Religion and Climate Change

Abstract

Understanding the cultural dimensions of climate change requires understanding its religious aspects. Insofar as climate change is entangled with humans, it is also entangled with all the ways in which religion attends human ways of being. Scholarship on the connections between religion and climate change includes social science research into how religious identity figures in attitudes toward climate change, confessional and constructive engagements of religious thought with climate change from various communities and traditions, historical and anthropological analyses of how climate affects religion and religion interprets climate, and theories by which climate change may itself be interpreted as a religious event. Responses to climate change by indigenous peoples challenge the categories of religion and of climate change in ways that illuminate reflexive stresses between the two cultural concepts.

Multifaith Third Spaces: Digital Activism, Netpeace, and the Australian Religious Response to Climate Change

“…They state that their "common interpretations of core evangelical beliefs led primarily to climate scepticism" (Carr et al 2012, p. 278). Jenkins et al (2018) state, however, that other scholarship has concluded that religious beliefs are only one determinant factor in how an individual perceives climate change. They suggest that that which determines an individual's opinion on climate change is more dependent upon a network of relations regarding education, political beliefs, and geographic location.…”

“…Debate over climate change is caught up in the spheres of the political and the religious. Religious bodies, especially multifaith organisations, such as ARRCC, have long been advocating for environmental rights (Halafoff 2013;Jenkins et al 2018). However, there are also many who occupy a position of climate change denialism.…”

“…In their review of religious engagement with the climate change issue, Jenkins et al (2018, p. 90) note that the "most important fault lines in religious engagements with climate change are not between religious traditions but within them". Research on select religious groups also suggests that climate change denialism has a close relationship with religious beliefs (Jenkins et al 2018). Wylie Carr et al (2012) note that Evangelical Christians are the most sceptical groups in America with respect to climate change.…”

Religious education for ecological sustainability: an initial reality check using the example of everyday decision-making

“…However, research from primarily environmental sociology and psychology has shown that religious orientations play an important role in sustainability issues (for overviews cf. Tomalin et al 2019;Jenkins et al 2018;Basedau et al 2017;Ronan 2017;Sachdeva 2016;Haluza-DeLay 2014;Tucker 2006), although the connections are by no means clear. Whether religious orientations positively or negatively affect the formation of a sustainable environmental orientation depends on many personal and contextual factors, and not least, on the respective religious orientation itself (Baugh 2019;Ives and Kidwell 2019;Basedau et al 2017;Pater and Dankelman 2009;Sherkat and Ellison 2007).…”

A Hydra‐logical Approach: Acknowledging Complexity in the Study of Religion, Science, and Technology

“…As one might expect, Francis speaks of spiritual and scientific and technological realities and puts these at the service of ecological restoration and social progress, including a section explicitly dedicated to “religions in dialogue with science” (Francis 2015, 145–8). Meanwhile, there is evidence that the encyclical had both positive and negative impacts on environmental thinking (see Jenkins, Berry, and Krieder 2018, 9.4)!…”