Michael Northcott: God, Gaia, and the Working Class

Michael Northcott is Professor of Religion and Ecology, Indonesian Consortium of Religious Studies, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia and Professor Emeritus at the University of Edinburgh. While he was in town between semesters in Indonesia we got to connect in his home office for energizing and nerdy conversation that covers quite a bit of ground including...

• how a factory job ruined systematic theology
• class consciousness and Christian socialism
• Schleiermacher, Barth, Tillich, and the socialist decision
• the Protestant problem with preaching scripture
• the birth of Radical Orthodoxy
• the religious predicament of modernity
• the task of being a member of a living tradition
• "Do Angels exist?"
• "the original sin is plant selection... the only life that is good on the planet is life we control, for we are the only beings with mentality and deserve the honor."
• "the biggest problem in systematic theology is its obsession with first cause and the inability to acknowledge multiple agencies"
• the connection between reductive accounts of agency and the political craziness in the US and UK
• why the bread at the Eucharist matters
• contemporary alienation from nature and community
• encountering nature anew and Jane Goodall
• the role of faith in ecological activism
• Michael mentions Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire

If you are on twitter then you should follow Dr. Northcott.

Want to read Northcott's work? Check it out.

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