Climate, Catastrophe, and Faith

How Changes in Climate Drive Religious Upheaval

Bibliographic Data

ID19965405
AuthorsPhilip Jenkins (Distinguished Professor of History, Baylor University, corresponding author), Phillip Jenkins (0000-0002-3698-2144)
Year2021
Publication date2021-07-01
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueClimate, Catastrophe, and Faith (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University PressNew York (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/oso/9780197506219.001.0001
OpenAlexW4253789809
Open LibraryOL34689231M
ISBN9780197506219
LanguageEN
Citations received9

Repeatedly through history, the world has been subject to severe climate-driven shocks, which have caused famine, disease, violence, social upheaval, and mass migration. Commonly, such episodes have been understood in religious terms, through the language of apocalypse, millennium, and Judgment. Often too, such eras have sparked far-reaching changes in the nature of religion and spirituality. Depending on the circumstances, the response to climatic visitations might include explosions in religious passion and commitment; the stirring of mystical and apocalyptic expectations; waves of religious scapegoating and persecution; or the spawning of new religious movements and revivals. In many cases, such responses have had lasting impacts, to the point of fundamentally reshaping particular faith traditions. From those eras have emerged passionate sects—some political and theocratic, some revivalistic and enthusiastic, others millenarian and subversive. The movements and ideas emerging from such conditions might last for many decades and become a familiar part of the religious landscape, although with their origins in particular moments of crisis increasingly consigned to remote memory. By stirring conflicts and provoking persecutions that defined themselves in religious terms, such eras have redrawn the world’s religious maps and created the global concentrations of believers as we know them today. Whether we are looking at the Christian tradition or at Jews, Muslims, or Buddhists, the history of religions must take account of this climate dimension. In the modern world, it is very likely that the growing climate crisis will likely have a comparable religious impact across much of the global South

Environmental ethics · Faith · Geography · Millenarianism · Mysticism · Persecution · Political science · Politics · Religious pluralism · Spirituality · Theology · History · Law · Philosophy · Religion, Ecology, and Ethics · Religion

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