This open access book examines the role of religion in the emerging academic and policy discourses on the polycrisis—also termed the metacrisis or permacrisis. Drawing on philosophy, economics, and the comparative study of religion, the book develops a conceptual map and shared vocabulary for engaging the interlocking challenges of our age, which threaten multiple simultaneous regional instabilities across the world system. As current political, economic, social, and ecological frameworks are stretched to their limits, Akhtar explores how the world's religious traditions can be accessed as sources of spiritual inspiration and moral imagination to chart new pathways beyond our collective paralysis. Advancing a covenantal pluralistic response, the volume offers scholars, students, and policymakers a generative framework for navigating overlapping crises through interreligious wisdom. Essential reading for those working at the intersection of religion, ethics, public policy, and the global polycrisis.

Iqbal Akhtar teaches at Florida International University in the Departments of Religious Studies and Politics & International Relations. He is also Founding Executive Director of The East-West Foundation. He has held Fulbright fellowships for humanities and social science research in Tanzania and Pakistan, with prior teaching and research appointments at the United States Air Force Academy, the University of Management and Technology (UMT), and the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM). He completed his doctorate at the University of Edinburgh's New College School of Divinity, with earlier degrees in Jewish, Islamic, and Near Eastern Studies and in International Relations.