Reimagining God and Nature in the Face of Extinction

February 22-23, 2019
Santa Cruz, CA

Perhaps no two other phenomena of our contemporary era define the world as do globalization and climate change.  Globalization means both the “space-time” crunch of sped up communication, transportation, and production technologies that mean the world is much faster and that we are perhaps living at a pace that outstrips the planet’s carrying capacity.  It also means that there is no location on the planet, if there ever was, that is not criss-crossed with global flows of energy, information, and materials.  Some have responded to this with calls for a “return” to paracholism and nationalisms.  Others have argued that we can continue our path of the globalization of neoliberalism as usual, with social and environmental checks.  At the same time, and related, global climate weirding means that human activities have forever changed the face of the planet, leading some to call our contemporary era: the Anthropocene.  How can we navigate between nationalism and globalization as usual, toward some sort of alternative that acknowledges we are all part of a planetary community (along with many earth-others), in an effort to address problems that face the entire planet?  What role has religion (and especially monotheisms) played in helping to create our current planetary problems and what role do religious communities and in particular the theological imagination have in helping us to chart a different path forward? This symposium will be an opportunity to think about and discuss these urgent issues.