Religion in the Anthropocene

Description

This book charts a new direction in humanities scholarship through serious engagement with the geopolitical concept of the Anthropocene. Drawing on religious studies, theology, social science, history, philosophy, and what 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 debate trigger the emergence of a new ecological humanism? 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. Table of Contents List of Figures Foreword: The Anthropocene as a Challenge for Public Theology —Heinrich Bedford-Strohm Acknowledgments Contributors The Future of Religion in the Anthropocene Era —Celia Deane-Drummond, Sigurd Bergmann, and Markus Vogt Part 1: Setting the Stage 1 On Going Gently into the Anthropocene —Michael Northcott 2 From the Anthropocene Epoch to a New Axial Age: Using Theory-Fictions to Explore Geo-Spiritual Futures —Bronislaw Szerszynski 3 Transformations of Stewardship in the Anthropocene —Christoph Baumgartner 4 Religion at Work within Climate Change: Eight Perceptions about Its Where and How —Sigurd Bergmann Part 2: Historical Matters 5 Bridging the Great Divide: The Anthropocene as a Challenge to the Social Sciences and Humanities —Franz Mauelshagen 6 Becoming Human in the Anthropocene —Agustín Fuentes Part 3: Philosophical Analyses 7 De-moralizing and Re-moralizing the Anthropocene —Maria Antonaccio 8 Anthropocene Fever: Memory and the Planetary Archive —Stefan Skrimshire 9 Reconsidering the Anthropocene as Milieu: William Desmond and the Originary Goodness of Being —Francis Van den Noortgaete Part 4: Theological Trajectories 10 Performing the Beginning in the End: A Theological Anthropology for the Anthropocene —Celia Deane-Drummond 11 Cooled Down Love and an Overheated Atmosphere: René Girard on Ecology and Apocalypticism in the Anthropocene —Petra Steinmair-Pösel 12 Beyond Human Exceptionalism: Christology in the Anthropocene —Matthew Eaton 13 American Evangelicalism, Apocalypticism, and the Anthropocene —Marisa Ronan Part 5: Ethical Deliberations 14 Human Ecology as a Key Discipline of Environmental Ethics in the Anthropocene —Markus Vogt 15 Protection of Threatened Species in the Anthropocene: A Theological-Ethical Perspective —Anders Melin Part 6: Sociopolitical Transformations 16 Contesting the Good Life of Technological Modernity in the Anthropocene —Ian Barns 17 The Anthropocene and the Future of Diplomacy: Religion, Ecology, and Transnational Relations in the Age of Human Responsibility —David Joseph Wellman Bibliography General Index