Dr. Evan Kuehn is a theologian and academic librarian at North Park University, conducting research around modern religious thought. His forthcoming book is called Troeltsch’s Eschatological Absolute. On this bonus episode of Reversing Climate Change, Evan joins Ross to discuss his recently published article, "Is the Climate Crisis a Secular Eschatology?", introducing us to eschatology as an account of how our world ends and explaining how climate change qualifies as a secular eschatology.
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change podcast. I’m Ross Kenyon. This is a special bonus episode because we are on season break between seasons one and two of Reversing Climate Change, but I didn’t want to leave you in the lurch without any content for, I’m not even sure how long this break is going to be, maybe a month, maybe two, maybe more, maybe less, trying to strategize the next season. So I wanted to get a couple episodes out to release during that interim to make sure that you weren’t left all by your lonesome, I guess you could say.
And we’ve been talking about doing a theology series. We’ve been doing research and trying to meet the right people today. Thank you for being here, Evan. Yeah, thanks for having me. It caught my eye. Provocative title. So good work there. I’m not even sure that this title would make sense to our listeners. I’m not sure how many of them even know what eschatology is. That is a $5 word if I’ve ever seen one. So what does it mean?
Dr. Evan Kuehn: So I think when – if people do know or have heard the word eschatology, I think they usually think of things like the rapture or the four horsemen of the apocalypse, millennial prophecies, things like that, the left behind book series that came out in the 90s. Yeah, Kirk Cameron, man. I remember those days. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It’s a – And or like the late great planet Earth even before that. So all of that kind of stuff, I think, is what people usually think of when they hear the word eschatology, if they think of anything at all.
And all of that is a sort of eschatology. I would probably call it an apocalyptic. I think that history holds together as a completed story. So this means that eschatology usually signals a sort of discontinuity with our normal histories. And that’s where you get these things like, you know, horrible wars and four horsemen and things like that. The biblical language for this is like a new creation. So there’s kind of a break with the current one and we have a new one that comes forward.
But at its most... Basic and general and maybe philosophical. When we talk about eschatology, we’re just talking about how the world ends and in particular how our world ends in a way that brings closure and coherence to the life that we’re leading now.
Ross Kenyon: Okay, that makes sense and I think is good groundwork for anyone listening. And I think the connection to climate change should be relatively clear. I mean, it seems like there has been a dramatic increase in the weeping and gnashing of teeth over climate change, I think you could say. People are scared that this might be a sort of end time scenario and what that looks like. And I’ve heard this from, particularly from conservatives for a very long time, that there’s going to be some sort of crisis.
So if you’re a Marxist, maybe you think about this as class struggle within historical materialism. You have this like dialectical process. Mm-hmm.
Dr. Evan Kuehn: Yeah, yeah, I think that’s fair. And in the article you mentioned, I kind of pushed back on that a little bit, but I think ultimately that’s fair to call something like that a secular eschatology of sorts.
Ross Kenyon: It isn’t necessarily, people use it or they weaponize this term as a way of casting doubt on it. It’s a way of calling someone a utopian, I think. So could climate change be a secular eschatology? But it doesn’t necessarily have to be bad or criticism of that way of conceptualizing it, does it?
Dr. Evan Kuehn: Right. So I would say, and I think you’re right, I definitely, this is something that gets dispatched and weaponized against certain ways of understanding either the near or far future. Climate Change is a Secular Eschatology. I think that makes a lot of sense. We’re talking in some very serious ways about the ends of human history, whether we’re talking about some sort of ultimate extinction or even just the disappearance of certain islands and the cultures that exist there or the disappearance of our certain way of life that we’ve lived in the post-industrial West.
Those are genuine issues. I’m not sure. Sometimes that’s probably true, but I think in lots of cases that’s overblown.
Ross Kenyon: I think that’s fair indeed. Don’t immunitize the eschaton. You’re sort of like bringing the end of the world to the present in a way that is creating crisis where potentially none needs to exist. And then that Marxist example works. But also, I was intrigued reading. So, yeah. The charge may be unfair sometimes, but sometimes I think it is pretty accurate. And I think Naomi Klein was pretty honest in saying that this kind of is an eschatology, at least for the progressive left who cares about climate change.
Dr. Evan Kuehn: Yeah. And I actually, honestly, I haven’t read Naomi Klein’s book about that, but knowing just generally sort of the project she’s doing with it, it brings to mind, and she might have even used this quote, the idea that it is More difficult to imagine the end of capitalism than it is to imagine the end of the world. And so this, I think, sometimes gets sort of associated with the idea of capitalist realism. But it specifically ties the socioeconomic structures that are put into question by something like climate change to the eschatological question.
