Finger, Thomas N. Self, Earth & Society: Alienation & Trinitarian Transformation. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1997. 

Abstract

The twentieth century has been one of unparalleled and rapid transience. It is the century that started with the telephone and ends with e-mail. Jobs and homes have come to be changed at the rate of a half-dozen or more in a lifetime. Air and water pollution has brought the well-being of the earth itself into question. And political revolutions have rocked the world and soaked the soil of entire continents in blood. If there is a key word for the twentieth century, it might be alienation. Amid increasing and sometimes chaotic complexity, individuals struggle to attain an integrated and stable self. Ecological consciousness has helped post-Enlightenment humans to see how estranged we are from the earth. Societies, too, are internally divided. This profound and important book recognizes and reveals the connections between these three alienations. People are cut off from themselves, for instance, partly because they are cut off from the natural world around them. Thomas Finger here undertakes a probing "critical conversation" with culture, astutely examining and describing the alienations that haunt us all, and outlining a "constructive trinitarian response" that might mark the beginning of true healing for self, earth, and society.