Alban Weekly from The Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina, United States "PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS: Think Globally, Act Locally. Then Act Globally" for Monday, 13 February 2017
Think globally, act locally. Then act globally.
HOW A MISSION TRIP INSPIRED THE ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT OF A BALTIMORE CHURCH
In mid-October, members of Baltimore's New Psalmist Baptist Church celebrated the opening of their gleaming new campus with prayer, song and dance.
Dubbed the "Holy City of Zion" by the church's 7,000-plus members, the 175,000-square-foot space is three times the size of their old church and boasts a banquet facility, an exercise center and a stunning theater-style sanctuary that seats 4,000 worshippers.
But for all its amenities, the new church was missing something -- and members noticed right away.
"This building is three times the size of the old building. I'm still getting lost," said the Rev. Alfred J. Bailey II, minister of missions and outreach. "But they wanted to know, 'Where's our recycle bin? The old church had one.'"
Like many churches, New Psalmist Baptist is committed to environmental issues. But the congregation's impact has spread far beyond the walls of their own church, the city of Baltimore or even the impoverished communities in Kenya that first inspired their efforts. This African-American megachurch now serves as an adviser to major governmental organizations -- the United Nations among them -- helping to craft global environmental policies.
At the old church, five miles to the south, they'd recycled 84 tons of paper in three years, using the proceeds to aid a community in Kenya.
There, during a mission trip in 2005, Bailey and New Psalmist Baptist Bishop Walter Thomas Sr. visited a Nairobi slum and a drought-stricken community in the Rift Valley, where clashes over access to clean water had left dozens dead.
They vowed that their church, which had long supported the needy in Baltimore, would do what it could to address the economic, environmental and educational needs of those African communities.
Faith & Leadership
ENVIRONMENT, ACTIVISM
Think globally, act locally. Then act globally.
Photo courtesy of New Psalmist Baptist Church
An effort that started as a mission trip to Kenya for New Psalmist Baptist Church in Baltimore has grown into an environmental commitment with an impact on international policy.
In mid-October, members of Baltimore’s New Psalmist Baptist Church celebrated the opening of their gleaming new campus with prayer, song and dance.An effort that started as a mission trip to Kenya for New Psalmist Baptist Church in Baltimore has grown into an environmental commitment with an impact on international policy.
Dubbed the “Holy City of Zion” by the church’s 7,000-plus members, the 175,000-square-foot space is three times the size of their old church and boasts a banquet facility, an exercise center and a stunning theater-style sanctuary that seats 4,000 worshippers.
But for all its amenities, the new church was missing something -- and members noticed right away.
“This building is three times the size of the old building. I’m still getting lost,” said the Rev. Alfred J. Bailey II, minister of missions and outreach. “But they wanted to know, ‘Where’s our recycle bin? The old church had one.’”
Like many churches, New Psalmist Baptist(link is external) is committed to environmental issues. But the congregation’s impact has spread far beyond the walls of their own church, the city of Baltimore or even the impoverished communities in Kenya that first inspired their efforts. This African-American megachurch now serves as an adviser to major governmental organizations -- the United Nations among them -- helping to craft global environmental policies.
At the old church, five miles to the south, they’d recycled 84 tons of paper in three years, using the proceeds to aid a community in Kenya.
There, during a mission trip in 2005, Bailey and New Psalmist Baptist Bishop Walter Thomas Sr. visited a Nairobi slum and a drought-stricken community in the Rift Valley, where clashes over access to clean water had left dozens dead.
They vowed that their church, which had long supported the needy in Baltimore, would do what it could to address the economic, environmental and educational needs of those African communities.
“It was then that we began to make the connection that if we wanted to be effective at poverty remediation, we needed to address the larger environmental issues,” Bailey said.
The church started a series of “go green, save green” workshops, teaching congregants how to save both the planet and money by making small changes like washing all their clothes in cold water or switching to energy-efficient light bulbs. Now, members clamor for recycle bins and community gardens and remind each other to conserve water and electricity.
Questions to consider:
- Issues of injustice and poverty are huge and daunting. How do communities discern where and how to make targeted, faithful efforts for change?
- What’s your institution’s strategy to act locally and globally?
- In what ways can the Christian imagination have an impact on policies regarding water and other resources?
