Chapter 21 Faith and the Environment

Chapter 21: Faith and the Environment

Faith can be helpful or harmful to the environment, depending on the beliefs attached to faith. Religious beliefs about the environment vary and have changed over time.

Some Indigenous beliefs emphasize our place as being part of the circle of life, seeing animals and plants as siblings and parents. They emphasize respect including growing in understanding of plants and animals and their relationships with various plants and animals. Other Indigenous beliefs can be quite different.

For many centuries, Christianity understood humans as separate from and above the rest of the world with the plants, animals, and land to be used by us however we needed to use them. Exceptions include St. Francis of Assisi, his followers, and others who understood humans as being stewards responsible for the well-being of the land, plants, and animals.

One of the most extreme comments I have seen about the earth is ours to use claimed God created the earth as a disposable planet.

An increasing number of Christians believe we are part of creation, invited to love creation, and called to do what we can to help the environment. Most commonly people understand this as reducing littering and pollution, reducing green house gases, and creating or protecting natural spaces.

Members of various faiths are growing in their understanding of how important natural spaces are to our personal well-being.

There are many people with no religious beliefs who share the view that we are part of the circle of life, that our well-being requires respectful relationships with the rest of the world, and work in various ways to reduce or repair the damage we do to the land, plants, and animals.

For those who believe in a God of love, a loving Holy Mystery, and believe we are called to love that is unconditional and unbounded, a necessary step is to participate in circles or groups where knowledge is gained and shared that helps make good decisions regarding living out that love.

Fads must be treated with great care along with simplistic answers. For example, biofuels became a popular idea for reducing green house gases, but were quickly rejected by knowledgeable environmentalists. The promotion of biodiesel contributes to the destruction of tropical forests. Electrical generating plants using wood as fuel has many negative effects. Braiding Sweet Grass mentions a conflict between some environmental activists regarding the best way to promote the survival of sweet grass in which the activists thought any use of sweet grass was harmful. Research revealed that sweet grass that is not respectfully harvested slowly disappears. It needs to be harvested to thrive. The last example I offer is the electrification of transportation. Switching to electrical transportation makes a small difference on its own. Reducing transportation is more important, whether in distance, the weight of the vehicles, or the efficient use of transportation.



If faith is to be effective in helping us live in better relationship with the rest of the world, it needs to include patience, perseverance, and humility with openness to surprises and corrections.

Having deep faith means nothing on its own in terms of the environment. The particular beliefs attached to that faith matter most. A faith open to new information, new possibilities, and to rigorous evaluation of choices will be the most helpful for our future, and that faith does not need to include any deities, though it helps people like me feel more confident.

 

[Luce NDs]

Is deep faith just a sense of dug in and not moving or that the uncovering of what was sacred is still progressing?

 

[Mendalla]

This is an area where Christianity, even progressive and liberal strains, has a ways to go relative to animist or pantheist traditions like many indigenous belief systems around the world. The notion that the world itself is holy and the object of respect/worship, not just the product of some remote deity created for our benefit, is one that likely could have prevented a lot of the abuses of the post-industrial era. The new, and still controversial, science of consciousness that suggests consciousness could exist right down to the particle level kind of leans back in that direction, in fact.

Even to see the world as being created not for our benefit, but for its own sake and for God's and our enjoyment would be an improvement. Process has another path that might help, seeing the universe as existing in its own right with God guiding and enjoying it. But so long as we see the world as a product, as a created object rather than something existing in its own right and having inherent creative power, I think we are going to have trouble changing course.

UU'ism took an important step in the right direction with its seventh principle, "Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part", and with it the sixth source, "Spiritual teachings of Earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature", both of which lean to an animist or pantheist view of the world.

Not saying we all have to become pantheists or animists, but we do need to find new metaphors and models other than "God created the world for us", which has been the dominant idea in Christianity's treatment of nature.

I also think getting past the Gnosticism and Neo-platonism still lingering that separates "world" and "spirit" is important here, too. We need to see ourselves as fully integrated beings who exist fully in the world and are fully dependent on it to see how the harm we are doing affects us. If our hope is found "out there" or "in heaven", then we are not really going to take the state of the actual world seriously.