We are releasing sections of the book Faith in a Changing Climate for review. (The current Table of Contents is here.) This post provides the third part of Chapter 1. (Please note that this material is taken from the manuscript — it is likely to change as the book goes through the editing process.)
The first part of the chapter is here. The second part is here.
CHAPTER 1 — NOAH’S ARK
WE ARE “WE”
There are many, many books, websites, and blog posts that describe our multiple predicaments. Furthermore, national governments and international bodies have issued a seemingly endless stream of reports and proclamations about climate change for decades. There have even been a few cautious sermons on the topic. Many of these publications conclude with a general admonition that ‘they’ — or sometimes ‘we’ — should do something. We hope that clever people somewhere will come up with a techno-fix, but that prospect seems always to be a-glimmering on the horizon.
This begs the question as to who exactly ‘we’ or ‘they’ are. It is generally assumed that national and international governments will lead our efforts. But, as we saw in Figure 1.1, little has changed. There has been no effective leadership. Maybe the ‘we’ or the ‘they’ is the church community.
ORGANIZATION OF THIS BOOK
The book is organized into the following ten chapters.
Chapter 1 Noah’s Ark (this one)
Chapter 2 An Opportunity
Summarizes the background and goals for this book.
Chapter 3 A Journey
This chapter describes my personal journey into an understanding of climate change and other Age of Limits issues
Chapter 4 The 300-Year Party
Provides an overview of the extraordinary events of the last 300 years — a period that is often called the Industrial Revolution, but which would probably be better called the Fossil Fuel Revolution. This one-time event is coming to an end. It is this situation that provides an opportunity for the church to provide leadership.
Chapter 5 The City of Man
Early in the 5th century CE, Augustine of Hippo wrote his classic book, City of God. He argued that all human organizations — Cities of Men — eventually fail. Only the City of God is permanent. In this chapter we consider how today’s society, which depends utterly on the availability of fossil fuel energy, is coming to an end. This inevitability is a key part of our predicament. This understanding forms a basis of the guideline, ‘Understand Physical Realities’.
Chapter 6 Exile
Many people in today’s church feel a sense of exile, rather like the Hebrew people when they had to leave their homes and their Temple, and live and work in Babylon. They did not want to go, they did not know what lay ahead of them, and there was no assurance of a happy ending — a new Jerusalem.
Chapter 7 Green Technology to the Rescue
Technology has advanced the human condition in so many ways that it is natural for us to think that such progress will continue. In other words, we treat climate change and related issues as being problems that have a solution. The catch is that all technological developments depend on the availability of fossil fuel energy, and the ability to dispose of our wastes to ‘somewhere else’. However, we are running out of affordable fossil fuel energy, and we are running out of places to dump our pollution. There is no long-term green technology solution.
Chapter 8 Toward a New Theology
Many people of faith are working hard on environmental projects such as installing solar panels or recycling plastic waste. In this chapter we suggest that we need an intellectual framework, a theology, to provide a structure for this work.
Chapter 9 The Once and Future Church
The church has transformed itself many times in response to changing conditions. It needs to do so again. Some thoughts as to what the church of the future may look like are presented in this chapter.
Chapter 10 Three Guidelines
The final chapter summarizes the three guidelines that are developed in the previous chapters.
The chapters of the book are generally organized as follows.
A summary of the information provided in that chapter.
A parable or story.
A person’s name. Although the problems that we face are unique and without precedent, others have faced equally momentous challenges. Their actions can help us frame a useful response. The persons we have chosen for each chapter are:
Chapter 1. Noah,
Chapter 2. Isaiah,
Chapter 3. Jeremiah,
Chapter 4. Thomas Newcomen,
Chapter 5. Augustine of Hippo,
Chapter 6. John Shelby Spong,
Chapter 7. Al Gore,
Chapter 8. Francis of Assisi,
Chapter 9. Benedict of Nursia, and
Chapter 10. John of Patmos.