A journalistic memoir by a lapsed evangelical Christian that examines how the ecological crisis is shifting the ground of religious faith.

Our species is leaving scars on the earth that will last for millennia. How has religious ideology helped bring humanity to the brink of catastrophe? What new expressions of faith might help us respond with grace, self-sacrifice, and love? What will spark our compassion, transcend our divisions, and spur us to action?

Josiah Neufeld explores how the interlocking crises of climate change have shifted the ground of religious faith on a quest that is both philosophical and deeply personal. As the son of Christian missionaries based in Burkina Faso, Neufeld grew up aware of his privilege in an unjust world. His faith gave way to skepticism as he realized the fundamental injustice underpinning evangelical Christianity: only a minority would be saved, and the rest would be damned.

He was left, though, with an understanding of how people’s actions are influenced by spiritual motives and religious convictions, and of how a framework of faith can counter one’s sense of personal powerlessness. The Temple at the End of the Universe is the rallying cry for a new spiritual paradigm for the Anthropocene.

JOSIAH NEUFELD is an award-winning journalist who grew up as a Canadian expatriate in Burkina Faso and returned to Canada as a young adult. His essays, journalism, and short fiction have been published in the Walrus, Hazlitt, the Globe and Mail, Eighteen Bridges, the Ottawa Citizen, the Vancouver Sun, Utne Reader, Prairie Fire, and the New Quarterly. He lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

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The Temple at the End of the Universe is a thoughtful memoir, searching for greater meaning in a fraught world, and learning to be connected to the land once again … Perfectly on tone for the current state of our world.

Miramichi Reader

A thoughtful contribution to much-needed discourse about aligning personal values with public action to curb the climate crisis.

Literary Review of Canada

Peripatetic … tormented … fascinating.”

Broadview