Religion and the Natural Environment

2021-2022

Every year, CTI convenes a cohort of scholars in theology and other disciplines from around the world to collaborate on an issue of global concern. During the current academic year, 2021-22, CTI is focused on the issue of the natural environment, exploring how resources from religious and theological traditions might be brought to bear on ecological issues.

When the theme for the current academic year at CTI was set some five years ago, we could not have known that COP26, the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, would coincide with our workshop on religion and the natural environment. But as fate would have it, CTI’s team is grappling with the climate crisis as world leaders gather to work for meaningful change. CTI aims to inform public thinking, through providing fresh insights from theology and religious traditions. The group gathered this year is particularly well-situated to do so.

As this is the capstone year in our five-year Inquiry on Religion & Global Issues (2017-22), we are aiming to make climate connections with some of the other global issues in the inquiry. We are fortunate to have some of the leading scholars on migration and on violence in this year’s workshop, along with researchers, policymakers, and practitioners on environmental issues.

Among the latter is Mark Douglas, Professor of Christian Ethics at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. Over the past decade, Douglas has been writing a three-volume project exploring the impacts of climate change on war from a Christian theological perspective. His first volume has been published by Cambridge University Press: Christian Pacifism for an Environmental Age (2019), and the second volume on the just war tradition and the environment is now in press with CUP.

“Once completed,” Douglas explains, “the trilogy will, I believe, cap a project that reaches a wide academic audience and shapes conversations for years to come as the need to attend to the intersections of environmental crises, violence, and religion becomes increasingly pressing in the Anthropocene.”

Also in the workshop are two colleagues Douglas has worked with in the metro Atlanta area: Jairo Garcia and Codi Norred. Former Director of Climate Policy with the City of Atlanta and the lead author of Atlanta’s Climate Action Plan, Garcia is an expert in urban sustainability and climate change. He is currently the CEO of Urban Climate Nexus and teaches classes in urban sustainability and climate change at Johns Hopkins University and The Georgia Institute of Technology.

Codi Norred is the executive director of Georgia Interfaith Power & Light, a leading environmental non-profit in Atlanta. Norred holds a Masters of Divinity from Candler School of Theology at Emory University with concentrations in Justice, Peacebuilding, and Conflict Transformation, Theology and Ethics, and Human Rights. Also holding a BA in Religion from Samford University, Norred works at the intersection of religion, human rights, ethics, and the environment.

Lisa Sideris returns to CTI this year after her prior participation in our Inquiry on the Societal Implications of Astrobiology. A Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Sideris teaches a variety of courses in environmental ethics, science and religion, and nature spirituality, as well as courses focused on the emerging ethical issues of the Anthropocene. The overarching question that drives her research is how to articulate a vision of the human that is appropriate to the environmental challenges we collectively face. Her major publications on CTI’s research theme include Environmental Science, Ecological Theology, and Natural Selection (Columbia University Press, 2003) and Consecrating Science: Wonder, Knowledge, and the Natural World (University of California Press, 2017).

Like Sideris, Frederick Simmons joins the workshop this year at CTI after his previous involvement in the Inquiry on the Societal Implications of Astrobiology. Simmons is the John Templeton Foundation Research Scholar in Theology and Science at Princeton Theological Seminary and a Research Assistant Professor of Ethics at Boston University School of Theology. He has written on the natural world’s significance for Christian social ethics, the new cosmology’s ethical import, Christian environmental ethics in relation to anthropogenic climate change, and the idea of stewardship. As a member of CTI’s workshop on religion and the natural environment, he is writing an article on environmental pessimism and Christian hope and a chapter on Protestant assessments and uses of nature as a theological resource. He is the editor of the groundbreaking volume on Love and Christian Ethics (Georgetown University Press, 2016) and a co-editor of the forthcoming volume from CTI’s astrobiology inquiry, Life as a Planetary Phenomenon: Essays in the Astrobiological Humanities.

