cover image Authentic Hope: It’s the End of the World as We Know It, but Soft Landings Are Possible

Authentic Hope: It’s the End of the World as We Know It, but Soft Landings Are Possible

Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer. Orbis, $22 trade paper (240p) ISBN 978-1-57075-957-4

The world as we know it has ended, claims Nelson-Pallmeyer (Saving Christianity from Empire), a Lutheran professor of justice and peace studies at the University of St. Thomas. We just don’t know it yet. Humanity faces four despair-inducing problems: climate change and ecologically destructive economic growth, massive inequality, increased militarization with declining U.S. influence, and dysfunctional corporate-driven politics. Yet learning a new set of values and catalyzing a compelling vision of a good society may prevent us from crash-landing into our future. Nelson-Pallmeyer offers a detailed treatise of social ills (addictive consumerism, peak oil, Social Security costs, nuclear defense) linked with current data and articles for the determined reader. He contends that universal spiritual values and moral reasoning can realign American society for long-term economic and ecological sustainability. While fundamentally hopeful in his belief that people can change and society will follow, his generalized “meaning-based” argument for motivating social transformation loses power and coherency when he steps outside the Christian moral framework with which he is most associated. Nonetheless, his emphatic call that “hope requires honesty” is a treasured lesson for all who cherish the vision of a better world. (Apr.)