Climate Politics and the Power of Religion

Evan Berry

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780253059055
• eBook ISBN: 9780253059086
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Ethics & Religion

How does our faith affect how we think about and respond to climate change?

Climate Politics and the Power of Religion is an edited collection that explores the diverse ways that religion shapes climate politics at the local, national, and international levels. Drawing on case studies from across the globe, it stands at the intersection of religious studies, environment policy, and global politics.

From small island nations confronting sea-level rise and intensifying tropical storms to high-elevation communities in the Andes and Himalayas wrestling with accelerating glacial melt, there is tremendous variation in the ways that societies draw on religion to understand and contend with climate change.

Climate Politics and the Power of Religion offers 10 timely case studies that demonstrate how different communities render climate change within their own moral vocabularies and how such moral claims find purchase in activism and public debates about climate policy. Whether it be Hindutva policymakers in India, curanderos in Peru, or working-class people's concerns about the transgressions of petroleum extraction in Trinidad—religion affects how they all are making sense of and responding to this escalating global catastrophe.

INDEX

Page numbers in italics indicate figures.

Abbott, Carl, 238

Achuar people, 114

ACT Alliance, 21

Acuto, Michele, 238

Adger, William, 69

Adi Yogi, statue of, 158

Affordable Care Act (United States), 33

African Caribbean Spiritual Baptist religion, 41

African religions, 32, 45, 50, 57

Agard, John, 48

Agarwal, Anil, 81

Agarwal, G. D., 79–80

agency, 217, 262; moral, of sentient landscapes, 177–82, 185, 192–201

ahimsa (nonviolence), 87–88

Allen, George V., 233

Alley, Kelly D., 7, 8, 10, 87, 150, 263, 265

Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC), 246

Allison, Elizabeth, 218

Allocco, Amy, 67n1

Amazon, 180, 186, 196

American Psychological Association (APA), 211, 218

Andean Incas (1470–1532), 184

Andean region, 5, 8, 177, 183–86, 197. See also La Libertad (Andean region, Peru)

Anderson, Amy, 240

animist religions, 44, 57

Annenberg Public Policy Center study, 137

Anthropocene, 1, 10, 60, 200; kaliyuga, compared with, 67, 67n1

anthropology, 7, 113, 181, 184

anthropomorphism, 60

antidevelopment scholarship, 187

antimodernist critiques, 69

anxieties, 1, 3, 68, 79, 89, 216

apocalyptic beliefs, 42, 52–54, 133, 197–200

apus (divine beings), 8, 176–201; apu as honorary title, 184; Cerro Campana, 177, 188, 193–94, 196; Cuculicote, 179. See also sentient landscapes

Aquino, Benigno, 19, 24

archaeologists, and sentient landscapes, 191–92, 198

Arguelles, Ramon (Archbishop), 25–26

Art of Living Foundation (AOL), 153–58, 167, 170

Asad, Talal, 106, 111

Asociación de Rescate y Defensa del Apu Campana (Association for the Rescue and Defense of Apu Campana), 193

assemblages, climate discourses as, 60, 67, 69, 266

Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines, 18

atmospheric system, borderlessness of, 5

austerity, 46–47

austerity gospel, 42, 50–51; “prosperity-austerity gospel,” 42–43, 51–52

Australia, 97, 123–24; Indigenous peoples, 113–14, 116

authority, 249, 258, 263–65; moral, 177, 194, 244

Ayres, Alyssa, 236

Ayurveda, 75

Bacigalupo, Ana Marie...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction / Evan Berry
• I. Religion and the Construction of National Climate Policy
• II. Transnational and Theoretical Considerations
• III. Religion and the Complexity of Public Environmental Discourse
• Conclusion: Where Climate Meets Religion—Mobilization, Discourse, and Authority / Ken Conca
• Index
• About the Author