Reading with Earth - (T&t Clark Explorations in Theology, Gender and Ecology) by Anne Elvey (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Winner of the 2023 ANZATS Award for the Best Monograph by an Established Scholar

Applying a re-envisioned, ecological, feminist hermeneutics, this book builds on two important responses to twentieth- and twenty-first-century situations of ecological trauma, especially the complex contexts of climate change and cross-species relations: first, ecological feminism; second, ecological hermeneutics in the Earth Bible tradition.

By way of readings of selected biblical texts, this book suggests that an ecological feminist aesthetic, bringing present situation and biblical text into conversation through engagement with activism and literature, principally poetry, is helpful in decolonizing ethics. Such an approach is both informed by and speaks back to the new materialism in ecological criticism.

Review Quotes

The extraordinary breadth in this braided conversation between the biblical text and contemporary ecological contexts is impressive. Elvey combines analysis with creativity, complexities with poetry, nuance with passion. This work challenges, inspires and exhorts us to change and to imagine the future of our world differently.


This work builds upon the ecological hermeneutic of the Earth Bible project, while drawing also from feminist theological readings, the new materialism, indigenous scholarship and activism, and poetry, all in the service of reading Luke "with the Earth." This is a sophisticated, passionate, and timely reading. The Earth cries out, and Elvey enables us to hear these cries.


With great expertise and the fresh vision of a poet, Elvey draws disparate sources together into a searching eco-feminist conversation. This is a compelling appraisal of what it takes to face the traumas of ecological damage, colonialism and patriarchy and move towards the flourishing of all, including our more-than-human kin.

About the Author

Anne Elvey is Adjunct Research Fellow at Monash University, Australia, and Honorary Research Associate at University of Divinity, Melbourne, Australia.