The Future of Religion in the Anthropocene Era

T heated public intensity around the 2015 United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris (COP 21) shows that the complex political, social, and religious issues surrounding questions of climate change continue to remain high on the agenda. Within the sciences, the term Anthropocene—the Age of Humans—is gradually moving into the discourse of climate change; so far, however, there has been relatively little critical engagement with this concept from the perspective of the environmental humanities. The Anthropocene poses a tremendous challenge for the humanities not least because the human sciences bring tools that can assess the diverse scientific and cultural narratives. For theology and religious studies this includes an assessment of implicit religious narratives, or whether there are social and ethical implications, especially for environmental ethics. The geological notion of the Anthropocene is meant to denote the current geological era as a new geological epoch in which the collective imprint of human activities is so pervasive that the Earth System, most notably that associated with climate change, is destabilized. Related assessments suggest that humanity is now close to passing several other planetary boundaries and tipping points. These notions have stirred up vigorous discussions in the earth sciences, where research now focuses on a rigorous understanding of humanity’s interaction with the biophysical Earth System. Treating humanity as a whole in this way has also come under serious critique