Climate Change, Migration, and Christianity in Oceania

Abstract

Christian actors and institutions in the Pacific have taken to integrating themes of climate change, sea-level rise, and migration into their religious discourses and practices. Here what interests me is the deliberate reception, processing, and incorporation of the climate change cum migration problematic into the Christian governing practice. Foucault's conception of governmentality – how political power is exercised in the modern era – supplies the analytical instrumentarium for exploring this practice. A series of official declarations by Pacific churches, as well as three case studies from different regions of Oceania (Fiji, Kiribati, and Papua New Guinea), offer a window into the relationship between Christianity, forced migration, and climate change. I examine how Christian churches and actors now position themselves in the conflicted terrain of climate change and displacement as moral authorities and indispensable mediators on the local, national, and international levels.