Climate, Catastrophe, and Faith: How Changes in Climate Drive Religious Upheaval

Written by Philip Jenkins

Narrated by Pearl Hewitt

Long before the current era of man-made climate change, the world has suffered repeated, severe climate-driven shocks. These shocks have resulted in famine, disease, violence, social upheaval, and mass migration. But these shocks were also religious events. Dramatic shifts in climate have often been understood in religious terms by the people who experienced them. They were described in the language of apocalypse, millennium, and Judgment. Often, too, the eras in which these shocks occurred have been marked by far-reaching changes in the nature of religion and spirituality. Those changes have varied widely-from growing religious fervor and commitment; to the stirring of mystical and apocalyptic expectations; to waves of religious scapegoating and persecution; or the spawning of new religious movements and revivals.

In Climate, Catastrophe, and Faith historian Philip Jenkins draws out the complex relationship between religion and climate change. He asserts that the religious movements and ideas that emerge from climate shocks often last for many decades, and even become a familiar part of the religious landscape. By stirring conflicts and provoking persecutions that defined themselves in religious terms, changes in climate have redrawn the world's religious maps, and created the global concentrations of believers as we know them today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Highbridge Company
• Release date: Jun 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781696605380

Philip Jenkins

Philip Jenkins is the Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. He has published articles and op-ed pieces in The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe and is a regular on radio shows. He was educated at Cambridge and has written over twenty books including The Lost History of Christianity, Jesus Wars, and The Next Christendom and over a hundred articles and reviews. He has won several book prizes in both the Christian and secular arena.