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Theological Forum Issue

Vol. XIX, No. 4, December 1991

CREATION'S CARE AND KEEPING

 

CREATION AND SPIRITUALITY

(A Perspective from Christianity)


Wesley Granberg-Michaelson 2

I. The Spiritual Challenge of the Ecological Crisis


The global ecological crisis at its root presents modern society with a probing and unsettling spiritual challenge. The crisis raises the question, "What is humanity's relationship to, or with the creation?" And that question requires an answer which goes beyond politics and economics.

As critical as legislative measures are, and as essential as new economic practices are to saving the life-giving environment of our planet, they alone are insufficient responses.

We are living with a deeply ruptured relationship to the earth. Most of us know this intuitively. When you walk along the shore of the ocean at sunset, feeling the fresh breeze in your face, listening to the endless surf which washes toward, and then away from shore, studying the same as countless as the stars shifting constantly, then you are easily eclipsed by wonder.

It takes, I think, only an hour's walk in barefeet that press into moist sand by the ocean's edge to remind our hearts that we are guests in the midst of grandeur and mystery which springs from things eternal.

And yet, such intuitions are made remote, uncommon, sentimental, romantic, and even foolish in a culture which expects and demands that we live daily according to other realities proclaimed to be more important.

So "nature" as we call it, using secularized language which reveals our spiritual impoverishment, is reserved for vacations, provided one can afford them. Or it becomes an interlude, like a brief intermission in a play between acts, or a sixty second commercial image with the sand, water, beach, and sunset as the inspiring setting for advertising a new car--a car whose exhaust will cause excess heat from the sun to be trapped on the earth, raising the sea, eroding the sand, and attacking shorelines around the world.

When we deal with the ecological crisis, at any depth, we begin to sense rather quickly that the problems point to something deeper, something more profound, something spiritual. Of course this is never an excuse for failing to act practically to change things. Countless local campaigns and initiatives can be undertaken. Yet beneath these lies the unsettling realization that a whole modern, industrialized culture that has remade our life over the past two centuries, and which offers to that minority of the world who can pay it countless benefits, securities, and pleasures--that this culture has destroyed humanity's spiritual relationship with the created world. And further, this spiritual destruction is the decisive cause of the world's growing natural destruction today.

A few months ago I was meeting in Moscow with the delegation of the Russian Orthodox Church who were preparing for the Seventh Assembly of the World Council of Churches--the meeting which just concluded last February in Canberra, Australia. The Russian Orthodox delegates were discussing the subjects of the Assembly, and reviewing the preparatory materials. The Assembly theme was "Come Holy Spirit - Renew the Whole Creation," and the first section was "Giver of Life - Sustain Your Creation!" The preparatory booklet talked of how much Christian theology, with its stress on human dominion over the earth, had led to the attitudes and actions resulting in ecological destruction.

But an Orthodox priest reacted strongly. "We cannot say that this is true in our situation. In our society, it has not been a bad theology by the church, but rather, it has been the official atheism of society which has produced the ecological destruction of our country."

This was one of those startling comments that gets followed by a long, and almost embarrassing silence. But the priest was pointing to a deep truth. The materialistic vision and philosophy that has reigned for 70 years in his society had sought to exclude spiritual perceptions of life, including in particular the life of creation itself. The world was merely matter. How it was treated didn't matter, as long as the fruits of its exploitation, and the means of this production, were in the control of the working people.

Glasnost in the Soviet Union, and the revolutions in the formerly called Eastern European countries, have revealed to the world the depth of ecological devastation in these societies. Conditions are shocking. Many reasons and explanations are offered. But the analysis of the priest cannot be ignored.

But this gives no solace to Western societies. For our practical atheism regarding nature has been just as radical. God's creation has become a secularized object, severed from any spiritual reality, and regarded as the storehouse of raw materials for our wealth.

For both capitalist and communist ideologies, God's creation has been emptied of its spiritual integrity. Humanity's relationship with it became one of exploitation, devoid of respect, reverence, and restraint. Such a stance was fashioned by the scientific revolution, and the industrialization which followed. These events radically reshaped how humanity thought about and understood the created world. And gradually, the world itself was reshaped, until today, when this process now threatens to unravel the foundations of life itself.

