Religion in Environmental and Climate Change Suffering, Values, Lifestyles

Religious worldviews inform the activities of a majority of the world population, suggesting that religion offers significant theoretical and practical contributions to mitigating, and adapting to, global climate change. But the respective functions of religion are ambiguous: some religious organizations are aiming to become 'greener', screening their traditions for moral imperatives to respect the environment; however , some beliefs and religious practices may have fatalistic attitudes towards the impacts of climate change or may work against sustainable developments.In this book, 'religion' - defined from theological, ethical, philosophical, ethnological, anthropological, and historical perspectives - serves as an analytic lens for exploring the manifold human modes of perception, action and thought in climate change. Charting the spread from regional case studies to global-scale syntheses, the book discusses these overarching questions: How are ongoing climatic changes and the scientific projection of its future changes perceived in different belief systems including indigenous worldviews? What can religion contribute to mitigate, and adapt to, anthropogenic climate change? What features of religion may, in turn, hamper such adaptation?

Acknowledgements \ Notes on Contributors \ Part I: Setting the Stage \ 1. Facing the Human Faces of Climate Change Dieter Gerten & Sigurd Bergmann \ 2. Global Change and the Need for New Cosmologies Wolfgang Lucht \ 3. Religion in the Public Sphere: The Social Function of Religion in the Context of Climate and Development Policy Michael Reder \ 4. Contemplating Climategate: Religion and the Future of Climate Research Timothy Leduc \ Part II: Sketching Sustainable Futures: Recent Dynamics in World Religions \ 5. Climate Justice from a Christian Point of View: Challenges for a new Definition of Wealth Markus Vogt \ 6.Climate Justice and the Intrinsic Value of Creation: The Christian Understanding of Creation and its Holistic Implications Friedrich Lohmann \ 7. Evangelicals and Climate Change Michael Roberts \ 8. Religious Climate Activism in the United States Laurel Kearns \ 9. The Future of Faith: Climate Change and the Fate of Religions Martin Schönfeld \ Part III: Regional and Indigenous Belief Systems and Environmental Change: Case Studies \ 10. Climate and Cosmology: Exploring Sakha Belief and the Local Effects of Unprecedented Change in North-Eastern Siberia, Russia Susan Crate \ 11. Religious Perspectives on Climate Change Among Indigenous Communities: Questions and Challenges for Ethnological Research Lioba Rossbach de Olmos \ 12. Vulnerable Coastal regions: Indigenous People Under Climate Change in Indonesia Urte Undine Frömming and Christian Reichel \ 13. Jaichylyk: Harmonizing the Will of Nature and Human Needs Gulnara Aitpaeva\ 14. Environment, Climate and Religion in Ancient European History Holger Sonnabend \ Index