Religion in the Age of the Anthropocene

Environmental Values 30 (2):215-234 (2021)
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Abstract

Though responses to the Anthropocene have largely come from the natural and social sciences, religious responses to the Anthropocene have also been gaining momentum and many scholars have been calling for a religious response to complement scientific responses to climate change. Yet because Genesis 1:28 does indeed tell human beings to ‘subdue the earth’ monotheistic religions have often been understood as complicit in the human exceptionalism that is thought to have created the conditions for the Anthropocene. In distinction to such Biblical traditions, indigenous animistic cultures have typically respected all forms of life as ‘persons’ and such traditions have thus become a source of inspiration for ecological movements. After discussing contemporary Christian efforts to integrate the natural sciences and the environment into their responses to the Anthropocene, this article will turn to animism and seek to evaluate the risks and benefits that could ensue from a postmodern form of animism that could provide a necessary postsecular response to the Anthropocene.

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Citations of this work

How Long will Business as Usual be Sustained?Norman Dandy - 2021 - Environmental Values 30 (2):141-146.
Animism: Its Scope and Limits.Graham Oppy - 2022 - In Tiddy Smith (ed.), Animism and Philosophy of Religion. Springer Verlag. pp. 199-226.

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References found in this work

Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity.Ulrich Beck, Mark Ritter & Jennifer Brown - 1993 - Environmental Values 2 (4):367-368.
The Lives of Animals.J. M. Coetzee - 1999 - In The Lives of Animals. Princeton University Press. pp. 13-70.
Machinic Animism.Maurizio Lazzarato & Angela Melitopoulos - 2012 - Deleuze and Guatarri Studies 6 (2):240-249.

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