Religion in the Anthropocene

By Heinrich Bedford-Strohm

This book charts a new direction in humanities scholarship through serious engagement with the geopolitical concept of the Anthropocene. Drawing on religious stwhatudies, theology, social science, history and philosophy, and can be broadly termed the environmental humanities, this collection represents a groundbreaking critical analysis of diverse narratives on the Anthropocene.
 
The contributors to this volume recognize that the Anthropocene began as a geological concept, the age of the humans, but that its implications are much wider than this.

Will the Anthropocene have good or bad ethical outcomes?
 
Does the Anthropocene idea challenge the possibility of a sacred Nature, which shores up many religious approaches to environmental ethics?
 
Or is the Anthropocene a secularized theological anthropology more properly dealt with through traditional concepts from Catholic social teaching on human ecology?
 
Do theological traditions, such as Christology, reinforce negative aspects of the Anthropocene?
 
Not all contributors in this volume agree with the answers to these different questions. Readers will be challenged, provoked, and stimulated by this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Mar 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781498291927

Heinrich Bedford-Strohm

Prof. Dr. Heinrich Bedford-Strohm ist Inhaber des Lehrstuhls Systematische Theologie und theologische Gegenwartsfragen an der Universität Bamberg, Dekan der Fakultät Humanwissenschaften und Leiter der Dietrich-Bonhoeffer-Forschungsstelle für Öffentliche Theologie.

Book preview

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Religion in the Anthropocene

Edited by

Celia Deane-Drummond Sigurd Bergmann & Markus Vogt

Foreword by 
Heinrich Bedford-Strohm

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RELIGION IN THE ANTHROPOCENE

Copyright ©

2017

Wipf and Stock Publishers. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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Cascade Books

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paperback isbn: 978-1-4982-9191-0

hardcover isbn: 978-1-4982-9193-4

ebook isbn: 978-1-4982-9192-7

Cataloging-in-Publication data:

Names: Deane-Drummond, Celia, editor | Bergmann, Sigurd, editor | Vogt, Markus, editor | Strohm, Heinrich Bedford, foreword.

Title: Religion in the anthropocene / edited by Celia Deane-Drummond, Sigurd Bergmann, and Markus Vogt ; foreword by Heinrich Bedford Strohm.

Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books,

2017

| Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: ISBN:

978

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1

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4982

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9191

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0

(paperback) | ISBN:

978

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1

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4982

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9193

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(hardcover) | ISBN:

978

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1

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4982

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9192

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7

(ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Human ecology | Nature—Effect of human beings on | Global environmental change | Ecotheology.

Classification: BR

115

N

3

2017

(print) | BR

115

(ebook)

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

04/11/17

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) come from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright ©

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1984

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2011

by Biblica, Inc.®Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked (RSV) come from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright ©

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National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Contributors

The Future of Religion in the Anthropocene Era

Part One: Setting the Stage

Chapter 1: On Going Gently into the Anthropocene

Chapter 2: From the Anthropocene Epoch to a New Axial Age

Chapter 3: Transformations of Stewardship in the Anthropocene

Chapter 4: Religion at Work within Climate Change

Part Two: Historical Matters

Chapter 5: Bridging the Great Divide

Chapter 6: Becoming Human in the Anthropocene

Part Three: Philosophical Analyses

Chapter 7: De-moralizing and Re-moralizing the Anthropocene

Chapter 8: Anthropocene Fever

Chapter 9: Reconsidering the Anthropocene as Milieu

Part Four: Theological Trajectories

Chapter 10: Performing the Beginning in the End

Chapter 11: Cooled Down Love and an Overheated Atmosphere

Chapter 12: Beyond Human Exceptionalism

Chapter 13: American Evangelicalism, Apocalypticism, and the Anthropocene

Part Five: Ethical Deliberations

Chapter 14: Human Ecology as a Key Discipline of Environmental Ethics in the Anthropocene

Chapter 15: Protection of Threatened Species in the Anthropocene

Part Six: Sociopolitical Transformations

Chapter 16: Contesting the Good Life of Technological Modernity
in the Anthropocene

Chapter 17: The Anthropocene and the Future of Diplomacy

Bibliography

Figures

Figure 1. Friedrich Georg Weitsch. Humboldt and Aime Bonpland in the valley of Tapia on the foot of the vulcano Chimborazo. 1810. Oil on canvas, 100 x 71 cm. Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin. From: © bpk / Stiftung Preussische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg. Photo: Hermann Buresch.

