While conducting research for the book Green Politics: The Global Promise (1984), Charlene Spretnak discovered that many European Greens, especially in West Germany, were ambivalent about the linking of spiritual values with Green principles -- ecological wisdom, social responsiblity, grassroots democracy, nonviolence, and gender equality. Among Greens in North America, however, she found the link to be quite strong. In The Spiritual Dimension of Green Politics, which was originally presented as the 1984 annual lecture of the E.F. Schumacher Society of America, Spretnak applies Green insights to three questions: "Who are we? What is our nature?" "How shall we relate to our context, the rest of the natural world?" "How shall we relate to other people?"


"Spretnak set herself the formidable task of examining spirituality and its role in Green politics, and her insights were, in my estimation, unsurpassable. She was able to deal with both those concepts - both difficult, both often minunderstood, bot often opposed - in a fresh and inspiring way, without making spirituality seem drippy and sentimental or Green seem useless and utopian. Her lecture was absolutely original, breaking new ground in a way that has simply not been done before."
- Kirkpatrcik Sale, Resurgence (UK)

"This book presents the questions and problems of Green spirituality in gentle, incisive, compassionately pragmatic terms. It is essential to the development of Green politics in America."
- Gary Snyder, poet and bioregionalist


The Spiritual Dimension of Green Politics was originally published by the E.F. Schumacher Society of America in 1983 as a booklet entitled Green Politics: The Spiritual Dimension. It was subsequently published by Bear & Company, Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1986 with the title The Spiritual Dimension of Green Politics.