Climate change promises monumental changes to human and other planetary life in the next generations. Yet government, business, and individuals have been largely in denial of the possibility that global warming may put our species on the road to extinction. Further, says Sallie McFague, we have failed to see the real root of our behavioral troubles in an economic model that actually reflects distorted religious views of the person. At its heart, she maintains, global warming occurs because we lack an appropriate understanding of ourselves as inextricably bound to the planet and its systems. A New Climate for Theology not only traces the distorted notion of unlimited desire that fuels our market system; it also paints an alternative idea of what being human means and what a just and sustainable economy might mean. Convincing, specific, and wise, McFague argues for an alternative economic order and for our relational identity as part of an unfolding universe that expresses divine love and human freedom. It is a view that can inspire real change, an altered lifestyle, and a form of Christian discipleship and desire appropriate to who we really are.

For decades, Sallie McFague lent her voice and theological imagination to advocating for the most important issues of our time. In this final book, finished before her death in 2019, McFague summarizes the work of a lifetime with a clear call to live in such a way that all might flourish.

For decades, Sallie McFague lent her voice and her theological imagination to addressing and advocating for the most important issues of our time. In doing so, she influenced an entire generation and empowered countless people in their efforts to put religion in the service of meeting human needs in difficult times. In this final book, finished in the year before her death in 2019, McFague summarizes the work of a lifetime with a clear call to live in "such a way that all might flourish." The way, she argues, is the "kenotic interpretation of Christianity: the odd arrangement whereby in order to gain your life, you must lose it. The way of the cross is total self-emptying so that one can receive life, real life, and then pass this life on." A masterful and life-giving summing-up of a theology that makes a profound difference for us, our communities, and our planet.

Cover -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- 1. The Geopolitics of a Slow Catastrophe -- 2. Coal, Cosmos, and Creation -- 3. Engineering the Air -- 4. Carbon Indulgences, Ecological Debt, and Metabolic Rift -- 5. The Crisis of Cosmopolitan Reason -- 6. The Nomos of the Earth and Governing the Anthropocene -- 7. Revolutionary Messianism and the End of Empire -- Index

The T&T Clark Handbook of Christian Theology and Climate Change entails a wide-ranging conversation between Christian theology and various other discourses on climate change. Given the far-reaching complicity of "North Atlantic Christianity" in anthropogenic climate change, the question is whether it can still collaborate with and contribute to ongoing mitigation and adaptation efforts. The main essays in this volume are written by leading scholars from within North Atlantic Christianity and addressed primarily to readers in the same context; these essays are critically engaged by respondents situated in other geographic regions, minority communities, non-Christian traditions, or non-theological disciplines. Structured in seven main parts, the handbook explores: 1) the need for collaboration with disciplines outside of Christian theology to address climate change; 2) the need to find common moral ground for such collaboration; 3) the difficulties posed by collaborating with other Christian traditions from within; 4) the questions that emerge from such collaboration for understanding the story of God's work; and 5) God's identity and character; 6) the implications of such collaboration for ecclesial praxis; and 7) concluding reflections examining whether this volume does justice to issues of race, gender, class, other animals, religious diversity, geographical divides and carbon mitigation. This rich ecumenical, cross-cultural conversation provides a comprehensive and in-depth engagement with the theological and moral challenges raised by anthropogenic climate change.

In this award-winning text, theologian Sallie McFague challenges Christians' usual speech about God as a kind of monarch. She probes instead three other possible metaphors for God as mother, lover, and friend.

In this splendidly crafted work, McFague argues for theology as an ethical imperative for all thinking Christians. It can help Christians assess their own religious story in light of the larger Christian tradition and the felt needs of the planet. She shows readers how articulating their personal religious stories and credos can lead directly into contextual analysis, unfolding of theological concepts, and forms of Christian practice.

This book offers the first comprehensive systematic theological reflection on arguably the most serious issue facing humanity and other creatures today. Responding to climate change is often left to scientists, policy makers and activists, but what understanding does theology have to offer? In this collection, the authors demonstrate that there is vital cultural and intellectual work for theologians to perform in responding to climate science and in commending a habitable way forward. Written from a range of denominations and traditions yet with ecumenical intent, the authors explore key Christian doctrines and engage with some of the profound issues raised by climate change. Key questions considered include: What may be said about the goodness of creation in the face of anthropogenic climate change? And how does theology handle a projected future without the human? The volume provides students and scholars with fascinating theological insight into the complexity of climate change.

In this quick and vibrant little book, Kelly Kapic presents the nature, method and manners of theological study for newcomers to the field. He emphasizes that theology is more than a school of thought about God, but an endeavor that affects who we are. "Theology is about life," writes Kapic. "It is not a conversation our souls can afford to avoid."

This book explores the interface of bodies and religion by investigating the impacts human-induced global warming will have on the embodied and performed practices of religion in ecologies of place. By utilizing analytical insights from religion and nature theory, posthumanism, queer ecologies, ecological animisms, indigenous knowledges, material feminisms, and performance studies the book advocates for a need to update how religious studies theorizes bodies and religion. It does so by in the first half of the book advocating for religious studies as a field, and the academy as a whole, to take the ongoing and deleterious future impacts of climate change seriously--to re-member that those laboring as scholars in religious studies, and the communities they study, have always been bodies in material bio-ecological places--and to let this inform the questions religious studies scholars ask. The book argues that this will lead to very different forms of engaged, liberatory scholarship that demands a different type of scholarship and public advocacy for resilience in the face of climate change. The second half of the book offers case study examples of how scholars may better engage religious bodies within petrocultures, while attending to new, emerging materialist posthuman assemblages of religious bodies. This book will be of interest to those in religious studies, the environmental humanities, and those working at the interface of the body and the natural world.