Page - 22 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/02

22 | Angela Sue Sawyer www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/2, 21–33 Ecological Criticism This article engages in a creative intertextual encounter between a pop-cul- tural song and a biblical passage.1 An ecofeminist reading that compares Tracy Chapman’s song “The Rape of the World” with Isaiah 51:1–52:6 seeks to find commonalities and intersections between the modern concerns Chapman invokes and Deutero-Isaiah’s ancient proclamation of salvation. Placing the earth at the centre of the conversation about gendered aspects of both the song and the biblical text allows us to be sensitive to what Elaine Wainwright refers to as the “ecological texture” of both texts and “ecological thinking”.2 In Deutero-Isaiah, land as well as people are victims of war. Their relationship and future are intricately bound up with one another. The primary concern of Chapman’s song is raising awareness of environmental catastrophe via a metaphor of a mother being raped. I would argue that Isaiah 51:1–52:6 does not share Chapman’s primary concern for the environment. However, the en- vironment is a significant part of a broader concern for an exiled people being implored to return to their home and about the very real consequences of war for the physical environment to which they are returning. My analysis of Isaiah 51:1–52:6 seeks both a transformative reading of Chapman’s song, by bringing it into dialogue with the biblical text, and a broader awareness of the biblical text’s context in today’s current climate emergency. Over the past few decades, a variety of scholarly theological responses to ecological concerns have emerged. Ecotheology takes seriously the complicity of Christianity in the ecological crisis, as articulated initially in Lynn White Jr’s frequently cited article.3 This notion stems from a sense of anthropocentric superiority in the Christian tradition and a view of creation as subject to dom- ination, perspectives which have had disastrous consequences for the earth. The most influential ecological response in biblical studies is the Earth Bible Project, which has produced a set of key principles and multiple publications and has been closely associated with the Society of Biblical Literature eco- logical hermeneutics sessions.4 Empathy and identification are core aspects 1 This article was presented as a paper at the 2019 International Society of Biblical Literature conference in Rome and has been revised for the purposes of this journal. 2 Wainwright 2012, 280–304. 3 White Jr 1967, 1203–1207. 4 Habel 2008, 1–8; Habel 2009; Habel 2013, 39–58. For a list of publications associated with the Earth Bible, see Norman Habel n. d. [accessed 16 September 2020].