Making oneself at home in climate change
religion as a skill of creative adaptation
pp. 187-201
in: Stanley , Stanley D. Brunn (eds), The changing world religion map, Berlin, Springer, 2015Abstract
Religions offer substantial cultural skills for the "making-oneself-at-home" of humans as humans locate believers in a world and at places inhabited by the Divine. Landscapes in Aboriginal Australia are shaped by spiritual powers in the dreamtime. Cities in Mayan Yucatan are placed on the edge of subterranean water streams and the stars, both dwelling places for ancestors and gods. Even if Jesus moved around in a quite homeless way and Christian faith transformed the code of a split between profane and holy places by deifying the whole creation, Christian churches also have shaped a specific sacred geography. Current technically and economically driven mobilities seem to catalyze an increasing homelessness in the ongoing globalization, which challenges and changes religious modes of making-oneself-at-home. The mobilization of traditional indigenous spirituality and the emergence of the "global Sacred" can be analyzed in such a horizon. I focus on the ongoing and dangerous climatic change process that accelerates homelessness and causes increasing waves of forced migration and challenges the spiritual skills of making-oneself-at-home. Such change creates a painful theological dilemma: how can one feel oneself at home in a good creation when this is destroyed by humans themselves, which are believed to be images of God the Creator? On a contextual level populations need to experiment with new modes of adaptation to a changing environment with increasing turbulences and disasters. Such adaptation impacts the physical and sociocultural and spiritual dimensions of life. Climate change also changes religion; how can religion contribute to creative climate adaptation? Religious skills are illuminated with short examples from the Kilimanjaro region, Siberia and Indonesia. Concluding remarks about the spatiality and mobility of religion and topics understudied complete the exploration.