ABSTRACT
The introductory chapter highlights the importance of environmental discourse and obstacles to climate change communication. Some of the most important stakeholders in climate communication are religious audiences. I specifically focus on Christianity and its influence on environmental deliberation. This chapter introduces my typology of separators, bargainers, and harmonizers to understand how Christians make sense of and respond to climate science and environmentalism. This chapter also introduces important theoretical and methodological terms such as terministic screens, metaphor, rhetorical listening, and the Toulmin model, which guide my analysis of existing publications from Christian organizations and personal conversations I engaged in with Christians. To conclude, I describe the main contributions of the project as combining rhetorical analysis with qualitative interviews, exploring the various intersections of Christianity and the environment, and offering a new typology for understanding climate skeptic’s rhetorical features.
