Religion, Narrative, and the Environmental Humanities
Bridging the Rhetoric Gap
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Book Description
Religion, Narrative, and the Environmental Humanities provides a fresh look at rhetoric, religion, and environmental humanities through narratives of evangelical culture, analyses of evangelical writing, and their connection to environmental topics. This volume aims to present a cultural understanding between evangelical and non-evangelical communities, exploring how environmental priorities and differences fit within the thinking and felt experiences of American evangelicalism. Offering a variety of theological topics, chapters include discussion of key themes such as eschatology, scriptural authority, or stewardship, and their relationship to evangelical thinking and conceptualization within climate change rhetoric. To help readers better access evangelicalism and translate these ideas, each chapter utilizes individual narratives located within evangelicalism to set an affective or experiential base for readers. In addition, this volume includes textual analysis of key documents within each section to further explore the environmental issues, values, and elements within the subculture of American evangelicalism. This volume will be essential for all scholars interested in bridging the gap of cultural translation and exploring the deep rhetorical roots of evangelical attitudes toward environmental issues.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Talking Systematic Theology: An Introduction
Chapter 2: Eschatology: Escaping the Apocalypse with Evangelicals and Environmentalists
Chapter 3: Scripture and Authority: The Department of Hermeneutic Security
Chapter 4: Stewardship: Human Care through Creation Care in Evangelical Environmental Statements
Chapter 5: Evangelism: Share the Good (and Bad) Environmental News
Chapter 6: Knowing Creation: "Bible Science" and the Possibility of Global Warming
Chapter 7: Sin and Righteousness: Affective Dissonance and Comparing Environmental and Political Priorities
Chapter 8: Evangelical Conservation: A Postscript
Author(s)
Biography
Matthew Newcomb earned his PhD in English (with an emphasis in Rhetoric and Composition) from Pennsylvania State University. He currently serves as an Associate Professor of English at SUNY New Paltz where he directed the Composition Program for ten years, earning the Dean’s Outstanding Service Award. His publications on argument, affect, environment, sports rhetoric, and composition theory have appeared in Rhetoric Review, College Composition and Communication, JAC, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment, enculturation, Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, and elsewhere.