Religion and Planetary Climate Crisis

Overview & Synopsis

No religious production has ever happened on a planet with 425+ ppm CO2 such that rapid climate change is the evolutionary and biogeochemical carrier within which all future religious production will by definition occur. This Reprint investigates how various theological positions may be responding to imminent climate regime shifts and how the sociology of religion may inform readers on how human groups are (or are not) using religion to organize around climate change. It explores how some religious actors are influencing cultural and social discourses around rapid climate change and dwelling practices within shifting bioecologies of place, including at the interfaces of technology and religion and of sustainability and religion, and how scholars should even conceive of the category of "religion" and how to teach to this category. Concepts of religious health within religious communities who may (or may not) be responding to the negative health impacts of runaway climate change and how religious ethics may (or may not) be changing to address the normative elements of runaway climate chaos are also investigated. Such scholarship occurs within the larger theme of the Reprint of Religion and Planetary Climate Crisis, where this crisis is understood to be biogeochemical, especially in geological time frames, but also political, economic, technological, ethical, and, therefore, biocultural. This opens up the need for humanities scholars to rapidly address rapid global heating in their research and teaching, and, thus, the requirement for the field of religious studies/theology to rapidly do the same.