Petro‐theology: Critical engagement with theologies of energy and extraction

Abstract

This essay serves as a more extended introduction to many of the themes, concerns, and aims of this issue. Along these lines, key terms and discourses like extractivism, energy humanities, and petroculture studies are introduced. The essay elaborates two key claims: energy has been theological (and not just techno‐scientific) and analysis of current energy concerns (including climate change) need to be theorized and addressed in relation to land. These claims call for approaches to an energy‐driven climate crisis that attend to theo‐philosophical assumptions of energy and extraction and point to the significance of energy humanities approaches. Engagement with energy and extractivism humanities leads to a call for further attention to three different areas within Christian energy ethics and Religion & Environmentalism scholarship: (1) an approach to Christian energy ethics that better accounts for the theo‐philosophical gendered, racialized, and colonial implications of energy concepts, (2) closer attention to mineralogies and geologies among ecotheologians and 3) critical assessment of convergences of creation and redemption theologies for extractive aims.

Energy and spirit: Extraction, thermodynamics, and change

“…Energy and change are at the heart of existence, including but not limited to human existence. Scholars in the humanities have been taking up the study of energy in the past few years, as part of what is called “energy humanities” (Daggett, 2019; Irigaray, 2021; Marder, 2017; Rowe, 2022; Stoekl, 2007; Szeman & Boyer, 2017). In addition to scientific, technical, and economic energy studies, many of which are focused on alternative energies as a way to supplement or replace fossil fuels, we need new ways to think about energy systems and how they are integrated into our lives in a broad sense.…”