Anthropocene Religion : Rethinking Nature, Humanity and Divinity Amid Climate Catastrophe

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 centre 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.