On this week’s PBS show, Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, there is a cover story on Evangelicals and the Environment.
The show is worth viewing. It dovetails with the what I have said in previous posts about the fundamentalist concept of the ‘rapture’ and Christian theologies of nature. Two quotes in this story speak volumes about the distance evangelical Christians need to go before they come to an adequate understanding of our moral relationship to the non-human world.
The first is by the Reverend Richard Cizik, who is Vice President for Governmental Affairs at the National Association of Evangelicals. He says,
‘We, as evangelical Christians, have a responsibility to God, who owns this property we call earth. We don’t own it. We’re simply to be stewards of it. And if climate change is occurring, can we simply, with blinders on, pretend it isn’t happening?’
The notion that the Divine of the universe has or needs real estate, much less a super (humans) to manage it, begs to be satarized. I suppose we should be glad that the ‘stewardship’ model is more friendly and responsible than the ‘dominion’ model, but seriously folks, is this all that evangelical environmentalism can muster? Yes, Cizik mentions climate change, and that is good. Unfortunately, if you dig a bit deeper into this theology, you’ll find an anthropocentric vision concerned with resource management and social justice. Nothing in it respects the intrinsic value of animals and the rest of nature.
The video segement with Christine Schwartz is perhaps the most revealing moment in the show.
‘Knowing what the Scripture teaches that Christ talks about he’s going to make a new heaven and a new earth. So in that sense I am not so concerned with this present world because I know it is going to be replaced with a better, greater one. At the same time, I don’t want to throw away what we have.’
Ms. Schwartz is admirably honest, and her statement echoes through-out the show. It reflects, however, a worrisome orientation towards nature as a commodity to be consumed. A little knowledge of natural history goes a long way here, undermining a worldview that abstract our lives from the nature in which we are embedded, and the other creatures with whom we share our home.
cheers, Bill
Photo: Angels in America