The Anthropocene Religion challenges Western modernity's ideas of nature and humanity's place within it, requiring a reconceptualization of religion and the divine. The Gaia hypothesis provides a figure to understand these concepts in their interconnectedness.

Format: Hardback
Length: 192 pages
Publication date: 28 February 2025
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Anthropocene Religion contends that confronting a future and present characterized by catastrophic climate change necessitates a profound reevaluation of the concepts of nature and humanity's place within it, inherited from Western modernity. It also necessitates a reconceptualization of the nature and role of religion. The advent of the Anthropocene simultaneously displaces the human from the center of the world and erodes all sharp distinctions between the natural environment and the realm of human activity. Similarly, the Anthropocene renders untenable concepts of religion that rely on reference to realms, beings, or forces that wholly transcend nature. It is, however, possible to understand both religion and its divine referents in worldly rather than transcendent terms, just as it is possible to understand nature as dynamic and creative. The Gaia hypothesis offers us a figure through which to approach these concepts in their interconnectedness.

Anthropocene Religion

Anthropocene Religion argues that addressing a future and present shaped by worldwide catastrophic climate change involves not only radically rethinking the ideas of nature and humanity's place within it, inherited from Western modernity. It also demands a reconceptualization of the nature and role of religion. The advent of the Anthropocene simultaneously displaces the human from the center of the world and erodes all sharp distinctions between the natural environment and the realm of human activity. Similarly, the Anthropocene renders untenable concepts of religion that rely on reference to realms, beings, or forces that wholly transcend nature. It is, however, possible to understand both religion and its divine referents in worldly rather than transcendent terms, just as it is possible to understand nature as dynamic and creative. The Gaia hypothesis offers us a figure through which to approach these concepts in their interconnectedness.

Weight: 430g
Dimension: 240 x 162 x 17 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781474425391