In Life After Doom, Brian McLaren, a SSUC favourite, reaches the conclusion that—spoiler alert!—”civilization as we know it is now doomed to collapse.” That, anyway, is New Zealand environmentalist James Beck’s determination. He calls the book “honest, confronting, gritty, imaginative, poetic, and reflective,” then insists that it offers “a roadmap for facing the present and future with courage and hope, making it a must-read….”
Britain’s Church Times agrees: a “call to activism in an earlier book is replaced by a melancholy resignation that it may already be too late,” which “does not make for jolly reading.” Nevertheless, “we can still live lives of love and defiance…even on a dying planet”—this is “the book’s central and most powerful insight….” Publishers Weekly heralds it as a “bracing study.”
This is “a more sobering book than McLaren’s usual,” Spirituality & Practice acknowledges, while picturing the author as “one of our living spiritual teachers. […] If you are willing to feel worse in order to feel better, then this book is for you.” In it, progressivechristianity.org declares, “he engages with the catastrophic failure of…our religious and political leaders to address…ecological overshoot, economic injustice, and the increasing likelihood of civilizational collapse.”
Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart
By Brian McLaren
St. Martin’s Essentials, 2024
