Undisciplined Environments

By Gracia Ramirez and David Vergara-Moreno

This photo essay looks at Isla Grande, the largest coralline island of Nuestra Señora del Rosario Archipelago, which is part of the Parque Nacional Natural Corales del Rosario y de San Bernardo, in the Colombian Caribbean. The essay considers the environmental beauty and the violence that underpin Black lives on the island, and the ways in which they have resisted as a community to go forward into the future.

La Bodeguita dock in Cartagena de Indias is the tourists’ gateway to the promised paradise of white-sand beaches and turquoise waters of the Rosario Islands. The docks and other hard boundaries of the port witness an encounter with the polluted waters around Cartagena. This port is responsible for 70% of the country’s maritime trade and has been categorized as the third most efficient port in the world.

Although rarely mentioned by the early chroniclers, it is reasonable to infer that —prior to and during the early centuries of colonization— Cartagena’s Bay was a lush mosaic of abundant coral reefs, dense mangrove forests, and towering tropical dry forest trees.

Today, however, the bay reveals another face: murky waters, laden with sediments, polluted by centuries of maritime traffic, urban and industrial waste, and dredging works that have radically transformed its ecological cycles.

While the departure of tourism to the islands is mainly managed from La Bodeguita dock, the journey out of the bay and into the sea allows visual contact with other docks along the coast.

This is a layered cartography of memories, economies, and spatial regimes: tourist piers, logistical cargo yards, shipyards, naval bases, and private marinas. The bay is not merely a coastal landscape, it is a friction zone between multiple socio-economic and political logics: tourism, military operations, goods trade, and the communities whose ways of life are subordinated to those regimes. This is a liquid frontier: a place of circulation, exclusion, and resistance.

The archipelago of the Rosario Islands is connected not just to the Atlantic but also to another body of water, the Canal del Dique. The Spanish colonizers began its construction in the 16th century using enslaved Indigenous and African labor, with the goal of linking the Magdalena River —the nation’s main fluvial artery— with the Cartagena Bay.

Map of the Northern part of Bolívar Department, Republic of Colombia 1886-1903 (Edward Stanford, 1899, cropped). It is possible to see Cartagena de Indias, Barú island below, the Canal del Dique and the Calamar-Cartagena Railway (red line). Source: Mapoteca Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia.

Since then, the Canal has played a strategic role in both domestic and foreign transport and trade, evolving from wooden barges in the 17th century, to the advent of steam-powered boats in the 19th century.

For over three centuries, the Magdalena River and its canal were the only connection between Colombia’s Caribbean and its Andean provinces, linking a nation divided by three mountain ranges and a wide variety of thermal floors and ecosystems. Socially, the Canal became the route to freedom, as many runaway enslaved people (cimarrones) followed its waterways and founded Maroons communities (palenques) in the surrounding wetlands and hills during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Until the late 19th century, the Dique was merely a narrow, shallow ditch less than 15 meters wide, which was impossible to navigate during droughts. But throughout the 20th century, the canal was radically transformed. U.S. companies carried out major dredging and straightening projects that widened it to 100 meters, reducing its original 270 meanders to only 55, dramatically increasing its flow and sediment loads, altering the ecological balance of Cartagena and Barbacoas Bays and surroundings.

Despite these efforts, the canal became almost obsolete after the construction of two major highways that linked the Caribbean to the Andean region of the country in the 1950s. However, around the same time, Colombia’s largest oil refineries were established in Barrancabermeja and Cartagena.

As human geographer Austin Zeiderman argues, such infrastructures articulate geo-racial regimes and hierarchies of white and black, urban and peripheral, central and insular, that become sedimented into both Cartagenian landscapes and bodies.

Excavations on the ground reveal the coralline stone, compacted after centuries of pressure and erosion. Isla Grande is a coral reef fossil itself. Coral reefs are vital ecosystems: they protect shorelines from storms, sustain local fisheries, support biodiversity, and form the ecological backbone of a tourism industry that underpins much of Cartagena city’s economy. Yet their very skeletons have been quarried and consumed. Entire islets were built for elite leisure by filling the sea with broken coral, the moneyed class literally manufacturing new islands from the bones of the reef.

Coral grounds. Photo by Gracia Ramirez.

