A Consultation

In-person in July and/or 5 newsletters Mar-July

Friday, July 26, 2024
Catholic University
Washington, DC

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.

Our Consultation is grateful to the American Scientific Affiliation for administrative and venue support. Consider adding on the three days of ASA’s wonderful conference for Christians in Science. Click here.