Unruly refrains: Faith, prophecy, and climate disengagement among Seventh-day Adventists in St. Eustatius

Presentation Unruly refrains: Faith, prophecy, and climate disengagement among Seventh-day Adventists in St. Eustatius, by Island(er)s at the Helm researcher Dr. Yvette Ruzibiza (KITLV)

In this presentation, I will discuss findings from an article in progress that examines how some members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in St. Eustatius, a small Caribbean Island prone to hurricanes, interpret and respond to climate change. Despite living amid clear signs of environmental stress, some Adventist members demonstrate limited concern or urgency regarding climate change. Rather than framing this as climate denial, the analysis frames it as an alternative epistemological stance, deeply shaped by religious prophecy, spiritual endurance, and mistrust of global institutions.

Drawing on three months of ethnographic fieldwork, the study identified three key perspectives that structure this form of disengagement: First, climate change is often viewed as intertwined with political and religious agendas, particularly linked to the Catholic church and global governance agendas; second, environmental challenges are interpreted through an eschatological lens, indicating the fulfilment of biblical prophecy- as signs of the of the prophesied ‘end times’ that calls for divine intervention rather than human solutions; and third, nature is seen as divinely ordered and historically cyclical rather than in crisis.

Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of refrains is used as a lens to analyse these findings and structure the discussion, leading to the paper’s central argument: that such disengagement should not be understood as denial, but as an alternative epistemological stance.  

Yvette Ruzibiza is a researcher in Political Anthropology at KITLV, working on the Islanders at the Helm project. She previously held a postdoctoral research position at Copenhagen Business School and was a visiting scholar at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam (UvA), where she also completed her PhD. Her research interests include East African politics as well as the political dynamics of the Dutch Caribbean islands.