Erin Prophet
University of Florida
February 5, 2020, 4–5:30 PM
Marston Science Library L-136
What can be learned from the study of religion about motivating climate action? Are religious people less likely to accept human responsibility for climate change? Erin Prophet will examine contemporary scholarship, consider the role of millennialism in both religious and environmental rhetoric, and ask whether it is possible to reframe the issue in ways that will engender a positive religious response. She contextualizes the discussion within her own experience growing up in a millennialist sect that anticipated nuclear war and natural cataclysms such as widespread flooding and earthquakes, and built extensive underground shelters in which to survive these events.
This event is free and open to the public. No advance registration is required.`
About the Speaker
Erin Prophet is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion, University of Florida. She is a scholar of religion with interests in alternative spirituality, medicine, and environmental ethics. She studies millennialism and apocalypticism in new religious movements as well as the influence of fiction on theology. Among her publications are Prophet’s Daughter: My Life with Elizabeth Clare Prophet Inside Church Universal and Triumphant (2009) and “Charisma and Authority in New Religious Movements,” in the Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements (2016). In addition to her PhD in Religion (Rice University), she has a Master’s degree in public health. She is a co-author with Jeffrey Kripal of the textbook Comparing Religions (2014).
“Religion, Rhetoric, and Climate Change” is sponsored by Imagining Climate Change and the Department of Religion. “Religion, Rhetoric, and Climate Change” poster by Madeleine Gangnes.