A Consultation

In-person in July and/or 5 newsletters Mar-July

Friday, July 26, 2024
Catholic University
Washington, DC

Our initiating hosts, John Elwood and Lowell Bliss, are pictured here at Crawford Lake, near Milton, ON, the proposed “golden spike” for the New Future (erstwhilely) known as the Anthropocene (August 2024). Read here the Introduction to Old and New Futures, the explanatory correspondence that set our Consultation in motion.

CONSULTATION PREMISE #1:  The New Future will experience excruciating collapses, catastrophes, and/or extinctions for which our faith in current efforts at activism, sustainability, and/or technological innovation is unfounded.  It is neither pessimism nor doomism to admit this.

By Lowell Bliss (released March 6, 2024)

“It is still not too late to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.”

I am an optimist by nature, but this rallying cry of so many of my colleagues has lost all meaning for me.  The problem is how two of the words—worst and late—are so subjectively imprecise but they masquerade as syntactically definitive.  The word worst is a superlative adjective, and so, of course!, it’s not too late to avoid the worst-est.  Read More.

Paper #2: Who is Christ for Us Today?: Toward a More Cruciform Faith for the “New Future” (the X-Axis)

CONSULTATION PREMISE #2: In the New Future of ecological trauma, a faith that primarily accentuates widely-held positives—the comforting assurances upon which optimistic religion depends—will become increasingly unintelligible to those seeking wholeness and hope in this world. It is not unfaithful to admit this.

By John Elwood (released April 2, 2024)

Last autumn, the “Faith Factor in Climate Change” report showed up in my in-box. I had been waiting anxiously for this: PRRI’s ten-year update analyzing how religion impacts American attitudes on environmental policy. Surely, our efforts at “creation care” advocacy would have yielded some progress, I told myself.

I already knew much of what I would find: that secular Americans would hold the most constructive attitudes toward climate policies, and that Christians—most of all, White Evangelicals—would lead the way in denial and inaction. But surely there would be progress, I hoped. Read More.

Our Consultation is grateful to the American Scientific Affiliation for administrative and venue support. Consider adding on the three days of ASA’s wonderful conference for Christians in Science. Click here.

Eden Vigil is an institute of William Carey International University, an accredited on-line university offering graduate degrees in Development Studies and Transformational Urban Leadership.