Out of the Ark: A Cross-Sectional Study into Biblical Interpretation and Climate Change - Rebecca Watson

Summary:

Climate change has historically been implicated in religious and social change and upheaval. In such circumstances, religion can provide comfort and cohesion (advancing human flourishing in social relationships) or feed conflict, scapegoating and apocalypticism (undermining human flourishing in social relationships). Likewise, Christian faith can correlate both with higher incidences of denial of anthropogenic climate change and with pro-environmental attitudes, with biblical literalism often being a factor in the former. Biblical interpretation enables individuals and communities to make sense of a changing world both through rootedness in unchanging authoritative texts that provide continuity with the past and through creative reframing in the light of present concerns, enabling the (re)construction of meaning despite disruption and challenge. The proposed research seeks to explore the role of biblical interpretation in enabling individuals and communities to make sense of a changing world, specifically in relation to climate change, and the drivers behind different interpretations.

Current rapid climate change and wider instability and uncertainty (including political and social divisions, often drawn along religious lines and hampering human flourishing in society) necessitates understanding what is happening or could happen as people adjust their (religious) perspectives in line with a different experience of reality, not least because of the potential impact of such worldview shifts on human flourishing and social relationships. As people’s responses are culturally informed, interventions to encourage pro-environmental behaviour need to connect with cultural, local and religious perspectives. Enabling human flourishing in the face of climate change necessitates working with the religious frameworks held by particular social groups. This demands understanding what people believe and why, in this case, how Christians read their sacred texts in relation to climate change.

The proposed research (study A) asks how perceived implications of the Noah’s Ark story might correlate with climate change anxiety, sustainability concerns, and belief in anthropogenic climate change. The study examines how interpretations of Noah’s flood and environmental attitudes are predicted by personality, locus of control, self-efficacy, trust in God, religiosity, religious coping strategies, and beliefs about the attributes and nature of God. Participants will be asked through an online questionnaire to read a summary of the Noah’s Ark story and to consider which readings they find persuasive, indicating their level of (dis)/agreement on a Likert scale. Some interpretations will cluster around conservative beliefs, and others around more liberal values, enabling comparison with other factors. The proposed research will be quantitative, with a small qualitative element as participants will be able to add brief comments on the survey. A subsidiary study (B), a brief qualitative survey, completed on-screen, will interrogate Anglican trainee ministers about their views on how the story of Noah’s ark can inform thinking about climate change today. The range, recency and recurrence of ideas about climate change in connection with the Noah’s ark story will be the focus of a thematic analysis, while questions about preaching practice and intentions with regard to environmental and climate change issues will indicate the likelihood of participants’ ideas on this topic being disseminated in their communities.