This seminar will be presented in person, and also livestreamed on EMU’s Facebook Live page.

Theology and Ethics After Nature

Peter Dula
Professor of Religion and Culture
Eastern Mennonite University

Can nature tell us anything about morality? Can humans draw conclusions about how to live with each other and the land from observations about ecology? In recent years, scholars across disciplines have argued not just that we can but that we must in order to adequately reckon with the climate crisis. Jedediah Purdy, a prominent theorist of democracy and environmental law, argues that this is a mistake. Moreover, he thinks it is a mistake that can be blamed on religion. In this colloquium I will try to say why I think he is right about the former but wrong about the latter.

Peter Dula is Professor of Religion and Culture at Eastern Mennonite University. He received a Ph.D from Duke University in theology and ethics in 2004. He is the author of Cavell, Companionship, and Christian Theology (Oxford, 2011) and co-editor (with David Evans) of Between the World of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Christianity (Cascade, 2018). Before coming to EMU, he worked with the Mennonite Central Committee in Iraq and Burundi and taught at the Meserete Kristos College Ethiopia where he was a Fulbright scholar. His most recent work is in the areas of eco-theology and philosophy.