ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the development of an ecological hermeneutics, some of the problems that its practitioners have encountered and some of the new possibilities that it has opened up for biblical scholars to make their unique contribution to the healing of Earth’s ills. Laudato Si’ models a particular way of reading the Scriptures: allowing the ecological crisis to be the context in which believers might listen to their sacred texts. The Ecojustice Principles also alerted readers to “the voice” of Earth as heard in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, a voice raised both in celebration and in lament and resistance. As ecological hermeneutics has developed internationally, there has been a growing recognition that the Bible is often “an inconvenient text” for ecologists, that it is not consistently eco-sensitive, that it frequently portrays the earth being ravaged, particularly in writings of an apocalyptic tendency.
