"This work makes a much-needed contribution to teaching and learning about the various forms of religious belief and action in our world." - Kevin J. Christiano, University of Notre Dame

The collapse of industrial civilization is rapidly unfolding and offers us an opportunity far beyond mere survival, even as it renders absurd any attempts to “fix” or prevent the end of the world as we have known it. Sacred Demise is about the transformation of human consciousness and the emergence of a new paradigm as a result discovering our purpose in the collapse process, thereby coming home to our ultimate place in the universe. Our willingness to consciously embark on the journey with openness and uncertainty may be advantageous for engendering a quantum evolutionary leap for our species and for the earth community. "We face an awesome internal transition that will take us into very unfamiliar territory and will call upon our deeper resources. Carolyn Baker's Sacred Demise is a courageous, wise, and compassionate guide for us all through this inner journey." Michael Brownlee, Co-founder, Transition Boulder County "Carolyn speaks with a confidence that never flinches from entering into the hardest truths of our times, or from the most difficult truths about the culture we are immersed in, so that we might emerge from the chrysalis of global crisis with open hearts and a renewed way of living on Earth together."--Juan Santos, Fourth World Blogspot

""This work makes a much-needed contribution to teaching and learning about the various forms of religious belief and action in our world.""--Kevin J. Christiano, University of Notre Dame.

Explores the renewed American quest for spirituality from historical, sociological, and literary perspectives.

A leading scholar, cultural historian, and Catholic priest who spent more than fifty years writing about our engagement with the Earth, Thomas Berry possessed prophetic insight into the rampant destruction of ecosystems and the extinction of species. In this book he makes a persuasive case for an interreligious dialogue that can better confront the environmental problems of the twenty-first century. These erudite and keenly sympathetic essays represent Berry's best work, covering such issues as human beings' modern alienation from nature and the possibilities of future, regenerative forms of religious experience. Asking that we create a new story of the universe and the emergence of the Earth within it, Berry resituates the human spirit within a sacred totality.

This text shows counter-intuitively, that the secular enterprise that everyday sociology appears to be pursuing is actually not what is really going on at sociology's deepest level. Sociology today is in fact animated by sacred impulses, driven by sacred commitments, and serves a sacred project. The book re-asserts a vision for what sociology is most important for, in contrast with its current commitments, and calls sociologists back to a more honest, fair, and healthy vision of its purpose.