From the book...

"I see in the Genesis creation stories a God who delights in all life and who gives men and women the vocation to nurture the world's abundance. This creativity is the ongoing artistry of a vast congregation. Many creatures and natural forms build life, coming together in awareness, nourishment, and delight.

"Biblical ethics do not attribute holiness to features of the landscape. Instead they draw all of life - domestic creatures, wild creatures, and the land itself - into the politics of the covenant relationship where each has distinctive rights and duties. Stories of 'the fall' express how such moral relationships have broken apart to yield sin, oppression, and pollution. Jesus' call for a new kingdom is a call not to withdraw from the world, but to make these relationships right. The hart of the biblical hope is a desire to reestablish a nurturing ecosystem of peace among all peoples and with all species, so that each may live while all worship the Lord together."

"The Bible presumes what modern experience has confirmed: the health of all species depends significantly upon the moral health of the human species. ...Hebrew prophets understood environmental pollution to be nature's experience of human oppression."

"Let us regard Jesus as the Lamb, God incarnate, embracing human flesh and all the earth's liveliness as well as the soil from which we are formed. When we think about Jesus, let us remember the weak of all species and the vulnerable systems of life support, for we may meet Christ among them. And when we deal directly with the natural world, let our love, respect, and careful behavior express the image of God."