Considering Climate Change in the Lenten Season

This year, the editorial team of the Politics of Scripture is excited to host a 6-week Lenten series on climate change and ecojustice. During the liturgical season of Lent, beginning with the receiving of ashes this week on Ash Wednesday, many Christian communities encounter death and practice self-denial as preparation for the celebration of the Easter season and its promise of new creation. While these themes are not commonly tied to the earth and nonhuman life, we at the blog find resonance between these traditional practices and the global reality of climate change. Death—human and nonhuman alike—now confronts us on an enormous scale. Further, practices of ongoing denunciation and the radical reorientation of the human-self are likely to form the foundation of any possibility of a collective future.

Within this matrix, the next six essays on the blog will reflect on the intersection between the lectionary texts and climate change. Beginning tomorrow morning, with an essay for the first Sunday of Lent, each post will draw on at least one, if not more, of the four readings and consider how its content can be fruitfully encountered in the present time. We hope you’ll join us as we engage the resources of the past with the hope of reimagining the present in a radically new epoch of human history.