There is a history of trying to marry climate activism with religious tradition and theology. This is an intuitively satisfying combination because climate change is a fundamental existential threat, and religion is a powerful force shaping culture, beliefs, priorities, and behaviors – especially around important moral and existential questions. Moreover, religious leaders and organizations often wield substantial ideological and financial power to shape policy. It seems that religion should have something useful to say about climate change.
This talk touches on the history of climate activism as it relates to Christianity and Islam. Interestingly, there are many points of parallelism between the two. In both cases, climate activists have sought to promote climate action as a necessary corollary of existing theological narratives such as stewardship of the earth (Christianity) or core religious principles such as Khalifa or Maslahah (Islam). In both cases, we see three basic conceptualizations among practitioners: acceptance of climate change as real and a responsibility of humanity; skepticism about climate change; or acceptance of climate change as real but caused by the will of God (e.g. as a punishment or a precursor to the end times) rather than humanity. And in both cases, there appears to have been little/extremely limited success in using theological arguments to persuade religious practitioners not already convinced.
Why might this be? Aside from the general difficulty of persuasion, it is also that case that religion, though a powerful force, may be ill-suited to this kind of persuasion. First, religion tends to involve a complex set of ideas – a single religious text tends to offers multiple narratives that can be exploited to justify multiple viewpoints or political stances, making it difficult to argue for the primacy of any one interpretation, especially if it clashes with existing biases. Moreover, attempts to do this may evoke in-group/out-group tensions if the narrative being promoted is seen as tied to “outsiders” to the religious community.
Second, there is likely some cognitive dissonance between religion and climate change. Religious belief tends to be immediate, personal, and relational; by contrast, climate change is big, remote, and scientific/technical. In case evidence, religion seems to connect more readily to local conservation efforts with indirect connections to climate rather than to climate policy itself. For this reason, I postulate that it may be easier to mobilize the power of religious faith in promoting climate adaptation efforts (which tend to be focused on solving immediate local problems) than on preventing climate change.
For additional information, you can click through Prof. Kelsey’s presentation here