For many years the church has been inattentive and unresponsive to this spiritual crisis represented by the deterioration of the earth's environment. Its own theology had become absorbed by the cultural values and perspectives on nature which had shaped the modern age. Thus, unlike the movements for civil rights and for peace within the past three decades, the early prophets of the environmental movement came from outside the churches and religious communities.

But the remarkable fact of the past five to seven years has been the widespread attention that has emerged within the churches to the ecological crisis. New interest and urgency in the issues of theology of creation is evident in seminaries, and in the mushrooming variety of books and articles now found on these topics. Moreover, this interest is now being translated by many denominations into concrete programs.

A recent survey has documented this dramatic change within U.S. congregations. Many major denominations have now established clear programs dealing with the ecological crisis, including the United Methodists, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church, the United Church of Christ, the Disciples, the American Baptist, and others. The survey discovered that other denominations were at the brink of making such new program commitments. Further, such concern was discovered across the theological spectrum, from liberal to evangelical constituencies.

Many of these commitments had been made in just the past year, and the survey remarked that this all may represent the most profound and rapid shift in official church policy on social policy since denominations turned against slavery 200 years ago.

Within the Catholic Church, at official levels, a similar change is apparent. Over a year ago, Pope John Paul II issued a major statement on the World Day of Peace, titled, "Peace with God the Creator, Peace with all Creation." This marked the most forceful statement by the Vatican on ecological issues, and the theology of creation, which has ever been issued. Clearly it established at the level of official Catholic declarations a priority of theological and practical concern dealing with the crisis facing the creation.

The Orthodox Church as well has made clear its commitment. Last year, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, located in Constantinople, published a major document titled "Orthodox Perspectives on Ecology," setting forth the views of the Orthodox concerning the global environmental crisis. Such perspectives find deep support in the tradition of Orthodox theology. From ancient times, this voice of the Christian tradition, which is so often neglected and ignored by the Protestant West, has proclaimed that God's work of redemption reaches out to embrace all the creation, in a unity between the material and spiritual dimensions of reality, which was assured through the incarnation.

Discussions with the Russian Orthodox Church reveal a similar and intense commitment concerning their ability to respond, both theologically and practically, to the crisis of ecological devastation which faces their country. And that concern is shared widely; this summer, the North American Conference on Christianity and Ecology (1991) is sponsoring an "Ecology Tour of the Soviet Union," in cooperation with church representatives. And just last year, the Orthodox Church joined with the Soviet Academy of Sciences in sponsoring the "Global Forum on Survival and Development," which brought together the Secretary General of the U.N., the head of several U.N. agencies, parliamentarians from throughout the world, and leaders from all the world's major religions, in order to consider the spiritual and political challenges presented by the global breakdown of sustainability.

The Anglican Church as well has joined in this chorus of global religious awakening. Its new Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, whose roots are in the evangelical wing of that church, has already declared his support of "green Christianity." A book by that same title, written by Tim Cooper, has just been published in England. And that was followed by Sean McDonagh's new book, The Greening of the Church, written by this Catholic priest who has spent most of his life working with the poor in the Philippines.

Such religious concern is not limited to the church. The World Wide Fund for Nature (previously the World Wildlife Fund), one of the oldest and most powerful global conservation organizations, identified the encouragement of major world religious views and efforts to deal with the ecological crisis as one of their chief goals. An impressive series of events and publications have followed, building an unlikely alliance between this organization and many established religious voices.

Even the United Nations has joined in the appeal for spiritual resources to address the environmental crisis. The United Nations Environmental Program instituted the "Environmental Sabbath" four years ago, in which it reached out to religious communities, encouraging them to observe a special focus in their worship once each year directed to the spiritual dimensions of the ecological crisis. Their New York office provides to churches and other religious groups a background kit of quotations, scripture references, liturgies, etc. for those who wish to participate. In some ways, this is the final irony, and proof of the spiritual crisis presented by creation's destruction. Even secular, bureaucratic international organizations are now pleading with the religious communities of the world to apply their faith to the crisis facing the earth. Finding solutions requires nothing less.

Only two decades ago the late historian, Lynn White, Jr., argued in a famous speech that Christianity was the major ideological cause of the world's environmental crisis. No one can doubt the past sins of omissions and commission by Western Christianity toward the integrity of God's creation. But the remarkable feature of recent years has been this great reversal of Christian thought and action regarding the sanctity of the created world of God.

