False Prophets and Climate Cults. How Climate Change Becomes Religiously Meaningful to Grassroots Conservatives in the US
Öffentlicher Vortrag von Prof. Dr. Robin Veldman (Texas A&M University) im Rahmen der internationalen Konferenz “The Greening of Religion and Spirituality – Exploring Beliefs, Practices and Organisations in Times of Environmental Change”.
| Datum: | 15. Juni 2026 |
|---|---|
| Zeit: | 18.15 Uhr bis 20.30 Uhr |
| Ort: | Universität Luzern, HS 7 |
Der Vortrag findet auf Englisch statt.
In 2008, Barack Obama successfully campaigned for the US presidency on a platform that included the introduction of national-level climate change legislation. By 2025, the head of the US government’s top environmental agency was celebrating “driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.”
To understand this reversal, and religion’s role in it, requires exploring how US conservative media has shaped Americans’ religious sensibilities, and how these sensibilities have increasingly been deployed against climate change. In this public keynote lecture, Robin Veldman moves beyond the climate literature’s “media effects paradigm,” which understands conservative media in essentially propagandistic terms. She explores how conservative media is made meaningful in the lives of conservative activists in the US, drawing on extensive field research in the US-states of Texas and Michigan.
In the keynote, Veldman argues that conservative media should be understood not simply as a natural counterpart to “liberal media”, but as an arm of the conservative movement. She goes on to show how grassroots activists interpret the religious messages and affective modes of conservative media as authentic and meaningful. This helps to explain their mobilizing power. Finally, she calls upon scholars of religion and the environment to pay attention to religiosity that transcends traditional conceptions of religion, not only on the pro-environmental side (i.e., nature spiritualities, dark green religion), but on the anti-environmental or sceptical side as well.
Prof. Dr. Robin Veldman
Robin Veldman is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Texas A&M University, and serves on the advisory board of the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture.
With a background in Religious Studies from the University of Florida, her research focuses on religion, politics, and climate change, primarily in the United States. She is the author of The Gospel of Climate Skepticism: Why Evangelical Christians Oppose Action on Climate Change, the co-edited volume How the World’s Religions are Responding to Climate Change and a number of articles and book chapters. More recently, her research has focused on the role of conservative media in coordinating religious traditions in the US.
Keynote Lecture
This public keynote lecture is part of the international conference “The Greening of Religion and Spirituality – Exploring Beliefs, Practices and Organisations in Times of Environmental Change”.
The Keynote Lecture is open to the public and free of charge. An apéritif (“Apéro riche”) is offered after the lecture.
