A Consultation

“Reflections on Eco-Realism Consultation: What’s Clear, What Calls”

After the July 26th gathering at Catholic University, we (John and Lowell) promised to provide a short synopsis of the most compelling things we heard from you, and the directions and projects that we find most energizing going forward. We are sending this to all of you—both those who subscribed and considered our four premises, and those who also attended in person and participated with us face to face. Read More.

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.

Paper #1: An Eco-Realistic New Future (the Y-Axis)

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.

Paper #3: Eco-Realism and Re-imagined Ministry in a New Future (from the Y-Axis to the X-)

CONSULTATION PREMISE #3:  The New Future demands greater attention to the inevitable suffering of climate change, and the spiritual foundations of courageous and compassionate responses to it; even if such focus arouses accusations of abandoning mitigation and adaptation.

By Lowell Bliss (released May 7, 2024)

“Nothing was ready for the war that everyone expected...”
-Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

I. Naomi Klein and the Respect that Preppers May Deserve

I have a friend in our old church in Kansas whose in-laws are doomsday preppers. Our friends aren’t into it themselves, but they are dutiful children, and so once a year they make the trek to some undisclosed location in Wyoming where activities of the family reunion include freshening the water supplies and attending to upkeep. There are guns on the property. After “the Collapse,” hunting will of course be a necessity. For a while, I can imagine, there will be a propensity to share from the stockroom with other human beings, but then I can also imagine the growing threat around them that results in using those guns to “protect what is ours for our own.”

Doomsday preppers are easy enough to caricaturize, or for our purposes, they are easy enough to dismiss if we hold out optimistically for the continuation of what our Consultation is calling “the Old [triumphant] Future.” Read More.

Paper #4: Reimagining Faith for the New Future

CONSULTATION PREMISE #4: A faithful Christianity in a darkening New Future demands more than redoubled efforts at virtue. It demands interrogation of tenets inherited from the world of the Old Future. If the positive declaration of “This” is to be meaningful, it must now be accompanied by the negative “Not That.” 

By John Elwood (released June 4, 2024)

“There has been in Christian history a thin tradition which tried to proclaim the possibility of hope without shutting its eyes to the data of despair, a tradition which indeed insisted that authentic hope comes into view only in the midst of apparent hopelessness…. This is, we must emphasize, a thin tradition.”   – Douglas John Hall

Is Christianity ready for the “New Future” of ecosystem failure and societal upheaval?

I am not asking, “Are Christians ready?” For the most part, we already know the answer to that question. Read More.

The Apocalyptic and Systemic: A Second Consultation Graph

We would like to propose a new conceptual graph to augment the one we have used in Pre-Consultation papers 1-4. This graph is an effort to visualize our responses in the New Future in terms of the personal v. systemic, and in terms of the prophetic v. apocalyptic. We encourage those who are challenging Old Future understandings to do more than just become prophets, but also apocalypticists, and then commit to work for systemic interpretations and change, not just individual or personal ones.

 This second graph owes much to Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen’s book An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity (Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 2022). 
Read More.

What is the Work of our Consultation?: Expectations and "Homework"

Whether you are a registrant (who will be with us on July 26 in person) or a subscriber (who has been reading along)—today’s newsletter is for you! Twenty-three days until our Consultation! We are excited. We have about 30 registered to attend and good co-horts of youth, theologians, pastors, scientists, and climate activists. (It’s still not too late to register). It is time to pose the question: What is the work that is expected of us?— not only during the seven hours some of us will be together on July 26, but for all of us who have spent the Spring reading and digesting this eco-realistic content? We see four categories of work (each of which recommends some small pieces of pre-arrival homework, as you have time and inclination)":

• The Work of “Renters”

• The Work of “Early Adopters”

• The Work of Consultants

• The Work of Apocalypticists
  Read More.

A Summary of Seven Hours Spent Together on July 26, 2024:

“The Old Future is Gone”: Eco-Realism and the Re-imagined Faith for the New Future

Read the summary of what our gathered consultants discussed, including notes from nine breakout sessions on topics that they chose for themselves as important.