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming, in which she reflects on the first chapter of the Bible and the ensuing “notion of absolute power that is then imitated by humans made ‘in the image of God.‘”
Keller is also concerned with the role sexism may play in the resistance to the preservation of the earth.
“Our species has treated the earth like a ‘woman‘ ñ to be alternately taken for granted, romanticized or exploited and discarded,” Keller said. “Therefore, as the women‘s movements and the ecological movements of the planet come ever more into alignment, new possibilities for a full-bodied democracy develop.”
Keller has also published From a Broken Web: Separation, Sexism and Self, and Apocalypse Now & Then, “a feminist guide to the end of the world.” Her forthcoming book is God and Power: Counter-Apocalyptic Journals.
The Vanderbilt Divinity School Howard L. Harrod Lecture was established to honor Harrod, the Oberlin Alumni Professor of Social Ethics and Sociology of Religion, who taught for more than 30 years at Vanderbilt. Harrod worked extensively in environmental ethics and activism and was an advocate for new ways of understanding the relationships of humans with the animal and natural worlds.
For more information, call Barbara Kaeser at 615-322-8910, or go to the Vanderbilt Center for the Study of Religion and Culture website at www.vanderbilt.edu/csrc.
Media contact: Jim Patterson, (615) 322-NEWS
Jim.patterson@vanderbilt.edu