The Canal del Dique continues this slow and silent violence. Each rainy season, it expels plumes of sediment-laden freshwater that spread across several square kilometers, covering turquoise waters with brown stains. These pulses reduce salinity and block light, suffocating photosynthesis and interrupting coral reproduction cycles that coincide with the wet months. In fact, the deposits of sediment have turned the formerly island of Barú into a peninsula, following the interventions of USA engineering companies in the twentieth century.

The history of Isla Grande is intimately linked to that of Barú. Around the time of the Spanish colonization, these territories were called Bahaire after the indigenous chief that ruled them before the conquest. The Spaniards used enslaved labour to excavate quarries in Barú and Tierra Bomba, extracting coralline stone used in Cartagena’s colonial architecture. They also built kilns to burn coral stone, producing mortar for the city’s fortifications and lime for its characteristics whitewashed walls.

In the eighteenth century, the nearby island of Barú became a strategic point for cimarrones and Dutch and English smugglers who used enslaved workforce for the logistics related to trafficking. Some enslaved workers, in turn, were secretly saving money to buy their freedom to their masters –mostly Spaniards–.

Over the nineteenth century, with the crisis of slavery and the independence wars, Barú became an instance of a horizontal community formed mostly by cimarrones, freed slaves and mestizos. Their economy was based on subsistence agriculture, fishing, bartering and mutual support.

Wooden house. Photo by Gracia Ramirez.

On June 7 of 1850, groups of neighbours from Barú bought an old hacienda to its then owner for 1.200 COP and finished their payment on May 19, 1851. Just two days later, the abolition of slavery was signed in the country. Thus, Barú become a Black community with collective property before the establishment of the modern-day Republican State. Coconut became the main crop and some families from Barú moved to the neighbouring Rosario Islands to extend the plantations.

Islander dwellings echo this layered material history. Traditional houses rely on wooden boards and palm-thatched roofs, fragile yet renewable. Modern constructions import thin red bricks and cement from the mainland, materials that, as they degrade, seep into the calcareous soil and alter its composition.

Seashell. Photo by David Vergara.

Cement itself is ambivalent: it raises luxury resorts that displace the community, yet it also fortifies schools and homes through collective labor. In their very texture, these materials tell two stories at once—of extraction and restriction, but also of resilience and re-creation.

Right at the centre of Isla Grande is now the town of Orika. An old rubber tree guards the town’s square and provides shelter from the sun. The Cultural House is the gathering place where local council meetings (juntas) take place. The story of Orika is one of socioecological struggle and resistance.

Over the twentieth century, Barú started supplying agricultural goods to the growing Cartagena population, shifting toward intensive production of coconut, fish and mangrove charcoal. Up until the 1950s –when roads were constructed to connect Cartagena with other inland cities– the Rosario islands and Barú were the main providers of food sold at the city’s Getsemani market.

Rubber Tree in Benkos Biohó Square, Orika, Isla Grande, PNNCRSB. Photo by Gracia Ramirez.

The first tourists were members of Cartagena’s urban elite. They arrived at the Rosario Islands between the 1930s and 1940s and started building recreational homes. While tourist infrastructure was consolidating around Cartagena and the islands, a beetle plague destroyed the coconut plantations in the 1950s.

In order to “protect” the islands, the government declared them National Natural Park in 1977, but the National Park mainly considered the sea, not the ground islands themselves. The decree sought to “conserve flora, fauna, landscapes, and historical and cultural manifestations with scientific, recreative or aesthetic goals”, but omitted any mention of the Blacks communities that already inhabited the territory (Rosario Islands, Barú, Santa Ana and Ararca).

New prohibitionist environmental policies, coupled with the rise of tourism, relegated local families to the hinterlands of Isla Grande and to the backs of hotels and resorts, where they worked as subordinate labor.

In the 1980s, the government declared the Rosario Islands to be State-owned vacant lands, unrecognising the community as a “organized population” for the use of land but allowing other economical uses such as tourism and recreation. This enabled a wave of land grabs by private investors that further marginalised the community. However, the 1991 Constitution and the ensuing law 70 of Black Communities of 1993 provided legal tools to transform the memory of dispossession into a fight for recognition.

The community used environmental education programs to strengthen social organizations and articulate their historical demands into a juridical argument. In 2001, after years of legal limbo, the Colombian state began the land restitution process.

