Hell
In Search of a Christian Ecology
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- £11.99
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- £11.99
Publisher Description
Hell on earth is real. The toxic fusion of big oil, Evangelical Christianity, and white supremacy has ignited a worldwide inferno, more phantasmagoric than anything William Blake could dream up and more cataclysmic than we can fathom. Escaping global warming hell, this revelatory book shows, requires a radical, mystical marriage of Christianity and biology that awakens a future beyond white male savagery.
Timothy Morton argues that there is an unexpected yet profound relationship between religion and ecology that can guide a planet-scale response to the climate crisis. Spiritual and mystical feelings have a deep resonance with ecological thinking, and together they provide the resources environmentalism desperately needs in this time of climate emergency. Morton finds solutions in a radical revaluation of Christianity, furnishing ecological politics with a language of mercy and forgiveness that draws from Christian traditions without bringing along their baggage. They call for a global environmental movement that fuses ecology and mysticism and puts race and gender front and center. This nonviolent resistance can stage an all-out assault on the ultimate Satanic mill: the concept of master and slave, manifesting today in white supremacy, patriarchy, and environmental destruction. Passionate, erudite, and playful, Hell takes readers on a full-color journey into the contemporary underworld—and offers a surprising vision of salvation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rice University English professor Morton (The Stuff of Life) presents an erudite theological meditation on the ecological "hell" into which the world has descended. According to the author, humans were created to be blessed inhabitants of Eden, "entwined with... oxygen breathed from leaves and birdsong." Yet, unaware of their blessedness due to the "foundational error" of "original sin," humans have fallen prey to fascism; "settler-colonial Christianity," which paves the way for corporations that harm the earth; and a "toxic theism" that holds sway on social media, undermining faith in science and social institutions. Morton draws loosely on the notion of Christian mercy and the "liberation phenomenology of African American Christianity" to counteract the judgmental ethos of "revenge-based environmentalism," though what this new model might look like in practice never quite comes into focus. Instead, a mystical meditation on the author's 2023 return to Christianity after years spent practicing Buddhism adds a final twist to an account whose tendency toward ambiguity and paradox makes for challenging reading. Still, persistent readers will find insights into the ways religion shapes conceptions of science and the self.