Peter Scott’s research explores the intersection between ecological theology and political theology. His CTI project, tentatively entitled Flesh Made Word: A Theological Materialism, explores the material pattern or logos of creation for a postnatural condition. The Samuel Ferguson Professor of Applied Theology at the University of Manchester, Scott is also Director of the Lincoln Theological Institute—a research center that has hosted research projects in this area, including “Systematic Theology and Climate Change” (2013). His major publications on CTI’s research theme include A Political Theology of Nature (Cambridge University Press, 2003), Anti-human Theology: Nature, Technology and the Postnatural (SCM, 2010), and A Theology of Postnatural Right (LIT Verlag, 2019).

A participant in CTI’s 2018-2019 workshop on Religion & Violence, Wolfgang Palaver is Professor of Catholic Social Thought at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. He has published books and articles on political theology, violence and religion, Thomas Hobbes, Carl Schmitt, Simone Weil, and René Girard. He recently conducted a research project on Gandhi’s concept of nonviolence at The Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (South Africa) alongside fellow CTI members Louise Du Toit and Ed Noort.

Kanan Kitani is an assistant professor of theology at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan. A CTI Member who took part in the 2018 workshop on religion and migration, Kitani focuses in her research on issues of church and state, global migration, and ecumenism. She has contributed chapters to various books, including Latin America between Conflict and Reconciliation (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), Christianities in Migration: The Global Perspective  (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), and Christian Theology in the Age of Migration: Implications for World Christianity (Lexington Books, 2020). Currently, she is pursuing a degree in environmental studies at Kyoto University Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies to prepare her for further research on the topic.

A Professor of Systematic Theology at the Norwegian School of Theology, Religion, and Society, Jan-Olav Henriksen returns to CTI after his earlier participation in the 2012-2013 Inquiry on Evolution and Human Nature. Presently, he has in press a book with Bloomsbury/T&T Clark on  Climate Change and the Symbol Deficit in the Christian Tradition. He argues in the book that Christianity is rich in symbols that identify and address the failures of humans and the obstacles that prevent humans from doing well, while positive symbols that can engage people in constructive action seem underdeveloped. Henriksen is also co-authoring a book for the general public with philosopher Arne Johan Vetlesen on the ethical challenges related to climate change. During CTI’s workshop this year, Henriksen is writing Theological Anthropology for the Anthropocene, which will focus on what the present situation entails for the understanding of humanity’s place and role on the planet.

William Barbieri is a CTI Member who participated in CTI’s workshop on religion and migration in 2018. He teaches in the School of Theology and Religious Studies and directs the Peace and Justice Studies Program at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. Barbieri has published several books, including Ethics of Citizenship: Immigration and Group Rights in Germany (Duke University Press, 1998) and Constitutive Justice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). His current research addresses ecological ethics, the politics of human dignity, and the historicity of morals.

Edwin Turner is a returning CTI member, having participated for several years in CTI’s Inquiry on the Societal Implications of Astrobiology. A Professor of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University, Turner has carried out extensive astronomical observations at Mt. Palomar Observatory, Kitt Peak National Observatory, NRAO’s Very Large Array, Apache Point Observatory, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan’s Subaru Telescope and with the Hubble Space Telescope. Working extensively in both theoretical and observational astrophysics, Turner has published more than 240 research papers on topics such as binary galaxies, groups of galaxies, large-scale structure, dark matter, quasar populations, gravitational lensing, the cosmic x-ray background, the cosmological constant, exoplanets, astrobiology and the origin of life. Recently, he has been an active participant in the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative and the YHouse project. Turner is a co-editor of the forthcoming volume from CTI’s astrobiology inquiry, Life as a Planetary Phenomenon: Essays in the Astrobiological Humanities.

Central to CTI’s mission is the convening of leading thinkers—and CTI is certainly doing just that to meet the existential challenge of climate change. Just as important, CTI convenes leading thinkers in order to inform the way people think and act, an imperative in the case of the climate crisis. This is a global concern for which theological voices must be brought around the table with policymakers and practitioners. That is precisely what CTI is doing as world leaders gather in Glasgow.