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Such a manner of action would have to be considered an abuse of one's right and a violation of the right of others. In addition, it comes within the meaning of religious freedom that religious communities should not be prohibited from freely undertaking to show the special value of their doctrine in what concerns the organization of society and the inspiration of the whole of human activity. Finally, the social nature of man and the very nature of religion afford the foundation of the right of men freely to hold meetings and to establish educational, cultural, charitable and social organizations, under the impulse of their own religious sense.

The family, since it is a society in its own original right, has the right freely to live its own domestic religious life under the guidance of parents. Parents, moreover, have the right to determine, in accordance with their own religious beliefs, the kind of religious education that their children are to receive. Government, in consequence, must acknowledge the right of parents to make a genuinely free choice of schools and of other means of education, and the use of this freedom of choice is not to be made a reason for imposing unjust burdens on parents, whether directly or indirectly.

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Besides, the right of parents are violated, if their children are forced to attend lessons or instructions which are not in agreement with their religious beliefs, or if a single system of education, from which all religious formation is excluded, is imposed upon all. Since the common welfare of society consists in the entirety of those conditions of social life under which men enjoy the possibility of achieving their own perfection in a certain fullness of measure and also with some relative ease, it chiefly consists in the protection of the rights, and in the performance of the duties, of the human person.

The protection and promotion of the inviolable rights of man ranks among the essential duties of government. Government is also to help create conditions favorable to the fostering of religious life, in order that the people may be truly enabled to exercise their religious rights and to fulfill their religious duties, and also in order that society itself may profit by the moral qualities of justice and peace which have their origin in men's faithfulness to God and to His holy will. If, in view of peculiar circumstances obtaining among peoples, special civil recognition is given to one religious community in the constitutional order of society, it is at the same time imperative that the right of all citizens and religious communities to religious freedom should be recognized and made effective in practice.

Finally, government is to see to it that equality of citizens before the law, which is itself an element of the common good, is never violated, whether openly or covertly, for religious reasons. Nor is there to be discrimination among citizens. It follows that a wrong is done when government imposes upon its people, by force or fear or other means, the profession or repudiation of any religion, or when it hinders men from joining or leaving a religious community. All the more is it a violation of the will of God and of the sacred rights of the person and the family of nations when force is brought to bear in any way in order to destroy or repress religion, either in the whole of mankind or in a particular country or in a definite community.


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The right to religious freedom is exercised in human society: hence its exercise is subject to certain regulatory norms. In the use of all freedoms the moral principle of personal and social responsibility is to be observed. In the exercise of their rights, individual men and social groups are bound by the moral law to have respect both for the rights of others and for their own duties toward others and for the common welfare of all.

Men are to deal with their fellows in justice and civility. Furthermore, society has the right to defend itself against possible abuses committed on the pretext of freedom of religion. It is the special duty of government to provide this protection. However, government is not to act in an arbitrary fashion or in an unfair spirit of partisanship. Its action is to be controlled by juridical norms which are in conformity with the objective moral order. These norms arise out of the need for the effective safeguard of the rights of all citizens and for the peaceful settlement of conflicts of rights, also out of the need for an adequate care of genuine public peace, which comes about when men live together in good order and in true justice, and finally out of the need for a proper guardianship of public morality.

These matters constitute the basic component of the common welfare: they are what is meant by public order. For the rest, the usages of society are to be the usages of freedom in their full range: that is, the freedom of man is to be respected as far as possible and is not to be curtailed except when and insofar as necessary.

Many pressures are brought to bear upon the men of our day, to the point where the danger arises lest they lose the possibility of acting on their own judgment. On the other hand, not a few can be found who seem inclined to use the name of freedom as the pretext for refusing to submit to authority and for making light of the duty of obedience. Wherefore this Vatican Council urges everyone, especially those who are charged with the task of educating others, to do their utmost to form men who, on the one hand, will respect the moral order and be obedient to lawful authority, and on the other hand, will be lovers of true freedom-men, in other words, who will come to decisions on their own judgment and in the light of truth, govern their activities with a sense of responsibility, and strive after what is true and right, willing always to join with others in cooperative effort.