Fearing expulsion from the territory, the families decided to establish a new village in the center of Isla Grande: Orika, in honor of the daughter of Benkos Biohó, a cimarron leader and hero of San Basilio de Palenque, the first Black free village in the Americas (1714). In just two months, the community cleared the land and built their houses, a gesture of dignity and memory, affirming their right to exist as a Black community in their ancestral territory. After collecting evidence and going through endless administrative hurdles, in 2014 the Constitutional Court recognized the collective deed title for the Black community of Isla Grande, becoming the only community having achieved that so far within the national park.

Sunset horizons and native trees may meet the tourist’s gaze as landscapes ready for easy consumption— postcards of “untouched nature.” Yet the town of Orika unsettles this commodified view. Its soundscape resists containment: sound systems (picós) blasting loud music reverberates from the main square, echoing through every coralline ground cavity, vibrating as much in bodies as in stone.

In language, too, survival leaves its trace. The word Dios circulates as the name of the Christian god, but within it hides the untranslatable presence of African spirits, invoked yet unconfined by letters. This is not syncretism as tourist folklore, but the deep mimicry of African cosmologies that persisted beneath colonial surveillance.

In the Colombian Caribbean, enslaved Africans lived not in the vast monocultures of the sugar plantations of Brazil or Cuba, but in smaller, multiethnic communities tied to haciendas, cattle ranches, mines, and urban centres under the close watch of the Inquisition tribunal of Cartagena.

Cut off early from eighteen century renewed arrivals of African captives, these populations developed distinctive spiritual practices, an instance of what Sylvia Wynter called “black indigenization”— that in intertwining African, indigenous, and Christian forms, found ways of being human when colonial hegemony ruled otherwise.

Orika inhabits this layered spiritual geography. It is not simply a village bounded by its streets, but a porous space where music, light, and faith exceed enclosure—an unlimited terrain of survival, memory, and reinvention.

Mangrove forests form the living roots of Isla Grande. They are among the most resilient trees on Earth—thriving where others would perish. Their bodies adapt to saline soils and shifting tides, standing firm where land is not yet land.

Propagules germinate while still attached to the parent tree, dropping into the water as living seedlings that drift across lagoons and channels, anchoring themselves wherever conditions allow. Each root is a promise of survival, each forest a nursery that shelters fish, crabs, and birds in any of their stages of life. Mangroves breathe through aerial roots that rise above the mud, searching for oxygen in conditions too harsh for most species. Always green, they embody endurance.

The mangrove is never alone. Its leaves, roots, and fallen branches decompose into nutrients that sustain fish and crustaceans; its tangled roots interlace with seagrass meadows and coral reefs in a single inter-ecosystemic web. Together, these systems form the ecological triangle of the Caribbean coast: corals buffer waves, seagrasses filter and stabilize sediments, mangroves hold the shoreline while feeding both sea and land. In Isla Grande, these roots not only prevent erosion but also connect the island’s fragile ecology to Cartagena’s coastal mangroves, weaving life across waters.

For Orika, the mangrove is more than ecology—it is a metaphor for community. Like the red mangrove that elevates itself above its roots, the people rise from centuries of exclusion, rooted yet expansive. Their history drifts like propagules, carried by tides of resistance until finding ground to grow.

The mangrove teaches resilience, interconnection, and renewal: lessons for a community that continues to defend its territory while imagining futures where culture and ecology flourish together. Roots here are not only in soil, but in memory and struggle, anchoring Orika to both the Caribbean Sea and to its own unfolding horizon.

There are no roads in Isla Grande, only sandy footpaths weaving through the tropical dry forest and the mangroves. No motorized vehicles circulate within the island, people walk or ride bicycles, while boats and yachts, arriving from Cartagena, leave trails of oil shimmering over the turquoise surface.

Caribbean Sea water around Isla Grande. Photo by Gracia Ramirez.

Plastic bottles and rubbish drift ashore, carried by tides that remember more than the islanders would wish. Drift here is both material and historical: traces of empire, slavery, tourism, and extraction wash against the reef, staining waters once clear. The islands themselves are a coral body in constant erosion and recomposition, a living drift of stone, memory, and survival.

Plastic and vegetable waste. Photo by Gracia Ramirez.

Yet drift is not only decline—it is also possibility. Orika, born out of dispossession, has become a node of reorganization and creativity. The community council anchors collective life, negotiating with agencies and hotels that now contribute resources for communal projects.