Global ecumenical gatherings of the church have provided perhaps the most startling evidence of this awakening. Certainly this was true of the recently concluded Seventh Assembly of the World Council of Churches. Its theme, "Come Holy Spirit - Renew the Whole Creation," encouraged a strong focus on the crisis of global survival facing our world, and the responsibility of the global Christian community to forcefully address these issues as critical dimensions of the churches' contemporary witness to the love of God shown in Jesus Christ.


II. The Theological Issues at Stake


The resurgence of the Churches' attention to the crisis of the earth is bringing crucial questions of theological debate and controversy to the surface of Christian thought and life around the world. Our focus here is to explore this debate within Christianity; while we have already seen how the spiritual dimensions of the ecological crisis address all religious persuasions, the point of attention for this article, is how concern for creation is affecting the understanding of Christians.

We should not be surprised, first of all, that major developments in the world are challenging the church's thinking and understanding. That is how it should be. What we call "theology" never happens in a vacuum. It comes from the interaction of revelation and life. Quite literally, theology means how we understand God. And that understanding--an understanding not merely of the head, but the understanding of the heart, of one's whole being--is always influenced by the events in our world. We want to make sense out of them, in light of our faith in God.

So the early church had to understand, first, its persecution, and the ruthlessness of powers in society. Later, it had to understand its own political power. Christians tried to grasp the meaning of their faith in the face of the black death of the Middle Ages, and in the midst of conquering, hostile invaders. The church had to make sense out of its understanding of political authority, and the intentions of God, when faced by political and social revolutions which deposed monarchs and established new understandings of human responsibility. Black Christians tried to grasp what their faith meant amidst their unspeakable bondage and suffering as slaves. And so the story has continued. Theology consists of this ongoing interaction between the fidelity of one's heart and life to God, and the changing, and often confounding experiences of life in the world.

So as Christians we turn to our revealed sources of truth--the Scriptures. And for much of the Christian tradition, this also includes the historic interpretation and understanding of such truth held and refined through the ages by the church. Then, on the other hand, Christians turn to the agony of the creation today--but also, to its deeper mystery, its wonder, its life. In this new dialogue, a search for insight, understanding, and, most of all, commitment is taking place.

But the dialogue breaks down, and trouble results, when either side is ignored or silenced. That is the danger facing the contemporary search for a new theology of creation, and for the ways in which spirituality and creation are to be related together for the sake of our common future.

On the one hand, the church has been blinded to the experience of the earth's sufferings, and the earth's revelations as well, through a predetermined assumption of what the truth of Scripture declares. Some are quite positive, for instance, that humanity is at the center of creation. Everything that God made is for human benefit. The task of man is to subdue, conquer, exploit, and utilize the earth to suit our purposes. And since the material world will pass away, it has no inherent and lasting value before God.

But another danger exists as well. We can conclude that the Bible and the thinking of the church has been so wrong, so narrow-minded, so destructive, and so limited in its vision, that it is incapable of contributing in meaningful ways to a fresh and redeeming understanding of the creation. That temptation explains why many pioneers in the environmental movements felt compelled to reject Christianity. Similarly, many others who fought against past structures of sin perpetrated by the church were convinced that the very basis of the Church's claim to truth had to be rejected.

Such trends are in evidence today. The quest for new sources of spiritual insight and inspiration can easily neglect the necessity, in Christian terms, of discernment. Perhaps this is understandable when we realize that an entire worldview, rooted in a secular, mechanistic, and thoroughly materialistic understanding of the world is now being overturned. This process seeks the discovery of new spiritual realities. The Church should be the first to welcome this search, rather than resist it. But in so doing, Christians must seek to hear both sides of the dialogue-- revelation and context, as it is often called.

In rejecting the past failures of Christianity to prevent the destruction of the earth, some, like the noted writer Father Thomas Berry, seek to listen to the earth as a "new story" which reveals its own truth, and constitutes a "new revelatory experience." For Berry and others, these revelations of the earth's own story simply replace, rather than modify, reform, and renew, the insights of the biblical tradition. This, it seems to me, represents the danger of the other extreme, and will finally deprive the Christian community of discovering how the resources of its faith can become the motivating and inspiring force which can yet offer to the world hope for its ecological and spiritual salvation.

For Christian theology and spirituality to be revived today in the face of the ecological crisis, we surely must begin listening anew to what the earth is telling us. We must hear its groanings. And we must discover the presence of God's Spirit in the midst of this pain. We must take the full experience, and the story of creation, in its glory and its grief with utter seriousness.

