Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction and reader's guide
- PART I DEFINING RELIGION AND SUSTAINABILITY, AND WHY IT MATTERS
- PART II THE EMERGENCE AND DEVELOPMENT OF SUSTAINABILITY
- PART III THE ETHNOGRAPHIC DATA AND SUSTAINABILITY CASES
- 7 Walking together separately: evangelical creation care
- 8 Stories of partnership: interfaith efforts toward sustainability
- 9 The religious dimensions of secular sustainability
- 10 Manufacturing or cultivating common ground?
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
8 - Stories of partnership: interfaith efforts toward sustainability
from PART III - THE ETHNOGRAPHIC DATA AND SUSTAINABILITY CASES
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction and reader's guide
- PART I DEFINING RELIGION AND SUSTAINABILITY, AND WHY IT MATTERS
- PART II THE EMERGENCE AND DEVELOPMENT OF SUSTAINABILITY
- PART III THE ETHNOGRAPHIC DATA AND SUSTAINABILITY CASES
- 7 Walking together separately: evangelical creation care
- 8 Stories of partnership: interfaith efforts toward sustainability
- 9 The religious dimensions of secular sustainability
- 10 Manufacturing or cultivating common ground?
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
ALLOWING A THOUSAND FLOWERS TO BLOOM
Fazlun Khalid, founder and director of the Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Sciences (IFEES) said that building a sustainable world was impossible unless the planet's cultural diversity was considered one of its strengths, rather than something to be overcome with a diluted, global ethic. For Khalid, varied extant ecological and social crises can only be fruitfully addressed by preserving a diversity of perspectives, actions, and partnerships. Quoting Mao Tse-tung, Khalid said, “I'm for allowing a thousand flowers to bloom! Let people work, make their own solutions from their own beings and their own places … Solutions and places and beings are different” (interview May 29, 2008). In this, Khalid agreed with Martin Palmer, his former employer and the Secretary General of the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC). Addressing the necessity of plural approaches to achieving sustainability, Palmer suggested that any unity of purpose or perspective in sustainability was a fantasy (echoing Davison's earlier point):
It's just not how humanity works. Christianity's been trying to unify everyone for the past 2000 years, communism for the past 200 years, capitalism for the past 100 years. It doesn't work. Why don't we just go with what we know does work: pluralism and diversity? [These] can often lead to conflict, but that's an issue of defining what we're saying!’
(Interview May 27, 2008)- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Religion and SustainabilitySocial Movements and the Politics of the Environment, pp. 133 - 159Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2013