Every weekend, and on national and local holidays, happiness brightens the whole town in shared spaces like the main Plaza (Benkos Biohó Plaza), the picós, the cockpits, houses and the Casa Cultural. A new foundation works with children and youth, teaching them to stage traditional dances and music, reweaving ancestral ties to the palenques and to African rhythms long suppressed.

Ecotourism initiatives, led by younger generations, form alliances with older community projects, offering alternatives that value culture and ecology together.

Buildings around Benkos Biohó Square in Orika. Photo by Gracia Ramirez.

Drift, then, also gestures toward a different horizon. In Orika, the tides carry not only the weight of history but also the seeds of futures yet to come. The Rosario Islands are a historical drift still evolving—where coral, memory, and community recombine into new forms of life.

The post Notes on Isla Grande: Figurations of Environmental Violence and Beauty in the Colombian Caribbean appeared first on Undisciplined Environments.

by Rebecca Rutt, Margrethe Birkler, and Emily Jean Cornwell

Interdisciplinary research is tricky enough but working across faith / atheist positionalities can bring unexpected insights to scholar-activism. In this essay, the authors recount their journey and report their findings on the Indecent Eco-Theology Praxis of Christian Environmentalists in Trump’s America.

I (Rebecca) am a social scientist working in the field of political ecology, and an atheist – or perhaps the humbler ‘agnostic’- although I was raised in an evangelical U.S. Christian home. I (Emily) am also from the U.S., also raised Christian, though I am a pantheistic Quaker today, and have recently completed an interdisciplinary MSc program on Climate Change. And I (Margrethe) am a Christian and a Danish theologian.

What we share, besides academic roles and calling Denmark home, is a commitment to action toward social, environmental, ecological and multispecies justice. This inspired a collaboration and propelled us to direct our collective academic gaze toward a field that we deem to be of great shared importance: the potentials and challenges of environmentalism in the United States – as undertaken by Christian organizations.

Recently, we conducted a case study of how one eco-Christian organization in the United States is resisting the political and inter-religious marginalization of ecological concern. Our work was based on interviews with the main staff of Creation Justice Ministries (CJM), a small but well-connected U.S. faith umbrella organization aspiring to unite Christian denominations to protect and restore the environment in God’s name. Importantly, CJM is among the few explicitly Christian eco-organizations, alongside the more numerous interfaith environmental groups.

This felt pertinent because of Christianity’s prominence and influence in the U.S. (where 62% of American adults identify as Christian according to the Pew Research Center, 2025). As explained by CJM’s Executive Director, while interfaith groups are also doing critical work, the fact that CJM is “rooted in Christian tradition, Christian theology” provides “a depth and a specificity” to their work that strengthens the potential for impact throughout the ecumenical community.

“Restore / Share / Protect God’s Creation” – 2025 public event by CJM calling for the administration to take bold action for creation care. Source: CJM, Executive Director Avery Davis Lamb.

This in turn was pertinent in light of the findings from a recent poll of religious American citizens who were asked about their views on climate change. While 70% of respondents said that they believe the Earth is getting warmer, only 48% believe this is because of human activity.

Among Christians, 85% believe God gave humans a duty to protect and care for the Earth, yet only 54% find stricter environmental protections worth the cost. And despite the longstanding presence of environmental stewardship in Christian values, the dominant Christian discourse in the United States appears largely apathetic – or actively hostile – towards the climate crisis.

A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences also documented that while up to 90% of Christian leaders believe in anthropogenic climate change, only around half have ever discussed this with their congregations, and only a quarter have mentioned it more than once or twice. Within congregations where climate change was discussed, a reported 35% of listeners were apathetic or uninterested, 27% were suspicious or resistant, and 10% were hostile towards hearing about climate change in sermons.

Some religious leaders who delivered such sermons have also described being threatened with angry letters and firing. It is clear from such figures that caring for the Earth is a marginal position to hold, both politically in the country but also within the Christian faith.

“Restore / Share / Protect God’s Creation” – 2025 public event by CJM calling for the administration to take bold action for creation care. Source: CJM, Executive Director Avery Davis Lamb.

