Alastair McIntosh – Peace activist and author.
Perhaps the most pressing question facing us, is how do we live our resistance to the injustice and violence we are embedded in? And in particular with regard to climate change.
For nearly twenty years Scottish writer, activist and human ecologist, Alastair McIntosh, has harnessed a deep spiritual commitment to nonviolence, to positive and radical effect. In the field of environmental protection his approach was instrumental in stopping a multinational corporation from turning a majestic Hebridean mountain into ‘the gravel pit of Europe’. And in the field of land reform in Scotland, in empowering the community of the Isle of Eigg in buying out their laird.
What might be the lessons and challenges for us in the north of whatever faith or none, also struggling for justice but in the charged context of a past that continues to divide us?
In his ground-breaking books, Alastair McIntosh links violence to the consumerism that helps to drive climate change. In his talk and afterwards in conversation with Bernadette McAliskey, he will explore the roots of violence within each one of us and how our religious traditions were conscripted to its cause. He will explore insights to be learned from nonviolence that can help to reduce our addictions to consumerism and foster solidarity. In so doing, he calls for a “spiritual activism” that better integrates inner faith with our outer life in communities, including importantly political life. This opens up fresh vision for the place of faith as truth from the heart in this, the third millennium of Christianity.
Professor Alastair McIntosh is a Quaker with honorary positions at the University of Glasgow and Edinburgh University’s divinity school. His books include Soil and Soul on land reform, Hell and High Water on climate change, Spiritual Activism on leadership, and most recently, Poacher’s Pilgrimage about war and an ecology of the imagination. He regularly guest lectures on nonviolence at the UK Defence Academy and the Irish Defence Force at Curragh.
Alastair on the Irish Context
“It was not until I left home on the Isle of Lewis and went to study on the mainland, that I came to understand that I was from a background where hard-line Protestant views were embedded into us about Ireland. Only gradually, did I come to see that the course of history had wronged the indigenous Irish Catholics, but also, had arguably wrong-footed poor Scots settlers who had moved to Ulster.”
Alastair on Nonviolence
“Violence has been democratised. Anybody can make a bomb – as schoolboys we even knew how to do so ourselves with common agricultural chemicals. But to live in peace takes guts of a different sort…. But how can nonviolence be actively explored, and constantly re-empowered, against the backdrop of ongoing pressures to take recourse to violence? And those pressures, in the face of so many social, political, environmental and religious injustices in our world?”
Venue: City Hotel (Alexander Suite)
Admission: Free
Link to the full Conversation
“The environment is emerging as a new battleground for human rights.” (Global Witness 2016)
Things they say about Alastair McIntosh and his books:
- “World-changing” – George Monbiot, Guardian writer
- “Very, very inspiring.” – Sr. Miriam MacGillis, Genesis Farm, USA
- “One of the world’s leading environmental campaigners” – William Crawley, BBC
- “Truly mental” – Thom Yorke, Radiohead
LINKS TO ALASTAIR’S ONLINE MEDIA Home Page