So, yeah, I think it’s definitely relevant to eschatological ways of thinking about the world. Yeah, very, very intriguing. I like I like thinking about it in this way. And also that the idea of like not eminentizing the eschaton. This is, I think, a really it’s the key to a lot of the ambiguity about talking about things in an eschatological register because it kind of creates this weird dialogue. So the eschaton is that which transcends mundane historical life. So in the case of climate change, it’s whatever future disasters come or whatever future utopia we might create because of this situation.
But the point is, it transcends how we’re normally doing things today. So then if the concern is don’t eminentize the eschaton, well, if you’ve eminentized it, in some ways it’s no longer the eschaton, right? Because it’s not transcendent. So I think at the heart of a lot of these radical discontinuities and how we engage in social life and economic life is this question of, well, At the end of the day, if we do achieve, you know, what Naomi Klein’s trying to achieve, if we do achieve what you all at Nori are trying to achieve with a sort of reduction of carbon in the atmosphere and there’s this radically new world that we come to, can we really call it the eschaton anymore?
So I think that’s where there’s this ambiguity in the discourse where we can criticize something for trying to bring the end of the world to today. But if it’s here and if it’s been created by human hands, then to what extent was it really ever the eschaton in the first place? Does that make sense?
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I’m loving the nuance that you’re bringing to this because I’m so used to it being a cudgel that someone like William F. Buckley would just use against political opponents and Yeah.
Dr. Evan Kuehn: Yeah. I don’t think I mean, usually it’s used in an opportunistic way, but I think there are genuine anxieties that people can have about this. So, you know, if we’re talking about from a religious standpoint, there’s an anxiety of Things that should be a matter of ultimate concern and faith were confusing with things of this world. So we’re concerned about nature, the environment, and in a way, is that making us nature worshipers or something like that. There’s this concern of, I guess you’d call it like idolatry or something like that, where you’re confusing what’s ultimate and what’s immediate to us.
And then there’s this concern that you’re moving beyond whatever came before in calling for a new world. And sometimes, you know, does that mean we’re moving beyond the Christian faith or whatever faith? So I think those anxieties that people have are there’s a genuine sort of core to it. But it is a question of how realistic are the critiques that they’re offering and how much do they hit home when they’re actually criticizing someone like Naomi Klein or Greta Thunberg or something like that?
Ross Kenyon: Understood. And you’re setting me up well for another question I had about this. One of the components of apocalyptic or eschatological theorizing that I’m used to is, I’ve heard this explained as millenarianism, but I know that there’s like millennialism, I think is a sort of related idea, but different. I’m not sure which one I’m talking about, so feel free to steer me. But it’s this idea that the end of the world involves crisis, but then there’s this preparing the way for the second coming of Christ.
So then there are some Christian communities that are quite focused on building a better world now as a way of preparing for Christ. And other people think that this crisis happens and then it just sort of spontaneously happens or something like that. So I think that’s part of the end times, at least secular portion of eschatology. This was halfway to gibberish. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?
Dr. Evan Kuehn: I do. Yeah. So if we’re talking about just to step back and look at some of the terms you threw out there, and honestly, this can get very into the weeds, and I’m not sure I have a clear grasp of all of it, but very Very generally speaking, if we’re talking about the millennium, this is the millennial kingdom of Christ. So when you see references to the kingdom of God in the Gospels or something like that, then it’s hashed out more in the rest of the New Testament.
If it’s something that comes to us, if it’s something that comes to us from the other side, if God’s bringing it to us in this sort of cataclysmic end, And that’s the stuff that gets the most attention in the United States especially. That’s all the rapture stuff where there’s a focus on sort of Jesus coming in glory and then that brings in the kingdom. The other side of that where you talked about sort of us paving the way toward getting to the millennium is would be post millennialism.
And that’s connected more with the social gospel tradition in the U.S. where people were trying to do sort of kingdom work. You know, working with the poor and lowly and things like that. And that’s much more an understanding of it sort of not coming out of human power and resources, but the fact that humans had a part to play in the narrative that brings us to the end. So yes, I think you’re being clear. Sorry, just to make a short story long, that’s sort of how it all kind of plays out.
And then within that, there are, you know, plenty of different subdivisions for theologians to have chances to disagree with each other about it.
Ross Kenyon: Cool. Yeah. Thanks for teaching me more about that. I’m grateful. One thing we’ve danced around a little bit and given that I work in the environmental and climate space, I hear this sort of thing a lot about how people perceive the nature of time. And a lot of people, given that they have environmental leanings, tend to look back to indigenous traditions or even just old European traditions, too. The old pagan ways where it’s all about cycles, right? Empires rise, empires collapse. There’s really not sustained progress.