Figure 2. Wassily Kandinsky. Composition VII. 1913. Oil on canvas, 200 x 300 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. From: http://uploads8.wikiart.org/images/wassily-kandinsky/composition-vii-1913.jpg. Public domain.

Figure 3. J. M. W. Turner. The Deluge. 1805. Oil on canvas, 142.9 x 235.6 cm. Tate Britain, London. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/Turner-deluge.jpg. Public domain.

Figure 4. Matthias Grünewald. Isenheim altarpiece. 1512–1516. Oil on wood, 298.45 x 304.8 cm. Unterlinden Museum, Colmar, France. From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isenheim_Altarpiece#/media/File:Mathis_Gothart_Gr%C3%BCnewald_019.jpg.

Figure 5. Jacopo Tintoretto. The Crucifixion of Christ. 1568. Oil on canvas, 341 x 371 cm. San Cassiano, Venice. From: http://www.wikiart.org/en/tintoretto/the-crucifixion-of-christ-1568. Public domain.

Figure 6. The Crucifixion. 1849. Currier & Ives colored print lithography. https://www.loc.gov/resource/pga.03628/. Public domain.

Figure 7. Northern Sami groups in Haga. Sami knife with sheath. 1948. Iron and horn craft. Museum of World Culture, Gothenburg, Sweden. The National Museums of World Culture (Världskulturmuseerna) in Sweden. No. 1948.21.0010a-b, © photo: Ferenc Schwetz, reproduced with kind permission from Världskulturmuseerna.

Figure 8. Evelyn De Morgan. The Worship of Mammon. 1909. Oil on canvas, 60.3 x 50.2 cm. De Morgan Centre, London. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_worship_of_Mammon.jpg/. Public domain.

Figure 9. Giovanni Bellini. Sacred Allegory. Ca. 1485. 73 x 119 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giovanni_Bellini_001.jpg. Public domain.

Figure 10: Primary energy consumption, CO2 emissions and energy mix for selected countries (China, USA, India & the United Kingdom), 1965–2014. The graphs were created by the author, with data from BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2015.

Figure 11: South Reading Room. Mural with quotation from Thomas Jefferson about the living generation, by Ezra Winter. Library of Congress John Adams Building, Washington, D.C]. 2007. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2007687053/. Photo: Carol M. Highsmith.

Foreword

The Anthropocene as a Challenge for Public Theology

Is there something like an Anthropocene? We have good reasons for reflecting upon this question. One thing is clear: human beings now have the power to change the shape of the earth to a degree that once took many thousands, or even millions, of years. There is, therefore, a growing tendency to speak of a new and distinct age, even though we are talking about a relatively short period of time that has brought about these changes.

How fundamental the changes are, and how recently they have developed, Larry Rasmussen impressively shows with a metaphor in his book Earth Community, Earth Ethics. He writes of a ten-volume encyclopedia in which the history of the cosmos is written. Even if we skip the first two-thirds of the development of the universe, we still have five billion years in ten volumes. If each volume is 500 pages, each page tells the story of one million years. The most amazing insight of this metaphor concerns the place of humankind and its activities in the development of the universe: humankind arrives on page 499 of the last volume. The last two words of the last page tell the story of human civilization, and the story of the human destruction of nature begins with the last syllable of the last word of the last volume.¹

It is difficult to assess, since we are living in it, whether there is something like an Anthropocene. There are good reasons that the names used to describe a certain age so far have been given afterwards, in looking back. Perhaps we must leave the question unanswered and instead direct our attention to how we should act in a time in which the power of humankind over non-human nature has reached an enormous scale and in which human beings are in the process of destroying the ecological balance which has been the basis of life so far. Politics plays a key role in dealing with this situation. In the future, political decisions must be directed towards transforming the economy from the destruction of non-human nature, with extreme inequalities in the distribution of wealth, towards an ecologically sustainable source of prosperity for all human beings. Politics seems to be incapable, on its own, of achieving this huge but fundamentally necessary reorientation. This is because political decision-making—at least in democracies—tends to be oriented towards and limited by the next election and, as a result, always seeks to secure the consent of the electorate. This is why civil society is so crucial. Civil society paves the way for necessary political change by generating a political climate that is the basis for courageous political decisions.

One should not underestimate what civil society can achieve, especially given the recent rise of an ecological consciousness. Big corporations now pay for expensive whole-page ads in national newspapers to highlight their sustainability scores. Even if one is skeptical of the credibility of such ecological promotion efforts, it is remarkable that big economic players seem to think a good ecological record increases their ability to do business. Compared with a few decades ago when ecological advocacy was hardly more than a niche phenomenon in the public debate, this diagnosis is a big success story of civil society, despite what might still need to be achieved.

