Environmental Theology is an open access and peer-reviewed English-language journal dedicated to a critical engagement between the Christian faith and the environmental crisis. It welcomes contributions from early-career scholars as well as established academics. Through interaction with other sciences and perspectives, this journal seeks to encourage rigorous reflection across the theological disciplines, strengthening the level of debate and fostering new voices and trajectories.
In recognising the global scope of both the environmental crisis and Christianity, Environmental Theology also seeks to provide a forum for the critical self-engagement of the Christian Church. This journal intends to create a meeting point for a variety of perspectives and theological disciplines by prioritising the place-based realities of environmental crisis and the kind of theological attention thus required. As such, Environmental Theology seeks contributions that critically engage with environmental issues in ways that are Christian, constructive, and theological.
That this journal is Christian defines its constructive basis. Though its form and traditions vary throughout the world, the Christian Church is bounded by its Creedal faith and its self-conception as the continuing work founded in the gospel of Jesus Christ. This journal aims to be ecumenical and broadly invitational, attentive to the global and variegated nature of environmental issues while maintaining a definitively Christian perspective.
That this journal is constructive is to treat the work of the Church as embodied, alive, and able to creatively respond to emerging issues. In its critical engagement with the environmental crisis, Environmental Theology locates itself within the living history of the Church and the development of its theologies over time. This journal thus aims to build on the foundation of existing Christian theology; invoking, adapting, and extending that foundation to integrate Christian thinking with the realities of environmental crisis.
That this journal is theological defines its disciplinary boundaries. It is primarily interested in communicating truth about creaturely relationship to God, specifically concerning the environmental crisis and the ways it is interpreted through the Christian faith. We welcome contributions which draw on other disciplines, such as religious studies, history, psychology, and more - but the aim of this project is to establish an explicitly theological lens for the Christian evaluation and response to environmental issues. By asserting itself as a strictly theological journal, Environmental Theology orients itself firmly towards the potential for theological language to clarify, mediate, and edify relationship to God. Many crises we now face reveal a need for place-based theologies of experience and environmental engagement, ranging from the local to the global (and perhaps further). As a platform bound by this disciplinary commitment, this journal will bring together new and active conversations in service to the global church.
That this journal is environmental locates its interest in the relationships between creatures, creation, and Creator – and especially in providing a robust theological account of the ways that humans experience, interpret, and interact with the world. It is, of course, humans who do theology, just as it is humans who do the things resulting in our present environmental crisis. By facilitating a critical convergence between Christian theology and other ways of knowing the world, Environmental Theology will aid the development of epistemological continuity between faith and sciences, as well as between the many voices of the global Church.
It is our hope that this convergence contributes to a life-giving shift in the practices of the Church, especially in the minority world, where the Church has often resisted theological challenges inherent to increasing environmental knowledge. By rooting this journal firmly in the Christian tradition and insisting that it proceeds as a living development of Christian faith, we provide a platform to discuss the environmental crisis as a Christian problem. As such, this journal aims to foster challenging, rigorous, and authentically Christian responses to a crisis that affects every one of God’s creatures.