The Concept of Environment in Judaism, Christianity and Islam

In 1986, an important meeting of Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus took place in Assisi to discuss how each religion could contribute to the protection of the environment. In particular, Judaism, Christianity and Islam joined environmentalists and other ethical critics in making the observation that industrialization and consumerism have severely destabilized the eco-system, showing critical ethical concern for the environmental crisis and the future of humanity. Although the Vatican has made a better job of communicating its ecological ethics (Laudato si’, the second encyclical of Pope Francis published in 2015, comes to mind here) than have Judaism and Islam, Jewish and Muslim thinkers, like Christian theologians and philosophers, have also seriously engaged and developed influential theologies of creation, calling for a spiritual transformation of human behaviour in order to protect the environment. For example, Islamic religious authorities contributed to an ethics of ecology in 1983 with the Saudi document entitled ‘Environmental Protection in Islam’, published in English, Arabic and French. A salient dimension of religious engagement with ecology is inter-religious dialogue, as emphasis on the protection of the environment, spirituality and human responsibility are feature of shared wisdom between world religions. The book under review emerged from a conference on the concept of the environment in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which took place in June 2020 at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, organized by the Research Unit ‘Key Concepts in Interreligious Discourses’, (now the Bavarian Research Center for Interreligious Discourses [BaFID] at Friedrich-Alexander-University). The book is divided into three chapters. Chapter 1 discusses the concept of the environment in Judaism, presenting both a biblical account and ecological reflections based on the Jewish tradition. Rabbi Yonatan Neril and Rabbi Leo Dee (both working at the Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development, based in Israel) address the spiritual roots of the ecological crisis, drawing on three main sources: the Bible, rabbinic literature and their ecological commentary on the Bible published in 2022. For the authors, the key Jewish tenets on ecology can be summarized in four principles: the commandment not to waste or to destroy; the oneness of God’s creation and the importance of protecting it and maintaining biodiversity; commandments to rest from creating and altering the environment; and commandments regarding the ethical treatments of animals (9). The authors see in the Bible, and especially in the biblical stories of Noah, Abraham and Jacob, the epitome of wisdom on how humans should build sustainable communities that care for creation and resources, are spiritually aware, and accept stewardship, responsibility and restraint. The chapter criticizes the destructive hand of humankind, almost in a messianic way, especially in the industrial age, and the redemptive nature of God’s action, sometimes through punishment although often through the options God offers human beings to avoid self-destruction.