Mary as Mother of the Blue Seas: An Ecotheology Proposal in Light of Climate Change

Many ecotheologians have written on climate change; this paper proposes an ecotheology of Mary as the Mother of the Seas from a maritime perspective, derived from a blue hermeneutics. In the first section, an introduction will briefly outline the impact of climate change on the seas, especially the Pacific Ocean. More importantly, this paper proposes four key criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of ecotheologies. First, an effective ecotheology relevant to the era of climate change must be sea-based. Second, given the scale and importance of climate change, an effective ecotheology must not be simply an amendment to a single Christian doctrine, but rather form an integral part of Christian systematic theology. The concept of Mary as the Mother of the Seas is therefore proposed as an integral part of systematic theology. The third criterion is that an ecotheology must be able to be in dialogue with a coastal belief system for which it is constructed. To fulfill the third criterion, this paper presents a specific example of the theological engagement between Mary and the Indonesian sea deity Roro Kidul. Last but not least, the fourth criterion, as explicated in the last section, provides examples of resonances of the proposed sea-based Mary in South-east Asia and Latin America, demonstrating how a sea-based Mariology could contribute toward diverse coastal communities, not just those in Indonesia. In summary, the concept of Mary as the Mother of the Seas offers a fresh contribution to ecotheology and systematic theology, primarily within coastal communities, and has both local significance and global relevance.