Because of the lack of a meaningful international response to global warming, geoengineering has emerged as a potential technological response to climate change. But, thus far, little attention has been given to how religion impacts our understanding of geoengineering. I defend the need to incorporate theological reflection in the conversation of geoengineering by investigating how geoengineering proposals contain an implicit anthropology. A significant framework for our assessment of geoengineering is the balance of human capability and fallibility—a balance that is at (...) the center of theological and religious interpretations of the meaning of the human condition. Similarly, geoengineering challenges our past understandings of theological anthropology. (shrink)

Engineering the Climate: The Ethics of Solar Radiation Management is a wide-ranging and expert analysis of the ethics of the intentional management of solar radiation. This book will be a useful tool for policy-makers, a provocation for ethicists, and an eye-opening analysis for both the scientist and the general reader with interest in climate change.

The twentieth century saw the rise of hermeneutics, the philosophical interpretation of texts, and eventually the application of its insights to metaphorical “texts” such as individual and group identities. It also saw the rise of modern environmentalism, which evolved through various stages in which it came to realize that many of its key concerns—“wilderness” and “nature” among them—are contested territory that are viewed differently by different people. Understanding nature requires science and ecology to be sure, but it also requires a (...) sensitivity to history, culture, and narrative. Thus, understanding nature is a fundamentally hermeneutic task. Interpreting Nature brings together leading voices at the intersection of these two increasingly important philosophical discussions: philosophical hermeneutics and environmental philosophy. The resulting field, environmental hermeneutics, provides the center of gravity for a collection of essays that grapple with one of the most compelling issues of our time: how do humans relate to nature? Adopting a broad and inclusive view of “the environment, Interpreting Nature takes up restoration and preservation, natural and built environments, the social construction of nature and nature as it imposes itself beyond our categories, and much more. The rich diversity of contributions illustrates the remarkable fecundity of hermeneutic resources applied to environmental issues. Taken together, the various contributions to this collection mark the arrival of environmental hermeneutics as a distinct field of study. (shrink)

Modern environmentalism has come to realize that many of its key concerns "wilderness" and "nature" among them are contested territory, viewed differently by different people. Understanding nature requires science and ecology, to be sure, but it also requires a sensitivity tom, history, culture, and narrative. Thus, understanding nature is a fundamentally hermeneutic task.

(2013). Hope and Fear: The Theological Side of Framing Environmental Change. Ethics, Policy & Environment: Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 152-155. doi: 10.1080/21550085.2013.801187.

Exploring Nature's Texture brings together a collection of internationally-known group of artists, theologians, anthropologists and philosophers to look at the imaginative possibilities of using the visual arts to address the breakdown of the human relationship with the environment.

Using the example of a small oak savanna located in Iowa, I begin by presenting some of the problems that confront us in attempting to describe nature. Finding ourselves in a paradox in an attempt to model nature, I then suggest that modeling nature through the use of the concept of “emplacement” offers us the best way forward. To better define “emplacement,” the argument then turns to an exposition of Paul Ricoeur’s idea of “emplotment.” I conclude by detailing how one (...) might use “emplacement” to construct a model of a specific place of nature. (shrink)

This essay investigates the correlation between theological investigations of culture and those of the natural world. A fruitful question emerges when reflecting on how theological thinking resides between these subjects: how does our theological reflection on art meaningfully inform our consideration of nature? The path to exploring this question takes the form of questioning three different works of art: Willem Moreelse’s A Portrait of a Scholar, Francis Bacon’s Landscape,and Joseph Beuys’ Lightning with Stag in Its Glare. Exploring the interconnection between (...) these works, a hermeneutical mediation between art, place, and the spiritual is suggested. (shrink)

In ‘The Tollgate Principles for the Governance of Geoengineering’, Stephen M. Gardiner and Augustin Fragnière develop a holistic framework for geoengineering governance, pointing out the importance...

Using a new model focused on four core capacities-intellectual complexity, social location, empathetic accountability, and motivated action--Teaching Civic Engagement explores the significance of religious studies in fostering a vibrant, just, and democratic civic order.In the first section of the book, contributors detail this theoretical model and offer an initial application to the sources and methods that already define much teaching in the disciplines of religious studies and theology. A second section offers chapters focused on specific strategies for teaching civic engagement (...) in religion classrooms, including traditional textual studies, reflective writing, community-based learning, field trips, media analysis, ethnographic methods, direct community engagement and a reflective practice of "ascetic withdrawal." The final section of the volume explores theoretical issues, including the delimitation of the "civic" as a category, connections between local and global in the civic project, the question of political advocacy in the classroom, and the role of normative commitments.Collectively these chapters illustrate the real possibility of connecting the scholarly study of religion with the societies in which we, our students, and our institutions exist. The contributing authors model new ways of engaging questions of civic belonging and social activism in the religion classroom, belying the stereotype of the ivory tower intellectual. (shrink)

In a theological understanding of nature, what is the significance of herons? This article reflects on the question of herons by first describing how bird migration can be included in a theological approach to nature. To explore the theological meaning of migration, theology must model nature as defined by the idea of 'emplacement'. Next, it investigates how the migration of herons challenges and complements our sense of dwelling by detailing the different ways that herons are emplaced as migratory birds. It (...) concludes by offering three insights into the place of herons in a philosophical theology of nature. First, migrating herons and other non-human animals penetrate into nature as both radically particular creatures and anonymously general ones. Second, herons push us to understand the theological meaning of the otherness of Otherness. Third, non-human animals remind us to move beyond solipsistic views of our emplacement. Together with a general description of the elements of emplacement that are added by the migration of herons, we see how we are theologically influenced by the 'intimate distance' of herons. (shrink)

This essay addresses how the idea of wilderness is a point of conversation between environmental philosophy and environmental theology. This topic is approached through a conversation with the environmental philosophy of Martin Drenthen. First, I discuss the respective aims of environmental philosophy and environmental theology. Second, I summarise the work of Drenthen on wilderness and otherness. Third, I compare this vision of environmental philosophy and a theological concept of Divine Otherness. Finally I sketch how this exploration is part of a (...) theological account of wilderness. Taking seriously Drenthen's view that wilderness is the otherness at the intersection of nature and culture, wilderness can be understood as indicative of Divine Otherness. Thus wilderness is a unique place where theological and philosophical thinking traverse and challenge each other. (shrink)