I joined several other contributors in an issue of Christian Reflection dedicated to environmental ethics and theology.

Bratton, S.P., 2012, Appreciating wilderness. In: Caring for Creation, Christian Reflection, 28-35.

The City of Waco finally released the very nicely formatted document on the Brazos and Bosque River corridor.  I wrote one chapter on ecology for the pub. Copies are available on the City of Waco website.

Reference: Bratton, S.P., 2012, Section 2: the Ecology [of the Brazos and Bosque River corridor], pp. 21-30 and selected photographs in City of Waco, Parks and Recreation Department, National Park Service, Trails and Conservation Assistance Program, US Army Corps of Engineers, For All Our Lifetimes: A Vision for the Brazos and Bosque Rivers – Waco, TX, Waco,: City of Waco Parks and Recreation, 62 pp.

Deep Blue: Critical Reflections on Nature, Religion and Water, just published by Equinox Press for2008 includes a chapter (9) by Susan Bratton entitled “The spirit of the edge: Rachel Carson and numinous experience between land and sea.” 

Susan Bratton, 2008, Thinking like a mackeral: Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea-Wind as a source for a trans-ecotonal sea ethic, Ch. 5, pp. 79-93 in Lisa H. Sideris and Kathleen Dean Moore, Rachel Carson: Legacy and Challenge, Albany: State University of New York Press, has been released in both a hard cover and a paperback edition, as of May 2008.

My article on “Ecology and religion” in the Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science is just about to receive wider circulation as the volume goes into a paperback edition.  This will make the entire project more accessible for class use.  The paperback edition has been released as of April 2008.

Two encyclopedia articles, by Susan Bratton, are in press for the Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy soon to be published by Thompson/Gale.  The articles are an overview of “Oceans” including applications of the precautionary principle and of ecosystemic equity, and a short article on St. Francis of Assisi.

In 2006, Oxford University Press published The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science.  I contributed the chapter on “Ecology and religion” pp. 207- 225. 

The chapter covers the relationship of world religions to both ecological and environmental science.  Topics include: religion as a reservoir of ecological knowledge; indigenous religions and environmental management; deities as personifications of ecological processes; sacred texts, including the Bible and Koran, as sources of ecologial instruction; historic western religious values and science; Romanticism; post-modern dialog; the impact of ecological and environmental science on religion; and coversely, the impact of ecological science on religion. The article concludes with a discussion of globalization.

“The Spirit of the Edge: Rachel Carson and Numinous Experience between Land and Sea”

is currently in press in a book edited by Sylvie Shaw and Andrew Francis, entitled Deep Blue published by Equinox Press in London, UK. The volume should be available sometime in 2008.

Abstract: The Edge of the Sea and A Sense of Wonder by Rachel Carson encourage her readers to perceive the sea as the primal source of life and therefore as the essence of human origins. She treats the boundary between land and sea as a numinous zone, where people can enter into another realm and develop a sense of awe concerning both the beauty and the diversity of the oceans.  Spiritual experience with the Edge will prompt a sea ethic, where even the mud flats become ecosystems worth conserving. Carson’s writings champion restoration of the silence and solitude of the Edge, as a locale fostering human fascination with and respect for nature. The chapter briefly discusses Carson’s Presbyterian upbringing and American Protestant traditions of encounter with the divine or spiritual self-actualization in wild landscapes.