Description
Trade ReviewJan-Olav Henriksen has produced a valuable resource for the church as it struggles to bring Christian faith to bear fruitfully on the climate crisis. He offers a deep dive into the power of symbols to engender consistent action – including political action – for transformation toward ways of living that allow earth’s climate systems to flourish. This book will be invaluable in the academy and in the church. -- Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda, Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary of California Lutheran University, USA
The late Ursula K Le Guin argued that if we going to think ourselves out of the current problems of climate change and globalization, we are going to need more speculative fiction writers. This means we need new symbols with which to imagine our planetary futures. This book is important because it critiques the underlying theological symbols of western style democracies and economics that are, in the era of the Anthropocence, quite simply deficient. We need new, planetary ways of imagining human-God-Earth relations that suggest we (and all things human) are emergent from the process of planetary evolution. -- Whitney Bauman, Florida International University, USA
Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Deficit Thesis and the Task It Presents
Part 1: Contexts for the Symbol Deficit Chapter One: From Acts of God to the Anthropocene
Chapter Two: Culprits for the Predicament
Chapter Three: Consumer Idolatry
Chapter Four: Religion in Denial
Chapter Five: To Empower Those Who Suffer and Give Voice to Those Who Lack It
Part 2: Conditions for symbolic practices Chapter Six: Symbols as Mediating Practice
Chapter Seven: Conditions for Agency: A Critique of Modernity’s Detached Subject
Chapter Eight: Symbols for Enhancing Moral Motivation and Avoiding Defection
Chapter Nine: An Inductive, Experientially Oriented Theology
Part 3: Symbols for Practices Chapter Ten: God as Creator - A Critical Symbol?
Chapter Eleven: From Anthropos to All of Creation
Chapter Twelve: Symbolic Deficits in Apocalypticism – Towards a Presentist Eschatology
Chapter Thirteen: Sin
Chapter Fourteen: Symbols for Hope – A Critical Evaluation
Chapter Fifteen: Sacrifice, Hope, and Grace Bibliography Index