Change must happen on a global scale. More than any other political issue, ecological problems do not stop at national borders and can therefore only be responded to through international political action. The months leading up to the climate conference in Paris in December 2015 were an encouraging example of the power of global civil society. The conference’s success was widely attributed by its key political actors to the long-term efforts of global civil society. Among the actors of civil society, churches played an important role. In the weeks before the conference, Christians from all over the world, together with people of other religious traditions, walked thousands of miles to Paris in a pilgrimage for justice and peace. In a moving multi-religious ceremony, which I myself participated in, religious leaders from across the globe came together with the pilgrims to hand over 1.7 million signatures to the conveners of the conference. It was a ceremony of joy and hope ending in a dance involving the Archbishop of Cape Town, Thabo Makgoba, and the U.N. climate office director, Christina Figueres, who were then joined by all the participants of the ceremony. Churches are especially important actors in global civil society because they represent a network of locally rooted parishes all over the world with a common universal horizon. This common universal horizon is based on the belief that the earth is God’s creation and, therefore, not our possession as human beings but entrusted to us by God to take good care of. Having dominion over the earth as mandated in Genesis 1:26 does not mean exploitation of the earth; it should be understood, rather, as analogous to the governing task of the king in Old Testament texts, which was to care for the poor and vulnerable. Modern thought has perverted the biblical theme of dominion, making it into a justification of unlimited human power over non-human nature. What has been misinterpreted as something like a Magna Carta of human power in the Anthropocene is in reality a call to responsibility in the age of human misuse of power.

The role of religions in global civil society in the age of the Anthropocene is especially important for another reason. Religions reach not only the minds of people but also their hearts and, even more, their souls. Since ecological reorientation fundamentally includes (besides political and economic structural changes) a change in lifestyle patterns, the success of the intended transformation is dependent on the input of institutions that reach people at the deep levels of their existence.

A public theology is needed to equip the church with a theological basis to enable her to fulfill this task. Public theology helps societies to understand themselves, to read the signs of the times, to interpret culture, and to provide orientation in a situation of disorientation. Thus, churches have a hermeneutical task. Reading the signs of the times in the Anthropocene, for example, could mean showing the imbalance between two possible understandings of the human being that have always been part of human existence. Human being as shaper of its destiny has always been a key dimension of humankind’s self-understanding. The biblical call to till and care for the earth (Gen 2:15) is an example of this. The Bible, however, also warns of making the human being as shaper into an absolute. The story of the Tower of Babel is an impressive example of this absolutizing; building the tower in order to become as great as God (i.e., wanting to be God) leads to division and destructive consequences for culture.

Human being as receiver marks the opposite pole. Humankind has always seen its own limits. Religion has pointed toward something greater than humankind and has helped us to accept human limitedness. However, there is a danger in this conception as well. If human being as receiver is made into an absolute, if it is perverted as a blind subordination to some fate, it pacifies human protest against injustice. Critics of religion like Karl Marx, therefore, have rightly criticized this form of religion as the opium of the people. Movements like Latin American liberation theologies have recognized these consequences and, in response, developed theological concepts to understand the Christian faith as a driving force for changing history.

In this interplay between human being as a shaper and human being as a receiver, an interplay which has characterized human history, we must recognize that in the age of the Anthropocene the balance has unduly shifted towards human being as a shaper exerting power over non-human nature. We have unlearned the acceptance of our limits in our relationship with non-human nature. What we need now is an ethic of human self-limitation.

Churches and other religious communities not only have a hermeneutical task, they also have a political task in society. They must advocate political and sociocultural change to regain an appropriate power balance between humankind and non-human nature. They can fulfill this task by issuing public statements, such as the call of religious leaders at the climate summit in Paris in 2015. They can intervene directly in political decisions to make their positions known to decision-makers. Furthermore, church leaders can privately or publicly talk with politicians to share their views and argue for change. Finally, churches, through their international networks, can listen to the stories of experiences of injustice and vulnerability from the margins, hand them on to the global centers of power, and hold decision-makers accountable.

The task is enormous. Consequently, churches need to cooperate with other agents of civil society to address the challenges of our times. Drawing on rigorous academic reflection across the disciplines is an important fruit of such cooperation, and so, I wholeheartedly welcome the contributions of this volume. If the time we live in will indeed be named Anthropocene by later generations, these contributions will turn out to have been pathfinders for understanding its deep intellectual, cultural, and spiritual grounding.