For those of us engaged as scholar-activists in the field of environmental justice, we may benefit from a reminder of the crucial historical role played by Christian churches and their congregations in the struggle against environmental racism, and later for environmental justice in the U.S., where the term first emerged. This history receives perhaps less attention in contemporary environmental justice scholarship (although perhaps less so in grassroots activism).

In particular, we acknowledge the decades of work by civil rights and faith leader Rev. Benjamin Chavis Jr., who in the late 1980s coined the term ‘environmental racism’ that paved the way for the broader notion of environmental justice (even as environmental racism remains as important today).[i] Rev. Chavis was responding to a groundbreaking 1987 report by the Commission for Racial Justice of the United Church of Christ. The analysis documented for the first time the systemic connection at the national level between race and the sitings of toxic facilities – above and beyond class.

A plaque dedicated to the protests against PCB dumping in Warren County, North Carolina. Source: Wikimedia Commons/ Creative Commons.

The report noted, for example, that three out of every five Black and Hispanic Americans lived in communities with uncontrolled toxic waste sites. At the press conference presenting Chavis’ charge, he described this situation as, “an insidious form of institutionalized racism. …  in effect, environmental racism”. Even earlier, we recall the important role of African American Protestant churches as critical sites of organizing and mobilizing in the now famous 1982 protests against a PCB landfill in Warren County, North Carolina.

Relatedly, eco-theology, which for decades has helped draw attention to the intersections of religious faith and environmental concern, is nothing new in the U.S. The field coalesced in the 1960s, most famously through the works of U.S.-based Islamic scholar and philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr and U.S. historian Lynn White, and developed throughout the 1970s-80s.

However, the contemporary political landscape is sharply narrowing the space for articulations of eco-theology attentive to the climate and related crises. Under the Trump administration, Christian right-leaning nationalism is growing, and those who challenge the destruction of the Earth in their theology are likely to become further marginalized.

Upon returning to office, Trump continues to solidify the entanglement between right-wing nationalism and Christianity. Recent policies under the Trump administration, such as defunding faith-based environmental programs and empowering religious leaders who frame ecological protections as anti-Christian, have reinforced a theological culture in which domination and extraction define human relations with the rest of nature.

Our entry into this context was also influenced by Margrethe’s recent theorizing of what she dubbed ‘indecent eco-theology’ (IET): a critical theological approach centering the experiences of especially marginalized groups in (re)defining Christianity alongside action toward eco-justice. This made CJM as a case organization also relevant, given IET’s attention to the Christian faith.

In brief, IET emphasizes an action- and practice-informed Christianity, inspired by Argentinian theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid’s ‘indecent theology’ foregrounding a queer, liberatory, and street-based God-walk (as opposed to merely God-talk). Althaus-Reid maintained that theology does and should begin outside academic walls and halls of institutionalized power, which may engender ‘indecency’ in the eyes of powerholders – although Althaus-Reid rather recognized and celebrated less formalized knowledge/praxis.

A portrait of Argentine theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid, writer of the book ‘Indecent Theology’. Source: Wikipedia/Creative Commons.

Birkler’s IET similarly suggests that environmentally-engaged congregations can be the primary source of theology and encourages new insights of Christianity that emerge from activism. The IET framework also acknowledges the queerness and liberatory aspirations in Althaus-Reid’s indecent theology. Her queer theology, characterizable as “ruptures rather than reconciliations with structures that cannot be reformed”, articulated a sharp critique of the dominant social, religious, and political systems of the Global South- even speaking out against the limitations of liberation theologies.

Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Susan M. Shaw’s explicit attention to intersectionality provided IET with additional analytical purchase. Their ‘intersectional theology’ calls for attention to the complex social categories that inform and legitimate the production of particular knowledges, shape the daily experiences of various groups, and assert an ecclesiology (i.e. the study of the Church) that embraces difference and centers social justice.

With the notion of eco-justice in mind, IET is also informed by Laurel Kearns’  conceptualization of the term as equitable relations in God’s kindom (as opposed to the more hierarchical term ‘kingdom’) amongst humans but also between humans and the vast realm of creation.

Crucially, this perspective brings other species and ecological systems into the realm of justice, thereby moving beyond the historical anthropocentrism of environmental justice and toward what some secularly conceive as ecological or multispecies justice. We thus used the IET as a lens to examine the theological praxis of Creation Justice Ministries (CJM) in the context of the U.S.

