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The I Index

Climate, Catastrophe, and Faith: How Changes in Climate Drive Religious Upheaval

Bottom of the pile

13

/100

I Index Overall Rating

Readers

9/100

Critics

17/100

Scholars

N/A

Author:

Philip Jenkins

Publisher:

Oxford University Press

Date:

May 11, 2021

Historian Philip Jenkins draws out the complex relationship between religion and climate change. He asserts that the religious movements and ideas that emerge from climate shocks often last for many decades, and even become a familiar part of the religious landscape, even though their origins in particular moments of crisis may be increasingly consigned to remote memory.

What The Reviewers Say

Randall Stephens,
Washington Post
In his insightful and gripping new book, Philip Jenkins looks at how humans have understood climate convulsions and weather cataclysms in religious terms. Jenkins is perhaps the ideal historian to undertake a project like this, which runs from roughly the 11th century to the present. A professor of history at Baylor University, he is nothing if not prolific.

Kirkus
A survey of the historical effects of climate on world religions.

Publishers Weekly
In this uneven study, Jenkins, a professor of history at Baylor, attempts to chronicle how climate change has affected religions.