‘A Secular Faith’ - the importance of subjectivity in climate action
Tania Pavlova, BSc Social Anthropology
On October 23 the LSE Faith Centre held a symposium to celebrate 10 years since its founding. In conversation with Bishop Rowan Williams and an interfaith panel, the event explored the question of 'climate change; is religion the antidote to the poison?'
Image: John Englart / CC BY-SA 2.0
At first glance it may not be clear what, exactly, religion has to do with climate action. As Reverend Professor Walters, Director of the Faith Centre, pointed out in his opening address, there is a secular bias in social science. It is easy to imagine faith being placed firmly in the peripheral realm of higher education – personal belief and spirituality in opposition to the practical, scientific endeavors that really solve the issues of the world.
Climate discourse is often aligned with the realm of science; seen as shaping policy which trickles down to local community projects like vegetable gardens and beach cleans. Although ecological research is crucial to addressing climate change, it represents only a small part of the picture of how people – including policy makers – experience and respond to climate change. The experience of people represents far more than just ecological fact – it is an ethical, everyday project where personal belief is central.
In our own lives, we are continuously exposed to both the facts of ecological study and relentless news of hurricanes and wildfires. As such news becomes a regular feature in our lives, everyday experiences like unusually warm autumn days become markers of crisis. For many this brings not only climate anxiety, but an urgency to 'act right' and do our part in the day-to-day. The need to recycle, resist fast fashion, and turn off the lights has thoroughly integrated ethical decision-making into the everyday. As people reflect on what foods they shouldn’t eat, or which kinds of clothes they should avoid, climate-oriented ethics of daily living sometimes strikingly resembles religious tradition and thought.
On the wider landscape, a glance at the news reveals how subjectivity affects people’s response to the climate crisis. Readers are bombarded with dooming prophecies of an inevitable apocalypse, and yet calls to action from NGOs and scientific advice rely on the belief that genuine change and mitigation are possible. While many condemn environmental extractivism, some people declare humanity itself 'the virus' plaguing the world, while others, often radical economists or those from Indigenous backgrounds, instead question capitalist production and foreground degrowth.
Elon Musk's fabled Mars colony offers security and comfort as he graduates from laid back indifference to borderline climate change denial; why worry if you have the billionaire's lullaby of an extraterrestrial Plan B, after all. Meanwhile, numbers of climate refugees in the harder-hit and underfunded Global South steadily rises. Personal, cultivated beliefs about the climate and humanity's place in it directly shape people’s climate action - or lack thereof.
Climate discourse is inseparable from the big questions. How can humanity be a positive force on Earth? Do one person’s actions matter in the face of overwhelming CO2 emissions of large companies? The climate movement is a thoroughly existential project concerned with humanity's place in the world; enough so that scholarship has even described environmentalism as a 'secular faith'.
Confronted with such a complex, varied landscape of human belief about climate change, the contribution of religious communities and scholarship becomes evident. A stunning 80% of the world’s population subscribe to a major faith. What Pope Francis recently called the “dominant technocratic paradigm” of climate discourse overlooks religion as a constructive force, which alienates huge, global communities that could drive vital change – particularly in regions most affected by rising temperatures.
Further, there is immense value in religious thought, which has long spoken to the ethical problems encountered in climate discourse. It can interrogate humanity’s responsibility to our world, and emphasise the importance of spiritual or interpersonal life over material goods and non-stop consumerism. Religious discourse could teach moral creativity, fostering the ability to imagine stories of resilience and adaptation when climate action feels hopeless and inert.
The 10 years of vibrant community and discourse at the LSE Faith Centre points to the importance of religious life in academia. Faced with issues of unprecedented complexity, including religious thought and community into climate conversation is not a matter of EDI quotas, but a necessity on the intellectual landscape of a crisis that touches us all.