{"id":2021,"date":"2026-06-24T09:54:44","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T09:54:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/?p=2021"},"modified":"2026-06-24T09:54:44","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T09:54:44","slug":"christians-on-climate-change-a-new-seminar-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/?p=2021","title":{"rendered":"Christians on Climate Change: a new seminar series"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By <a href=\"https:\/\/profiles.open.ac.uk\/maria-nita\" >Maria Nita\u00a0<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Gaia, by Luke Jerram, exhibited at Bath Abbey, July 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Copyright: Maria Nita<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The image above shows Luke Jerram\u2019s world-famous Gaia artwork whilst exhibited at Bath Abbey in 2023. <a href=\"https:\/\/my-earth.org\/\" onclick=\"javascript:urchinTracker ('\/outbound\/article\/my-earth.org');\">Jerram\u2019s Gaia<\/a> allows publics to reflect on the fragility of the Earth\u2019s biosphere, as well as our individual and collective responses to the climate crisis. Although Jerram\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>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 &amp; Gemie, 2020; Nita &amp; Kidwell, 2022)<\/p>\n<p>In a new series of seminars titled \u2018Christians on Climate Change\u2019, 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\u00a0Christian\u00a0responses to the climate crisis.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Bringing together leading scholars from different theological, geographical and disciplinary contexts, the series explores how\u00a0Christian\u00a0thought and practice engage questions of environmental degradation, ecological justice, political responsibility, and social transformation. By exploring the plurality of\u00a0Christian\u00a0climate\u00a0voices, 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\u00a0Christian\u00a0climate discourse, how it shapes public theology, policy engagement, protest movements, and everyday ecological practice. Moreover, by situating\u00a0Christian\u00a0climate 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\u00a0Christian\u00a0traditions within the broader public arena of global climate action.<\/p>\n<p>Please join me for the first of these seminars, on Wednesday, 1 July, 1:00 \u2013 2:00 pm, when Revd Dr Mark Siddall will talk about:\u00a0\u2018This planetary body: a proposed framework to understand Christian perspectives on anthropogenic climate change\u2019<\/p>\n<p>To attend this first seminar please register: here [the links can be embedded] <a href=\"https:\/\/events.teams.microsoft.com\/event\/d22240dc-6829-4e95-b0cd-b408ef0df7a5@0e2ed455-96af-4100-bed3-a8e5fd981685\" onclick=\"javascript:urchinTracker ('\/outbound\/article\/events.teams.microsoft.com');\">https:\/\/events.teams.microsoft.com\/event\/d22240dc-6829-4e95-b0cd-b408ef0df7a5@0e2ed455-96af-4100-bed3-a8e5fd981685<\/a><\/p>\n<p>If you are interested in attending future events, please register: here <a href=\"https:\/\/forms.gle\/7F7Tv3zBbKDiSpxe7\" onclick=\"javascript:urchinTracker ('\/outbound\/article\/forms.gle');\">https:\/\/forms.gle\/7F7Tv3zBbKDiSpxe7<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>References<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Nita, M. 2024. \u2018Sacred Waters, Sacred Earth \u2013 Contemporary Paganism inside Extinction Rebellion: A Relational Analysis of Protest Death Rituals\u2019 in <em>Extinction and Religion<\/em>, edited by Jeremy H. Kidwell and Stefan Skrimshire, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 114-154. ISBN: 9780253068491.<\/p>\n<p>Nita, M. and J. H. Kidwell. eds. 2022. <em>Festival Cultures: Mapping New Fields in the Arts and Social Sciences<\/em>. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI. 10.1007\/978-3-030 88392-8, ISBN 978-3-030-88391-1.<\/p>\n<p>Nita, M. and S. Gemie. 2020. \u2018Counterculture, Local Authorities and British Christianity at the Windsor and Watchfield Free Festivals (1972\u20135)\u2019, <em>Twentieth Century British History<\/em> 31 (1): 51 -78, DOI.10.1093\/tcbh\/hwy053.<\/p>\n<p>Nita, M. 2016. <em>Praying and Campaigning with Environmental Christians: Green Religion and the Climate Movement.<\/em> New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 259 pp., DOI 10.1057\/978-1-137-60035-6, ISBN 978-1-137-600034-9.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Maria Nita\u00a0 Gaia, by Luke Jerram, exhibited at Bath Abbey, July 2023 Copyright: Maria Nita The image above shows Luke Jerram\u2019s world-famous Gaia artwork whilst exhibited at Bath Abbey in 2023. Jerram\u2019s Gaia allows publics to reflect on the fragility of the Earth\u2019s biosphere, as well as our individual and collective responses to the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2022,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2021"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2024,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2021\/revisions\/2024"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}