Climate, Religion, and the Anthropocene

This course examines intersections between religious life and climate change in a comparative and global perspective. In recent years, the idea of the Anthropocene—the period of geological time during which human activity has become the primary force shaping the Earth’s climate—has abounded in both academic and popular literature. This focus on human agency over the climate raises questions about the extent to which humans share equally responsibility for and vulnerability to climate change, as well as differing understandings of human relationships and responsibilities toward the environment. This course uses religion as a lens to examine the role of humans in both creating ecological destruction and efforts to repair and rework relationships with the natural world. We will draw on primary texts from religious traditions around the world in a bid to unsettle human-centric and universalist narratives of the Anthropocene. By the end of the semester, students will have deepened and nuanced their understandings of the notoriously vexed categories of religion and the Anthropocene, and come away with new ways of thinking about the climate crisis.