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Comfort the Waste Places, Defend the Violated Earth |
23www.jrfm.eu
2020, 6/2, 21–33
of the Earth Bible Project.5 It is characterised by suspicion about the biblical
text and alignment with liberation and feminist hermeneutics. The Earth Bible
Project has been critiqued for risking “ethnocentrism” and “anachronism”,
with Hilary Marlow suggesting its underlying ideology is problematic and its
method somewhat restrictive.6 She contends the Earth Bible Project approach
may have the unintended consequence “of inviting rejection of the biblical
text by those who consider it to be irrelevant in today’s world”, and notes, “it
may also encourage the rejection of concern for the environment by those
for whom the Bible carries authority as sacred scripture”.7 The Exeter Project
(Sheffield University) has offered a different approach than the Earth Bible
Project by affirming the authority of the biblical text, arguing for “an attempt
to construct an ecological theology which, while innovative, is nonetheless
coherent (and in dialogue) with a scripturally shaped Christian orthodoxy”.8
More recently Tina Nilsen and Anna SolevĂĄg have made a case for using the
Earth Charter (originating from the United Nations) as the base of their ecolo-
nial approach, an interdisciplinary combination of ecological and postcolonial
hermeneutics.9 Although each of these developments is informative, the Earth
Bible Project principles and the connection with feminist criticism have prov-
en most fruitful for this article.
An ecofeminist reading, as Wainwright explains, “makes explicit the inter-
connection between the violence against, and the exploitation and degrada-
tion of both women and the Earth”.10 The coincidental emergence of ecolog-
ical and feminist studies, along with related ecofeminist and ecojustice con-
cerns, has been long explored, with tropes of sexual violence used to express
ecological degradation. The conflation of mother Earth and mother Nature
in environmental discourse “is widespread and generally accepted without
question”, writes Tzeporah Berman.11 These associations come with assump-
tions about women and the role of mothers in society. These notions, in turn,
are precisely what makes a metaphor of earth-as-mother coherent, enabling
multivalent but also ambiguous possibilities.12 Combining overlapping met-
5 Habel 2008, 1–5.
6 Marlow 2009, 91.
7 Marlow 2009, 94.
8 Horrell 2010, 8–9.
9 Nilsen/SolevĂĄg 2016, 665.
10 Wainwright 2000, 162.
11 Berman 1994, 173–178.
12 Dille 2004, chap. 1.
JRFM
Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/02
- Title
- JRFM
- Subtitle
- Journal Religion Film Media
- Volume
- 06/02
- Authors
- Christian Wessely
- Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati
- Editor
- Uni-Graz
- Publisher
- SchĂĽren Verlag GmbH
- Location
- Graz
- Date
- 2020
- Language
- English
- License
- CC BY-NC 4.0
- Size
- 14.8 x 21.0 cm
- Pages
- 128
- Categories
- Zeitschriften JRFM