When Martha Park’s father announced he was retiring from the ministry after forty-two years, she moved home to Memphis to attend his United Methodist church for his last year in the pulpit. She hoped to encounter a more certain sense of herself as secular or religious. Instead, she became increasingly compelled by uncertainty itself, curious about whether doubt could be a kind of faith, one that more closely echoed the world itself, one marked by loss, beauty, and constant change.

In illustrated essays, World Without End: Essays on Apocalypse and After, explores the intersections of faith, motherhood, and the climate crisis across the South, from man-made wetlands in Arkansas to conservation cemeteries in South Carolina; from a full-scale replica of Noah’s Ark in Kentucky to the reenactment of the Scopes Monkey Trial. Park chronicles the ways the faith she was raised in now seems like an exception to the rule, and explores this divide with compassion and empathy.

World Without End considers the way religion shapes how Southerners understand and interact with the world—and how faith can compel them to work to save the places they love.

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Reviews:

“[I]n these echo-chambered times, World Without End is a much-needed palliative.” – Rien Fertel, The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate

“World Without End: Essays on Apocalypse and After is a deeply felt and carefully investigated collection about faith and science. Empathetic and precise.” –  “God Is Change: Martha Park embraces uncertainty in World Without End” by Lou Turner for Humanities Tennessee’s Chapter 16

“A gorgeous exercise in open theology, World Without End places generosity, curiosity, and the desire to make the world better at its fore.” – Starred Review from Foreword Reviews

“Across each of these vulnerable essays, Park offers no definitive path forward. Instead of sharing hard-and-fast edicts, the kind desired by those with a fundamentalist frame of mind, Park advocates for courage and conversation.” –Southern Review of Books

“Park’s particular genius lies in the deft way she weaves threads from her own life with today’s thorniest questions. She considers: How can groups of people interpret our shared world so differently? Does belief in an afterlife lead some to abandon care for this world? Is it better to prepare for disaster in isolation or community? Are there ways in which even our disparate beliefs can come together?” – Soul Searching Through the South: Essay writer and illustrator Martha Park considers faith, family, climate change, and community in her debut collection by Christina Nifong