The Sacred Universe: Earth, Spirituality, and Religion in the Twenty-First Century

A leading scholar, cultural historian, and Catholic priest who spent more than fifty years writing about our engagement with the Earth, Thomas Berry possessed prophetic insight into the rampant destruction of ecosystems and the extinction of species. In this book he makes a persuasive case for an interreligious dialogue that can better confront the environmental problems of the twenty-first century. These erudite and keenly sympathetic essays represent Berry's best work, covering such issues as human beings' modern alienation from nature and the possibilities of future, regenerative forms of religious experience. Asking that we create a new story of the universe and the emergence of the Earth within it, Berry resituates the human spirit within a sacred totality.


About the Author

Thomas Berry (1914-2009 established the History of Religions Program at Fordham University and, with Wm. Theodore de Bary, founded the Oriental Thought and Religion Seminar at Columbia University. He was also the former director of the Riverdale Center for Religious Research. Along with his books Buddhism and Religions of India, his major publications include The Dream of the Earth, The Great Work, Evening Thoughts, and The Universe Story, with Brian Swimme.

Mary Evelyn Tucker directs the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale where she teaches in a joint degree program between the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and the Divinity School. She is the author of Moral and Spiritual Cultivation in Japanese Neo-Confucianism, The Philosophy of Qi, and Worldly Wonder: Religions Enter Their Ecological Phase.