The introduction to this book suggested that the apocalyptic theology of Ælfric and Wulfstan reflects an early medieval earth consciousness: an awareness not only of patterns of environmental collapse and restoration, but also of human complicity in and vulnerability to these environmental crises. Although the word ecology did not enter English until the late 19th century, the early medieval earth consciousness reflected in the theology of Wulfstan and Ælfric intersects in productive ways with the modern field of ecotheology, which examines the connections between religious worldviews and the degradation or restoration of the environment. As an academic discipline, ecotheology lies at the intersection of environmental and religious studies, interrogating the interrelationships—real and imagined—of human society, the other-than-human elements of the Earth community, and God. Ecotheologians explore a wide variety of environmental issues, such as the moral implications of environmental inequality, factory farming, or human-caused climate change, from the perspective of religious ethics. Among Christian ecotheologians in particular, an important goal is to address the “ecological complaint”: the accusation (leveled most famously by Lynn White, Jr.) that Christianity is responsible for modern environmental crises because its foundational texts, as codified in medieval Europe, insist that “it is God's will that man exploit nature for his proper ends.” Above all, ecotheology is a liberation theology seeking to identify and correct injustice in all its manifestations.

To the best of my knowledge, the only book-length study of Old English literature which explicitly engages the field of ecotheology is Corrine Dale’s The Natural World in the Exeter Book Riddles.