Welcome to a seminar on how theology can (or should?) face crises and engage the signs of the times. There are currently many crises for theology to face but in the seminar, we will focus on the anthropogenic climate crisis as well as the fragmentation, acts of dehumanization, and contentious atmosphere that pervade many contemporary societies.

The papers will, therefore, discuss theological social ethicist Rufus Burrow, blue theology with an oceanic focus, and entangled voices of rage from non-human creation.

Date: 6^th of February 2026
Time: 10.15-14.00
Place: 1461-516

No registration necessary

Program

10.15-10.25: Welcome by Prof. Anders-Christian Jacobsen, Aarhus University

10.25-11.10: “Rufus Burrow, Jr. and Ethical Prophecy for the 21st Century”, Assoc. Prof. Nathaniel Holmes, Florida Memorial University
Rufus Burrow was a theological social ethicist with deep roots in the philosophy of American Personalism and the theological ethics of Martin Luther King, Jr. This presentation will delineate key principles of ethical prophecy which provide principles applicable for addressing the fragmentation, acts of dehumanization, and contentious atmosphere that pervade many contemporary societies. Special attention will be given to engagement with Tillich's Religion of the Concrete Spirit idea in conversation with Burrow's ethical prophecy.    

11.10-11.20: Short break

11.20-12.05: “Sing you Islands: Blue Theology and Climate Change in the Arctic”, Prof. Sigríður Guðmarsdóttir, University of Iceland
In Deutero-Isaiah´s poetic summons he addresses the most isolated and remote places he can think of and asks them to sing. Islands and islanders are asked to sing a new song to God along with other complex ecosystems in deserts, meadowland and mountainous regions. Isaiah has briefly shifted the focus from the land-based perspective to the sea, from the center to the margins of the known world, from the green to the blue.
Clement of Alexandria (2^nd century AD) interpreted Isaiah 42:10 in his Exhortation to the Greeks and postulated that Christ was the new song to sing from the margins of the inhabited world. For Clement, this is because Christ as the Word points to the divine source and creation of the world as well as the event of incarnation for liberation and well-being. If Christ sings from the islands, what then is Christ up against in the Arctic? What kind of new song is this and what relevance does it have for climate sensitive theologies to speak from the islands? What stories of hope, praise, survival, anguish, anger, oppression and relation are included in these insular refrains, new and old? How are these stories connected to watery places?
The interpretation calls for an examination of a theological relationship between divinity and (other) abyssal bodies of water, including humans. To sing this song from an island perspective, insular identity and attachment to place is important both to the choice of theoretical framework, to the way in which theory and method are connected and how the texts are interpreted. In this presentation I will reflect theologically “about”, “for”, “in” and “from” the Arctic, but not “of” the Arctic, because the Arctic is a complex place with many identities, languages and diversities.

12.05-13.00: Lunch break

13.00-13.45: “Entangled climate rage and non-human voices of creation”, Margrethe Birkler, Aarhus University
In this paper, I propose that eco-theology makes oddkin with the non-human voices of creation through an entangled eco-theology of climate rage. Drawing on e.g. Audre Lorde’s intersectional rage and Donna Haraway’s entangled sympoiesis, I offer climate rage, in all its multitudes of multi-voiced and multi-faced complexity, as a tool to avoid epistemic injustice in eco-theology. The non-human voices of creation can, in this sense, be understood as wrathful witnesses of bodies put upon the gears of the machine of the climate crisis – a machine which I propose eco-theology rage against. By including these voices in the polyphonic choir of climate rage, this rage can, furthermore, be translated into action. Joining together with companion species and critters, the life-giving chaos of the ocean, and additional creaturely others, the entangled eco-theology of climate rage proposed in this paper seeks to meet several challenges facing eco-theology. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres once said, “now is the time to turn rage into action … Every voice can make a difference”. Even if human voices keep silent, the stones, and all the other entangled critters of creation, will cry out. I propose that eco-theology engages these voices instead of turning away from them

13.45-14.00: Closing comment, Prof. Anders-Christian Jacobsen, Aarhus University