The Role of Values in Responding to Major Social Change: Christian Churches and the Transition Town Movement

气候变化的可能影响不断出现在新闻中，但目前对日常行为的影响仍然很小。尽管许多石油专家认为石油可能在未来三到五年内达到峰值，但人们对资源枯竭的考虑要少得多。“过渡城镇运动”（The Transition Town Movement，简称TTM）始于爱尔兰的金塞尔，2005年在托特纳斯生根发芽，是目前发展最快的社会运动之一，在英国有100多个团体，在欧洲、北美、日本和澳大拉西亚也有团体。它的存在是为了让社区为石油峰值和气候变化在食品安全、工作和生活方式方面可能产生的影响做好准备。TTM不与任何政党和宗教团体结盟。然而，过渡训练吸引了广泛的文献，从永续农业到生态心理学到心理治疗，这些文献是TTM的“心灵”团体所吸引的，他们负责寻找应对重大社会变革的精神资源。这些文学作品在很大程度上是“流行的”，其中大部分可以在连锁书店的“心灵，身体，精神”部分找到。这些文献中隐含的价值观和假设是什么？它真的有能力对重大社会变革作出建设性的反应吗？它是如何与另一个西方社会和精神传统，即基督教联系起来的？问这些问题很重要，因为应对石油峰值和气候变化的影响将是一个关键的集体选择问题。当我们发现自己不得不这样做时，我们不需要被蒙在鼓里。TTM没有明显的政治目标。然而，在某种程度上，它是关于公民塑造他们的环境和未来，控制他们的生活，它确实有政治含义。它采用了什么样的过程和实践，这些过程和实践在实现建设性的社会变革（比如，与恐慌或无政府状态相对）方面有多有效？再说一次，这些问题可能很快就会变得非常紧迫。再一次，基督教有许多应对社会变革的模式，从罗马帝国解体期间出现的修道主义，到六七十年代军事独裁时期出现的拉丁美洲基层社区。重要的是要尝试并了解哪些社会过程是建设性地应对变化的有效方式。这项研究是比较的，将有助于理解我们当前社会的精神传统，并探索其优点和缺点，作为回应社会影响的方式，许多科学界的成员都在预测，但还没有形成大众意识的一部分。

SummaryThe likely impacts of climate change are constantly in the news, but are still currently having very little effect on day to day behaviour. Resource depletion is much less considered, even though many oil experts consider that oil may peak in the next three to five years.The Transition Town Movement (TTM) began in Kinsale, Ireland, and then took root in Totnes in 2005, and is currently one of the fastest growing social movements, with more than 100 groups in the UK, and groups in Europe, North America, Japan and Australasia. It exists to prepare communities for the likely impacts of peak oil and climate change in terms of food security, work and lifestyle. The TTM is aligned with no political party and no religious group. Transition training, however, appeals to a wide range of literature ranging from permaculture to ecopsychology to psychotherapy, and this literature is what is appealed to by the 'Heart and Soul' groups of the TTM, charged with finding spiritual resources for dealing with major social change. This literature is largely 'popular' and much of it can be found in the 'Mind, Body, Spirit' sections of Chain Bookstores. What are the values and assumptions implicit in this literature, and does it really have the capacity to sustain constructive responses to major social change? How does it relate to another Western social and spiritual tradition, namely Christianity? Asking these questions is important because responding to the impacts of peak oil and climate change is going to be a critical collective choice problem. When we find ourselves having to do this we need not to be in the dark.The TTM has no overt political objectives. To the extent that it is about citizens shaping their environment and their future, taking control of their lives, it does, however, have political implications. What processes and practices does it adopt, and how effective are these in enabling constructive social change ( as opposed, say, to panic or anarchy) ? Once again, these questions may be very urgent very soon. Once again, Christianity has many models for dealing with social change, ranging from monasticism, which emerged during the break up of the Roman Empire, to the base communities of Latin America, which emerged during the military dictatorships of the sixties and seventies. It is important to try and see what social processes are effective ways of responding to change constructively.The study is comparative and will help both to understand the spiritual traditions of our current society and to explore their strengths and weaknesses as ways of responding to the social impacts which many members of the scientific community are predicting, but which do not yet form part of popular consciousness.