Creation Justice Book List
A good book can shift our perspective, give us hope, provide us with opportunities to educate others, and spur us to take action.
Toward this end we have collected a few books that we hope inspire you and your church communities.They can be read alone, but will be most fruitful in conversation with others. Maybe you’ll organize an intergenerational book club for friends or family, or a study session with church or conference colleagues.
If you are interested in joining a UM Creation Justice Movement book discussion on one of these books over Zoom, or have book suggestions for us to add to the list, please reach out through this form.
What if We Get it Right: Visions of Climate Futures. Penguin Random House, 2024. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson.
Sometimes the bravest thing we can do while facing an existential crisis is imagine life on the other side. This provocative and joyous book maps an inspiring landscape of possible climate futures. With clear-eyed essays, vibrant interviews, data, poetry, and art, Ayana guides us through solutions and possibilities at the nexus of science, policy, culture, and justice.
Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist, policy expert, writer, and teacher working to help create the best possible climate future. She co-founded and leads Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank for the future of coastal cities, and is the Roux Distinguished Scholar at Bowdoin College.
Join an eight week online book discussion with Dr Mark Davies, Wimberly Professor of Social and Ecological Ethics, Director of the World House Institute at Oklahoma City University. Fridays from noon to 1:30 p.m. from July 11 to August 29, 2025. Register here
Liberating People, Planet, and Religion: Intersections of Ecology, Economics, and Christianity. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2024. Joerg Rieger and Terra Rowe.
There is growing consensus that life on the planet is in peril if climate change continues at its current pace. At stake is not only the future of many species but of humanity itself. As an increasing number of ecological economists have emphasized, these problems will only be adequately addressed by re-examining economic systems from an ecological perspective, fundamentally calling into question assumptions of unlimited growth and the maximization of shareholder profit foundational to neoliberal capitalism. Religion and ecology scholars have also increasingly emphasized the ways climate change challenges assumed divides between nature and culture, religion and labor, economy and ecology, and calls for critical and constructive engagement with the religion, economy, and ecology nexus.
Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth. Fortress Press 2022. Debra Rienstra.
Refugia Faith explores how Christian spirituality and practice must adapt to prepare for life on a climate-altered planet. Refugia (reh-FEW-jee-ah) is a biological term describing places of shelter where life endures in times of crisis, such as a volcanic eruption, fire, or stressed climate. Ideally, these refugia endure, expand, and connect so that new life emerges. Debra Rienstra applies this concept to human culture and faith, asking, In this era of ecological devastation, how can Christians become people of refugia? How can we find and nurture these refugia, not only in the biomes of the earth, but in our human cultural systems and in our spiritual lives? How can we apply all our love and creativity to this task as never before?
Refugia Faith Discussion Guide
Debra’s Refugia Faith Newsletter
Refugia Podcast
Earth and Soul: Reconnecting amid Climate Chaos Bold Story Press 2024. Leah Rampy.
The result of a decades-long journey to examine the gaps in our climate change conversations and uncover what lies beneath our unwillingness to change our interactions with the natural world. Facing directly into the devastation of climate change, we are led through a soul journey of grief and loss to claim the beauty, joy, and possibility that is present when we reweave our relationship to this sacred Earth – a path which just might offer hope for the future. Discussion questions are available at the end of the book.
Press and podcasts featuring Leah Rampy
See June 19 2024 Movement Cafe conversation with Leah Rampy
Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart MacMillan Publisher 2024. Brian McLaren
For the last quarter-century, author and activist Brian D. McLaren has been writing at the intersection of religious faith and contemporary culture. In Life After Doom, he engages with the catastrophic failure of both our religious and political leaders to address the dominant realities of our time: ecological overshoot, economic injustice, and the increasing likelihood of civilizational collapse. McLaren defines doom as the “un-peaceful, uneasy, unwanted feeling” that “we humans have made a mess of our civilization and our planet, and not enough of us seem to care enough to change deeply enough or quickly enough to save ourselves.”
Creation Justice Ministries offers recordings of their three Summer Reads webinars on Life, Death, and Resurrection in a Climate Changed World. Through engaging conversations between authors of pivotal books, each session offers a spiritual lens to view the profound challenges and opportunities presented by climate change. The third and final webinar is with Brian McLaren on this book. Watch the recording here.
The Future We Choose:The Stubborn Optimist’s Guide to the Climate Crisis. Penguin Random House 2021. Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac.
Take a deep breath and decide that collectively we can do this, and you will play your part.
We have just entered the most consequential decade in human history. The scientific assessment of climate change suggests this can either be our final hour, or our finest. The Future We Choose is an inspiring manifesto from Global Optimism Co-Founders and two of the architects of the 2015 Paris agreement, Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac. It explains what’s to come, how to face it and what we can do. Practical, optimistic and empowering, this is a book for every generation, showing us the exciting world we can all be part of creating. If we all play our part in the most important decade that we have ever faced, The Future We Choose shows how we can move beyond the climate crisis into a thriving future.
Climate Justice: A Call to Hope and Action. Second Edition 2022. Edited by Pat Watkins. Distributed by United Women in Faith. Companion book to the Loving People and Planet in God’s Name Study: Engaging the Local Church in the Study and Practice of Climate Justice
We live on a small blue planet in the midst of a mindbogglingly huge universe. It is a fragile planet, and it’s the only one we have to call home. Our responsibility is to learn how to live in right relationship with God, each other, and with the earth itself. Climate Justice: A Call to Hope and Action invites you to seek climate justice, which means setting right our relationships with each other and the earth. Climate injustice is the result of climate change, and we will never be able to bring justice to the planet until we bring justice to all people. The study will challenge you to see what needs to happen for climate justice to become a reality in the world today—and understand the urgency of these changes. The Church needs to more powerfully model how to address climate injustice. This entails not only focusing on the environment, but also asking hard questions regarding financial profit, a growing economy, our independent way of thinking, and our understanding of efficiency.
Love in the Time of Climate Change: Honoring Creation, Establishing Justice. Fortress Press 2017. Sharon Delgado.
Good discussion of what it means to address climate change from Christian and Wesleyan perspective. Every Methodist engaged in creation justice should be familiar with this fine book by a leader of the Fossil Fuels divestment movement within the UMC. As relevant today as when written. Love in the Time of Climate Change challenges readers to develop a faithful response to climate change, which disproportionately harms the poor, threatens future generations, and damages God’s creation. This book creatively uses scripture, tradition, reason, and experience to explore the themes of creation and justice in the context of climate change. Its premise is that love of God and neighbor requires us to honor creation and establish justice for our human family, for future generations, and for all creation.
More Great Book ideas: