The Lure of the Separate: Reflections on Christianity, Nationalism, and Empire By Retief Müller I grew up in South Africa in late apartheid. Now, I am a church historian and curious about how Christianity and themes of national or ethnic identity tended to merge. Apartheid-era South Africa was perhaps a Read more
Making Kin By Alissa Jones Nelson “Make kin, not babies.” Donna J. Haraway’s four-word gauntlet, thrown down in her 2016 book Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, becomes more relevant every day. As a woman who has chosen not to have children, I’ve been called many things. Read more
Poetic Science: How Literature Conveys Knowledge of Nature By Kocku von Stuckrad For most non-specialists, much information about the natural world is drawn from newspapers, TV, and popular books. Even scientists are influenced by those sources. Another source of knowledge, however, and a thoroughly underestimated one, is literature—historical fiction, novels, Read more
On Life, Dogs, and Chernobyl By Whitney A. Bauman (Ferris Wheel, Pripyat, Ukraine) As someone who works in the broad field of “religion and nature,” and who regularly teaches a course on “Earth Ethics,” I jumped at the opportunity to visit one of the defining environmental disasters of our time: Read more
Predators, Prey, and Snowdrops: Recognizing the Nature of the World By Graham Harvey Some Amazonian Indigenous people recognize two ways in which living beings relate to others, as predators and prey. More accurately, sometimes a being acts as a predator and sometimes they become prey. A hunter (human, jaguar, deity, Read more
Circling the Elephant: Why Difference Matters By John Thatamanil Recently, my wife and I dared to enter an old local haunt in her hometown, Big Bad John’s, a bar in Victoria, BC. With bras on the ceiling and peanut shells on the floor— it hardly strikes you as a setting Read more
Fire and the Transfiguration of Paradise By Sarah Pike On the morning of November 8, 2018, the world turned silver and a shadow of its normal self. A black cloud of smoke from the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, ten miles from my home, blocked the sun for most of Read more
On Absent Priests, the Dignity of Women, and Refugees By Anna Mercedes In a Roman Catholic monastery near the prairies of the American Midwest, more than a hundred Sisters gathered to mark the Sunday of the Epiphany, a Christian feast of light and divine presence. The musicians have been tirelessly Read more
\\ // By Cleo Mikutta – III – // \\ On a cruise ship caught in a tropical storm, the chlorine water in the indoor swimming pool has begun to imitate the violent rhythm of the waves outside. The heavy armchairs in the lounge blow from side to Read more
What is Your Part? Reflections on “Action” in a Time of Crisis By Susannah Crockford As part of my research on climate change, I recently interviewed a retired civil engineer who worked for decades in the oil and gas industry. From inside his solar powered home, heated by wood-pellet burning Read more