- How can churches leverage their nearly ubiquitous presence and shared beliefs to facilitate change across denominational and cultural lines?
- Does dislocation -- being uprooted to new places -- stimulate institutional creativity and clarify values?
“By no means are we experts. We’re learning every day,” Bailey said. “But my mom has a saying we often use: ‘In order to decide what’s in the cake, you have to be in the kitchen.’ It’s great to have the privilege to be in the kitchen.
“We don’t know how big the impact is going to be in the future. We’re doing it because we see God’s leading us on a path to do it,” he said. “This is not something available just to us. You can do this. You just have to have the desire to want to do something.”
Why would a church in Baltimore want to tackle environmental issues half a world away? It’s all part of the church’s mission, Bailey said: “Empowering disciples to empower the world.” Plus, those issues can ultimately make their way to Baltimore, he said, reeling off a list of examples.
Mercury levels in fish affect the safety and cost of seafood sold in Maryland. The recent invasion of the Northern Snakehead -- a predatory fish native to Asia -- has endangered Maryland’s ecosystem. And a rise in cases of asthma and bronchitis among African-American youth may be linked to climate change and environmental hazards, he said.
“You have to begin to relate environmental problems to what people are facing every day,” he said. “It’s relating the environmental issues to Main Street that helps people want to work globally.”
T.D. Jakes begins a partnership
Bailey and Thomas traveled to Kenya in 2005 at the invitation of Bishop T.D. Jakes, leader of The Potter’s House in Dallas, whose organization was drilling wells in communities near Nairobi to address the water crisis.
Though Thomas had been to Africa before, it was Bailey’s first experience with international ministry. Until then, Bailey said, 90 percent of New Psalmist Baptist’s outreach had been local: hosting health fairs and career days, providing supplies for area schoolchildren and distributing food and holiday gifts to the needy.
He worried that the problems he witnessed in Kenya might be too much for even his large church to tackle.
“You go to Kenya or Mexico or any Third World country and you’ll never be the same,” said Bailey, who refused to water his lawn after returning from the dry Rift Valley. “I saw people who were dying over water, and I thought, ‘Why am I watering my grass?’”
New Psalmist Baptist member James Morant knew Bailey and other church members were eager to make a difference, and he thought he could help. Morant had traveled all over the world as the special assistant for international affairs for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under three different administrations.
In the spring of 2006, he urged Bailey to come with him to Mexico City for the World Water Forum, a triennial conference at which government decision makers and their civilian counterparts discuss how best to provide clean water across the globe.
There, Bailey and Morant organized a seminar on how faith-based organizations could help the professionals deliver water.
“They had a lot of questions: Why should the environmental world work with faith-based organizations?” Bailey said. “The line I’d heard Bishop Jakes say -- and I said it -- was we could do so much more together than we could ever do apart. That must’ve resonated with the crowd.
“One thing faith-based organizations have to their advantage is we have been able to capture the hearts and minds of people,” Bailey said. “While a person may not listen to a government entity, they’ll listen to their pastor.”
That’s true, said Ellen F. Davis, a professor of Bible and practical theology at Duke Divinity School whose current work focuses on an exegetically based response to the ecological crisis. It’s advantageous for public officials and nongovernmental organizations to team up with community churches to institute long-lasting social change, she said.
“The church is in every village, and it is the church leaders -- both lay and ordained -- who are the opinion leaders. They’re often the best-educated people in the village,” said Davis, who works with the Episcopal Church of Sudan to provide communities with theological education, sustainable agriculture, and health and nutrition programs.
“In places torn by conflict, sometimes -- not always -- the church is the organization people feel has not been compromised. In many cases, people still trust the church. They don’t necessarily trust the government,” she said.
Traditional conservation groups and governmental entities have a lot of expertise, Bailey said. But congregations such as New Psalmist Baptist, which is affiliated with the National Progressive Baptist Convention and the American Baptist Churches, USA, bring a special energy to the process born of an overpowering need to preserve God’s creation.
“The environmental field is known for creating sustainable projects, but it takes them so long to do anything because they’ve got to do all the research,” Bailey said. “Meanwhile, as a faith organization, we’re going in to provide an immediate need. We have a saying in the faith community: We tend to ‘blow in, blow up and blow out.’ One thing we wanted to make sure we were doing is creating a sustainable effort.
