Nature Against Empire: Exodus Plagues, Climate Crisis and Hard Heartedness

Direction V49 no.1 (2020)

The realities of climate chaos hit me personally and hard in December 2017 with the Thomas Fire. California’s largest wildfire to that date, scorching 80 percent of our Ventura River watershed, it was an apocalyptic unveiling, the kind shared by survivors of hurricanes the same year in Houston (Harvey) and Puerto Rico (Maria).

Continue reading “Nature Against Empire: Exodus Plagues, Climate Crisis and Hard Heartedness”

Nature against Empire: Exodus Plagues, Climate Crisis and Hardheartedness

Note:  This is an excerpted, edited text of a talk given to the Alliance of Baptists Annual Gathering in Dayton, OH on April 27, 2018.  It was published (with images and graphs, absent here) in our May 2018 BCM Enews , and is part of my ongoing search to find theological ways to talk about the urgency of climate crisis.  This piece is long (10 pages), but I hope readers will spend some time with it and give me some feedback.  You can also hear the audio presentation as a 3-part podcast here.  Image above: From a 2012 Community Art Project on Exodus 7-11.

The realities of climate chaos hit me particularly hard this last December with the Thomas Fire in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.  California’s largest wildfire on record, scorching 80 % of our watershed, was for us an existential apocalyptic unveiling, the kind shared by survivors of recent hurricanes in Houston and Puerto Rico.  Continue reading “Nature against Empire: Exodus Plagues, Climate Crisis and Hardheartedness”