—Heinrich Bedford-Strohm

1. Rasmussen, Earth Community,

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Acknowledgments

This edited volume is the fruit of a substantial number of the contributions to the fourth biennial European Forum for the Study of Religion and Environment that met in Munich at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany, from 14 to 17 May 2015 . Since that time the editors have collaborated and worked closely with the contributors, who come from diverse backgrounds, mostly, though not exclusively, from Europe. We are particularly grateful to those participants who contributed to the rich discussions in Munich on this newly emerging topic. We are also particularly grateful to the following: Dr. Nathaniel Warne, who assisted in the early stages of the administrative process, and graduate assistant Liam de los Reyes, who copyedited virtually all the chapters prior to submission under the expert guidance of the Assistant Director of the Center for Theology, Science and Human Flourishing, Dr. Rebecca Artinian-Kaiser. In addition, special thanks to Dr. Joshua Kaiser, who prepared the final manuscript, along with compiling the index for this volume. We would also like to acknowledge that this publication is made possible in part by the generous support from a publication award from the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, College of Arts and Letters, University of Notre Dame. Finally, we would like to thank Christian Amondson, formerly of Wipf and Stock, for facilitating the publication of this book and for the support of the editor in chief, Dr. K. C. Hanson, along with the assistance of Matthew Wimer and James Stock.

Contributors

Maria Antonaccio, Professor of Religious Studies and affiliated faculty with the Environmental Studies Program, Bucknell University, Pennsylvania, USA

Maria Antonaccio received her MA and PhD from the University of Chicago Divinity School. In addition to her research on the ethics of climate change and sustainability, Antonaccio has published on Iris Murdoch, moral psychology, ancient models of askesis in contemporary ethics, the ethics of consumption, and the role of technology in the humanization of nature. She has recently received a two-year fellowship with the Enhancing Life Project (John Templeton Foundation) for a book project entitled Imagined Futures: Climate Change, Counter-worlds, and the Cultural Meanings of Sustainability.

Ian Barns, Emeritus Senior Lecturer in Ethics and Sustainability Policy, Murdoch University, Western Australia

Until his retirement in 2011, Ian Barns was a member of the School of Sustainability at Murdoch University for twenty-three years and before that a member of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. With a PhD in the social studies of science, his interdisciplinary research and teaching has focused on the challenge of sustainability and on the nexus between ethics, theology, technology, and sustainability. He has published articles in journals, including Science, Technology and Human Values, Theology and Science, Pacifica, and Zadok Perspectives, as well as edited or co-authored books, including The Theology of the Human Person; Challenges for Einstein’s Children; God Down Under; and Poststructuralism, Citizenship and Social Policy. As a member of the General Synod’s Social Responsibility Commission of the Anglican Church in Australia, he was a delegate at the 1990 World Council of Churches meeting in Seoul on Justice, Peace, and the Integrity of Creation.

Christoph Baumgartner, Associate Professor of Ethics, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Utrecht University, Netherlands

Christoph Baumgartner’s principal topics of current research and teaching include environmental ethics, intergenerational justice, religion in the public sphere, freedom of religion and freedom of expression, secularism and post-secularism, and citizenship. His publications include Umweltethik—Umwelthandeln: Ein Beitrag zur Lösung des Motivationsproblems and chapter contributions to Was heißt Natur? Philosophischer Ort und Begründungsfunktion des Naturbegriffs and Transformations of Religion and the Public Sphere. Postsecular Publics.

Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, Presiding Bishop of the German Protestant Churches, Honorary Professor of Systematic Theology, University of Bamberg, Germany, Extraordinary Professor of Systematic Theology University of Stellenbosch, South Africa

Heinrich Bedford-Strohm is Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Bavaria and Chairman of the Council of Evangelical Churches in Germany. From 2004 until 2011, he held the Chair of Systematic Theology and Contemporary Theological Issues at the Otto-Friedrich University of Bamberg. He was Founding Director of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Research Centre for Public Theology, President of the Society of Protestant Theology in Germany, deputy Chairman of the Chamber for Social Responsibility of the German Protestant Churches, and the main editor of the journal Evangelische Theologie until 2011. His publications include Vorrang für die Armen: Auf dem Weg zu einer theologischen Theorie der Gerechtigkeit; Gemeinschaft aus kommunkativer Freiheit; Schöpfung; and Positon beziehen: Perspektiven öffentlicher Theologie.

