Philip Jenkins

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  Climate Catastrophe And Faith

  $31.99

  One of the world’s leading scholars of religious trends shows how climate change has driven dramatic religious upheavals.

  Long before the current era of man-made climate change, the world has suffered repeated, severe climate-driven shocks. These shocks have resulted in famine, disease, violence, social upheaval, and mass migration. But these shocks were also religious events. Dramatic shifts in climate have often been understood in religious terms by the people who experienced them. They were described in the language of apocalypse, millennium, and Judgment. Often, too, the eras in which these shocks occurred have been marked by far-reaching changes in the nature of religion and spirituality. Those changes have varied widely–from growing religious fervor and commitment; to the stirring of mystical and apocalyptic expectations; to waves of religious scapegoating and persecution; or the spawning of new religious movements and revivals. In many cases, such responses have had lasting impacts, fundamentally reshaping particular religious traditions.

  In Climate, Catastrophe, and Faith historian Philip Jenkins draws out the complex relationship between religion and climate change. He asserts that the religious movements and ideas that emerge from climate shocks often last for many decades, and even become a familiar part of the religious landscape, even though their origins in particular moments of crisis may be increasingly consigned to remote memory. By stirring conflicts and provoking persecutions that defined themselves in religious terms, changes in climate have redrawn the world’s religious maps, and created the global concentrations of believers as we know them today.

  This bold new argument will change the way we think about the history of religion, regardless of tradition. And it will demonstrate how our growing climate crisis will likely have a comparable religious impact across the Global South.

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  Fertility And Faith

  $29.99

  Demography drives religious change. High-fertility societies, like most of contemporary Africa, tend to be fervent and devout. The lower a population’s fertility rates, the greater the tendency for people to detach from organized or institutional religion. Thus, fertility rates supply an effective gauge of secularization trends. In Fertility and Faith, Philip Jenkins maps the demographic revolution that has taken hold of many countries around the globe in recent decades and explores the implications for the future development of the world’s religions.

  Demographic change has driven the secularization of contemporary Western Europe, where the revolution began. Jenkins shows how the European trajectory of rapid declines in fertility is now affecting much of the globe. The implications are clear: the religious character of many non-European areas is highly likely to move in the direction of sweeping secularization. And this is now reshaping the United States itself.

  This demographic revolution is reshaping Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and Judaism. In order to accommodate the new social trends, these religions must adapt to situations where large families are no longer the norm. Each religious tradition will develop distinctive emphases concerning morality, gender, and sexuality, as well as the roles of clergy and laity in the faith’s institutional structures.

  Radical change follows great upheaval. The tidal shift is well underway. With Fertility and Faith, Philip Jenkins describes this ongoing phenomenon and envisions our collective religious future.

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  New Anti Catholicism

  $19.99

  Anti-Catholicism has a long history in America. And as Philip Jenkins argues in The New Anti-Catholicism , this virulent strain of hatred–once thought dead–is alive and well in our nation, but few people seem to notice. Jenkins shines a light on anti-Catholic sentiment in American society and illuminates its causes, looking closely at gay and feminist anti-Catholicism, anti-Catholic rhetoric and imagery in the media, and the anti-Catholicism of the academic world. For newspapers and magazines, for television news and in movies, and for major book publishers, the Catholic Church has come to provide a grossly stereotyped public villain. Catholic opinions, doctrines, and individual leaders are frequently the butt of harsh satire. Indeed, the notion that the church is a deadly enemy of women–the idea of Catholic misogyny–is commonly accepted in the news media and in popular culture, says Jenkins. And the recent pedophile priest scandal, he shows, has revived many ancient anti-Catholic stereotypes.
  It was said that with the election of John F. Kennedy, anti-Catholicism in America was dead. This provocative new book corrects that illusion, drawing attention to this important issue.

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