This past year I have been updating Love in a Time of Climate Change: Honoring Creation, Establishing Justice, which was originally published in 2017. The revised version will be released on January 13. Here are a couple of excerpts from the new Preface:
At this time in history, when the stability of life on Earth is being disrupted by rapidly advancing climate change, we human beings face an unprecedented challenge. The challenge is whether to turn away or face and respond to the dangers of planetary warming, knowing that our choices will affect all future generations. Those of us who benefit from industrial civilization also carry the moral burden of knowing that our fossil-fueled way of life is harming people here and now and diminishing God’s good creation.
But living in this time can also be seen as an opportunity and a privilege, as a time of possibility for a “great turning.” Many years ago, after participating in an intergenerational nonviolent direct action, a young woman who had been at the action sent a card to thank me. She signed her note with these words: “I am so grateful that we are alive at this time when the earth needs us most.” I considered her words a blessing.
Love in a Time of Climate Change is an invitation for followers of Jesus to embark on a deepening journey of faith that integrates personal spirituality with action for climate justice. It offers a step-by-step way to reflect on the reality, causes, impacts, and projected outcomes of our rapidly heating planet and to discern a faithful response. Seminary classes and church groups have used the first edition as a guide to developing a theological approach to climate change and as an exploration of key conversations taking place about it today. The book draws from John Wesley’s theology of creation and his teachings on social holiness. It adapts Wesley’s use of Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience as sources of authority to explore the themes of creation and justice in the context of climate change’ and offers suggestions for action.
The revised edition updates facts, advances the conversation, and builds on the book’s primary themes. The premise of Love in a Time of Climate Change is that love of God and neighbor in our time requires us to honor creation and treat it with respect and to work to establish justice, including climate justice. This book is a guide for doing so. It is an invitation to move beyond self-preoccupation and to expand our understanding of who we are and why we are here in this time of unprecedented challenge. We are privileged to be alive here on this incomparable planet, now in this moment of urgency, when everything we have ever loved is at stake. We are called to rise to the occasion: to face the truth, follow the light, and live into the future as children of the earth, children of the universe, and children of God.
If you are interested in reading this book in advance of its release, let me know. I am looking for a team of “Beta readers” who might find the book valuable and who might help me get the word out about it before its January release.
I now pass on to you the blessing that I received years ago: “I am so grateful that we are alive at this time when the earth needs us most.”
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