Losing ground: Reading Ruth in the Pacific

The Ruth narrative opens with a biblical version of climate crisis – there was a famine in Judah’s storehouse (Bethlehem, house of bread) – to which a family responded by migrating, seeking asylum. This family would have crossed both land and water – because Moab was on the other side of the Dead Sea, and the Jordan and Arnon rivers were on the way – as many refugees in the modern time do.
In the unfolding of the narrative, some of the topics of critical concern to climate refugees (despite international law not recognizing ‘climate’ as a category among refugees) are addressed e.g., security in terms of food, home, land and inheritance. Around those topics, this book offers a collection of bible studies on the Ruth narrative in and from Pasifika (for Pacific Islands, Oceania) that interweave the complexes of the climate pandemic—climate change, climate trauma, climate grief, climate resilience, climate injustice—with the interests and wisdoms of Pasifika natives.