By Maria Nita 

Gaia, by Luke Jerram, exhibited at Bath Abbey, July 2023

Copyright: Maria Nita

The image above shows Luke Jerram’s world-famous Gaia artwork whilst exhibited at Bath Abbey in 2023. Jerram’s Gaia allows publics to reflect on the fragility of the Earth’s biosphere, as well as our individual and collective responses to the climate crisis. Although Jerram’s Gaia has been hosted in many different settings, such as festival sites, parks and shopping malls, the opening up of cathedrals around Britain to poignant, socially engaged ecological art, like Gaia, points to the important role religious traditions could have in fostering a deeper ethical engagement with the climate emergency.

My historical and ethnographic research into the climate movement has pointed to the growing recognition of the role of Environmental or Green Christianity in the climate movement. (Nita, 2023) Moreover, I have showed that in Britain the broad environmental movement and intersecting free festival movement, incorporated important Christian practices and pilgrimage-like rituals, where participants travelled to symbolic sites, endured shared hardship, and formed temporary communities of communitas, creating alternative sacred spaces within the changing religious landscape of late twentieth-century Britain. (Nita & Gemie, 2020; Nita & Kidwell, 2022)

In a new series of seminars titled ‘Christians on Climate Change’, I will invite speakers among both scholars and practicing Christians who have an interest in how faith communities and organizations can recover deeply rooted ecological principles needed for transformative action in the face of the climate crisis. The seminar series will aim to showcase the breadth and diversity of contemporary scholarship on Christian responses to the climate crisis.

Bringing together leading scholars from different theological, geographical and disciplinary contexts, the series explores how Christian thought and practice engage questions of environmental degradation, ecological justice, political responsibility, and social transformation. By exploring the plurality of Christian climate voices, the series will critically examine both old tensions and new harmonies within the tradition, with specific attention to grassroots activism and institutional authority. Attention will be given to the political implications of Christian climate discourse, how it shapes public theology, policy engagement, protest movements, and everyday ecological practice. Moreover, by situating Christian climate engagement within contemporary debates on sustainability, justice, and post-secular politics, the series will foster interdisciplinary dialogue across religious studies, environmental humanities and social sciences. Ultimately, the series seeks to examine the role of Christian traditions within the broader public arena of global climate action.

Please join me for the first of these seminars, on Wednesday, 1 July, 1:00 – 2:00 pm, when Revd Dr Mark Siddall will talk about: ‘This planetary body: a proposed framework to understand Christian perspectives on anthropogenic climate change’

To attend this first seminar please register: here [the links can be embedded] https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/d22240dc-6829-4e95-b0cd-b408ef0df7a5@0e2ed455-96af-4100-bed3-a8e5fd981685

If you are interested in attending future events, please register: here https://forms.gle/7F7Tv3zBbKDiSpxe7

References

Nita, M. 2024. ‘Sacred Waters, Sacred Earth – Contemporary Paganism inside Extinction Rebellion: A Relational Analysis of Protest Death Rituals’ in Extinction and Religion, edited by Jeremy H. Kidwell and Stefan Skrimshire, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 114-154. ISBN: 9780253068491.

Nita, M. and J. H. Kidwell. eds. 2022. Festival Cultures: Mapping New Fields in the Arts and Social Sciences. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI. 10.1007/978-3-030 88392-8, ISBN 978-3-030-88391-1.

Nita, M. and S. Gemie. 2020. ‘Counterculture, Local Authorities and British Christianity at the Windsor and Watchfield Free Festivals (1972–5)’, Twentieth Century British History 31 (1): 51 -78, DOI.10.1093/tcbh/hwy053.

Nita, M. 2016. Praying and Campaigning with Environmental Christians: Green Religion and the Climate Movement. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 259 pp., DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-60035-6, ISBN 978-1-137-600034-9.