Fall 2025 · Vol. 54 No. 2 · pp. 303–304
Book Review
So We and Our Children May Live: Following Jesus in Confronting the Climate Crisis
Harrisonburg, VA: Herald, 2023. 303 pages.
Sarah Augustine is cofounder and executive director of the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery. She is also cofounder of the Suriname Indigenous Health Fund. She has taught at Heritage University (Toppenish, WA), Central Washington University (Ellensburg), and Goshen College (IN). Sheri Hostetler is cofounder of the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery. She is lead pastor of First Mennonite Church of San Francisco and a prolific author.
So We and Our Children May Live is an impassioned plea to change the way we live in order to return the world to a more natural and sustainable form. In part, the authors contend that “decolonization” will help accomplish that.
The Doctrine of Discovery, according to the authors, is a five hundred-year-old church doctrine justifying colonization and the slave trade that form the structure of our present society. The first part of the book considers Reality versus reality. Systems of life are Reality, whereas reality is based on “extractive logic.” Chapter 1 describes the climate crisis as a symptom of the problem, not the source: the overconsumption that has depleted many species and disrupted the intricate food web. Chapter 2 promotes interdependence rather than individualism. There they promote the very defensible idea that the earth would be more balanced if we extracted enough resources to fulfill our needs rather than our wants. The most important idea of chapter 3 is that economic theory considers labor and capital but not the importance of a stable ecological system.
Part II is titled “Beyond Green Growth.” Here chapter 4 makes the case that green growth is unjust because it will require large amounts of minerals, and these will be extracted in a way that will scar the land and pollute the water of already marginalized indigenous peoples. Chapter 5 asserts that green growth is unrealistic. Because the pace of everything is increasing, our consumption of energy, concrete, steel, and plastic is many multiples of what previous generations used. Not only can we not continue to increase consumption at this rate, even supporting the current rate using green (electric) energy is not possible. One example they use is that jets cannot fly on electricity stored in onboard batteries and may never be able to do so since batteries are so heavy. The last chapter of part II lays out the case that green growth is limited by the carrying capacity, p. 304 the number of people, other organisms, and/or crops that a region can sustain. Thus far, humans have managed to avoid such limits through scientific and technological advances in agriculture. The authors make a compelling case that these advances have allowed us to artificially exceed the carrying capacity and warn we are likely to crash by 2040.
The final part of the book is “imagining a decolonized future.” They first describe decolonization, which many readers will find unsettling in its description and this reviewer found puzzling. Central to decolonization is returning land to indigenous peoples, though how this is implemented when others have legally owned the land for several generations is unclear. Chapter 8 is an interesting chapter, and the changes described are either first order, which affect processes, or second order, which affect systems. Because systems are complex, small changes have negligible effects; therefore, the system itself must be changed. The system they would like to change is capitalism, as capitalism is intended to generate profits, which it does at the expense of the environment and the commons. They offer intriguing hints of what a different economic system would look like but admittedly fall far short of a systemic recommendation. Chapter 9 culminates in a call for a reorganization of the church to a more just church, which stands for the rights of the oppressed and divests from entities that support the extractive mindset.
Whereas there is much to appreciate in the book, this reviewer found it lacking in some scientific respects. For example, the colonization of the Americas resulted in the deaths of almost ninety percent of indigenous peoples. They suggest the resulting revegetation led to decreased CO2 and a consequent 0.15 °C temperature decrease. This seems speculative given the clearing of forests by colonists. They suggest the rivers and aquifers in rainforest communities are “permanently” damaged by mercury contamination. Mercury contamination is reprehensible, but this overstatement belies the fact that nature is a complex adaptive system with healing properties, and if we stop digging and start becoming good stewards, recovery will take place.
The book is intended for a general audience. It would make a great addition to a college reading list focused on developing critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Indeed, multiple viewpoints may elicit plausible solutions to the climate crisis.