Our work resulted in the publication of an academic paper entitled “We can’t be quiet. We can’t sit back.”: Examining the Indecent Eco-Theology Praxis of Christian Environmentalists in Trump’s America. While the main focus of the article, published in the theological journal Dialog, became to advance ongoing theological debates[ii], it also generated important reminders for those of us operating within the more secular environmental and environmental justice scholar/activist terrains. It further showcased the perspectives of those from the faith community, and the contemporary potential for secular and faith communities to collaborate toward shared goals.

For instance, while eco-concerned faith groups are marginalized in the broader religious and political order, collaboration with secular environmental groups is viewed by CJM at least as important to nourish shared values and the achievement of political goals, as they have experienced firsthand. The Theological Director described:

“A lot of folks in the environmental community aren’t expecting a faith voice. I think people are pleasantly surprised when we show up, when we show up with numbers, when we show up with energy, when we show up educated on the topics”.

The divisive political climate today likely deters faith-secular collaboration around environmental issues by generating negative expectations of eco-concern, especially on the part of faith communities. Based on CJM’s experiences, informed, organized faith groups should actively explore the potential of partnerships for meeting urgent shared environmental, climate, and social goals. And environmental groups, irrespective of their faith position, should understand that partnerships with groups like CJM are essential.

“You are not alone.” CJM mapping of allied churches and faith communities taking action around the country. Source: CJM, 2026: https://www.creationjustice.org/resilience.html

Referring to one of their programs in conjunction with the American Geophysicist Union, called Private Earth Exchange, CJM’s Theological Director described how churches serve as community science hubs:

“themselves identify[ing] environmental issues that are happening in their community, and are then paired with community scientists.”

He described the multiple benefits of such collaborations:

“One, it’s really empowering to these churches to believe that there are solutions that they can be a part of.”

Nourishing a sense of efficacy is integral for mobilization. Another benefit is amending their understanding of the “false and artificial divide between faith and science.”

CJM’s work with other faith communities who may not yet connect the need for ecological care to their existing concerns and efforts, such as those related to racially-based injustices, offers insights into framing and communication of broad relevance for change-making. The Theological Director emphasized that many conversations other faith communities are having today, are just “one degree away from a climate conversation” – be it hunger, poverty, or racial equity.

Mapping the Climate-Church Crisis. Source: CJM, 2026 (https://www.creationjustice.org/resilience.html)

To make the connection, to “connect the dots”, requires

“recognizing that the conversation has to start at different places. The conversation starts about air quality, and that Black children are far more likely to have asthma because of air quality issues. The conversation starts at the fact that regardless of income, you are five times more likely as an African American to live near a waste treatment facility. …. And helping people understand that those are environmental issues. Those are Creation issues.”

A similar sentiment was expressed by CJM’s Church Engagement Manager, who stated her intention to bring her experiences from working at an ‘incarnational ministry’ in a Central American immigrant neighborhood outside D.C. into the work at CJM. ‘Incarnational’, here, was related to a doctrine of God where God is understood as being present with and in the world, as a way to “be tangibly present with all of the creation that is around you”.

Some deeply personal revelations for us authors also occurred through this process.

I (Rebecca) came to terms with the partiality of my Christian upbringing in an evangelical Christian home and some beliefs so ingrained that I was blind to them. Through this work, I came to realize that while I may have been pleased in what is now my home country of Denmark by, say, the substantial presence of female clergy in the Danish Lutheran Church and its relative inclusion of homosexuality, I subconsciously assessed these as not truly Christian.

I also grasped the tremendous significance of eschatology (part of my new vocabulary!), namely beliefs (note the plural!) about biblical ‘end times’ and the return of Jesus Christ. The version I had been taught foretells a world in decline until the ‘rapturous’ moment of Christ’s return and the ascent of believers, as the rest remain to face devastating ‘tribulations’.

This ‘theology of despair’- in that it effectively precludes a rationale to work for change (apart from conversion to the faith)- was a major rereading of the Bible introduced in the 1800s that over time, became a cornerstone of contemporary U.S. evangelicalism.[iii] Not only does this view deter action for social and ecological justice, it is even interpreted in some faith circles as call to contribute to worsening conditions on Earth, in a hubristic attempt to force Christ’s hand, and his return.[iv]

Yet another view existed, and persists today, albeit in currently marginalized faith communities. CJM’s Executive Director explained to us that the theology of ‘rapture’ is not an orthodox belief but rather relatively new to Christian theology, and runs counter to the understanding of God as a loving creator. He explained:

“I don’t pretend to know what will happen in the eschaton, but I do believe strongly that God (…) made this world out of love (ex amore) and sent God’s son as Divinity incarnate to show what it looks like to intimately love creation — people and planet. It is completely contrary to how I understand God’s character that that same God would burn up the world.”