Sigurd Bergmann, Professor in Religious Studies, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway

Sigurd Bergmann serves on the executive committee of the European Forum on the Study of Religion and Environment. His research has investigated the relationship between the image of God and views of nature in late antiquity, methodologies of contextual theology, the visual arts in the indigenous Arctic and Australia, the relation between space/place and religion, and religion in climatic change. His publications include Creation Set Free; God in Context; Theology in Built Environments; In the Beginning Is the Icon; and Religion, Space and the Environment. Bergmann was co-project leader of the interdisciplinary program Technical Spaces of Mobility and co-editor of The Ethics of Mobilities; Religion in Environmental and Climate Change; Christian Faith and the Earth; and Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred.

Celia Deane-Drummond, Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA

Celia Deane-Drummond is founding Director of the Center for Theology, Science and Human Flourishing at the University of Notre Dame and current Chair of the European Forum for the Study of Religion and Environment. Deane-Drummond holds doctorates in plant physiology and in systematic theology. Her research focuses on the engagement of systematic and moral theology and the biological and social sciences. She is the author of two-hundred scholarly articles or book chapters, thirty of which are in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and author or editor of twenty-five books, including Creation through Wisdom; The Ethics of Nature; Genetics and Christian Ethics; Future Perfect (with Peter Scott); Ecotheology; Christ and Evolution; Religion and Ecology in the Public Sphere (with Heinrich Bedford-Strohm); Animals as Religious Subjects (with David Clough and Rebecca Artinian-Kaiser); The Wisdom of the Liminal; Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred (with Sigurd Bergmann and Bronislaw Szerszynski).

Matthew Eaton, Faculty of Theology, St. Michael’s College, Toronto, Canada

Matthew Eaton earned his PhD in theology at the University of St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto in 2016. His dissertation, Enfleshing Cosmos and Earth: An Ecological Christology of Deep Incarnation in Dialogue with Emmanuel Lévinas’ Ethics of Infinity explored the expanded relevance of incarnation theologies for life and ethics within the Anthropocene. He has published articles on eco-theology, Christology, and Emmanuel Lévinas and is currently co-editing a volume entitled Encountering Earth: Thinking Theologically with a More-Than Human World. He is interested in posthumanist and affect theories as well as feminist materialisms as ways of exploring subjectivity, ethics, and theology beyond humanism. Eaton has lectured at the University of St. Michael’s College, Virginia Theological Seminary, and currently serves as an adjunct assistant professor at St. John’s University and Sacred Heart University.

Agustín Fuentes, Professor and Chair of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA

Agustín Fuentes has a BA in zoology and anthropology and an MA and PhD in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. His current research includes cooperation and community in human evolution, ethnoprimatology and multispecies anthropology, evolutionary theory, public perceptions of evolutionary theory, and interdisciplinary approaches to human nature(s). His recent books include Evolution of Human Behavior;Biological Anthropology: Concepts and Connections; Monkeys on the Edge: Ecology and Management of Long-tailed Macaques and their Interface with Humans; Race, Monogamy, and Other Lies They Told You: Busting Myths about Human Nature; and Conversations on Human Nature.

Franz Mauelshagen, Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, Postdam, Germany

Franz Mauelshagen is an environmental historian focusing on the history of great transformations, the Anthropocene, climate change, and natural disasters. He has an MA in philosophy, history, and law from the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Bonn and a PhD in history from the University of Zurich. He has served as coordinator of the program Climate & Culture at the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen and as a member of the institute’s executive board. His publications include Palgrave Handbook of Climate History and Klimageschichte der Neuzeit 1500–1900.

Anders Melin, Associate Professor in Ethics, Department of Global Political Studies, Malmö University, Sweden

Anders Melin’s main field of study is environmental ethics and he has published articles and book chapters on genetic engineering and ethics, the Buddhist-Christian dialogue and environmental ethics, mobility ethics, and biodiversity and ethics. Melin’s main recent publication is Living with Other Beings: A Virtue-Oriented Approach to the Ethics of Species Protection (2013). He is currently the leader of the research project Energy and Justice: An Ethical Analysis of Swedish Energy Politics Based on the Capability Approach, funded by the Swedish Research Council.