“So let’s bring together the expediency of the faith-based tradition and the sustainability of the environmental movement,” he said. “That’s the beauty of the partnership we have.”
New Psalmist Baptist Church and the United Nations Environment Programme
The church’s enthusiasm caught the attention of Achim Steiner, executive director of the Nairobi-based United Nations Environment Programme. He encouraged them to apply for accreditation from his agency, a designation that would allow them to weigh in on international environmental policies as they were being crafted by the U.N.
In May 2007, New Psalmist Baptist earned accreditation, essentially becoming a consultant to the U.N. Environment Programme alongside 252 other organizations such as Greenpeace International, the Sierra Club, Rotary International and The Nature Conservancy.
Though the list includes other faith-based groups such as the World Council of Churches, the World Muslim Congress and the Coordinating Board of Jewish Organizations, New Psalmist is the only individual congregation to hold that status.
“What that means is that every policy paper, every suggested strategic direction of the United Nations Environment Programme, is sent to us for comment,” Morant said. “One year, there was a whole series of papers to review on mercury -- the chemical and the chemical devastation to the endocrine system and specifically the female reproductive capacity -- and they sent papers to little New Psalmist to see if we have any comment.”
The church has also advised the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, on how to marshal the forces of faith-based organizations for work in sub-Saharan Africa. And they’re serving as a subcontractor to UNICEF, mapping the progress of a program called Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, or WASH, which hopes to extend safe water to every school in more than 90 countries -- 60 of them developing.
“Never before has there been a UNICEF committee chaired by a faith representative. Not only have they done it, but they have done it with an energy that has been an example to the U.N. and other NGOs,” said Martin Palmer, director of the England-based Alliance of Religions and Conservation, or ARC, which argues that compassion for the earth is a direct extension of all the world’s religions.
Palmer, who has worked with New Psalmist officials, raved in an e-mail about the church’s “extraordinary energy put into new discoveries and new ways of living the gospel and of being faithful.”
“The reason they can be so powerful is that they have actually done this in the slums of Kenya,” he wrote. “They are not just well-meaning, concerned people -- they have also taken action.”
In February, Bailey and church members will travel again to Nairobi as part of their partnership with a public school and a Kenyan church. But they’ll also meet with federal officials there about providing water and sanitation facilities to schools throughout the country under UNICEF’s WASH program.
“It’s one thing to work with one school, four schools or five schools. But then to talk with the people in government who oversee all the schools or to work under the umbrella of UNICEF, hopefully we have a little more influence than a single church meeting with officials. You carry the weight of the U.N. with you,” Bailey said. “To see if you can change the lives of children all around the world is mind-blowing.”
Recognized by Prince Philip at “Many Heavens, One Earth” event
In November 2009, New Psalmist and 29 other faith-based organizations were recognized by England’s Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for their efforts on behalf of the planet.
Church leaders and choir members traveled to Windsor Castle for the “Many Heavens, One Earth” event, organized by ARC. There, the choir earned an almost-unheard-of standing ovation after performing a version of St. Francis’ “Canticle of the Creatures.”
“Windsor Castle is very staid. All of a sudden, you hear this cheering and yelling,” said Morant, a soloist. “The choir was ready to walk offstage, and we were called back to do an encore. It was truly overwhelming.”
A month later, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, officials from nearly 200 countries would squabble over how best to address global warming.
But at Windsor, representatives from 30 organizations representing nine religions pledged in writing to work together to care for the earth and to protect its resources for generations to come. Their seven-year plans ranged from launching green initiatives at Hindu pilgrimage sites in India to creating Islamic labels for environmentally friendly products.
In its own seven-year plan, New Psalmist promised to continue its work in Kenya supporting clean water efforts, medicine delivery and the establishment of a school’s computer lab.
But the plan was also notable for the church’s efforts at home, including:
• Conducting energy audits in congregants’ homes with the local power company and making sure its new building was energy-efficient
• Educating its youth about their impact on the environment with an annual science fair
• Establishing a community development corporation that, with a grant from the National Science Foundation, is teaching Maryland kids about environmental science, engineering, technology and math through boat building
• Planning “hoop houses” -- simple greenhouses -- on its new campus where fresh vegetables and herbs can be grown and offered to the community
In addition, the large outdoor recycling bin will be moved from the old building to the new church soon, Bailey said.