Religious freedom therefore ought to have this further purpose and aim, namely, that men may come to act with greater responsibility in fulfilling their duties in community life. The declaration of this Vatican Council on the right of man to religious freedom has its foundation in the dignity of the person, whose exigencies have come to be are fully known to human reason through centuries of experience. What is more, this doctrine of freedom has roots in divine revelation, and for this reason Christians are bound to respect it all the more conscientiously. Revelation does not indeed affirm in so many words the right of man to immunity from external coercion in matters religious.

It does, however, disclose the dignity of the human person in its full dimensions. It gives evidence of the respect which Christ showed toward the freedom with which man is to fulfill his duty of belief in the word of God and it gives us lessons in the spirit which disciples of such a Master ought to adopt and continually follow. Thus further light is cast upon the general principles upon which the doctrine of this declaration on religious freedom is based.

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In particular, religious freedom in society is entirely consonant with the freedom of the act of Christian faith. It is one of the major tenets of Catholic doctrine that man's response to God in faith must be free: no one therefore is to be forced to embrace the Christian faith against his own will. Man, redeemed by Christ the Savior and through Christ Jesus called to be God's adopted son, 9 cannot give his adherence to God revealing Himself unless, under the drawing of the Father, 10 he offers to God the reasonable and free submission of faith. It is therefore completely in accord with the nature of faith that in matters religious every manner of coercion on the part of men should be excluded.

In consequence, the principle of religious freedom makes no small contribution to the creation of an environment in which men can without hindrance be invited to the Christian faith, embrace it of their own free will, and profess it effectively in their whole manner of life. God calls men to serve Him in spirit and in truth, hence they are bound in conscience but they stand under no compulsion. God has regard for the dignity of the human person whom He Himself created and man is to be guided by his own judgment and he is to enjoy freedom.

This truth appears at its height in Christ Jesus, in whom God manifested Himself and His ways with men. Christ is at once our Master and our Lord 11 and also meek and humble of heart.

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He who does not believe will be condemned" Mark But He Himself, noting that the cockle had been sown amid the wheat, gave orders that both should be allowed to grow until the harvest time, which will come at the end of the world. He showed Himself the perfect servant of God, 18 who "does not break the bruised reed nor extinguish the smoking flax" Matt.

Buddhist meditation can tell us to focus on our own mortality in distressingly concrete ways what will your body look like, one is asked, in a hundred years. In helping us maintain this focus, religion can thus enable us to take at least the first step toward collective change.

If the environmental crisis represents both a deep obligation for religious response and an important opportunity for a specifically religious contribution, it is also the case that environmental movements are by their very nature hospitable to religion. This is because environmentalism though, of course, not without some very unpleasant exceptions 22 tends to have a spiritual dimension which other liberal or leftist political movements lack.

Compared to often partial and partisan struggles for democracy, in support of rights for workers, women, or racial minorities, against colonialism, or for more economic justice, environmentalism bears remarkable and crucially important affinities with religion. These affinities p. In the contemporary environmental movement even those groups totally unconnected to religiously identified organizations are often inspired by a political ideology, or at least by a moral sensibility, with powerful religious overtones.

This sensibility has been present in much environmentalism since its origins in the mid-nineteenth century and has evolved into a comprehensive worldview which in many respects is often undeniably spiritual in nature. Thus in the initial years of conservation leading voices as disparate as Thoreau, John Muir, Robert Marshall, Sigurd Olson, and John Burroughs celebrated nature not only for its physical beauty and utility, but for its spiritual value as well.

As historian Michael P. A similar orientation can be found within all aspects of the contemporary environmental movement. Most contemporary environmental organizations repeatedly stress that their goal is not just to save wilderness, but to protect all of life. We are all, says the Bible, made in the image of God.

We all, says Buddhism, suffer and deserve release from our pain.

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Each community, says the Qur'an, has its own purpose and value. Any violence against one of us, teach the Jains, can only hurt us all. Looked at in this light, then, the universal missions of truly compassionate religion and of truly global environmental politics naturally converge, at least in the attempt to forge the widest possible social and ecological ethic.