Michael Northcott, Professor of Ethics, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

Michael Northcott conducts research in the environmental humanities, and especially how political theology, religious ethics, economics, and technology shape human agency in relation to the nonhuman. He has published twelve books and over seventy academic papers. His most recent books include Place, Ecology, and the Sacred: The Moral Geography of Sustainable Communities; Systematic Theology and Climate Change: Ecumenical Perspectives; and A Political Theology of Climate Change. He has been visiting professor at the Claremont School of Theology, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Flinders University, and the University of Malaya. He led a large Arts and Humanities Research Council grant on faith-based ecological activism in the United Kingdom, entitled Caring for the Future Through Ancestral Time (http://ancestraltime.org.uk) in 2013-16.

Marisa Ronan, Research Fellow, Environmental Humanities Research Centre, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

Ronan received her PhD in American Studies from University College Dublin in 2009. Her dissertation, Evangelical Cultural Appropriation: Christian Fiction and the Pursuit of a New Evangelical Christianity provides an intellectual and literary history of American evangelicalism from the Puritan era to postmodernism. As a Research Fellow at the Centre for Environmental Humanities, Ronan explores how the humanities can be drawn upon to address climate change, for example the relationship between religion and the environment and how faith impacts perceptions of climate change, human agency, and scientific intervention. Other research interests include intervention points and best practice for managing marine heritage and tackling environmental challenges to coastal cultural landscapes.

Stefan Skrimshire, Lecturer in Theology and Religious Studies, The University of Leeds, UK

Stefan Skrimshire is a lecturer in Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Leeds. In addition to several chapters and journal articles, he is the author of Politics of Fear, Practices of Hope and editor of Future Ethics: Climate Change and Apocalyptic Imagination. His teaching and research combine continental philosophy, political theology, and environmental humanities.

Petra Steinmair-Pösel, Institute for Social Ethics, University of Vienna, Austria

Petra Steinmair-Pösel is a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Vienna. Her current research (Habilitation) in social ethics concerns the relationship between mystical experience and sociopolitical commitment. She is especially interested in social ethical questions regarding gender issues, ecology, and sustainability. Another of her primary fields of research is René Girard’s mimetic theory, with a special focus on questions relating to positive/peaceful mimesis and the application of Girard’s work in the realm of Catholic theology/spirituality and social ethics. She was editor with Ingeborg Gabriel of the volume Gerechtigkeit in einer endlichen Welt: Ökologie-Wirtschaft-Ethik.

Bronislaw Szerszynski, Reader in Sociology, Lancaster University, UK

Bronislaw Szerszynski has a BA in independent studies in the environmental humanities and a PhD in sociology. He researches across the social sciences, natural sciences, arts, and humanities to situate the changing relationship between humans, environment, and technology within the perspective of human and planetary history. His recent work explores themes such as the Anthropocene, geoengineering, and planetary evolution. He is author of Nature, Technology and the Sacred; co-editor of Risk, Environment and Modernity; Re-Ordering Nature: Theology, Society and the New Genetics; Nature Performed: Environment, Culture and Performance; Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred. He was co-organizer of the conference Between Nature: Explorations in Ecology and Performance, Experimentality, a research program on experimentation in the sciences, arts, and society, and Anthropocene Monument, with Bruno Latour and Olivier Michelon.

Francis Van den Noortgaete, KU Leuven, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, Research Unit of Theological and Comparative Ethics, Belgium

Francis Van den Noortgaete holds master degrees in chemistry, environmental sciences, and world religions. He is currently a doctoral researcher at KU Leuven in the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies. His main research interests lie at the interdisciplinary boundary between religious studies, environmental ethics, and motivational psychology.

Markus Vogt, Professor of Christian Social Ethics, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany

Markus Vogt is the chair for Christian Social Ethics at the Catholic faculty of Ludwig Maximilian University and dean of the Catholic faculty. He has served as coordinator for the working group on environmental issues of the European Council of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference, as head of the Community of Christian Social Ethics in the German speaking counties, as a scientific research professor at the Rachel Carson Center for environment and society, as a member of the executive board of the Munich Competence Center for Ethics, and as a speaker of the council board for bioeconomy with the Bavarian government. His publications include: Prinzip Nachhaltigkeit. Ein Entwurf aus theologisch-ethischer Perspektive; (ed.) Wo steht die Umweltethik? Argumentationsmuster im Wandel; (ed.) Die Moral der Energiewende; (ed.) Gliederungssysteme angewandter Ethik; (ed.) Die Welt im Anthropozän. Erkundungen im Spannungsfeld zwischen Ökologie und Humanität.