“If we’re tasked with caring for God’s creation, we need to do so in a tangible way,” he said. “My goal is to make sure we stay as active in the community locally as we do internationally.”
Morant said members of New Psalmist Baptist have embraced the church’s environmental efforts at home and abroad, viewing them as another way to “love thy neighbor,” even if that neighbor happens to be 7,500 miles away.
The church has been able to make an impact on a global scale because its suggestions have also been well-received by policymakers, he said. They seem to realize that New Psalmist Baptist and other faith-based groups bring a sort of “real people” perspective to the process that often gets lost when only bureaucrats are in the room, said Morant, who himself worked for the federal government for 39½ years before retiring in July 2009.
“I think we bring reality. We think we bring the capacity to mobilize people for change, and I think we bring commitment. It’s a passion, and we don’t take it lightly,” he said. “We stand on the shoulders of a lot of folks out there struggling day to day, and we find ourselves in this marvelous position at this moment in time. We have gotten to suggest things and verify things and have people bounce stuff off of us, which isn’t too often done. We are a nontraditional yet powerful force.”
IDEAS THAT IMPACT: CREATION CARE & STEWARDSHIP
How faith-based organizations can protect the planet
The Alliance of Religions and Conservation identifies seven areas on which to focus when creating a plan for your organization or congregation.
Read more »
Faith & Leadership
ENVIRONMENT, CREATION CARE, ACTIVISM
How faith-based organizations can protect the planet
iStockThe Alliance of Religions and Conservation identifies seven areas on which to focus when creating a plan for your organization.
The Alliance of Religions and Conservation, or ARC, argues that compassion for the earth is a direct extension of all the world’s religions and that each faith can positively affect the environment simply by following its own core teachings and beliefs.
The organization, which is based in the United Kingdom, has more information and resources on its website(link is external).
When developing an environmental stewardship plan, ARC suggests asking the following questions:
- Faith-consistent use of assets. What is the environmental impact of your facility or any construction programs? Is it possible to use solar panels or other “green” materials? Can you engage in recycling, tree planting or land preservation? Are you promoting environmentally responsible use of water and making ethical food choices?
- Education and young people. Half of the world’s educational institutions are associated with faith organizations. Does your curriculum offer an opportunity to teach kids about the environment, green living, recycling or gardening? Does your school encourage kids to walk or use public transportation?
- Wisdom. Do you foster an atmosphere of compassion for the natural world? How do you train your religious leaders on environmental issues, and can training in general be “greened”? Have you created a plan for caring for those affected by climate change or environmental catastrophe? Can your services and study of scriptures be developed to emphasize treading lightly on the earth and consuming less? Are there stories or traditions that highlight how your faith has always cared for nature?
- Lifestyle. Have you carried out an environmental audit of your assets and have you encouraged your congregation to do the same? Can you encourage and assist your congregation in living more simply? Have you looked at your faith’s role in tourism or pilgrimages and thought about environmentally friendly ways for visitors to travel? Can you and your faithful use your joint purchasing power to help the environment, such as by creating a food co-op?
- Media and advocacy. How do you influence your government’s environmental policies? Do your websites, newsletters, TV and radio stations promote ecology? Based on your experiences, can you create a guide to help others live more simply? Do you examine what kinds of materials your Bibles, tracts, etc., are printed on?
- Partnerships, funding and staff. Can you set aside staff and funds dedicated to environmental work? Have you tapped the experts within your own faith or congregation, perhaps those in the environmental field, for advice? Can you partner with other churches or secular groups to address climate change issues?
- Celebration. Have you set aside a specific festival to focus on the natural environment? Or could you take an existing custom and adapt its practices so there’s a deeper environmental message?
Young people seek an earth restored
If the church wants to remain relevant for students and the youth generation, it should increase and amplify its call to action on climate change, says a young Christian leader.
Read more from Emily Wirzba »
Faith & Leadership
ENVIRONMENT, CREATION CARE, ACTIVISM
Emily Wirzba: Young people seek an earth restored
If the church wants to remain relevant for students and the youth generation, it should increase and amplify its call to action on climate change, says a young Christian leader.
