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.)
No one expects you to “buy” every idea that comes down the pike, but the work of a consultation is best facilitated when everyone agrees to at least “rent” some parametric or delimiting ideas for a season. For us, those ideas are the four premises, the four papers that unpacked them, and the two graphs that accompanied them. Here is one of John’s strongest restatements of those premises:
Crisis is now inevitable under the rule of the dominant systems governing our world. We no longer hold out hope for the survival of those systems, nor for much of human society and the biosphere subject to their dominion. [Triumphal] “Positive Christianity”—one among those systems—is increasingly unintelligible amidst the crisis we now see and foresee, nor is it capable of a redemptive role in that unavoidable crisis. Our focus now needs to foreground suffering, and the courage to enter into it with compassion. To do this, we will need new or rediscovered ways of being human—including those unimagined by prevalent economic, political and theological orthodoxies.
Therefore, out of a desperate love for humanity and all of creation, we issue a call for fearless and unconstrained reassessment of our unquestioning commitment to those inherited systems, and robust consideration of alternatives.
Another way to “rent” for the season of our Consultation is to consciously place yourself inside the Green Circles of our two graphs. (Zoom in to read.)
As we developed the graphs for each paper, we asked you a series of rental questions:
Can you move along the X- and Y-Axes across the lines to where our consultants are gathering, as we 1) consider collapses, catastrophes, and extinctions; and 2) learn about “The Theology of the Cross”?
Can you move across both the X- and Y-axes to the quadrant where our consultants are gathering in order to contemplate the choices we hope to make in the New Future and the spiritual and theological bases for those choices?
Can you additionally understand the X-Axis with authoritative inherited faith at one end, and reimagined contextual faith at the other? Or, in the alternative, with personal individual virtue at one end, and systemic and theological reimagination at the other?
Can you adopt this posture (systemic interpretations, and The Christian as Apocalypticist) in the New Future?
Recommended Homework for Renters
*Read or re-read the Papers, Premises, Graphs, and Responses (with special thanks to Greg Boyd, Andii Bowsher, and David Lott who posted recent comments.)
Some thinkers (like Brian McLaren—see below) are ‘innovators” in the eco-realism space. I believe John Elwood and some of you are too. Most of you however will be like me (Lowell): we’re “early adopters.” Are you familiar with the Diffusion of Innovation Adopter Categories, as currently popularized by Everett Rogers?
Source of graph and following text: June Kaminski (2011), “Diffusion of Innovation Theory,” Canadian Journal of Nursing Informatics, 6.2.
Early adopters are also called “visionaries,” and according to Kaminski, their role and characteristics are:
Serve as the opinion leaders
Have a natural desire to be trend setters
Serve as role models within their social system, respected by peers, successful
Want to revolutionize competitive rules in their industry (want to be first)
Attracted by high-risk/high-reward projects (adventurous)
Not necessarily cost sensitive (often think “spend big”)
Provide excellent tester subjects to trial the innovation.
On July 26 and during this season, here is what I think the work of us early adopters is:
Continue to learn from innovators, but with a constructively critical posture.
Process the depth of your own adoption, including “counting the cost”
Build a community of early adopters
Begin to design and implement practical New Future programs, etc.
Explore how to engage the Early Majority
Recommended Homework for Early Adopters
*Do a brief inventory of your emotions: how are you feeling about the content and process of this Consultation?
*Count the costs: What are the risks to you of joining an early adopters community? What are the risks of reaching out to others who may (or may not) be Early Majority?
We warned you that this wouldn’t be another “sit-down-and-listen” conference. We will be facilitating the seven hours of our July 26 Consultation with the help a process called Open Space Technology (Harrison Owen, Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide, San Francisco: Barrett-Koehler Publishers, 2008.) For a 1 minute-forty five second video introduction, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_jhcvCYBbg
Open Space Technology challenges us to make the following four promises to you (GULP!) : By the end of our gathering, the following will have occurred:
Every issue of concern to anybody will have been raised, if they took responsibility for doing that.
All issues will have received full discussion, to the extent desired.
A full report of issues and discussions will be in the [inboxes] of all participants [by Monday morning].
[A basic proposal] of priorities. . . and action plans will be made.
NOTE: These last two promises are modified since Owen admits: “The last two typically only occur in two-and three-day meetings with computer support.”
Recommended Homework for Consultants
Identify—if you care to or if you can—”some issue or opportunity related to our theme for which you have genuine passion and for which you will take real responsibility. Don’t just consider good ideas that somebody else might do or be interested in. Think of powerful ideas that really grab you to the point that you will take personal responsibility to make sure that [the topic gets discussed and/or] something gets done. If nothing occurs to you, that is okay, and if if you have more than one issue or opportunity, that is fine too” (Owens, 86).
We continue on the learning curve of this new space. To that end, as we have done with previous newsletters, here are some suggested additional resources: a lecture from Dr. Carmody Grey on the occasion of COP26 in 2021, and a new book by Brian McLaren released just last month.
Dr. Carmody Grey is Assistant Professor of Catholic Theology at Durham University. We highly recommend that all in-person consultants come to July 26’s event having watched Dr. Grey’s 47-minute lecture. Her’s is an alternative approach to eco-realism, an application of Catholic theology (or so it seems) and it ends up in a surprising place. Her question—What do we want to sustain in the New Future?—is a crucial one. YouTube video, click here. Or available as a podcast, search: Winter Hook Lecture 2021 or here: https://lcileeds.org/winter-hook-lecture-2021-thinking-about-faith-and-the-climate-what-do-we-want-to-sustain/
We are arranging for all in-person consultants (one per couple) to receive a free copy of Brian McLaren’s book Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart (New York: St. Martins, 2024). Just released last month, McLaren’s book is remarkably close to our-eco-realism-consultation-between-two-covers-of-a-book. For all of us—whether you can attend the consultation or not—the latter chapters of his book suggest some practical ways forward, and perhaps some joint projects that we can undertake in the months to come.
Recommended Homework for Apocalypticists
* If you can, please listen to Dr. Grey’s lecture before the Consultation.
*We highly recommend McLaren’s book for whenever you can get your hands on it.