Religion to the Rescue (?) in an Age of Climate Disruption
Issue: Vol 9 No. 1 (2015)
Journal: Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture
Subject Areas: Religious Studies
Abstract:
Since the early 1990s calls by religious elites as well as by scholars who affiliate with and study religions to address the negative consequences of anthropogenic climate change have been increasing. An important example of the trend occurred in November 2014 during the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in San Diego where ‘Religion and Climate Change’ was the conference’s central theme. Data presented at this meeting, however, was not encouraging for those hoping that religious individuals were embracing consensus scientific understandings about anthropogenic climate change, and becoming deeply concerned about climate disruption and making a strong response to it a high priority. The scientific study of the religious dimensions of perceptions and actions related to climate change, for its part, is showing signs of becoming more rigorous and illuminating, better able to track changes that might unfold with regard to religious perceptions and practices related to the earth’s environmental systems.
Author: Bron Taylor
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