Sharon Delgado

Now that the revised edition of Love in a Time of Climate Change, has been released by Fortress Press, I am posting excerpts. Today’s excerpt is the first of two parts about awakening to new ways of seeing the world, sometimes painful, sometimes exhilarating.

There are times in life when we are offered new ways of seeing the world. Sometimes a new way of seeing is imposed upon us, as in times of tragedy or loss, or when confronted by the depth of suffering, social upheaval, or unspeakable evil in the world.

Such experiences can shake us to the core and challenge our worldview. If we have a strong community of support, we may be able to process our thoughts and experiences with others and gain new insights. Love in a Time of Climate Change is designed to help people process their thoughts and feelings about the inexorable progression of climate change, its underlying causes, and the social and political contexts that are perpetuating it. Such explorations are especially fruitful in a book study or other supportive group setting.

So much has happened in the world in the interim between the publication of the first edition and this revised edition of Love in a Time of Climate Change, including the rising influence of Christian nationalism and populist support for authoritarianism, the targeting of immigrants and others, the tenuous state of global cooperation, the breakdown of international law, and the outbreak or acceleration of multiple wars, famine, and genocide. As this book is released, the second Trump administration is dismantling government agencies that provide for the common good and cutting social programs that many depend on. With the termination of USAID, the United States has stopped providing food aid and agricultural assistance to some of the poorest and most vulnerable people on earth.² In the United States, billions are being allocated for building private prisons to house detainees, streamlining deportation, and militarizing our city streets, as official cruelty to immigrants becomes the norm. Universities, media, and even judges are being vilified. Unwavering US support makes us complicit in Israel’s genocide against the people of Gaza and has propelled us into bombing Iran. Democracy and the rule of law are up in the air, as lawsuits against the Trump administration abound.

Many of us in the United States feel repeatedly traumatized at how quickly the administration is defunding and dismantling beneficial government programs while supercharging government’s repressive functions. Things are happening so fast that there is no way to know how things will develop by the time you read this book. These actions are creating shock, fear, and horror as people witness the collapse of the order that many felt to be normal life in a flawed but relatively stable society. Meanwhile, as the administration slashes programs that monitor and address planetary warming, the inexorable progression of climate change presents us with dangers unknown to any previous generation, threatening our civilization and the present and future of life on Earth. These shocks can drive us to withdrawal, stunned paralysis, or despair. Alternately, they can help to expand our perception and spur us to action.

These assaults on society and on the systems that sustain life, as shocking as they, are not random or haphazard. The Trump administration is systematically implementing Project 2025, a nine-hundred-page roadmap designed by the Heritage Foundation to consolidate executive power and reshape the federal government in line with right-wing policy objectives.

Knowing the context in which these assaults on democracy and the common good are taking place can expand our perception and enable us to see the largely unseen forces at work, undermining the stability of our supposedly benign government, civilization, and life on earth. These forces may seem abstract and anonymous, but they are not. An awakening to the powers, “the invisible forces that dominate our lives,” can widen our perspective on the  scope of God’s activity and our call to action in the world. We will return to this topic in later chapters.

To integrate the reality of climate change into our faith journey, we must be open to facing the truth, however difficult that truth may be. This revised edition of Love in a Time of Climate Change updates the science of climate change to help readers understand where we are now in its progression, its speed of acceleration, and likely future scenarios. It exposes institutional “bad actors,” including politicians that reject climate science and the oligarchs that fund them, right-wing think tanks that oppose regulation, and fossil fuel corporations that disguise their complicity through greenwashing and fostering doubt about the reality or significance of climate change. This edition also suggests further actions for climate justice that contribute to a cultural shift and systemic change.

New ways of seeing can also come through experiences of awakening to the power that animates the universe, beyond religion or philosophy, a new perspective that may be accompanied by a sense of direction or “call.” Some call this power “God.”

Tomorrow’s post will continue from here: Awakening to New Ways of Seeing the World (Part 2), an excerpt from Love in a Time of Climate Change, which is now available in Paperback, eBook, or Audiobook format. The Audiobook version is available on Amazon with a trial 3-month subscription to Audible at $.99 per month that you can cancel at any time.

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