Hope in the Midst of Ecological Crisis
A Review of
Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart
Brian D. McLaren
Hardback: St. Martin’s Essentials, 2024
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Reviewed by Leroy Seat
Doom is “the emotional and intellectual experience shared by all who realize the dangerous future into which we are presently plunging ourselves, our descendants, and our fellow creatures.” These are the author’s words in the introduction of his new book that is essential reading for all of us who know about and care about the future of life on planet Earth. On the dust jacket, environmentalist Bill McKibben says this book is as “rich and thoughtful as all of Brian McLaren’s work, but with a particular urgency!” This reviewer fully agrees.
McLaren is a prolific author, public theologian, and currently the dean of the core faculty at the Living School, the spiritual formation program of Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation.
My appreciation for Brian began by reading his A New Kind of Christian trilogy (2002-05), which was significant theology written as novels. Then his 2006 book, The Secret Message of Jesus, emphasized that the kingdom of God is more about society than about individuals. That emphasis on the kingdom of God being primarily about human society in the present world rather than individuals being transported to heaven upon death is a major reason many contemporary conservative Christians do not regard McLaren highly. Thus, many such Christians may well not like Life After Doom because of his emphasis near the end of the book regarding the need for us to live in this fraught present day with the dream of the kingdom of God, which is “not a destination after death: it is the higher, bigger, vaster, deeper way of life here and now” (236).
McLaren first wrote about the growing global ecological crisis in Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope (2007). In “I Am Waking Up,” the first chapter of Life After Doom, McLaren tells how he started researching that book in 2006, the year he turned 50. After a year of research and writing, he states that he “became convinced that human civilization as we knew it was destroying itself. It was on a suicidal, eco-cidal trajectory arching toward the collapse of the global ecosystems upon which we depend” (17). This is his first book since then, dealing at length with what he calls “our precarious predicament”—and it seems he has a bit of regret that he did not continue addressing that most pressing issue more thoroughly until now.
McLaren writes, “Those of us who are older want to write our grandchildren apology letters, lamenting we didn’t do more sooner” (5). That sentence then has this footnote: “Larry Rasmussen wrote a book of such letters, The Planet You Inherit” (2022), and ERB posted my review of that book (here) in February 2023. I concluded that review with these words: “Rasmussen’s book is certainly worth reading, and its hopeful views about confronting the current and coming ecological crisis need to be pondered thoughtfully. Still, this challenging book written for the author’s young grandsons will need to be balanced – both in the future and now – with careful consideration of more realistic views about what is most likely to occur” in the lifetime of his young grandsons. In Appendix 5 of his book, McLaren includes the “Dear Grandkids” letter he wrote, and I thought it was better, more helpful than what Rasmussen said to his grandsons.
Early in “Welcome to Reality,” the second chapter, McLaren succinctly sets forth the diagnosis of the predicament he examines throughout the book: “Our global civilization as currently structured is unstable and unsustainable” (23). Some scientists and eco-theologians, especially William Catton, Jr., and Michael Dowd, have made this same diagnosis. But this is the first time a major “mainstream” Christian author has analyzed that predicament so intensely and so clearly—and with a pastor’s heart (and in a pastor’s voice in the excellent audiobook version).
Throughout this challenging book, McLaren explores four possible scenarios for the years ahead. In the second chapter, he calls those scenarios 1) “Collapse Avoidance,” 2) “Collapse/Rebirth,” 3) “Collapse/Survival,” and 4) “Collapse/Extinction.”
Since it is clear that he thinks only the last three are feasible, at the end of the first chapter he warns his readers that the following chapter is “rough sledding” – and indeed it is for those who have not read extensively and thought deeply about these matters. But then chapters three and four are more pastoral in nature as the author seeks to help his readers face the fearful future in ways that are not debilitating.
Space does not permit commenting on most of the book’s chapters, but consider briefly the fourth/last part of his book. There McLaren elucidates what he calls “a path of agile engagement.” Michael Dowd’s emphasis on “post doom, no gloom” provided helpful light for these dark times, but McLaren’s last chapters are even more beneficial and encouraging.
In chapter 17, Brian repeatedly stresses that despite all the ugliness, “beauty abounds.” In the next chapter, he cites and heartily agrees with the words, “It is a magnificent thing to be alive in a moment that matters so much” (224). Chapter 19 emphasizes the need to live with the dream of the kingdom of God which includes the words cited above from page 236. The following chapter is “Find Your Light and Shine It.” If we do that, even in this time of doom, we can have “an abundant life, a meaningful life, abounding with beauty … whatever the future may hold” (249).
“Whatever you do, it matters.” Those words (on 253) are the crux of McLaren’s final chapter, which closes with 15 numbered paragraphs expounding that basic assertion. This is a most helpful conclusion, for it expounds many different ways to respond to the challenge of the ecological crisis. We should not, therefore, be critical of those people whose ways are different from our own.
At the end of the book are six appendices. All are valuable, but perhaps many of you who read this review will find help and be motivated by reading Appendix 2, “Using This Book for Small Groups, Classes, Sermon Series, and Retreats.” This book is too good and too important to just be read and then shelved or returned to the library. It needs to be read carefully, thought about deeply, and discussed thoroughly with other thoughtful people. Indeed, the “wisdom and courage for a world falling apart” elucidated in Life After Doom need to be widely dispersed.
Leroy Seat
Leroy Seat, Ph.D., was a Baptist missionary to Japan and a full-time professor of Christian Studies and theology at Seinan Gakuin University from 1968 to 2004. He is now retired in his home state of Missouri. After 65 years as a Baptist church member, he joined a progressive Mennonite church in 2012. Find him online at: https://theviewfromthisseat.blogspot.com/
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