Religious Perspectives on Ecological, Political, and Cultural Grief

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of Religions invites scholarly contributions exploring religious perspectives on ecological, political, and cultural grief.

Several theses motivate this Special Issue.

• First, grief has become constitutive; for many people (religious and non-religious), grief has become a constitutive and pervasive, rather than intermittent, feature of life in the turbulence of the contemporary world.
• Second, grief has become structural; as a result of various systemic and historical dynamics, grief has become structural, a response to socio-cultural, ecological, and political forces in the world, as well as a response to acute, personal loss and death. 
• Third, structural grief is religiously significant; religious thinkers, communities, and traditions can uniquely contribute to our understanding of and response to ecological, political, cultural, and other forms of structural grief, and structural grief can generate new perspectives on religious life and experience.

These theses provoke clusters of questions that authors may want to address in their submissions, including but not limited to the following:

• How are economic, ecological, political, and socio-cultural trends changing the character and causes of grief, and what can a religious perspective (e.g., historical, comparative, theological, psychological) contribute to our understanding of these changes? For example, what resources can scholars of religion bring to our understanding of and responses to ecological, political, and cultural grief? How might these or other forms of structural grief lead to new interpretations of contemporary religious life and experience?
• Can grief in response to disruptive changes in the social and material conditions of life be adequately interpreted by existing theories of grief? Can grief theories, oriented primarily to acute personal loss or the death of loved ones, help us to understand persistent, diffused, and ambiguous loss? Are new theories of grief needed to understand the nature and consequences of a sense of loss resulting from changing social status and cultural norms, the persistence and intensification of racial injustice, the breakdown of religious worldviews and institutions, the demise of political projects and ideals, the decline of shared values and epistemic standards, the climate crisis, or the extinction of species?
• How might analyses of grief's changing character and causes provide new ways of interpreting and understanding contemporary human religious, moral, and political life? In other words, what do new forms and expressions of grief tell us about what we care about, who we are becoming, and how the world is changing? 
• How do religious beliefs, values, practices, or institutions influence, limit, enrich, and leverage our sense of who and what is grievable?

Submissions that engage one or more of the theses or questions articulated above are especially encouraged. In addition, submissions attentive to the pedagogical implications of grief, especially the forms of grief discussed above, are welcome. The Editorial Team will review all submissions examining the connections between religious thought/experience and ecological, political, or cultural grief.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Theology, ethics, theological ethics, religious ethics;
• Religion and the environment;
• Environmental and climate humanities;
• Ecotheology;
• Religion and politics;
• Affect theory;
• Thanatology;
• Political theology;
• Psychology of religion;
• Political psychology;
• Eco psychology;
• Sociology of religion;
• Religion and social sciences.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200-300 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editor, or to the Assistant Editor Ms. Violet Li ([email protected]) of Religions. Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the special issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Michael S. Hogue
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• grief
• ecological grief
• political grief
• religion
• theology
• ethics
• politics

Title: Extending the Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement to Ecological Grief

Abstract: The Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement (DPM, Stroebe & Schut) is a well-known framework in contemporary grief research and counselling. It depicts how people oscillate between various tasks and reactions. There’s a need to engage more with the intense feelings of loss (“Loss-oriented tasks”), but also with other things in life and other parts of the adjustment process after a loss (“Restoration-oriented tasks”). This article discusses the framework in relation to ecological grief and proposes that an extension into collective dynamics would be beneficial. While the DPM has been extended to family dynamics, many subjects of grief are even more collective and require mourning from whole communities or societies. Ecological grief is a prime example of such “structural grief” (Hogue). Religion and spirituality can be linked with the subject matter in many ways. Worldviews and religions affect dynamics of ecological grief, and the process of meaning reconstruction (Neimeyer) caused by ecological grief extends to the level of worldviews and spiritual practices. Religion and spirituality have potential to be helpful in such processes, but if there is disenfranchised grief and/or other difficulties, the disruption between ecological mourners and their spiritual communities may provide an additional layer of “spiritual grief” (Pihkala, forthcoming). The article draws from eco-emotion research, grief research, religion and ecology research, and interdisciplinary environmental studies.

Title: Exploring Existential Aspects of Sociopolitical Grief

Abstract: Grief is most commonly understood as an individual response to the death of a loved one. However, this view of grief is highly individualistic and does not incorporate the complexity of the grief experience as a response to many different types of losses. Grief may be individually and collectively experienced. It may also be present not just after the death of a loved one, but due to the “death” of deeply held values, ideals, and identities that originate in social and structural spheres. A unique form of grief that has significant relevance to current world events is sociopolitical grief, which occurs in losses that occur as a result of the implementation of political policies, laws, organizational norms, and social messaging that profoundly impact specific individuals and groups. In this article, the concept of sociopolitical grief will be explored through the lens of the assumptive world, which includes both social and existential frameworks, each of which provides unique implications for losses that originate at the governmental, structural, and/or social levels.

Title: Metabolizing Moral Shocks for Social Change: School Shootings & Faithful Activism

Abstract: “Moral shocks” are unexpected events or pieces of information that so deeply challenge one’s basic values and sense of the world that they profoundly reorient a person’s understanding of life and even self. Yet those who experience significant moral shocks rarely participate in related activism and instead experience grief as highly privatized and apolitical, a reality that serves the status quo and most powerful. This article considers how religious resources can help metabolize private grief into public lament and catalyze political grievance. Analyzing the rise of gun control activism after an elementary school mass shooting in Nashville, TN, I argue religious resources help metabolize moral shocks into social change in five significant ways: 1) cultivating practiced, purposeful pathos, 2) offering collective lament, 3) building networked resiliency materially and theologically, 4) risking new alliances of accompaniment, and 5) storying hope. This case analysis contributes to a broader claim for political theology: Christianity can be understood as a movement based on a moral shock. This framing then animates practices of care to accompany those in moral distress and help disciple grief into a movement of faith that rejects death-dealing political and social policy.