AT PRESENT, the warnings of a scientifically predictable catastrophic future for our planet are failing either to unite humanity or to rekindle hope. One Conference of the Parties (COP) after another has come and gone, and the brighter hopes of the Paris COP, in 2015, have faded into the fog of denial, confusion, and mistrust. The nations are unable to confront, with sufficient determination, the collective suicidal path on which they are travelling.
This failure continues alongside the ever more visible signs of an incipient climate breakdown. The accelerating effects of global warming are set to bring about unimaginable suffering, if not civilisational collapse. It is beyond comprehension, and yet it is happening.
There has been a strand of religious apocalyptic thought that believes that, if the End is coming, then it will be by God’s will, and we cannot resist it. This belief, however, is less evident in the 21st century. Instead, we have a kind of resignation, or false optimism, which is heightening the risk of a humanly caused apocalyptic breakdown in the later part of this century.
Prophetic warnings of divine judgement, as in the Bible from the eighth century BC onwards, may sometimes heighten the threat of disaster in order to bring about the repentance that will avert it. Sometimes, destruction is described as it unfolds “in real time”, as a way of explaining the reality of judgement in the here and now.
Words of warning may also reflect historical disasters after the event, while the words are ascribed to figures who preceded the event. Late Jewish apocalyptic texts, as co-opted in the New Testament, notoriously predict an apocalypse that did not happen in singular historical terms, however disastrous the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 must have been for those who witnessed it. The expectation of the end of all things soon began to fade, as a delayed parousia gave way to a more settled existence for second-generation and later Christian communities.
SO, IT is clear that the label “apocalyptic” should always be used with caution, whether in a religious or a secular context. But, in the 21st century, we are nearer than ever to experiencing the meaning of such language once again. Ever more probably, we now face the end of our world rather than the final end of the world.
The warnings may be more sophisticated, but the reality is, as David Wallace-Wells writes at the start of his book The Uninhabitable Earth, “worse, much worse than you think”.
Despite all the current late-stage efforts to mitigate and reduce the effects of climate change, and all the “targets” for 2030 or 2035 or 2050 or beyond, we are entering a time when it is already too late to fend off climate chaos. The effects of that chaos threaten us all on a scale that is utterly unprecedented in human history.
Thus, in the second half of this century, “survivors” will not be those who have suffered from the safeguarding failures of the Church of England or other institutions: survivors will be those hundreds of millions in many countries on earth who will have lost everything; or they will be eking out a permanently wretched form of life amid mass migration, drought, wildfires, flooding, sea-level rises, and climate chaos. How, then, can our living standards or our whole way of life remain unscathed? How can we not envisage that our present rate of “natural” disasters and wars will be multiplied hundreds of times over?
This is an acute problem for all Christian theology and ethics, as well as for all serious thinkers. For most of my life, I have believed in some version of a “theology of hope”, along with all those who still pray and seek for a Kingdom of God to be discerned and experienced on earth. Such a Kingdom will become much harder to discern in the decades ahead, because of the earthly destruction that is slowly unfolding. It is becoming easier to despair than to hope.
We used to imagine apocalyptic scenarios as the unspeakable after-effects of a nuclear conflict between the superpowers. That imagination at least came with the belief (or arguably deterrent effect) that such devastation would never come to pass, so long as nations or terrorists refrained from crossing the unthinkable line. Instead of fearing such an outcome, but believing that national leaders would never be so mad, we are now enduring a different kind of collective madness. The madness consists of ordinary denial — and behaving as if we did not really face such danger on such a scale.
AFTER the Los Angeles wildfires in January (News, 17 January), as with many other recent extreme weather events, observers noticed a kind of fatalism, and a feeling that, even if these things happen more severely and more often than before, yet the more existential the threat becomes, the less our society or our political system seems able to address it.
There is, of course, a wider belief, in the Churches and in wider society, that, with enough faith and hope, we shall “find a way through”. Thus, the problem is not exactly denied, but it is too painful or difficult to keep being reminded of it. Summits and gatherings of leaders go on year by year, with their declarations and “ambitious” targets. We are thus reassured that environmental policies at some level are addressing the problem, whether we are among those who think that they go too far, or those who think that they do not go nearly far enough.
Christianity, most religions, and, of course, many political leaders, too, want to offer reassurance: “Do not be afraid.” We are not, after all, like those caught up in a war zone or a disaster area, where terrified refugees must actually pack their bags and find somewhere else to lay their heads.
But we cannot rebuild a changed climate. So, what about the apocalyptic dimension of the gospel, and its call to repentance, in fear and trembling? This would be a more honest response to the approaching climate chaos. We cannot welcome an imminent end to human progress, in the fervent way that perhaps our first Christian ancestors did. But we can at least be more prepared to be living in an end time.
To predict the end of an era, or the end of a civilisation, or the end of “our way of life”, is not to say that the End of the World is upon us. But it may be to instil in us a different kind of faith from that which has guided our belief in human progress.
The 21st century does now look apocalyptic, even if it does not bring the Apocalypse. An end of some kind to our hitherto stable climate and, therefore, to the world order is in prospect. This could happen with or without a revival of religious hope for the future. But, before then, there will indeed be the greatest need for faith and hope of the deepest kind. It will not, surely, be a hope that business as usual will be resumed, when net zero or some other grand illusory target has been reached.
Rather, it will be hope against hope. It will be hope that a few chinks of light will guide us through the darkness. It will be faith in the God who brings life out of death, even when that death is as overwhelming as it now looks for those coming after us. To face that death, God help us all.
The Revd Edward Cardale, a retired priest in the diocese of St Albans, is on the editorial board of Crucible: The journal of Christian social ethics. This is an edited extract from an article that he wrote for the April 2025 edition.
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