I take seriously Numbers 35:33-34, which says, “You shall not pollute the land in which you live. … You shall not defile the land in which you live, in which I also dwell” (NRSV).
Proverbs 31:8-9 also deeply resonates with me when it proclaims, “Speak out for those who cannot speak, for the rights of all the destitute. Speak out, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.” For me, a church that fails to do these things is hypocritical and therefore unattractive.
I am not alone but part of a powerful youth movement desiring action on climate change. As the next generation that will inherit the world, young people speak with intense moral authority on the issue of climate change.
If the church wants to remain relevant for students and the youth generation, it should increase and amplify its call to action on climate change. By speaking from a moral perspective on a national level, the church can show young people across the country that it is a relevant place where youth can be supported in their quest to seek an earth restored.
I’ve worked with many student groups -- most from religious backgrounds -- and I see how passionately young people desire to engage with others on climate change. In early February, as part of my job as a program assistant with the Friends Committee on National Legislation, I engaged with students, faith leaders and Quakers across the Research Triangle area on our moral obligation as people of faith to act on climate change.
While in North Carolina, I gathered with Randall Williams, a Carolina Friends School (CFS) teacher, and Susannah Tuttle, the director of North Carolina Interfaith Power & Light(link is external), to give training and advice to 10 CFS high school students before leaving for a day of lobbying in Raleigh.
The group of students met with Michael Jones, Sen. Kay Hagan’s regional liaison in Raleigh, and delivered their challenge: “We are here to ask Sen. Hagan to take a moral stand on action regarding climate change. Will she use the recent coal ash spill on the Dan River as an opportunity to take a strong stance supporting renewable energy and the reduction of coal use?”
Their class on climate advocacy inspired the students to create a NC Students for Climate Action(link is external) group. They planned a massive carpool day and created a “Love Our Climate NC” campaign, complete with a video, information sheets, postcards and a social media package.
These students are serious about working for climate solutions. They are motivated by the science, but also something deeper: they are motivated by their faith and the moral call to conscience on climate disruption.
I returned to Washington, D.C., incredibly impressed at the maturity, passion and fierce desire these students had to seek an earth restored.
Many churches today mourn the loss of young people and are searching for ways to be relevant and engaging places for students and youth. Here is an opportunity for churches to do just that. I believe that the faith community is uniquely situated to make the moral call to action on climate disruption. As people of faith, we have a deep concern for God’s creation. We are called to care for the least of these, who often will experience the effects of climate change most severely. We have an obligation to future generations.
There are concrete ways that faith leaders and pastors can take action. Churches are making environmental stewardship a priority of their congregations -- physically “greening” their church buildings by undergoing energy audits, purchasing energy-efficient appliances and installing solar panels.
Pastors are writing to and meeting with their political representatives, advocating from a faith perspective why stronger environmental policies are needed.
This call to action is already resonating with congregations across the country. In early February, faith communities coalesced around the National Preach-In on Climate Change, hosted by Interfaith Power & Light, to mobilize the faith voice.
Youth movements are rising up across the planet urging action from a moral or faith perspective. A World Wildlife Federation faith project, Sacred Earth, encourages youth to make the connection between their faith and conservation, calling upon them to share their stories of how and why they are environmental advocates.
There is data that shows the importance of climate change to young voters. Eighty percent of voters under 35 support President Barack Obama’s Climate Action Plan, and 73 percent would oppose members of Congress who got in the way of the plan.
A study done by the Yale Project on Climate Change and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication found that 81 percent of 18- to 34-year-old evangelicals trust religious leaders as an information source on global warming. Faith leaders must not abandon the youth generation by failing to communicate boldly the importance of acting on climate disruption.
What a perfect chance for the church to revitalize its relationship with youth by acknowledging, respecting and reciprocating their passion and voice on this issue. By leading on climate change, the church can once again capture the imagination of the youth movement while fulfilling its mandate to love and protect all of God’s creation.
Let earth and heaven agree
Why should Christians care about the fate of Earth? Because cherishing creation is the way we show God our gratitude, the way we humbly acknowledge our creatureliness, and an important way in which we worship, says the former dean of Duke Chapel.
