Abstract
‘Clickbait’ is when a catchy title disguises an article about something else entirely. Rhodes’s Climate Crisis is a book-length clickbait, drawing readers to pick up a book that is not about climate at all. Apart from the 2-page introduction and the 4-page postscript, climate change is only mentioned in passing and less than 5 times in total. Appropriate titles for this volume might include ‘Jesus against Power’ or ‘Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan for Everyone’.
The central theme is that society is locked into unjust systems and that Jesus was against these systems. The reader is therefore challenged to ‘confront, in non-violent ways, a powerful political machine whose capitalist vested interests we [the Church] are threatening’ (p. 149). This point is made in various ways through a liberal reading of the Gospels including a demythologising of miracles (ch. 3), a long diatribe about how Paul ruined Christianity (chs. 7, 8 & 9) and a mini-quest for the historical Jesus (ch. 10).
The book is replete with unintentional ironies. In a book on climate there is not one scientific source. The entire book repeats ad-nauseum themes of the evils of Church institutions and of political power. Yet, in the postscript—the only place he addresses climate change—Rhodes writes: ‘Acting collaboratively. . . they [members of the Church] could influence governments and international corporations. Working together for the good of all humanity we could exert massive influence and political leverage.’ (p. 169) Taking over the political institutions and working with them turns out to be answer. Yet, there is no direction for what political priorities ought to be addressed first, nor how the one command Rhodes still finds in the authentic Jesus (‘love your neighbour’) could possibly be translated into just legislation.
Perhaps the strangest aspect of the book is Rhodes’s Victorian approach to gender. In chapter 4, Rhodes equates male forms of success with various types of penetration. In a Freudian-fuelled moment, he writes: ‘That word [penetration] is very important to most men. They get gratification from it. . . Think how many weapons of war are in the shape of a penis or have a penetrative function: a spear, a rifle, a bullet, a torpedo, a guided missile, a bomb.’ (p. 54) Men are success-oriented penetrators of the world. Women, meanwhile, are ideal, holy, and loving. The father of the Prodigal Son is described in glowing terms no less than three times as someone who ‘does not behave like a conventional father but like a typical mother.’ (pp. 54-55; 151, 156). On the last page, Rhodes blames men for ‘the reason we are in such a dangerous situation today. We need women to inject thoughtful, strategic rationality into the human race.’ Two pages later in a list of sources, there are 18 books by men, and only one by a woman (the Roman historian Mary Beard). If only Rhodes had followed his own advice.
If you want to learn about climate change, skip this book.