We might grow some, and then we retreat back, which is true for most of settled human history. The standard of living was essentially the same until, I think, what, like the 17th or 18th century, and then you hockey stick up, and then we We have that whiggish view of history where things are constantly progressing and getting better. But that’s a pretty new thing in the human experience. But one thing I thought was really interesting in your work, this article encouraged me to look a little bit more into was the idea that Christianity supports.
Because I think a lot of people... They sort of mix the two, right? Like they do think this is like maybe an end times crisis, but they also probably think that we have lost sight of the cyclical view of history as well.
Dr. Evan Kuehn: Right. So I think it’s one of those things where you can’t just say this is a good way of looking at things or a bad way of looking at things. All of this is so – any way of perceiving time, it’s not necessarily natural. So to me, it’s almost, I don’t know, it’s almost beside the point to ask, is this the good way or So to a certain extent. I think that was sort of settled long before we came along. I would say, first of all, I would say, actually, there are circular aspects to thinking about time within the Christian tradition as well.
And this This would go for like Judaism with the cycle of Holy Days throughout the year based on the harvest and things like that. In the Christian tradition right now, I don’t know when we’re airing this, but right now it’s the Advent season. So that’s the beginning. And the end of the Christian year is actually a time of judgment or of reflecting upon the judgment of human sin. And Advent at the beginning of the Christian liturgical year actually is a time of judgment. It actually almost has an eschatological sense to it where we’re looking forward to something and what we’re looking forward to is Christmas, right?
It’s the birth of the Messiah. So there’s a sense in which cyclical and linear conceptions of time are wrapped up together in Christianity. And I suspect, you know, in more circular conceptions of time, there’s also linear aspects there as well. So for me, the question is, how do these basic ways that humans understand the world around them happen? I’m not a climate change expert. I’m a theologian. But, you know, if you look at the numbers, I think we see things that are unique and not cyclical in human history.
Throughout sort of the development of the industrial West, we see a linear progression for good and evil. There are aspects of our history that make more sense to explain through a sort of context. There are also feedback loops. There are natural cycles that are extremely important for understanding our future given the climate crisis. And those are many examples. Maybe it’s more helpful to think of in terms of a cyclical sort of temporality. So I don’t think it’s either or. I think in some ways we can’t do much about it in terms of adjusting what schemas we use to think about time.
And I think the most important question really is, you know, can we think in a theologically more critical way about this stuff so that we can have a better account of what’s coming in the near future? Such an academic, Evan, giving me these wiggly bit from column A, bit from column B kind of answers. Yeah, a little bit of both.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. No, I think that’s all fair. And it is interesting to think about because I think these two conceptions of time broadly are posed against each other. And obviously, we utilize both and in different ways. So, cool.
Dr. Evan Kuehn: I guess my question in a way, if we want to look at other ways of conceiving time as more cyclical and maybe more helpful and more healthy, I guess, to connect with the... And there might be ways where it’s more helpful and other ways where it’s not. Sorry, I’m kind of repeating what I just said. No, it’s good. Thanks for summing it up.
Ross Kenyon: Well, if people did want to learn more about this topic, which I have no idea how people are going to take this. I personally think it’s interesting and I’m looking forward to doing a lot more episodes. I’ve been doing I met with a rabbi recently and I’ve been trying to develop some some stories coming out of it. What do you think are some good resources for people if they wanted to learn about the links between theology of various faith traditions and climate change? Where’s a good place to start?
Dr. Evan Kuehn: Yeah, you know, and I was trying to think about this ahead of time. I’m relatively new to the literature there. When I did my doctoral studies, I worked on eschatology, and so there’s an obvious connection there. But I’m kind of just dipping into some of the climate change literature as it’s relevant to theology. So some of the books that I’ve read are not necessarily from theologians, but I think they have some sort of theological interest to them, sometimes from ethicists is what I’ve looked at. One thing I don’t know what his religious background is, but David Orr is an ethicist, and I think he’s an environmental ethicist.
And he wrote a book called Dangerous Years. I found that helpful to think. Another person, actually a personal friend, and I mentioned, I mentioned this to you and earlier as well, Willa Swenson Langell, she teaches religious ethics at Villanova University, and she’s done a lot of cool work on the question of hope. So hope is a sort of classic theological verb. So she’s really intrigued by this idea that a lot of us in sort of the developed world are kind of morally paralyzed by the climate crisis.