Faith & Leadership
ENVIRONMENT, CREATION CARE, SERMONS, GOSPEL OF LUKE
Samuel Wells: Let Earth and heaven agree
Why should Christians care about the fate of Earth? Because cherishing creation is the way we show God our gratitude, the way we humbly acknowledge our creatureliness, and an important way in which we worship, says the former dean of Duke Chapel.Editor’s note: Faith & Leadership offers sermons that shed light on issues of Christian leadership. This sermon originally was preached at Duke University Chapel(link is external) on April 22, 2012.
Luke 24:36b-48(link is external)
Luke 24:36 They were still talking about it when — there he was, standing among them! 37 Startled and terrified, they thought they were seeing a ghost. 38 But he said to them, “Why are you so upset? Why are these doubts welling up inside you? 39 Look at my hands and my feet — it is I, myself! Touch me and see — a ghost doesn’t have flesh and bones, as you can see I do.” 40 As he said this, he showed them his hands and feet. 41 While they were still unable to believe it for joy and stood there dumbfounded, he said to them, “Have you something here to eat?” 42 They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43 which he took and ate in their presence.
44 Yeshua said to them, “This is what I meant when I was still with you and told you that everything written about me in the Torah of Moshe, the Prophets and the Psalms had to be fulfilled.” 45 Then he opened their minds, so that they could understand the Tanakh, 46 telling them, “Here is what it says: the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day; 47 and in his name repentance leading to forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed to people from all nations, starting with Yerushalayim. 48 You are witnesses of these things.
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Have you ever sat still in the early morning and heard the dawn chorus? Have you ever felt your heart rise in a throbbing ovation as the birds of the air form an orchestra of glory and voice creation’s praise?Fifty years ago, the conservationist Rachel Carson published a book entitled “Silent Spring.” Carson pointed out the way pesticides were coming to dominate American agriculture and were damaging not only birds and animals but also humans. Just imagine, she said, a spring in which no birds sang: it would be a silent spring.
And if that spring lies in the not-too-distant future for the birds, how long before humanity meets the same fate? First, there will be a silent spring; eventually, there will be no spring at all.
Those who marked the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, credited the publication of “Silent Spring” with the beginnings of the modern environmental movement. And Carson’s book marks a suitable emblem for ecological concerns, because it synthesizes the four dimensions that have characterized the movement ever since.
The first is the urgent sense of human catastrophe. Ecological concerns, such as those raised by Rachel Carson, have a wide following, but what makes them a focus of universal anxiety is the claim that they threaten to diminish human flourishing in the immediate term and terminate human existence in the medium to long term.
“We’re all doomed.” That kind of threat makes the ecological movement unique in its claim on the public imagination. It’s a slow-burning version of the threat of nuclear annihilation that mesmerized people’s vision at the height of the Cold War.
The second dimension is the profound sense of grief that these environmental threats all have a human cause. This isn’t a crisis that’s coming from the outside. This is a crisis humans are bringing on themselves.
I recall a conversation with an activist friend who was estranged from the church. I asked her what she so disliked about Christianity, and she said the biggest thing was that the clergy were always talking about sin, and it all seemed so negative and bitter and judgmental and life-destroying.
I then asked her why she was so passionate about ecology, and without a second thought she launched into a tirade about how people were damaging the air, the Earth and the seas, and she wanted to spend her life changing their hearts and minds and reversing the damage they’d done.
I said to her, “Who’s the one talking about sin now? You sound more evangelical about the environment than most clergy are about Jesus.”
The ecological movement may use different language, but it’s generally a lament for human participation in destroying habitats for other creatures and ourselves, and a call to repentance and a new way of living. The Earth is like an oppressed and enslaved people, and ecologists are shaking their finger like Moses, saying to Pharaoh, “Let my people go.” For many environmentalists, the question of human survival is just the tip of the iceberg: what’s at stake is an economic, social, ideological and sometimes religious transformation.
The third dimension that’s found in Carson’s book and among the great majority of environmentalist campaigners is a sincere optimism that the ecological crisis is something that can be significantly addressed through public policy initiatives -- through legislative change, regulation and prescription.
