The common goal of the contributors is to illuminate sexuality as a crucial site of conflict and dissent both within and between religious traditions. Thus, we have a collection of ten essays on themes emerging from the social scientific study of religion and sexuality in an array of cultural contexts. Together the essays examine four themes: 1) fecundism as an ideology of reproduction, 2) sexual identity and the life cycle, 3) binary sexual categories, and 4) relations of power and domination.

Controversial megachurch pastor Mark Driscoll proclaimed from a conference stage in 2013, "I know who made the environment and he's coming back and going to burn it all up. So yes, I drive an SUV." The comment, which Driscoll later explained away as a joke, highlights what has been a long history of religious anti-environmentalism. Given how firmly entrenched this sentiment has been, surprising inroads have been made by a new movement with few financial resources, which is deeply committed to promoting green religious traditions and creating a new environmental ethic. To Care for Creation chronicles this movement and explains how it has emerged despite institutional and cultural barriers, as well as the hurdles posed by logic and practices that set religious environmental organizations apart from the secular movement. Ellingson takes a deep dive into the ways entrepreneurial activists tap into and improvise on a variety of theological, ethical, and symbolic traditions in order to issue a compelling call to arms that mobilizes religious audiences. Drawing on interviews with the leaders of more than sixty of these organizations, Ellingson deftly illustrates how activists borrow and rework resources from various traditions to create new meanings for religion, nature, and the religious person's duty to the natural world.

Religious traditions provide the stories and rituals that define the core values of church members. Yet modern life in America can make those customs seem undesirable, even impractical. As a result, many congregations refashion church traditions so they may remain powerful and salient. How do these transformations occur? How do clergy and worshipers negotiate which aspects should be preserved or discarded?
Focusing on the innovations of several mainline Protestant churches in the San Francisco Bay Area, Stephen Ellingson's "The Megachurch and the Mainline" provides new understandings of the transformation of spiritual traditions. For Ellingson, these particular congregations typify a new type of Lutheranism--one which combines the evangelical approaches that are embodied in the growing legion of megachurches with American society's emphasis on pragmatism and consumerism. Here Ellingson provides vivid descriptions of congregations as they sacrifice hymns in favor of rock music and scrap traditional white robes and stoles for Hawaiian shirts, while also making readers aware of the long history of similar attempts to Americanize the Lutheran tradition.
This is an important examination of a religion in flux--one that speaks to the growing popularity of evangelicalism in America.

Controversial megachurch pastor Mark Driscoll proclaimed from a conference stage in 2013, "I know who made the environment and he's coming back and going to burn it all up. So yes, I drive an SUV." The comment, which Driscoll later explained away as a joke, highlights what has been a long history of religious anti-environmentalism. Given how firmly entrenched this sentiment has been, surprising inroads have been made by a new movement with few financial resources, which is deeply committed to promoting green religious traditions and creating a new environmental ethic. To Care for Creation chronicles this movement and explains how it has emerged despite institutional and cultural barriers, as well as the hurdles posed by logic and practices that set religious environmental organizations apart from the secular movement. Ellingson takes a deep dive into the ways entrepreneurial activists tap into and improvise on a variety of theological, ethical, and symbolic traditions in order to issue a compelling call to arms that mobilizes religious audiences. Drawing on interviews with the leaders of more than sixty of these organizations, Ellingson deftly illustrates how activists borrow and rework resources from various traditions to create new meanings for religion, nature, and the religious person's duty to the natural world.