How do you go about writing music for a climate-focussed worship album? What does it mean to sing alongside trees in a forest? How can we process the loss of animals and habitats in the music of a Requiem? As issues of climate and ecology become ever more important, Christian communities are increasingly looking for appropriate ways to respond to the current crisis in their worship and liturgy.
In this book, Mark Porter draws on more than 40 interviews with activists, song-writers, Christian leaders, and musicians to explore what it means to develop new Christian musical practices for a time of ecological crisis. Through these different conversations, the book enters into fundamental questions regarding our relationships with the world around us, the relationship between spirituality and ecology, and the different ways in which we can engage with the climate crisis which we are facing.
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This is a much-needed book. Musical Christian responses to the climate emergency are immensely varied and astonishingly creative, including musicking in well-known formats and innovations in sonic worlds that bring the human and other-than-human sound worlds together. The debates are carefully and clearly set out with remarkable respect for diverse theological and musical positions… This is an excellent and inspirational book that is an essential read for anyone concerned with Christian ecology.
June Boyce-Tillman, University of Winchester
This well-conceived and clearly-written series of interview-based case studies lifts the curtain on an important but under-studied aspect of music for the environment: the explosion of musical creativity and experimentation among progressive Christians and other faith-based groups in response to the existential crisis of climate change. A thoughtful and pioneering contribution to applied ecomusicology, this stimulating book offers a great deal to scholars, musicians, and environmental activists.
Jeff Todd Titon, Brown University
This book is a personal journey of discovery, emotionally engaged, and theologically alert [...] a pioneering and wide-ranging study of the place of Christian music in a changing, troubled world.
David Atkinson, Church Times
A rich variety sensitively explored.
Robin Gill, Theology