“Silent Spring” is a great motivator for activists, because the uproar caused by the book led John F. Kennedy to set up a commission to investigate its claims, which in 1972 led to the banning of the insecticide DDT in America, a ban extended globally 30 years later.
In 1972, the first United Nations Conference on the Human Environment was held in Stockholm, Sweden, and the public forum on the fate of the Earth convened in earnest. Henceforward, the great debate in environmental circles has been between idealists who want to promote a different way of life that’s not based on a predatory relationship with the Earth, sky and seas and the pragmatists who want to focus the movement on achievable legislative regulation.
The Earth is like the Titanic propelling itself toward the iceberg, and the Earth’s richest nations are like the Titanic’s owners, saying, “Faster! Faster!” Of course, the problem with the Titanic was not that it didn’t have a rudder but that the captain didn’t use it. In just the same way, say the activists, it’s not too late for the Earth to change course, once people accept how catastrophic our present navigation is.
But “Silent Spring” also represents a fourth dimension. It imagines a spring with no birdsong: no chirruping, tweeting or crowing. In other words, it imagines the Earth without a soul. This is a different kind of concern.
Its question is less about the preservation of the planet and its inhabitants, including us, and more about the qualities that can’t be measured or assessed. How do you quantify the value of a bird’s song? How do you estimate the impoverishment of a sky without the waft of beating wings? Even if the planet can survive humanity’s prodigal path of self-destruction, will something precious, and beautiful, and irreplaceable, be lost?
These are the four dimensions of the ecological crisis as it has emerged in the last 50 years. These are the four concerns that surface on the public’s consciousness, if not every moment of every day, at least on April 22 each year, when we stop to mark Earth Day.
But how do Christians understand these questions?
It’s important to acknowledge how politicized these issues have become. There’s nothing controversial about wanting to save humanity from destruction, although there’s inevitable skepticism that the shepherd may be crying wolf; and that skepticism understandably comes most acutely from those whose economic livelihoods are at stake. And there’s nothing controversial about wanting to preserve the birds and their song. But once you start pointing the finger of blame and invoking legislative regulation, then you’re in the middle of politics at its most agitated and partisan.
Why is the ecological crisis a problem for Christians? Some would say it isn’t a problem for Christians. Here there’s a good argument and a bad argument.
The good argument is that God is God. If God has our destiny in hand, then a mere setback like the depredation of the Earth isn’t an insuperable problem. Surely, if we were to ruin the Earth, God could just reach into a divine storehouse and bring out another Earth that just happened to be lying around for such an eventuality -- or even make one specially.
This is a good argument, because it puts things in perspective. It’s true that human sin can never be sufficient to divert the ultimate will and purpose of God. Our sin is never so bad that it can overshadow God’s grace.
We can destroy the planet, just as we can destroy our lives and the lives of others; but we can’t destroy what God will finally make of our lives or the life of the planet. In lamenting the condition of the Earth, let’s not make humanity too big by exaggerating our ability to ruin everything or make God too small by forgetting that this is always a story about God that we get to play a part in, not the other way round. Christian concern for the environment can’t be about self-preservation. It must be based on something else.
Here’s the bad argument: If you say Christians hope to be with God forever, and if you say that that life is the union of our soul with the eternal Trinity, then the rest of planet Earth, besides human beings, is one of three things.
It could be an instrument that can bring us closer to God, through experiences of intimacy, wonder or joy, and thus like a ladder we can kick away when it’s got us to the place we need to be. It could be a luxury, like a set of clothes, that makes our earthly life more congenial but isn’t fundamentally necessary. Or it could be a limitation that imprisons us, through entanglement, distraction or ensnarement, like a straitjacket, that threatens to keep us from our heavenly home.
If the created order is a ladder, a luxury or a limitation, then the environmental crisis isn’t a major problem, because the Earth isn’t something we fundamentally need and depend upon.
This is where the Christian view of the Earth has so often gone so wrong. Where do we start if we’re going to put things right? We start where all Christian theology starts -- with the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Let’s look at today’s Gospel reading from Luke chapter 24. Why does the resurrected Jesus appear on Earth at all? If our resurrected destiny is in heaven, why doesn’t Jesus go straight there? Well, see what we learn from Jesus’ brief appearance to the disciples on the evening of the first Easter Day.