We have not yet allowed our theology of creation to be shaped by a radical attentiveness to the experience of creation itself, and then to reread the Bible, expecting the vibrant inspiration of God's Spirit to breathe new and fresh truth into ancient words and stories.

Consider, for instance, the sheer and unfathomable mystery of the creation. Scientists say that our solar system is one of a hundred thousand million such solar systems in the galaxy which we call the Milky Way. And that galaxy is thought to be only one of another hundred thousand million similar galaxies. Only in this century has humanity come to know these truths about our "context."

Even more so, consider, within this context, the destructive power which humanity has been able to afflict upon the earth. The WCC reflected on this a few months ago at Canberra. The final report on the sub-theme, "Giver of Life - Sustain Your Creation" says this:

 


What would it mean to truly listen to this experience with radical attentiveness, and then read the Bible with a fresh openness to the revelation of God's truth?

The searching of Christians from every part of the globe who wrestled with the issues at Canberra may give us some clues. They declared,


Those gathered went on to stress the grave danger in which the planet finds itself, and the responsibility of the church:


Within the history of Christian attempts to understand God's creation, perspectives have tried to steer between the Scylla and Charybdis of God's immanence and God's transcendence. For a variety of reasons, Western theology especially since the Reformation, and leading into the modern era, has stressed God's absolute otherness, and God's truth as existing independent of the world, but always confronting it with power. One need not deny the validity of such perspectives. But neither must Christians allow such views to negate the equally powerful truths of the Bible which stress God's presence with the creation, and the daily, momentary sustaining of all life through the breath of God's Spirit (Psalm 104:30). Christian theology has, in fact, not steered a true course through the straits of immanence and transcendence in recent centuries. It has veered so close to the side of God's transcendence that it has risked being shipwrecked in a time of ecological emergency precisely because it has lost sight of God's revealing presence in the mystery and wonder of the creation.

The Canberra Assembly expressed it this way:


Thus, Christian theology today, throughout the globe, is in a massive task of renewal and reconstruction regarding its understanding of God the Creator, Jesus Christ the Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit the Sustainer, in relation to the crisis facing the earth.

That task is resulting in the rich rediscovery of biblical insights, seen in light of creation's story. Part of this discovery comes through recognizing how biblical voices, in their own time and context, asked these same questions, and looked to the creation with a similar awe, humility, and respect. For how else, for instance, are we to describe the insights of Job when he says,


Such Scriptures, particularly the Wisdom tradition of the Bible, are alive with wonder, insight, and openness to the Creation, as infused with the Spirit of God. And such insights are carried to a culmination in the New Testament's understanding of God's redemptive work in Jesus Christ--which reconciles "all things" and brings the promise of creation's healing, wholeness, and liberation.

In this search for new theological understandings, and new practical commitments, there are important partners in the dialogue. These should be mentioned in order to suggest the shape of future efforts by the church in this area.

First, Indigenous Peoples. The Christian community has only begun to realize the global history of genocide and cultural destruction which has been inflicted on indigenous peoples-- native Americans, Aboriginal people in Australia, the Maori people in New Zealand, countless tribes in Latin America, Asia, and elsewhere. And often such destruction has come with the advent of Christian mission. What has been destroyed is not only a people, but a spiritual legacy with the land that lives out of a deep interdependence with the creation. Such a worldview is, in fact, much closer to the Old Testament than to the outlook of modern secularism, for the Hebrew language knows of no word for "nature;" because it cannot speak of the natural world apart from its relationship of God. Christian understandings of creation have much to learn from those who have been the victims of such cultural destruction.

Scientists. We have already hinted at the new dialogue between Christianity and the scientific world which is an essential part of rediscovering new theological perspectives. What must be stressed is that much of the scientific world itself is not asking questions, or suggesting perspectives, which have deep spiritual, and ecological significance. One need only recognize how the Newtonian, mechanistic, materialistic view of the universe has been replaced in modern physics by views which stress the relativity and relationship between the perceiver and the perceived. The universe, it seems, is rooted in relationships. All this opens freshly, the discussions of cosmology, and a fresh search to speak together about the nature of reality.

