Intro, pp. 4-7

"Recent economic restructuring that lessens governmental involvement and seeks to promote maximum profit gives preference to the values of profit and efficiency over other values like sustainability and economic justice. This restructuring encourages corporations to maximize their profits. The argument is that corporate profit will lead to more jobs. Often the opposite occurs – workers are deemed "inefficient" and replaced by machines. Moreover, a large amount of profit being made in the global economy is not from productive investment, but from extractive investment in the form of financial speculation. This is nothing more than sophisticated gambling and does nothing to create jobs or wealth for communities. Simply put, when economies are structured primarily around profit, the interests of money will be more important than the interests of people or the environment." [Page 6]

1, pp. 17-19

"While large-scale farmers are certainly attuned to the tastes and desires of the market (as is any good businessperson), they often seem to be out of touch with what is best for the land, for our environment, and for the human community. . . .
     Small-scale farmers, in contrast, are more concerned that their farming practices exist in harmony with their environment and that they promote thriving local communities." [Page 22]

2, pp. 34-36

"The Korean concept of jeong can be helpful in reconfiguring and reimagining love in light of unequal relationships. This concept emerges out of relationships that are often not based on mutuality. Jeong emerges within the paradoxical and ambiguous space between hate and love, the oppressed and the oppressor, the self and the other, and the divine and the world." [Page 35]

"Jeong actively calls us to recognize the Self in the Other as a form of collaborative compassion. This collaboration with compassion is not one that seeks to maintain the status quo or to perpetuate oppression. Rather, such collaboration and solidarity, born out of connectedness, seeks to work toward emancipation for all. A popular saying in Korea is "you die--I die, you live--I live." This phrase which embodies the extreme sense of jeong that emerges within relationality, might be uncomfortable for the Western individualistic sensibility." [Pages 35-36]

"A crucial example of Jesus' embodiment of jeong in his ministry is illustrated in the way he addressed Judas in the Garden of Gethsemane. When Jesus is betrayed by one of his own disciples, rather than renouncing Judas, Jesus greets him with the aching word of jeong as "friend" (Matt. 26:50). Jeong can make possible an unraveling of suffering, a new connectedness, and a process of becoming--a new genesis. The metaphor of heart in jeong resonates with the metaphor of the unleavened bread that rises with yeast, as a symbol of the process of the "kin-dom" of God. For the arising of jeong (like the small yeast) within relationality is what generates the power toward the emergence of the vision and realization of the basileia ("kingdom") Jesus proclaimed." [Page 36]

"Perhaps the most important strategy is to pay fair wages and offer just working conditions.  ... One direct way of moving towards just economic relationships is to actively support unionization of childcare workers. It is important to know and follow legal standards for wages, overtime, and social security payments. These are minimum standards however.  A higher standard would be based on a living wage for your area. This information can usually be found through a local newspaper or economic justice group." [Page 37]

[Note: Information on local living wage can be found by contacting the Central Labor Council in your area or the local afffiliate of Interfaith Worker Justice. ~ Craig Myrbo]

"Scripture and Christian theology can and have been used to justify over-consumption. Traditional interpretations of the Genesis creation stories provide a foundation for a dominating relationship between humanity and the rest of creation. The first creation story, beginning at Genesis 1:26, says: 'Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion. . . . Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea.' Some people take the words 'dominion' and 'subdue' quite literally, believing that humans have a God-given right to harness, dominate, and subdue all of creation for human needs and wants. The second creation story in Genesis 2 says that God placed humans in the garden to 'till it and keep it.' Although this passage denotes stewardship, the prevailing interpretation is of ownership, use, and exploitation. Unfortunately, many Christians interpret these Scriptures to mean that the earth was made for humans and humans alone. [Pages 42-43]

"Change is difficult but not impossible."  [Page 45]

3, pp. 45-48

"One of the most difficult aspects of responsible consuming is knowing where to go in your  community for a variety of  consumer goods that are both environmentally sustainable and economically  just. ... churches can serve as leaders" (in acting as clearinghouses) [Page 47]

[Comment: It is very difficult because most sellers do not care. ~ Craig Myrbo]

"The deleterious effects of corporate and government policies on the environment, on rates of world hunger, on the wages of domestic and international farm workers, on rural communities, and on the healthiness and safety of our food are evident. As Wendell Berry has written, 'The global economy does not exist to help the communities and localities of the globe. It exists to siphon the wealth of those communities and places into a few bank account. To this economy, democracy and the values of the religious traditions mean absolutely zero." [Page 53]

[The author includes helpful lists of ways to rethink our eating habits]

"The present system separates food and eaters from each other. In the process it reinforces household ignorance of what food is; of how to appreciate and buy food; of how to eat sensibly and healthily; and of how to pass along the Christian values of gratitude, enjoyment, and sharing to our children." [Page 59]

"Holding corporations accountable is beneficial not only to local communities and to the environment, but to the corporations themselves. Businesses increasingly need a stable, educated workforce, good infrastructure, and markets to buy their goods and services. Simply looking out for the good of shareholders while ignoring the good of communities will, in the long run, be a losing option. We are no longer in the era when 'What is good for GM is good for America.' It is time to hold corporations accountable to particular communities and particular places. Only then will economic globalization cease to be a 'race to the bottom.'" [Page 75]

The centerpiece of the Kwanzaa celebration is the Nguzo Saba or the seven principles of Kwanzaa: umoja, kujichaqulia, ujima, ujamaa, nia, kuumba, and imani; respectively, unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith. While these virtues or principles are specifically applied to African American communal development and culture ..., I believe that they have far-reaching appeal across cultures and communities confronting environmental injustices." [Page 82]

6, pp. 82-86

[Comment: This particular analysis is a good confession for many social justice groups to speak aloud together. Then we might better affirm the many different gifts needed to work together for a common good. ~Wesley White]

8, pp. 101-104

8, pp. 104-107

8. pp. 107-111

9, pp. 115-118

10, pp. 130-133

11, pp. 146-149

"This chapter examines three popularly held but questionable beliefs. The first is that 'normal' or 'typical' persons are 'like us,' mostly white and hard-working but able to participate in some modicum of affluence. A second assumption is that affluence and poverty are not structurally related to each other in our political economy, so that people occupy their places in society due to random luck or individual hard work (or lack thereof). The third assumption is that people traditionally called 'the poor' are distinct and separate from everyone else and what happens to them will never seep into the lives of the affluent.
     "My thesis is that unless these assumptions are challenged, we are not likely to realize that the affluent also have a stake in the struggle for justice." [Page 151]

"...we must remember that moral intelligence is born in the heart and thus we must probe the links between social and personal transformation. One way of understanding the divinity of Jesus is that he became divine precisely because he became fully human, relating compassionately with sisters and brothers, with earth's creatures, and with the universe itself. . . . Our pressing work is to understand the challenges not only of the political economy, but also of our own moral and spiritual integrity." [Page 158]

"In taking on a justice-centered agenda for change, the good news is that we can begin to live fuller lives as we rebuild more inclusive, hospitable, communities across class, race, sex-gender, national, and religious divides." [Page 159]