Jesus still has the nail marks on his hands and feet . That means his resurrected body is the same as his earthly body. Jesus is not a ghost. That means his resurrected body really is a body, and not a disembodied soul. Jesus eats broiled fish. That means the created order still has a vital part to play in his heavenly existence.
These three revelations completely overturn the suggestion that the environmental crisis is not a problem for Christians. If the resurrected Jesus is a real body, a body in the image of his earthly body, a body that interacts with the environment not just externally, by moving about, but internally, by eating fish, then the Earth cannot be just a ladder, a luxury or a limitation. It must be integral to our identity and our relationship with God.
These were the kinds of insights that led the early church to realize the full extent of what God did in the resurrection of Jesus. Resurrection doesn’t mean our souls escape the prison of the world, pausing only for harp lessons and the fitting of angelic wings before flying away to cloudy bliss with God.
Resurrection means the promise that Earth will come to heaven and heaven will come to Earth. That’s what happened at Christmas, in the appearance of the fully human, fully divine Jesus. And that’s what will happen on the last day: the marriage of heaven and Earth. Every way in which Earth is too flawed, finite or sinful to be embraced by heaven has been removed by Christ’s resurrection. Earth isn’t a ladder, a luxury or a limitation -- it’s the theater of God’s glory, the playground of God’s delight, the garden of God’s encounter with us.
So the reason Christians care about the environment is not because if we don’t, we’re toast.
The reason is that if we’re not interested in the home God has made to dwell in with us now, how can we claim to be eager for the home God has made to dwell in with us forever? By the way we enjoy the playground God has given us to enjoy today, we show God how deeply we long to dance with the Trinity in eternity. If we don’t treasure the earthly theater of glory God has given us, God can only assume we’re not interested in entering the heavenly one. Cherishing creation is the way we show God our gratitude, the way we humbly acknowledge our creatureliness, and an important way in which we worship.
Polluting Earth, sky and seas, depleting habitats, overfarming land and ocean, eradicating species -- such practices tell the rest of creation it’s disposable, tell the rest of humanity that its survival is secondary to our comfort, and tell God that we’re bent on obscuring eternal grace with temporal consumption.
This is sin, in its simplest definition: being so shortsighted that we willfully shut ourselves out of God’s abundance and imprison ourselves in our own scarcity. And we’re all a part of it, however often we visit the farmers’ market, however many times we sign an email with a pious message about saving paper, however frequently we sprinkle our conversation with words like “sustainability” and “ecojustice.”
For Christians, the environmental crisis may be a problem. But it’s certainly an opportunity. It’s an opportunity because Earth Day is perhaps the greatest-ever parable of the Christian story. Earth Day celebrates the wonder of creation, in its abundance and diversity. It recalls the day the birds began to sing. Earth Day calls us to repentance when we remember the Fall, the human destruction of God’s precious gift.
It portrays the day the birds fell silent and forgot how the song was supposed to go. But Earth Day does more than that. It reminds us that there was a bird that came to Earth and taught us the tune we’d forgotten, making our hearts sing again. And that there will come a day when all creation sings; not just the birds but the rocks and stones and oceans and mountains themselves will cry, “Alleluia.”
And in the meantime, we remember this story by the way we sing and seek to turn our lives and our world into a song. We remember this story by the way we inspire others to sing with us and find in themselves a voice they never knew they had. We remember this story by singing this song back to those who’ve forgotten it until they remember how it goes.
That’s what Christians do in the face of the ecological crisis. That’s what Christians do on Earth Day. That’s the way Christians turn Earth Day into what it was always destined to be. Heaven day.
FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY
Greening Spaces for Worship and Ministryby Mark Torgerson Greening Spaces for Worship and Ministry is a comprehensive guide. The book provides a rationale, strategies, and resources for fulfilling environmental stewardship through the land and buildings of Christian and Jewish congregations. New construction, renovation, and historic preservation projects are addressed. Site development, material choices, energy generation and consumption, water use, interior air quality, green cleaning programs, and beauty are discussed. Ten congregations from across the United States and Canada are featured as examples of excellence in creation care in and through their built environments.
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VISIT OUR WEBSITE
Alban at Duke Divinity School
1121 West Chapel Hill Street, Suite 101
Durham, North Carolina 27701, United States
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