“Protect, Restore, and Rightly Share God’s Creation” – Recent outreach by CJM’s Director of Theological Education and Formation, Derrick Weston; Source: CJM, 2026 https://www.creationjustice.org/theologicaleducation.html

Encountering a U.S. Christian praxis so deeply committed to people and planet was revelatory.[v] While I have not made my way back to the faith, I did come to grasp both the partiality of my upbringing, and the way in which it undermines solidarities across secular and faith movements.

I (Emily) was delighted to learn of progressive, climate-aware Christians through this work. In conducting this research, I was surprised to find religious organizations that were entirely dedicated to acknowledging the climate crisis in their work, particularly as the Christian context I grew up in was hostile to these conversations.

Furthermore, finding theological work such as Althaus-Reid’s, which not only accepted marginalized perspectives but centered and uplifted these communities, was revelatory for my own relationship to faith and spirituality as a part of the queer community. This work ignited a passion and interest to continue working in this space, focusing on practical theology and ‘God-walk’ that might examine indecent theologies and their connection with the climate crisis.

Growing out of this research, I have taken up practicing restorative rituals, working alongside progressive theological organizations, aiming to acknowledge the climate crisis in small ways, communing with nature, community, and stillness. Through this, I realized the importance of silence, the more-than-human in faith, and found my way to a form of religion that feels aligned with who I am.

Lastly, I was encouraged by the ability for so many diverse areas of research and ‘fields’ to blend in this work. Though many of my peers were confused about the connection between religion and climate change, I found weaving this interdisciplinary web incredibly rewarding and meaningful, and this has opened my eyes to the ways that scholars can collaborate between fields previously thought to be distinct, such as science and religion.

Some resources provided by CJM for cultivating ‘faithful resilience’ through community mobilizations. Source: CJM, 2026 (https://www.creationjustice.org/resilience.html)

And I (Margrethe) explored the potential of empirical data collection, which is less common in the theological scholarship normally related to the subject of Dogmatics at the department I am connected to at Aarhus University. It was a truly enlightening experience to undertake an application study of a theory I had previously proposed. Suddenly, the theory was not only alive at my own desk at my office, but in the “real” world among faith communities.

This experience, furthermore, made me aware of a blind spot in the proposal of my theory of IET: if indecent theology is truly God-walk, and not merely God-talk, empirical data collection is vital to the study of it. While I had previously relied on the empirical studies of others in my work on IET, I was now challenged to produce this empirical data in collaboration with Rebecca and Emily. Here, I was reminded of the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration – not only in the data collection and analysis, but also across the different phases of discussing the impacts of our findings both as scholars and in relation to our private lives and the place of religion in them.

Through undertaking this study with Rebecca and Emily, I was not only reminded of the importance of collaboration but also faced with the need for scholarship to not be limited to the confines of my own office.

Speaking collectively once more, we acknowledge that this research collaboration came forth from a place of curiosity, and maybe a little uncertainty. Yet the interdisciplinarity and especially the cooperation across faith perspectives were unexpectedly giving, bringing an injection of new insights and momentum to our scholar/activism. We share these reflections in the hope that they may inspire others in the political ecology, justice, and faith communities to keep reaching across the aisles.

[i] One of the more recent examples of environmental racism in the U.S. context is the ongoing ‘water crisis’ of Flint, Michigan.

[ii] Specifically, we document the iterations between their practice and theological perceptions, advancing an interdependence with the more-than-human world while destabilizing dominant theological assumptions of the linear path from perception to practice. We also explore how they understand and mobilize ‘justice’, intersectionality, and engage with marginalized groups and the more-than-human world. Throughout, we draw insights to advance IET. Our findings thus reveal the organization’s resonance with IET alongside the particularities that emerge from a situated case study that are fruitful for further theoretical development.

