Behind all great science is a philosophy that binds those who inquire. Increasingly, experts in religion have re-discovered bedrock tenets in their faiths to protect an ailing planet. The integration of religious insight into the challenges for human stewardship of our world has brought a legion of new followers to the environmental movement.

Dr. Stephen Scharper is a renowned author, professor and scholar of religion and the environment. An Associate Professor with the Centre for the Study of Religion and the Centre for Environment at the University of Toronto, he is the former president of the Religious Education Association of the U.S. and Canada.

A much-sought-after lecturer, Dr. Scharper's research and teaching is in the areas of Catholic social ethics, environmental ethics, religious ethics and ecology, and the ethics of violence and nonviolence. He is the author of Redeeming the Time: A Political Theology of the Environment, and co-author with his wife, Hilary, a social-cultural anthropologist, of The Green Bible. He is co-editing a new volume, The Natural City: Reenvisioning Human Settlements. But, Dr. Scharper's appeal is far from the strictly academic. Since 2005, he has served as a Faith and Ethics Columnist of The Toronto Star, Canada's largest newspaper. He appears as a commentator on CTV News, VISION-TV, CityPluse 24, and CBC's Counterspin as well as CBC Radio's "Tapestry" and "Sounds Like Canada."

He has also contributed over 200 reviews and articles including Religious Studies Review, Worldviews, Environmental Philosophy, The University of Toronto Quarterly, Social Analysis, Commonwealth, America, Hour, The Montreal Gazette, The Walrus, and The Toronto Globe and Mail.

Dr. Scharper has taught at McGill University, Prescott College, the University of Waterloo, the University of Vermont, and the University of Notre Dame, where he held the John A. O'Brien Chair in Ethics. A unique blend of scholarly and approachable, Dr. Scharper has presented at the Religious Education Association of the U.S. and Canada, the Christians Farmers Federation of Ontario, the Toronto Catholic District School Board, the U.S. Navy ROTC Leadership Group, and Later Life Learning associations across North America. Dr. Scharper is a sentinel who proves that religion and the environment are mutually inclusive.

PRESENTATIONS

• Climate Change: What's Faith Got to Do with It?
• Of Faith and Fungi: The Greening of Religion in Our Ecological Moment
• Following the Cosmos in a Consumer Society: Faith, Cosmology, and the Common Good
• Hope in a Time of Climate Change: The Environmental Crisis as a Spiritual Crisis
• Learning to Play Well with Other Species: What Religions Can Offer Our Environmental Movement