And sometimes that plays out in denial. Sometimes that plays out in, you know, writing a screed on social media about it, but never actually getting up and doing anything about it, I guess. And so she looks at hope as something that allows humans to pursue hope. And she’s been really interesting for me to read her work on it. So, John Polkinghorne actually is a scientist, but also a theologian. And he wrote a book called The God of Hope and the End of the World. And I think he does a really good job of pointing out that Christianity and other faith traditions have lots of old stories about how the world ends and how we fit into that.
But we haven’t thought enough about How the world ends multiple billion years from now in the deep history of the universe and what’s the religious significance of that. So he does a good job of as a scientist saying these questions are still relevant, but we haven’t reflected. And we’re not thinking about, you know, what happens when the earth is irrevocably changed because of climate change. What happens long after our species becomes extinct? And what is the theological significance of that? So those are, I think, a few that I would point to.
But this is something that I’m kind of learning a lot about as well. So sorry, I wish I could be more helpful. I think there’s a lot of people. Oh, the one other thing I wanted to mention, you know, I’m talking about The end of the story here, a lot of theological reflection on climate change is about what’s referred to as creation care or stewardship of creation. So I think people could find a lot of helpful stuff looking at people who are talking about I’m more interested in the pessimistic end of the story and worst case scenarios and how do we think about that theologically, but that would be worth other people looking at.
Ross Kenyon: Great. Now, those are great recommendations. I’m sure you just added to my and listeners' ever-growing reading list. So thanks for doing that, Evan. Yeah. And then one question that you suggested for me, which I’m thinking about and still trying to wrap my head around. And listeners, if you have any ideas for good leads or for good topics related to climate change and theology, feel free to email hello at nori.com. But what sorts of theologically inflected questions does climate introduce into theology as a discipline?
We’re thinking about the idea of the Anthropocene. What’s on the frontiers of theology? Because I’m sure when people think about it, they’re like, hasn’t this stuff all been solved since like Aquinas or like Augustine? Like, is there more to do in theology? It seems kind of settled.
Dr. Evan Kuehn: And that’s the problem, right? I mean, that’s so people, you know, hear about what I do, you know, I’m a theologian. And it does seem like it’s sort of you dust off the old books and you read the answers that have already been given. And we do a fair amount of that. But theology is ultimately about Understanding human faith and how it works. And that’s something that looks vastly different today than it did before. So I think within the Anthropocene and on the verge of a climate crisis, the sorts of questions that I’m asking at least have to do with some of the books I mentioned already, human moral motivation.
What motivates us to respond to a crisis like this in a way that’s helpful rather than violent and self-destructive? I think that just the mere concept of the Anthropocene raises questions about The nature of humanity and its relation to other species and its relation to the creation. So to what extent can we understand ourselves in a way that also incorporates us into geological time and biologically? Climate change ultimately isn’t just about nature and the climate. It has a lot of social ramifications. We are going to have migration crises.
We’re going to have political crises that follow along with any changes in our environment. So theological questions that ask about human belonging and exclusion. About our neighbor and our duty to our neighbor. About the nature of political boundaries and the moral commands that transcend those political boundaries. And what we owe to our neighbor in a time when a lot of this is going to become unstable. I think theology has a lot of capacity to help us look at social complexities and make sense of them in a way that’s coherent and articulate.
Ross Kenyon: Well, this is a whole new area of inquiry for the podcast. There’s a lot of topics that I’m sure people would be interested in hearing more about. I’m interested.
Dr. Evan Kuehn: Yeah, I’m super glad that you’re looking into this. So I do. I think it’s great. And it sounds like you’re off to a good start with it. Well, you’re a little biased, Evan, because you started it. I am.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks so much for being here, Dr. Evan Keen. Very grateful that you made time to do this right before the holidays. We’re about to break for, this is what, December 20th right now. So thanks for squeezing me in. Oh, no, I’m glad to do it. Yeah, thank you. And one other thing too, is there any work of yours that you’d like to share or someplace where people could keep up with what you’re working on?
Dr. Evan Kuehn: Yeah, a lot of what I do is sort of deep in the weeds of some of these questions. Well, great. Well, we’d love to have you back to talk more if we can find a good way to do so. Well, thank you again, Evan. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Ross Kenyon: My pleasure. And if you like the show, please rate and review us in iTunes, Apple Podcasts, or Stitcher. Thanks for listening. Stay tuned for season two of Reversing Climate Change. This is just a neat little bonus episode that gives you a taste of some of what we’re thinking about for the next season. And thank you so much for listening.
