The weapons were carved with Rune names and dedicated to Thor and Odin, the war gods in Norse mythology. Dressed as a Norwegian policeman, Anders Behring Breivik took the ferry over to the island and shot sixty-nine children with a pistol and a semi-automatic gun. A majority of those killed where Social Democratic youth, camping on the island of Utøya.

On the afternoon of July 22, 2011, a white Norwegian killed seventy-seven people in and around Oslo. Social justice issues and the immediate needs of the homeless, immigrants, minority communities, and advocating for LGBTQ equality and against systemic injustice in most cases took precedence. Progressive congregations were open to environmental concerns, talked about their importance, but ultimately were minimally involved. Other factors included belief in sovereignty of God (the idea that the Christian God causes and controls all events), a tendency toward collective narcissism, and a susceptibility to conspiracy theories. I found substantial indifference or outright hostility to environmental concerns and climate mitigation at all of my Calvary Chapel sites, due especially to intense apocalyptic expectation of imminent rapture. I also viewed a substantial number of online sermons posted at church websites. I interviewed pastors, church members, and key leaders within religious environmentalism, and conducted three direct focus groups. I divided my visits between a fundamentalist confederation of churches (Calvary Chapels) and liberal congregations affiliated with The Center for Progressive Christianity, an affiliation of liberal congregations (primarily United Church of Christ and Episcopalian) where more naturalistic, non-supernatural understandings of Christianity are more common.

To investigate why, between 20, I did field work in congregations in Arizona (a Republican dominated state) and California (a state with strong Democratic Party influence). It has led to persistent theorizing that religions, including Christianity, are about to intervene in a way that will alter the political situation and increase public demand for climate change action and environmental protection generally. Religious forms of environmental advocacy started emerging in the United States in the 1990s, seemingly within all branches of American Christianity, creating hope, both among these emerging movements and among secular environmental advocacy groups, that this would bring new constituencies to bear, constituencies with the moral authority to make ethical demands for environmental protection.

Norway shooting manifesto pdf