Climate Church, Climate World: How People of Faith Must Work for Change - Hardcover

Antal, Jim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1538110687 ISBN 13: 9781538110683

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2018

Climate Church, Climate World argues that climate change is the greatest moral challenge humanity has ever faced; it multiplies all forms of global social injustice: hunger, refugees, poverty, inequality, deadly viruses, war. Environmental leader Reverend Jim Antal presents a compelling case that it’s time for the church to meet this moral challenge, just as the church addressed previous moral challenges. He calls for the church to embrace a new vocation so that future generations might live in harmony with God’s creation. After describing how we have created the dangers our planet now faces, Antal urges the church to embrace a new vocation, one focused on collective salvation and an expanded understanding of the Golden Rule (Golden Rule 2.0). He suggests ways people of faith can reorient what they prize through new approaches to worship, preaching, witnessing, and other spiritual practices that honor creation and cultivate hope.

About the Author:

Jim Antal is a denominational leader, activist, and public theologian. He serves as the national spokesperson on climate change for the United Church of Christ. Yale Divinity School recently honored Antal with the William Sloane Coffin Award for Peace and Justice, in recognition of his lifelong advocacy for nuclear disarmament, racial justice, Middle East Peace, and climate change activism.

Review:

After analyzing the history and social implications of climate change, Antal reimagines the role of church communities and their capacity to confront and resolve the problem. After each chapter throughout the book, there are discussion questions aimed at prompting readers to engage in their communities — through everything from Bible study to civil disobedience. Clearly, Antal’s purpose in writing is not simply to educate but to inspire readers’ hearts, heads and hands to “repurpose” the church, and reimagine its moral calling. (Chicago Tribune)

There are gems throughout the book that inspire. . . . I’ve been working on these issues for decades, but there was still much to learn in these pages. Antal gave me new ways to talk about climate change with people who may be in denial. And, best of all, he helped me understand radical hope. (Friends Journal)

From the Foreword: This book is written with unusual authority, because for as long as there has been a serious climate movement in the United States, Jim Antal has been at the forefront. I have stood with him at a hundred demonstrations, languished with him in jail, sweated next to him in paddy wagons. I have listened to him preach the powerful good news—and bad news—about the energy and climate crises from pulpit after pulpit. And I’ve watched as his cheerful, insistent, relentlessly loving approach has allowed so many Americans to join in this fight. He is on the short list of heroes who have given their all. (Bill McKibben, author of "Radio Free Vermont")

If you ever meet Jim Antal, your first thought will be, ‘This man has the energy of a dozen people wrapped up in one body.’ You’ll see his brilliance, his enthusiasm, his focus, and his resilient determination. You’ll also see his faith. You’ll sense all of these qualities in Climate Church, Climate World. You will be drawn from well-written page to page, until you have to put the book down and join the movement to . . . quite literally . . . save the world. On top of being brilliant, energetic, and inspiring, Jim Antal is, in my opinion, 100% right, and his message is prophetic in the truest sense. (Brian D. McLaren, author of The Great Spiritual Migration)

Even more than an environmental problem, climate change is humanity's greatest collective moral crisis, and no one understands that better than Reverend Jim Antal. He's borne witness to its test of our resolve from pulpits, in paddy wagons, and now through this book, which offers recipes for hope (and prescriptions for action) on every page. To people of faith—lay or clergy—who are seeking ways to engage on this great global challenge: Here is your guide. (Michael Brune, executive director, Sierra Club)

Jim Antal shows how the church can engage the urgent moral crisis of climate change. This book will inspire both the courage and conviction people of faith need to provide the leadership necessary to realise God’s dream of a just world in which humanity is reconciled to all of creation. (Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu)

This is the book for which we have been waiting concerning the climate crisis. It is clear: the time for ambiguity is long since past. It is bold: deeply rooted boldness is required to counter the forceful ideology of the fossil fuel lobby. It is institutionally realistic: this is no generic moral appeal, but a bid to the church to take up its primal mission. It is practical: it anticipates active ways for pastors and churches to get to it. This is a welcome must read. (Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary)

Jim Antal’s leadership and religious witness is legendary, and so is the power and beauty of his voice. This book will give you the courage, conviction, and practical tools you will need to be part of this movement! (May Boeve, executive director and co-founder, 350.org)

Antal argues that climate injustice is a force that amplifies every other social injustice, and that without a whole and restored earth we won’t achieve a whole and restorative society. In urging the church to more deeply consider its obligation in calling society to action, this book will help Christians, both congregationally and individually, act in response to climate change and maintain an outlook of Christ-centered hope while doing so. (Jim Wallis, president and founder, Sojourners)

Jim Antal is among the most knowledgeable and passionate advocates of creation care, and he captures the complete story in Climate Church, Climate World. (James Hansen, director, Climate Science, Awareness, and Solutions Program, Columbia University Earth Institute)