David Joseph Wellman, DePaul University, Illinois, USA

David Joseph Wellman’s work focuses on the relationship between religion and diplomacy, ecological ethics, and interreligious engagement. He is the author of Sustainable Diplomacy: Ecology, Religion and Ethics in Muslim-Christian Relations and Sustainable Communities. Wellman’s writing on diplomacy was used as the basis of an international conference, which culminated in the collaborative volume edited by Costas Constantinou and James Der Derian entitled Sustainable Diplomacies. His most recent research, focusing on interreligious engagement in Paris, is reflected in his current book project, Abrahamic Paris: Building Bridges Among Jews, Christians, Muslims and Atheists in the City of Light.

The Future of Religion in the Anthropocene Era

Celia Deane-Drummond, Sigurd Bergmann, & Markus Vogt

The heated public intensity around the 2015 United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris (COP 21 ) shows that the complex political, social, and religious issues surrounding questions of climate change continue to remain high on the agenda. Within the sciences, the term Anthropocene — the Age of Humans —is gradually moving into the discourse of climate change; so far, however, there has been relatively little critical engagement with this concept from the perspective of the environmental humanities. The Anthropocene poses a tremendous challenge for the humanities not least because the human sciences bring tools that can assess the diverse scientific and cultural narratives. For theology and religious studies this includes an assessment of implicit religious narratives, or whether there are social and ethical implications, especially for environmental ethics.

The geological notion of the Anthropocene is meant to denote the current geological era as a new geological epoch in which the collective imprint of human activities is so pervasive that the Earth System, most notably that associated with climate change, is destabilized. Related assessments suggest that humanity is now close to passing several other planetary boundaries and tipping points. These notions have stirred up vigorous discussions in the earth sciences, where research now focuses on a rigorous understanding of humanity’s interaction with the biophysical Earth System. Treating humanity as a whole in this way has also come under serious critique from social science, given the disparity of impact between different human cultures and groups. Kathryn Yusoff, for example, has coined the term Anthropogenesis to suggest that Anthropocene narratives are mythic in content and are orientated towards the Anthropos as either world-maker or destroyer.¹ Furthermore, nominating the Anthropocene fosters a material, evolutionary narrative of human origins and endings within a geological and not just biological time scale.

While the lively scientific debate mainly deals with the content of the geological concept and the lack of historical consensus about its beginning, the humanities and social sciences mine deeper into cultural and ethical dimensions and reflect self-critically on the advantages, or potential damages, that various versions of this concept might produce. While scientists, for example, tend to neglect the skill of power accumulation among humans and might simply expand their worldview universally to global society, voices in the environmental humanities are able to explore a triangular reciprocal net of relations between society-culture-nature-subjectivity. Another critical point of discussion emerges with regard to the future: can we think at all about the future in narratives of the Anthropocene? While Abrahamic religions always operate more or less strongly with images of the future, Anthropocene narratives, at least those born by geological sciences, seem to lack self-critical skills with regard to power, history, and ethics.

This collection of essays explores these and similar questions from different disciplinary perspectives within the humanities and social sciences, taking critical account of the religious, philosophical, theological, and ethical challenges and opportunities different narrations about the Anthropocene pose. Not all of the authors agree with each other and, therefore, this volume provides an important framework for further discussion and analysis. Insofar as such discussion has not yet been incorporated into a serious multidisciplinary study, this book also represents cutting edge research on a theme that will be of increasing importance, given the ongoing and escalating effects of human induced climate change. So far, theological and ethical discussion has tended to focus on socio-political discussions on climate change, rather than viewing such changes as part of a broader systems narrative.

In the first section, Setting the Stage, Michael Northcott’s contribution On Going Gently into the Anthropocene argues for the particular relevance of theology. Drawing on an analysis of John Ruskin’s work, Northcott argues that those who advance the idea of the Anthropocene share with Ruskin a common apocalyptic perspective. However, he argues that the global horizon of risk opened up by the Anthropocene carries an ethical and political challenge far beyond that posed by Ruskin. He believes that if the Copernican turn decentered humanity in relation to the destiny of the earth, now through science and technology humans are once again becoming aware that they are central to the earthly networks of agency and being which stretch from the rocky substrata to the skies. The Baconian mediation of the Anthropocene means that far from representing a new spiritual communion between humans and other life, Crutzen’s proposal represents an enhancement of a Baconian worldview in which humans now consciously take charge of the Earth System as a vast machine. Hence, it represents yet another refusal to accept the hybrid mixing of culture and nature which is intrinsic to human planetary existence and a refusal to take account of the intrinsic worth of other species. Northcott’s theological assessment is striking: we have replaced the Pantocrator image of Christ with the antichrist—Homo industrialis. He argues political and theological communities are called to witness to an alternative by exercising near-term sacrificial constraint. Green religious communities, transition towns, and other social activist movements, Northcott insists, are part of a movement of love best fostered by religious communities.

