Religion in the Anthropocene

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
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
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 Eight Perceptions
about Its Where and How
—Sigurd Bergmann

Part 2: Historical Matters
5 Bridging the Great 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 Memory and the Planetary Archive
—Stefan Skrimshire
9 Reconsidering the Anthropocene as William Desmond
and the Originary Goodness of Being
—Francis Van den Noortgaete

Part 4: Theological Trajectories
10 Performing the Beginning in the A Theological Anthropology
for the Anthropocene
—Celia Deane-Drummond
11 Cooled Down Love and an Overheated René Girard
on Ecology and Apocalypticism in the Anthropocene
—Petra Steinmair-Pösel
12 Beyond Human 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
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 Religion,
Ecology, and Transnational Relations in the Age of Human
Responsibility
—David Joseph Wellman

Bibliography
General Index