Quakers and Creation Care: Potentials and Pitfalls for an Ecotheology of Friends (Chapter Five in Quakers, Creation Care, and Sustainability)

While Friends have a strong tradition of activism around the social justice issues of each era, we also tend to spiritualize our faith, disconnecting it from the material world. Environmental concerns are arguably one of the most important social justice issues of of our time, and in many ways, activism, advocacy, and lifestyle witness seem like natural ways for Friends to engage in social justice in this time in history. This essay will explore some of the historical and theological strengths Friends can draw from our tradition that can help build a particularly Quaker ecotheology, as well as some of the portions of the Friends tradition that get in the way of practicing our faith in a more sustainable way

Climatologists, Theologians, and Prophets: Toward an Ecotheology of Critical Hope

As people of faith begin to recognize in larger numbers that our relationship with creation is one of the most important challenges facing us today, I find myself pondering what we have to offer the environmental movement. The Christian scriptures begin and end with stories of God and creation: the oft-mentioned creation stories of Genesis 1-2, and the eschatological reflections on the new heaven and earth, and the river and tree of life in Revelation 21-22. (1) In between are the stories of the people of faith, and how we interact with God in the midst of creation. These stories place us in the larger picture and give us metaphorical concepts of where we come from, where we are going, and who we are in relation to all that is created. Within this transcendent story, each of us comes from a particular context, a place and time, an individual journey of relational connection to God and to others attempting to follow God\u27s way. In this time and context, our stories are necessarily bound up with the ways that we treat one another and the rest of the natural world, but hope and purpose often feel elusive in religious and nonreligious settings alike

Shining a Light on the QGP - Electroweak Probes Experimental Summary

Objects which are only subject to the electroweak force are an ideal probe of QCD in high density and temperature environments as they carry information about the conditions during their production out of the QGP without interacting with it. Thus they can be used to characterize the initial state as well as several properties of the QGP and its evolution. Within this article the recent results regarding these electroweak probes presented at the 9$^{th}$ Hard Probes Conference (Aix-les-Bains, France, 2018) will be summarized. In particular the following questions will be addressed: Can we determine the necessary energy and particle density for the QGP creation using electromagnetic probes? Can we use light-by-light scattering in heavy-ion collisions to do precision tests of QED and measure the magnetic field of the QGP? How are quark jets modified by the presence of the QGP? What can we learn about the initial state and scaling properties in pp, p(d)-A and A-A collisions from the production of high \pt\ photons, Z$^0$ and W$^\pm$ bosons? In the version provided on arXiv, additional plots are included in the appendix with respect to the version submitted for publication in the journal.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures, 9th Hard Probes Conference (Aix-les-Bains, France, 2018), proceedings with additional figure