In the second chapter, Bronislaw Szerszynski discusses how he used a series of linked theory-fictions to explore possible futures for religion in a new geological epoch, using the notion of a possible Second Axial Age based on a radically different metaphysics. Szerszynski argues that any understanding of paths to the Anthropocene has to take account of the emergence of Axial cultures, but he cautions that this has to be done with care. On the one hand, Axial cultures seem to have held in check systematic attempts to exploit and transform the Earth because of their belief that the role of this world is largely to symbolize or prepare for the transcendent realm. On the other hand, Axial cultures were particularly suited for imperial expansion, promoted the idea that the human being has a privileged status within the cosmos, and could be said to lay the ground for the development of technological thinking. Szerszynski then introduces the concept of theory fictions and summarizes his own use of the genre in three pieces all set in a fictional future spanning a period from the mid-twenty-first to the late-twenty-second century. He then critically explores contemporary claims that a Second Axial Age of global consciousness is emerging in the twenty-first century due to increased dialogue between faiths and cultures. While these are claims of a renewal of First-Axial-Age themes of transcendence and universality, the Second Axial Age described in his own theory-fictions moves in a radically new direction. In his imagined future revolution in human thought, matter is active and self-organizing, difference is an explosive force within things, time is produced by material processes themselves and is multiple and intertwining, and the ways that worlds organize themselves undergo moments of bifurcation. He concludes with an exploration of what this might entail through a discussion of sacred work.

Christopher Baumgartner, in the third chapter on Transformations of Stewardship in the Anthropocene, addresses the question of how proponents of the notion of the Anthropocene ascribe to humanity the responsibility to act as planetary steward. For some authors, stewardship is a decisive characteristic of a new stage of the Anthropocene. His question relates to what precisely it might mean to take responsibility as planetary stewards in the Anthropocene and which specific moral obligations are included in this stewardship. Thus, he offers a philosophical conceptualization and critical analysis of the notion of planetary stewardship in the Anthropocene. On the basis of a comparison with the religious notion of stewardship that is part of Christian traditions, he demonstrates that the concept of stewardship is profoundly transformed within Anthropocene discourse. He gives particular scrutiny to assumptions about past, present, and future in stewardship concepts and how these influence the justification and the scope of our moral obligations in the context of climate change. Such an approach helps to identify, understand, and philosophically reconstruct the transformations of the concept of stewardship in the Anthropocene and critically analyze its strengths and limitations in a planetary context.

The fourth chapter by Sigurd Bergmann deals with eight perceptions of religion in climate change discourse. He argues that our awareness about anthropogenic climatic and environmental change represents one of the core assumptions in Anthropocene discussions. The concept of the Anthropocene was anticipated historically. He begins with a short summary of Alexander von Humboldt’s view of nature as a Naturgemälde (painting of nature). He then explores eight different perceptions of religious belief systems and their significance. Bergmann draws on the work of social scientists, including Robin Globus Veldman, to show that religion has a variety of modes: as worldview, source of morality, institution, and skill of connectivity. He adds to this perspective the passiological, i.e., the response of religion to suffering and violence, the aesth/ethical, the economic, and the spatial dimensions. Faith communities respond in specific ways to suffering and violence. They express beliefs that are beyond rational and ethical conventions in a diversity of aesthetical ways in ordinary life. Late capitalist fetishization of money, which, according to Bergmann, is a key driver behind climate change, represents a substantial threat to religious belief. One common earth and one common future is an emerging spatial and temporal consciousness that challenges different religions to revisit their understanding of life as a gift. Bergmann emphasizes both the multiplicity and ambivalence of religious responses to climatic change as well as the way in which religious traditions are able to make participants feel-at-home and contribute to creative adaptations to acute problems of climate change in the Anthropocene.

The second section deals with historical questions in more recent history and deeper into the evolutionary history of human beings. Franz Mauelshagen’s chapter on the history of ideas related to the Anthropocene goes deeper into historical precedents touched on by Northcott and Bergmann. Over a long period of modern scientific practice, a great divide has opened up between the natural sciences and the humanities/social sciences. Back in the 1950s, C.P. Snow discerned two separate