[iii] Also known as premillennialism; listen to the helpful NPR Throughline podcast, Apocalypse Now, from 2019. Also see the work of sociologists like Gorski and Perry (e.g. their 2022 book, The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy) and Arlie Hothschild (e.g. her 2016 book, Strangers in Their Own Land), who through quantitative, historical, and/or ethnographic research elaborate upon the history and current significance of end-times beliefs, with insight especially into the context of the USA.

[iv] Paradoxical to a position of disengagement, some evangelical leaders’ interest in gaining political power became apparent by the 1980s, coalescing around strategically determined issues that might rally Christian constituents – in particular the issue of abortion (despite that evangelicals were unopposed to abortion as recently as the 1970s). The election of Ronald Regan was a linchpin in this transformation.

[v] For me, this learning occurred both through getting to know the work of Christian environmentalists like the staff at CJM, but also through the many encounters with Margrethe, that came to push at my own firmly held beliefs about what counted or not as authentic faith. Margrethe’s sharing of her ambiguity regarding the Church, accompanied by such certainty of faith, was especially instructive.

The post Interdisciplinarity across the secular/faith divide: revelations from researching Christian environmentalists in Trump’s America appeared first on Undisciplined Environments.

Come join the early Political Ecology Network (POLLEN) event on June 27, 15:30 to 21:30 at La Cinètika in Barcelona. organized by Rupture Press & Undisciplined Environments.

Being a researcher in the face of socioecological catastrophe, genocide and exterminating war feels increasingly untenable. While universities, and academia, are as much, if not more, than accomplices and apologists in political control and military development, they are also a space of critical discussion, political awakening and resistance.

This Political Ecology Network(POLLEN) pre-conference, Political Ecology Struggling: Between Industrial Extermination and Genocidal War, seeks to discuss these issues while inviting a new and enjoyable format for academic discussions—we embrace the joy of our possibilities, while recognizing we should do more against war, extractivism and political control.

While discussing heavy topics, we seek to bring an engaging—if not fun—format of passive and active participation. This pre-conference seeks to add to POLLEN, making the most of our travels and, most importantly, seeks to confront the by-and-large lack of tangible actions taking place at universities and within academia. With the exceptions of night attacks by anonymous actors and mobilization by select staff and students, academia has by-and-large failed to create and grow universities as liberatory spaces. Instead, liberatory spaces and academic culture are strangled by digital bureaucracy, competitive ranking metrics, impoverished, arm-chair and politically ignorant  conversations about political movements.

This academic normal continues alongside increasing political repression, flagrant enactments of genocide and political censorship perpetrated by universities, meanwhile academic relevance is affirmed by salaries. However limited, the Political Ecology Struggling pre-event seeks to make an enjoyable crack within the academic space to create participatory learning, dialogue and convivial congregation. Honoring and advancing the politically conscious and active legacy of political ecology, we seek to encourage a movement away from bureaucratic management toward socio-ecological transformation.

This pre-conference event includes a small book fair from local and foreign publishers and begins with a welcome and introduction (with more detail) about the event. This is followed by games, participatory workshops and a joint panel organized by Rupture Press and Undisciplined Environments titled: Can Academics Struggle? If so, how?

We seek to discuss the shortcoming, but more so imagine and express possible ways to advance liberatory practices and spaces within the University.  While creating a workshop space, to learn new skills, we provide an event for socialising, discussion and, hopefully, new (academic) conspiracies. The evening will conclude with an entertaining show to end the night with jubilee and laughter.

Located at a social centre, La Cinètika, the event is free to attend (and in English), but suggested 10€  donations are welcome. All donations go to covering the material costs and all leftovers are split between Rupture Press and La Cinètika.

Location: La Cinètika, Passeig de Fabra i Puig, 28, 08030 Barcelona, Spain

Date: 27th June 2026

We hope to see everyone there, and while much of this schedule will remain a surprise until the days before the event, here is what to expect:

15:30: Doors Open to socialize

16:15-16:30: Welcome Introduction – This Evening!

16:30-50: Ice-Breaker Game & Giggles

17:00 – 18:45: Workshops

18:45: Dinner

19:20 – 20:20: Rupture Press/Undisciplined Environments: Can Academics Struggle? If so, how?

20:30 – 21:30: Exciting Entertainment

The post Pre-POLLEN: Rupture Press & Undisciplined Environments Invitational appeared first on Undisciplined Environments.