Liberating People, Planet, and Religion - (Religion in the Modern World) by Joerg Rieger & Terra Rowe (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

There is growing consensus that life on the planet is in peril if climate change continues at its current pace. At stake is not only the future of many species but of humanity itself. As an increasing number of ecological economists have emphasized, these problems will only be adequately addressed by re-examining economic systems from an ecological perspective, fundamentally calling into question assumptions of unlimited growth and the maximization of shareholder profit foundational to neoliberal capitalism. Religion and ecology scholars have also increasingly emphasized the ways climate change challenges assumed divides between nature and culture, religion and labor, economy and ecology, and calls for critical and constructive engagement with the religion, economy, and ecology nexus.

Often, though, religious engagements with economy and ecology have placed emphasis on individual morality, action, and agency at the level of consumption patterns or have suggested mere modifications within existing economic paradigms. Contributors to this volume call into question the adequacy of this approach in light of the urgency of climate change which is always ever entwined with ongoing patterns of exploitation, oppression, and colonialism in current economic systems. Rather than tweaking a system of exploitation, for instance by emphasizing individual consumption or care for human and non-human victims, these authors articulate important opportunities for religious engagement, activism, resistance, and solidarity around issues of production and labor. Recalling that Marx linked agencies and labor of people as well as the other-than-human world, these authors aim to articulate a sense in which liberation of people and the planet are intertwined and can be accomplished only through collaboration for their common good.

The basic intuition driving this volume is that while Christianity has by and large become the handmaiden of exploitative capitalism and empire, it might also reclaim latent theologies and religious practices that call into question the fundamental valuation of labor without recognition or rest, of extractive exploitation, and a "winner take all" praxis. In the process, Christianity might reclaim and reinvest in tenuous historical materializations of transformed ecological and economic relationships while economics might be re-informed by a valuation of the shared oikos as well as a just accounting of and renumeration for labor. Together they might serve the aim of the flourishing of all people and the planet.

Review Quotes

"Wonderful to see these explorations of religion and ecology continue in contemporary keys even as we have questionable evaluations of multispecies and human thriving above the now inevitable 2 degree C rise. Here authors contemplate issues of ecological justice, re-enchantment, animism, extractive economics, and ways of resisting new forms of racialized colonialism and capitalism. While oriented towards Christian perspectives, the discussions bring insights across the wider dialogue of religions in our imperiled world."

In the extractive exploitation of the earth and its workers, the role of production--not merely consumption--has often been missed. This crucial volume unveils how religion, when not colluding in ecological destruction, can motivate the still possible liberation of land and labor.

Religious traditions will have to decide who they will be and where they stand in this strange new world of our own making. Collaborations like this one are immeasurably helpful for that. Kudos to the editors and authors!

Rieger and Rowe's Liberating People, Planet, and Religion is the finest collection of essays on this crucial topic of the intersection of religion, ecology, and economics. It will redefine and illuminate the discussion for years to come.

About the Author

Joerg Rieger is distinguished professor of theology and holds the Cal Turner Chancellor's Chair in Wesleyan Studies in the Divinity School and the Graduate Program of Religion at Vanderbilt University. He is also the founding director of the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice at Vanderbilt. He is the author of Theology in the Capitalocene: Ecology, Identity, Class, and Solidarity (2022).

Terra Schwerin Rowe is associate professor in the philosophy and religion department at the University of North Texas. She is co-director of the AAR seminar, Energy, Extraction, and Religion, on the steering committee of the academy's Religion and Ecology unit, and a member of the Petrocultures Research Group. She is author of Toward a Better Worldliness: Economy, Ecology, and the Protestant Tradition (2017) and Of Modern Extraction: Experiments in Critical Petro-theology (2023).