Luke B Kreider | Goshen College (original) (raw)

Papers by Luke B Kreider

Research paper thumbnail of Varieties of Anabaptist Environmentalism and the Challenge of Environmental Racism

Mennonite Quarterly Review, 2020

Anabaptist environmental theologies and ethics could and should do more to engage issues of envir... more Anabaptist environmental theologies and ethics could and should do more to engage issues of environmental racism and environmental justice. Since most Anabaptist environmentalisms center on efforts to witness to God’s peace within creation, a failure to address ecologies of racialized violence undermines the tradition’s core theological values. This essay identifies three main varieties of contemporary Anabaptist environmentalism: agrarian virtue, bioregionalist discipleship, and eschatological eco-pacifism. It explores how each variety frames the natural environment within an account of Anabaptist faith and life, considers why and how problems of environmental racism elude that frame, and offers initial suggestions for how advocates and practitioners might sharpen each version in participatory dialogue with movements for environmental justice.

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Research paper thumbnail of Christian Ethics and Ecologies of Violence

Religions, 2019

This essay introduces "ecologies of violence" as a problem for Christian ethics. Understanding th... more This essay introduces "ecologies of violence" as a problem for Christian ethics. Understanding the links between violence and the natural environment will be critical to the pursuit of justice, peace, and sustainability in the twenty-first century. Yet these links often evade political action and escape moral attention because they do not fit comfortably within any of the fields requisite to address them. In most cases, the available resources for confronting these issues-"environmental issues" and "peace and conflict issues"-exist in separate toolkits, and no single discourse has developed resources to address their progressively merging spheres of concern. The essay outlines four types of ecological violence, examines recent work in Christian ethics relevant to them, and then argues for a dialogical method of ethics to confront them. Doing Christian ethics at the intersections of violence and environmental issues will require careful attention to environmental ethics as well as to the ethics of violence. More than that, it will require judicious efforts to navigate between them within case-based and place-based ethical analyses. Ecologies of violence invite Christian ethics to develop possibilities of ethical discernment and reparative action that do justice to the deep entanglement of ecological and sociopolitical systems.

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Research paper thumbnail of Religion and Climate Change

Annual Review of Environment & Resources, 2018

Understanding the cultural dimensions of climate change requires understanding its religious aspe... more Understanding the cultural dimensions of climate change requires understanding its religious aspects. Insofar as climate change is entangled with humans, it is also entangled with all the ways in which religion attends human ways of being. Scholarship on the connections between religion and climate change includes social science research into how religious identity figures in attitudes toward climate change, confessional and constructive engagements of religious thought with climate change from various communities and traditions, historical and anthropological analyses of how climate affects religion and religion interprets climate, and theories by which climate change may itself be interpreted as a religious event. Responses to climate change by indigenous peoples challenge the categories of religion and of climate change in ways that illuminate reflexive stresses between the two cultural concepts.

[pre-publication proofs; cite from the final paper at Annual Reviews]

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Thesis Chapters by Luke B Kreider

Research paper thumbnail of Theologies of Peace and Ecologies of Violence, Introduction

PhD Dissertation, University of Virginia, Religious Studies, 2020

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Research paper thumbnail of Varieties of Anabaptist Environmentalism and the Challenge of Environmental Racism

Mennonite Quarterly Review, 2020

Anabaptist environmental theologies and ethics could and should do more to engage issues of envir... more Anabaptist environmental theologies and ethics could and should do more to engage issues of environmental racism and environmental justice. Since most Anabaptist environmentalisms center on efforts to witness to God’s peace within creation, a failure to address ecologies of racialized violence undermines the tradition’s core theological values. This essay identifies three main varieties of contemporary Anabaptist environmentalism: agrarian virtue, bioregionalist discipleship, and eschatological eco-pacifism. It explores how each variety frames the natural environment within an account of Anabaptist faith and life, considers why and how problems of environmental racism elude that frame, and offers initial suggestions for how advocates and practitioners might sharpen each version in participatory dialogue with movements for environmental justice.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Research paper thumbnail of Christian Ethics and Ecologies of Violence

Religions, 2019

This essay introduces "ecologies of violence" as a problem for Christian ethics. Understanding th... more This essay introduces "ecologies of violence" as a problem for Christian ethics. Understanding the links between violence and the natural environment will be critical to the pursuit of justice, peace, and sustainability in the twenty-first century. Yet these links often evade political action and escape moral attention because they do not fit comfortably within any of the fields requisite to address them. In most cases, the available resources for confronting these issues-"environmental issues" and "peace and conflict issues"-exist in separate toolkits, and no single discourse has developed resources to address their progressively merging spheres of concern. The essay outlines four types of ecological violence, examines recent work in Christian ethics relevant to them, and then argues for a dialogical method of ethics to confront them. Doing Christian ethics at the intersections of violence and environmental issues will require careful attention to environmental ethics as well as to the ethics of violence. More than that, it will require judicious efforts to navigate between them within case-based and place-based ethical analyses. Ecologies of violence invite Christian ethics to develop possibilities of ethical discernment and reparative action that do justice to the deep entanglement of ecological and sociopolitical systems.

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Research paper thumbnail of Religion and Climate Change

Annual Review of Environment & Resources, 2018

Understanding the cultural dimensions of climate change requires understanding its religious aspe... more Understanding the cultural dimensions of climate change requires understanding its religious aspects. Insofar as climate change is entangled with humans, it is also entangled with all the ways in which religion attends human ways of being. Scholarship on the connections between religion and climate change includes social science research into how religious identity figures in attitudes toward climate change, confessional and constructive engagements of religious thought with climate change from various communities and traditions, historical and anthropological analyses of how climate affects religion and religion interprets climate, and theories by which climate change may itself be interpreted as a religious event. Responses to climate change by indigenous peoples challenge the categories of religion and of climate change in ways that illuminate reflexive stresses between the two cultural concepts.

[pre-publication proofs; cite from the final paper at Annual Reviews]

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Research paper thumbnail of Theologies of Peace and Ecologies of Violence, Introduction

PhD Dissertation, University of Virginia, Religious Studies, 2020

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact