Weather, Religion and Climate Change

Taking inspiration from anthropologist Tim Ingolds weather worlds, this fascinating book is a significant contribution to the environmental humanities that will be of interest to readers beyond the confines of theology and religious studies. Weaving in reflections on a rich collection of different art works, the author takes us inside pictorial, poetic and symbolic narratives on what it means to live in our weather. By doing so he both challenges the habitual complacency of detachment in the West, but also provokes new and innovative attitudes and practices in time and space. Rising to the surface like a deep subliminal current, Bergmanns theology contributes a spiritual dimension that recrafts the multi layered narratives that it interrogates. Celia Deane-Drummond, Senior Research Fellow and Director of Laudato Si Research Institute, Campion Hall, University of Oxford Although we talk of the weather a great deal, we do not speak of the weather much in the study of religion. In this bold collection of essays, Bergmann invites us with his customary insight, generosity and erudition into the liveliness of the weather. Refusing the greying out of the weather, Bergmanns analyses remind us that the weather is always colourfully intertwined with religious views and practices. This collection is a drenching gift and deserves to be read widely across the environmental humanities. Peter Scott, The University of Manchester, UK It was indeed difficult for me, while reading the book, to decide if Sigurds book is a book of theology, history, science or art! But soon I got to realize that it is in itself a piece of art. The reflections on contemporary environmental issues from a weather and theology perspectives are impressive. Indeed, there is an essential need to bridge the gap between science and humanities, including religious values and beliefs, especially when ae are facing an existential threat caused by our own consumptive behavior. Reading the book gave me the inspiration of our need of a fourth industrial revolution, not based on technology, but an ethical revolution that takes us back to our sacred values and beliefs. If we dont do so, soon not only Fiji will face climate migration, but even vast areas of coastal zones around the world. In many sacred books, God used weather to bring mercy to humans who faced social injustice, as Sigurd elaborates in the book, but in our days, it seems our unsustainable behavior towards our only planet is bringing sever weather conditions, that will not be merciful and be harsh on those underprivileged. Thank you for an inspiring book. Iyad Abumoghli, Director of Faith for Earth, UN Environment Programme Both enthralling and scholarly, Weather, Religion, and Climate Change is a timely and welcome contribution to the discourse surrounding climate change that helps us to locate weather properly in our worldview and explore the existential questions concerning weather at a time of increased vulnerability to rising temperatures and extreme weather events. In his opening remarks, Bergmann describes the book as providing us "with an exploratory trajectory, where altering weather moves from and through arts and religion to history and science, and further on to architecture and our demanding efforts to re-interpret our human place in the universe." Employing a hermeneutical lens in the phenomenological sense, he skillfully presents a fascinating and rich palette of precedents to consider across many disciplines that encourage and invite the reader to intimately experience "what it means to be bodily alive in weather lands." Bergmann challenges us to strive for "a deeper weather wising in cooperation with modern science", in order to avoid the folly of thinking we can simply geo-engineer our way out of the climate change crisis. Instead, he calls upon us to embrace a spiritually inspired reverence for weather, anchored in wonder and awe, as a c

Sigurd Bergmanns previous studies have investigated the relationship between the image of God and the view of nature in late antiquity and late modernity, the methodology of contextual theology, and visual arts in the indigenous Arctic and Australia, as well as visual arts, architecture and religion, and religion in climate change. He has inititated the European Forum for the Study of Religion and the Environment, and among his many publications are Religion, Space and the Environment (2014), Religion in the Anthropocene (ed. 2017), and Arts, Religion and the Environment: Exploring Natures Texture (ed. 2018).

1. Being Alive in Weather Lands Preliminary remarks 2. Inventing Weather Conveying the mysteries of alteration in J. M. W. Turners painting 3. Atmospheres Agog Weather, Culture, Religion 4. Weathering the History of Christianity Justice, Witchery, and Moral Thunder 5. In Suspense Meteorology beneath the stars 6. Weather as commodity or gift? 7. Under the Weather Roof Shelter, Faith and Architecture 8. Atmosphere and Anthropocene Critical considerations of a narrative and image in transit to the Ecocene.