This co-sponsored session examines multi-religious and intersectional approaches to climate change, human rights, and environmental justice. The session explores the work of grassroots communities and religious practitioners who offer emerging centers of eco-theology outside the academy. One paper grounds feminist eco-theology in Kachin women’s experience facing displacement and ecological degradation and how they organize for the right to collaborative survival. Next, Korean women's participation in decolonizing movements shapes Salim, an Asian ecofeminist theology, as an ecological movement working through holistic eco-caring activities and therapeutic communities. The third paper explores faith communities’ contribution to climate resilience hubs through organizing efforts, building and grounds modification, and collaboration with mutual aid groups and community-based organizations. The final paper shows how Islamic teachings inform Muslim communities in Indonesia to engage in ecological work and climate change mitigation through promoting eco-action, a common concern for environmental sustainability and advocacy, and training students for environmental care.
This paper weaves a Kachin feminist eco-theology out of the Kachin women’s experience of coerced displacement and ecological degradation in the Kachin land which is facing the loss of biodiversity at an unprecedented level caused by anthropogenic activities. I pay critical attention to extractive capitalism and militarism because their relationship is symbiotic, where both constitute each other and benefit from the interaction. I argue that the process of ecojustice will be only a spiritual frivolity if it does not attend to the wounds of the bodies of poor women and the body of all creatures. Focusing on poor Kachin women’s experience of coerced displacement, poverty, and environmental blight is the starting point for eco-theology that imagines collaborative survival. I will discuss how environmental blight impacts poor Kachin women differently as well as how they organize and struggle for collaborative survival for all life in the midst of displacement and poverty.
What could we learn from an Asian ecofeminist theology amid the pandemic and ecological crisis? Salim refers to women’s everyday embodied household-tasks. Salim broadly includes all of the diverse ecological activities that enliven our planetary living. The salim movement functions as an ecological movement in saving the economy and ecology as a valuable oikos, our living organism. Salim movements predominantly carried out by Korean women in the everyday practice of caring for their homes. Korean women have actively participated in decolonizing movements throughout the Korean history, e.g., Donghak movements (1894–1895), the March 1st Independence Movement (1919), the Post-Sewol Candlelight protests (2016–2017), and Korean Me Too movements (2018). Salim can be transformed into a healing energy of Life when we participate in holistic eco-caring activities and create therapeutic communities which is missio Dei today. Salim Theology is non-eurocentric and non-patrilinear but all-inclusive and symbiotic as a postcolonial ecofeminist theology.
As impacts of climate change are felt with increasing regularity in everyday life and in climate emergencies, it becomes imperative to build resilient communities that can mitigate and reverse climate change impacts, adapt to local changes, and recover quickly and equitably from climate disasters. This paper considers faith communities as potential participants and partners in hubs for climate resilience to respond to vulnerabilities due to climate change. The paper first defines and discusses the concepts of resilience and climate resilience hubs, then enumerates ways faith communities can contribute to climate resilience and community flourishing. Examples from faith communities in the presenter’s region and network will be offered, including advocacy and community organizing efforts, changes to buildings and grounds, and collaboration with mutual aid groups and community-based organizations toward more local, equitable, and sustainable communities. Theological educators are encouraged to prepare students to engage in this important work of our time.
This paper explores ecological work by Muslim communities in promoting climate change’s mitigation and environmental advocacy in Indonesia. I will specifically examine how Islamic teachings on environment inform Muslim communities to address environmental challenges and to engage with ecological work, especially in a Pesantren (Islamic boarding school) setting. I will use the work by environmental leaders from pesantren institutions, such as al-Imdad, Fadlul Fadlolan, Darut Tawhid, and Darul Arqam. I chose these pesantrens as they fit into what Fachruddin M. Mangunwijaya, an environmentalist activist and author, characterizes as eco-pesantren. The outcome of my research shows (1) how pesantren communities use Islamic teaching on environment to promote eco-action, (2) how they share a common concern for environmental sustainability and advocacy especially by promoting work such as managing garbage, planting trees, and creating an ecological oriented education, and (3) how they train students to care for the environment.