People of Other Living Faiths. While our focus has been on the discussion of Christian approaches to spirituality and theology, one of the telling discoveries of this search is the grounds for common dialogue which is opened with those of other faiths. It is remarkable to discover that Christian attempts to think with fresh openness about God's relationship to the creation, and the role of humanity yield fruitful opportunities for sharing with, and being enriched from other religious perspectives, yet without sacrificing the integrity of biblical views.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the search for new Christian views regarding the creation opens a new and critical partnership with the majority of the world's people who suffer from economic oppression, and who often struggle merely to survive. Previously it has been assumed that the quest for economic justice in the world, and the preservation of our fragile environment, inevitably compete with one another. But in ecumenical circles, as well as in much of the secular discussion on environment and development, these are increasingly being understood as parts of one indivisible whole.

It seems, in fact, that these issues are more likely to be seen separately in northern societies, where the quest for a wilderness area by urban yuppies conflicts with loggers whose part-time employment keeps them close to poverty. But in societies of the South, the inescapable connection between ecological renewal and economic well-being seems more evident. People experience it that way in their lives. A deteriorating eco-system affects the poor first and most; and it increases poverty. Likewise, those who are economically marginalized are often forced to cut down trees, till marginal land, and destroy eco-systems purely in the search for short term, immediate survival.

S.M. Mohamed Idris, editor of the new magazine Third World Resurgence and coordinator of the Third World Network in Malaysia, puts it this way:


One of the major challenges for Christian theology dealing with the earth is to demonstrate the unity between eco-justice and economic justice. The biblical vision of shalom, the traditions of the Sabbath and Jubilee year, and the visions of the new creation all demonstrate such a wholeness. In our time, the church faces the ongoing task of proclaiming that in our one world, the search for justice, for peace, and for the integrity of creation can never be divided.

Let me mention only briefly some of the concrete ethical and practical challenges which the churches and other religious communities will enter, based upon a reformulated understand of our relationship, and of God's relationship, to the creation.

First is the process of extending internationally the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to embrace the rights of nature. Some frame this as a Universal Declaration of Human Obligations toward Nature. In 1992, the third United Nations Conference on Environment and Development will take place in Brazil. The first item on their agenda is the adoption of an "Earth Charter" which seeks to accomplish this end. Already, theologians and others have been working to make their contributions to this process. This could be a critical means for the international community to acknowledge inherent rights and obligations for the creation, to which governments could then be held accountable.

This leads to the second challenge. Churches and religious communities must join in the search for new economic models and patterns which integrate together ecological realities with economic practices. In truth, every economic system is always a subsystem of the ecosystem, on which it totally depends for its long term sustainability. But neither traditional capitalist nor marxist approaches recognize this truth. A major task now awaits ecologists, economists, and theologians in searching for those means in which economic practices can truly become ecologically sustainable.

Finally, religious groups must build partnerships with the various "Green" movements and political parties throughout the world who are working in local situations for a new set of values, and a sustainable future, for the globe. They are searching deeply for spiritual, as well as political answers. Christians should join with them in dialogue, exploring together their points of common interest and their differences, and then accompany them as they sit in front of bulldozers, as they encircle trees about to be cut, as they organize new political parties and lobbies, and as they work for changes that are rooted in a new understanding of creation's value before God.

In the week following the Canberra Assembly I went to Tasmania, an island province of Australia on its southern tip. In the past few years, five members of its Green Independent Party have been elected to the Parliament, and they control the balance of power in the state government. One is pastor in the Uniting Church of Australia.

They took me on a trip into a rain forest with trees matched only by the California Redwoods. Recently, they had saved this area from being clear cut, and had it preserved as part of a World Heritage area. While there Bob Brown, one of their leaders, heard a Lyre bird. This rare bird has the ability to listen and then imitate the sounds of all the other birds it hears in the forest. As we quietly approached, we saw and heard this creature, as it repeated the beautiful repertoire of the other birds it was hearing in the forest.

Then Bob told me that the Lyre bird's also imitates the sound of the chain saw. When trees were being cut nearby, and the forest threatened--which also meant the Lyre bird's own habitat would be destroyed--it could be heard making the wail of the chain saw, echoing the sound of its own world's destruction.

I thought of the words of Saint Paul. For all creation groans, awaiting its liberation. I realized that God's creation is speaking to us. And I prayed that we would listen.

 

2 Dr. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson is Director of the Sub-Unit on Church and Society for the World Council of Churches, Geneva, Switzerland.