Publisher's Synopsis
Salomon is back with an all-new book on Christian ecotheology, with the goal of "breaking the silence" on "political polarization" and "compassion fatigue." Salomon candidly takes on positively, constructively, and sympathetically, the highly controversial, highly taboo, yet highly urgent topics of "political polarization" and "compassion fatigue" in politics and religion. All this is within an ecological-planetary context, including animals, disability, and neurodiversity. "Have Mercy on Me" is Salomon's most personal, creative, and accessible work yet. Salomon not only confesses his own stories of brushes with "political polarization" and struggles with "compassions fatigue." Salomon also confesses how the God of the Bible has helped him recover from "compassion fatigue" both personally and politically, helping Salomon to not give-up on the ecological struggle. Salomon identifies "compassion fatigue" as a major problem. He bases his conclusions on his own hard-won experiences, the experiences of other activists, and extensive research. "Compassion Fatigue" is a major issue which green movements need to take more seriously then they have, to help move the planetary agenda beyond political impasse to ecological resolution. At its heart, Salomon maintains that "compassion fatigue" occurs because we lack appropriate integration between our highest ideals and our everyday realities. "Have Mercy on Me, an Ecological Sinner" not only provides fresh critical analysis of the previsions, hypocrisies, and atrocities of various religious and secular movements throughout human history from Christianity to Communism. It also offers an alternative, more positive, empowering Christian ecological vision, and a much more hopeful, satisfying scenario about the future of Life on Earth. Moving beyond partisan politics, polemic posturing, divisive thinking, and false choices, Salomon crosses academic disciplines, political ideologies, religious faiths, even oceans, in an attempt to create a more inclusive, accessible, and doctrinally sound, yet uniquely Christian ecological vision. Salomon argues for ecological activism without partisan politics, environmental ethics without religious guilt, deep ecology without heretical doctrine, and God without organized religion. Salomon brings together all his secular academic training, Christian faith, Jewish identity, political commitments, previous works, and his life experiences being a person with Asperger's. He creates a Christian ecopsychology which contends that there is a relationship between the alienation of modern humanity, institutional animal cruelty, and the planetary crisis which must be redressed through personal relationships, political empowerment, and ecological hope.