Both believe that life deserves a reverence that p.

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It should be obvious that no society can function without some comprehensive framework of values. Every time we apply or fail to apply the Endangered Species Act or choose between energy efficiency and more oil-drilling no matter where or with what effects , we are expressing a sense of what is important to us, how we ought to live, and what we regard with reverence. The spiritual dimension of secular environmentalism and the new religious environmentalism are joining forces to offer us a fresh choice as to how we should answer those questions.

Since spirituality has been a key part of the environmental movement from its inception to the present, it makes environmental politics particularly fertile ground for an alliance with religion. This alliance has been manifest in a host of particular circumstances, including common work between the Sierra Club and the National Council of Churches and the U. In the last two decades the connections between religion and ecology have been manifest by explosive growth in theological writings, scholarship, institutional commitment, and public action.

Theologians from every religious tradition—along with dozens of nondenominational spiritual writers—have confronted religions' attitudes toward nature and complicity in the environmental crisis. This book reflects and furthers this fundamental shift toward ecological concern and commitment—as well as the academic study of this shift. In terms of scholarship, the last twenty years have witnessed the birth of what is virtually an entirely new field: the academic study of religion and ecology.

Of the many developments which this birth has occasioned, we can list a few highlights.

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And an academic society focusing on the topic—the Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture—has been formed. Even a partial bibliography of relevant books, articles, and websites would run to nearly a thousand entries.

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What is the connection? The writers whose essays grace these pages are among the key voices that have helped make this change possible. Within their own faith traditions, in academia, and as members of society at large, they have been leaders in goading religions, scholars, and their fellow citizens to take nature, the environmental crisis, and the connections between God, holiness, ecology, and more traditional social-justice issues more seriously.

They have analyzed texts, reported on institutional changes, and themselves drafted key documents for the leaders of their own faiths. Here are just a few of the many examples of how these authors not only study this movement but are part of it: John Hart, whose essay focuses on Catholicism, helped write major public environmental statements for the church, including the Columbia River Statement of American and Canadian bishops of the Columbia River region; 32 Protestant John Cobb was part of a group writing early—and highly influential material—for the World Council of Churches; 33 Mary Evelyn Tucker, whose essay surveys the academic field of religion and ecology, is cochair of one of that field's most important resources: the Forum on Religion and Ecology; Bron Taylor, who describes the role of spirituality in American environmental activism, edited the massive and groundbreaking Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature ; and John Chryssavgis, who wrote the essay on Orthodox Christianity, advises that religion's highest authority on environmental matters.

Most of these authors, including the editor, have been active in the American Academy of Religion's Religion and Ecology section, organizing and participating in panels which have spread the word to hundreds if not thousands of other scholars and teachers at the premier meeting of college-level teachers of religion in the United States.

The goal of the book as a whole is to make available in one place a comprehensive, organized, and high quality survey of all this field's essential concerns. It will be of use to the scholar or intellectual who is unacquainted with the subject; to the scholar knowledgeable about one area say, Christianity and ecology who desires to know more about related issues ecotheology from other traditions, religious environmental activism, etc.

The essays are serious, readable, and important. In terms of organization, the book's three sections reflect the several dimensions of this field. Each chapter in part I is shaped by the boundaries of a particular religious tradition. Theologians, leaders, clergy, and laypeople have had to ask how their own faiths—so essential in defining their understanding of the cosmos and their guidelines for living within it—have to change to face this new reality.

These essays describe the resources with which each religion began and the varying contours of their responses. Part II contains essays which explore some of the subject's complex and multifaceted connections and internal tensions. Separate papers on genetic engineering, animal rights, population, the contested ethical and religious meanings of ecology, and ecofeminism show that despite a large amount of agreement among religious environmentalists, many controversies remain.

David Barnhill's treatment of the spiritual dimension of nature writing and Holmes Rolston's essay on religion and science show the significant ways in which any study of religion and ecology takes us beyond the limits of religion considered in isolation. Mary Evelyn Tucker surveys religion and ecology as a field of academic study.