CLIMATE, CATASTROPHE, AND FAITH

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

In his latest, acclaimed religious scholar Jenkins looks at how climate change, broadly defined, has shaped movements in religion—mainly in the European realm but also around the globe. The author argues that by studying the past, we can make assumptions about the future of religious reactions to climate change. However, his forecasting is shaky, as the text becomes a catalog of natural catastrophes, each tenuously tied to its own corresponding historical horror. One of the author’s main narrative threads involves the unending string of catastrophes brought about by the long-running Little Ice Age, which lasted from the 1300s to the mid-1800s. Jenkins covers this period in a mesmerizing series of accounts of brutal winters and cold summers (along with the occasional drought), sometimes stretching on for years, bringing about hunger, poverty, and, inevitably, violence—particularly against Jews, Christian dissidents, and perceived witches, all of whom suffered due to a combination of economic tension and superstitious anger. Though it is common sense that severe changes in climate and weather patterns often lead to social change and unrest, the author’s attempts to tie nearly every important moment in European religion to climate issues—for instance, the rise of John Calvin’s theocracy in Geneva due to sunspot activity and Baltic Sea temperatures—will overwhelm most readers. Jenkins does incorporate other factors into his analysis, but he often forces the issue, overestimating the degree of causation between climate and “religious upheaval.” The author is also tripped up by the fact that climate change as he discusses it historically has entirely natural causes (volcanoes, El Niño, sunspots, etc.), whereas his predictions for the future are based on human-influenced climate change, the effects of which continue to expand and mutate.

A well-researched concept that falls flat in the presentation.