The Prince-Chavanne Chair in Christian Business Ethics is sponsoring a public lecture on November 2nd, at 2:00pm in the Belin Chapel, Houston Christian University, Houston, TX. This lecture is interdisciplinary, and Inaugurates for the Prince-Chavanne Chair a three-year consideration of Christian perspectives on sustainability. The lecture, Megacity Sacred Spaces: Creation & Community or Hot Spots, Flash Floods, and Food Deserts, will consider Christian environmental values not just expressed via theology and sermons –but as they emerge from the buildings and landscapes Christians create and manage. The lecture is free of charge and open to the public.
Specifically her lecture will discusses today's megacities require complex infrastructure and large land areas to support their burgeoning populations. Cities pave farm and forest tracts, degrade watersheds, modify local microclimates, and suffer from insufficient food access and green spaces for the less affluent. Religion has played an axial role in urban planning for many centuries. However, today's urban and suburban megachurches often adopt corporate strategies for landscaping, thereby contributing to environmentally negative trends, such as the expansion of impermeable surfaces and the reduction of heat-reducing tree cover. As participants in urban environmental planning, Christian institutions range from indifferent to highly engaged and accountable. Church responses are rooted, not just in Creation theology, but in a Christian ethos of participation in the greater civic community. Christian environmental values are not just expressed via theology and sermons –they emerge from the buildings and landscapes Christians create and manage.
Susan Bratton bio:
She is the author of four books on Christianity, spirituality and environmental ethics. The most recent is The Spirit of the Appalachian Trail: Community, Environment, and Belief on a Long-Distance Hiking Path. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2012. She has previously published: Environmental Values in Christian Art (SUNY Press); Six Billion and More: Human Population Regulation and Christian Ethics, and Christianity Wilderness and Wildlife: The Original Desert Solitaire. Dr Bratton is presently teaching courses in environmental subfields such as conserving biodiversity, forest ecology, and environment and society. Her career began with the U.S. National Park Service, when she served as director of a field laboratory in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and as coordinator of a research cooperative at the Institute of Ecology, University of Georgia. In addition to publishing numerous scientific articles on subjects ranging from fire management in parks, to the impacts of wild hogs, to restoration of disturbed high mountain floras, she has been writing and teaching in the environmental ethics. Her recent field projects and those conducted by her graduate and undergraduate students include studies of historic landscape change and invasion by exotic plant species. She has also recently published articles and book chapters on ecology and religion, Rachel Carson and ocean ethics, the ethics of commercial fishing, and Christian ecotheology and the Hebrew Scriptures. She loves teaching, especially in the field. Her other passions include hiking, old time music, and Baylor Sports, particularly Lady Bears Basketball.
A list of the last four years of publications is found on Google Scholar at: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=omPcqRoAAAAJ&hl=en
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Tim Ewest
Associate Professor
Houston Baptist University
Houston TX
(281) 649-3325
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