Luke Beck Kreider

I work in the fields of religious ethics and the environmental humanities, studying how religions and cultures understand and engage environmental problems. I focus especially on Christian traditions, attending to how scholars, churches, and movements reckon with environmental issues at their intersections with social and political dynamics like violence and racial, gender, and economic injustice. My current book project, “Theologies of Peace and Ecologies of Violence,” explores how Christian ethics respond to situations in which environmental issues are linked to dynamics of conflict and violence, inviting scholars and practitioners to reassess dominant conceptions of peace in light of the challenges of ecological violence. My next project explores the religious and political lives of four transboundary rivers, considering how waterways both resist and collaborate with dynamics of colonialism. I have published and presented on topics like religion and climate change, Christian ethics and ecological violence, environmental racism, and Anabaptist ethics.

I teach in the departments of Religion, Justice, and Society (RJS) and Sustainability & Environmental Education (SEED). For RJS, I teach core and elective courses in ethics, peace studies, and religion. For SEED, I teach on the moral, religious, and spiritual dimensions of sustainability challenges, and help facilitate the Sustainability Leadership Semester at Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center.

I previously held appointments at Yale Divinity School (Lecturer, 2021-22), the University of Virginia (Postdoctoral Research Associate and Lecturer, 2020-21), Goshen College (Visiting Assistant Professor of Peace, Justice and Conflict Studies, 2013-14), and Defiance College (Adjunct Instructor, 2011), where I taught courses spanning fields of Christian ethics, religion & ecology, climate ethics, peace studies, political theology, and global religions.

Peer Reviewed Articles

“Varieties of Anabaptist Environmentalism and the Challenge of Environmental Racism,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 94, no. 1 (Jan 2020).

“Christian Ethics and Ecologies of Violence,” Religions 10, 509 (Aug. 2019): 1-22.

“Religion and Climate Change,” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 43 (2018): 85-108. (Co-authored with Willis Jenkins and Evan Berry).

“Mennonite Ethics and the Ways of the World,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 86, no. 4 (Oct. 2012), 465-492.

Edited Volumes

Special Issue Editor, Mennonite Quarterly Review special issue on Anabaptist Environmental Thought, vol. 94, no. 1 (Jan. 2020).

Assistant Editor, The Routledge Handbook of Religion & Ecology, ed. Willis Jenkins, Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim (Routledge, 2016).

Book Reviews

Mark Douglas, Christian Pacifism for an Environmental Age (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019),  MQR 94, no. 1 (Jan. 2020).

Conference Presentations

“Environmental Security, Religious Imagination, and Anthropocene Politics.” American Academy of Religion, November 20, 2022 (forthcoming).

“Stewardship, Settler Colonialism, and Solidarity.” Rooted & Grounded: A Conference on Land and Christian Discipleship, October 15, 2021.

“The Fog of War: Christian Ethics and the Environmental Consequences of War.” Society of Christian Ethics, January 10, 2020.

“Armed Ecology: Religion, Race, and Environmental Imagination at Malheur.” American Academy of Religion, November 26, 2019.

“Arteries of the Nation: Religious Nationalism and Environmental Imaginaries in the Jordan River Valley.” American Academy of Religion, November 18, 2018.

“Humanity After Nature: Human Rights and Ecological Restoration.” Theorizing Human Nature: Bridge, Barrier, or Both? University of Notre Dame and University of Chicago Fourth Annual Graduate Student Conference, February 25-27, 2018.

“Varieties of Anabaptist Environmentalism and the Challenge of Environmental Racism.” Rooted & Grounded: A Conference on Land and Christian Discipleship, April 20-22, 2017.

“Climate Justice, Political Reconciliation, and Religious Ethics.” American Academy of Religion, Southeastern Regional Meeting, March 3-5, 2017.

“Ecological Violence and Political Reconciliation: Why Climate Justice and Peacebuilding Need Each Other.” Huskey Research Exhibition, March 23, 2016.

“Moral Development and the Islamic Ethics of Pluralism.” Jefferson Scholars Foundation Forum for Interdisciplinary Dialogue, September 24-25, 2015.

Luke Beck Kreider – Curriculum Vitae