Like much of the northern hemisphere, 2026 is proving to be a year of heatwaves, droughts, and forest fires.

We’ve all seen the graphs and the projections — but it takes an actual heatwave, sweat on the brow, hymnbooks pressed into service as fans, for the statistics to become a sensation.

But does any of this belong to theology? Should a theologian even be thinking about the weather?

Let me tell you a small story from last Sunday.

A homily on heat

A friend of mine, taking his cue from the heat that had half the congregation fanning themselves, preached briefly on climate change.

His logic was simple:

• Look around — we are struggling in this heat.
• We hear daily of broken weather records.
• We are about to profess faith in God as creator.
• We have to see this as part of the challenge of faith today.
• Then he mentioned Pope Francis’ Laudato si’, on the care of our common home, which is available free online.

It was a short homily — attention spans, after all, contract in proportion to rising mercury.

Three camps of objection

That evening he rang me, shaken and hurt. In the porch after Mass, several parishioners had cornered him.

They told him, in quite graphic language, exactly what they thought of his homily, his mention of “that pope,” and their future regard for him.

Their objections fell into three camps.

• Science, they said, doesn’t belong in a sermon — and how do you even know it’s true?
• They came to Mass for a personal encounter with Jesus, not “social commentary.”
• And if he did it again, they’d stop contributing; they weren’t paying to fund “woke” culture.

Their reactions were not as crisp as this, but these very revealing comments manifest in a nutshell some of the deepest spiritual problems among Christians today.

Faith and reason, not enemies

For centuries, opponents of religion insisted faith (superstition) and reason (science) were enemies — one had to choose, one excluded the other!

It was left to Christians to argue that “all wisdom comes from God” (Sir 1:1) and that no item of truth can contradict another — but it may only be from a fuller vantage point that we can understand this.

It may be that we think of climate change deniers as based in Washington DC and conspiracy theories flourishing on “social media.” The truth is we have to reckon with deep confusion all around us.

Thus, down the centuries, far from being enemies of science, Christians have seen the discovery of the complexity of the universe as an investigation of God’s handiwork.

The believing-thinking trap

What is new today, among some Christians, is the notion that they would rather believe than think!

But if one has to opt for a binary of either believing or thinking, one is moving on to very dangerous ground.

Here lies the road to both silliness and to being hoodwinked by every demagogue with an account on X.

Rational enquiry is not a substitute for faith, but rather faith in the Creator — who is beyond our imagining — goes hand-in-hand with rational study of that which is within our vision.

Without rationality, faith becomes credulity.

Without faith, life is reduced to aridity.

Only a fool burns down his own house – we would be poor witnesses
to the Good News if we did not shout: ‘Stop!’

We need to offer thanks to God for the learning of the climatologists who have explained to us what is happening.

• Thomas O’Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK).