Hope, Courage, and Resistance during Climate Change: Insights from African American Economic Cooperative Practices

Economic cooperative practices increase the ability of agents and communities to resist or curb ecologically damaging practices and to adapt to inevitable cultural and material transitions due to climate change. The history of African American economic cooperatives demonstrates how such efforts can build practical and leadership skills, transform local culture, and lay groundwork for wider collective action. Such practices fit Willis Jenkins’s model of prophetic pragmatism insofar as they draw on inherited traditions and transform culture and us. Contemporary Christians and church communities can encourage economic cooperation as a form of resistance to ecological destruction and, in doing so, encourage the habits of humility, hope, and courage.