ABSTRACT
Framing an issue as a crossroads is one ethical resource that surfaced in what the German philosopher/historian Karl Jaspers named the Axial Age. Recent Biblical scholarship has pointed to an alternative worldview to our unsustainable extractive economy embedded in the Hebrew Bible, which provides resources for a position that is spiritually grounded, environmentally informed and politically empowering. Historically, the writings of the prophet Hosea are earliest literary source for the description of the eternal covenant or 'treaty' established by the Divine. This vision of the covenant community characterised by ecological sustainability and social justice continued to be expressed through the Hebrew prophets, and was also enacted in certain agricultural practices of the Sabbath of the Land. Social workers have invaluable conceptual and practice skills for facilitating cross-sector environmental leadership in government, business, civil society, and communities and pressing for environmental, economic and social policy changes that would transition communities and countries from fossil fuel economies to a renewable energy economy.
