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Scholars, activists and others increasingly acknowledge that religion-whether conceived in terms of ideas, rituals or institutions-can help us cope with climate change and make sense of extreme weather events. Churches provide moral lessons in times of crisis, they spread awareness of climate change and, through community ritual, religious institutions can nurture a sense of collective responsibility. Much has been written on how contemporary faith groups have understood and acted on climate change and extreme weather events.Yet this literature is often not historically rooted and makes only superficial reference to the complex relationships between climate, extreme weather and religion in the past. Without an historical awareness we cannot understand the extent to which present-day religious discourses on the environmentfrom those articulated by "greener faith" advocates to fundamentalist skeptics-connect with how past societies understood climate and, more specifically, extreme weather events. A survey of the literature on Christian responses to extreme weather events, whether these be slow disasters (droughts) or isolated events (storms), suggests that histories that emphasize ruptures in attitudes to the natural world are problematic. Extreme weather events have long been regarded as omens and signs, and as divine judgments on sin. It is still thought that weather disturbances reflect disorders in human society. This literature survey introduces these continuities in Christian responses to extreme weather by ranging broadly across the English-speaking world from early modernity, though special attention is given to current work on Anglophone settler societies.
On at least eighty-seven occasions between 1789 and 1901 the Canadian state authorities made the dramatic move of setting aside days so that their populations could thank God for blessings, or implore His intervention and assistance in periods of crisis. Before Confederation every Canadian colony and province had developed a tradition of marking exceptional occasions with days of fasting and thanksgiving. After 1867 provincial governments, and then the Dominion government, would regularly call thanksgiving days for good harvests. Improvements in communication from the 1880s made the first genuinely empire-wide days of prayer possible. This article considers why days of fasting, humiliation and thanksgiving were such an enduring aspect of nineteenth-century Anglo-Canadian life. Special acts of worship would change their character and purpose over the course of the century, but they survived because Protestant churchmen and civil officials continued to value their community-building potential. The doctrine of "national providentialism"the idea that nations and peoples were rewarded or punished as a collective for their piety and sinfulnessnourished a range of community identifications in pre-and post-Confederation Canada. On the one hand the essay explores the varied senses of community that were stimulated by imperial, dominion, provincial and regional holy days; on the other, it shows how these occasions could expose I would like to thank Philip Williamson for his invaluable help in researching and writing this article. Funds from the Canada-UK Foundation and Northumbria University enabled me to undertake research trips in the UK and Canada. Jarrett Rudy, and conference audiences at the 2016 Ecclesiastical History Conference and the 2016 British Association for Canadian Studies Conference, provided valuable feedback on earlier versions of this paper. The journal editors and anonymous reviewers also provided very useful comments. Thanks go to Walter Batten for conducting research in Newfoundland archives.
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