Tenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

The existential crisis posed by rapid climate change calls for renewed attention to the cognitive and discursive means of resourcing and shaping resilience for planetary stewardship. In this paper, we draw from both theological hermeneutics and ethnographies of peaceful cosmologies to suggest avenues for deepening an ecumenical dialogue across Christian and indigenous world-views. We examine how bringing indigenous peace-making and resource sharing cosmologies into conversation with phenomenological hermeneutics concerned with engaging a redemptive reading of humanity’s place in the world sharpens a post-secular language of spiritual, social and ecological resilience at the crossroads of ecology and peace goals. In this configuration, evidence-based anthropological science allows for the diversity of forms of cosmological heritage to dismantle existing borders across modern, premodern and postmodern epistemologies.