PEOPLE
OF FAITH UNITE: THE MORAL IMPERATIVE OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS
By The
Rev. John Tamilio III,
I: The Environmental Crisis
Roman
Catholic theologian Hans Küng opens his 1993 book, Global Responsibility: In Search of a New World Ethic, with some
sobering statistics:
·
Every
minute, the nations of the world
spend 1.8 millions of US dollars on military armaments.
·
Every
hour, 1500 children die of hunger
related causes.
·
Every
day, a species becomes extinct.
·
Every
week during the 1980s, more people
were detained, tortured, assassinated, made refugee, or in other ways violated
by acts of regressive regimes than at any other time in history.
·
Every
month, the world’s economic system
adds over 7.5 billions of US dollars to the catastrophically unbearable debt
burden of more than 1.5 trillion dollars now resting on the shoulders of
·
Every
year, an area of tropical rainforest
three-quarters the size of
·
Every
decade, if the present global warming
trends continue, the temperature of the earth’s atmosphere could rise
dramatically (between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius) with a resultant rise in sea
levels that would have disastrous consequences, particularly for costal areas
of all [the] earth’s land masses.
These claims by Küng affirm what Lester
Brown (the Former President of the environmental group Worldwatch Institute and
winner of the United Nations’ 1989 environment prize) Küng’s points affirm what
Brown said a few years beforehand:
There are a half-dozen issues
that loom large on our list of environmental threats. One is deforestation; another is soil
erosion; a third is the build-up of greenhouse gases. The depletion of the ozone layer is a major
problem. So is the loss of biological
diversity, a loss of plant and animal species, that is; and finally,
desertification, land degradation, broadly, has increased.
And still, history has taught us nothing. The situation is worse than what Küng and
Brown described a decade ago. The
environmental crisis still looms large as one of the greatest threats that all
creation faces — it is a time-bomb waiting to detonate, its fuse burning
shorter and shorter each day.
I
believe that the root of this crisis lies in the loss of a covenantal ethic
that honors the earth as a covenantal partner.
Let me repeat that: the root of
this crisis lies in the loss of a covenantal ethic that honors the earth as a covenantal
partner. Since the Industrial
Revolution, when Western Civilization went from being an agrarian culture to a
mechanized one, we lost our reverence for the sanctity of the earth. In other words, modern industrialization and
globalization are void of an ecological conscience and a covenantal respect for
the earth. As a result, our planet is on
the brink of an environmental catastrophe, because we have abused it. We have seen the earth (and we continue to
see the earth) as a God-given resource that is meant to serve us.
Is there any hope? Can the doomsday clock be reversed? Hans Küng has argued that if we hope to
survive, then the religions of the world need to search for viable solutions
together. This can only be achieved
through the practice of healthy and constructive, interfaith dialogue. Küng maintains that,
…at the present moment the world
religions have a quite special responsibility for world peace. And the credibility of all religions,
including the smaller ones, will in future depend on their putting more stress
on what unites them and less on what divides them. For humankind can less and less afford
religions stirring up wars on this earth instead of making peace; making people
fanatical instead of seeking reconciliation; practicing superiority instead of
engaging in dialogue.
Therefore, we need to borrow the
words of the great social reformed, Karl Marx: the religions of the world need
to unite and produce an ethic that honors the earth. The current ecological crisis calls for a new
moral imperative. How the religions of
the world respond will be a test to their faithfulness and a witness to their
credibility. Let’s begin by looking at
this word covenant that I have been
using and how it is used in The Bible.
II:
The Biblical Understanding of Covenant
Before
we look at what a covenant is, though, we need to look at what it is not. A covenant is not a contract. A contract is a fundamental part of business
law and, according to Black’s Law
Dictionary, a contract is “An agreement between two or more persons which
creates an obligation to do or not to do a particular thing. Its essentials are competent parties, subject
matter, a legal consideration, mutuality of agreement, and mutuality of
obligation.” A contract is usually
established at the outset of a business agreement to ensure that the parties
involved abide by the promises set within the parameters of the contract. If one (or more) of the parties defaults on
his/her end of the agreement, then the contract establishes the grounds by
which legal recourse — to provide some form of compensation or justice to the
other party — can be sought. Contracts
are egocentric: they are utilized to protect the interests (usually financial)
of the parties involved. For example,
when party A enters into a contract with party Z, party A has his/her best
interests in mind. Party A is usually
only concerned with the interests of party Z as long as party Z’s interests
directly (or indirectly) benefit party A.
A covenant is
different. A covenant describes a
relationship of mutual love, support, and care, and covenants lie at the heart
of the Judeo-Christian faith tradition.
The problem, however, is that religions do not see themselves in
covenant with one another nor do they see themselves in covenant with the
land. For Christians and Jews, this is a
blatant contradiction of what a covenant is.
The concept of
covenant, and its ecological implications, has its roots in Judaism. The Hebrew understanding of covenant involves
three parties: God, people, and the land.
All three parties are active participants in a covenant. My ethics professor from seminary, renowned
scholar William Johnson Everett, once wrote that, “The land, like the people,
shared in a common holiness arising from its consecration to God.”
The other theological
word that comes into play here is stewardship. In the biblical narrative, God does not give his/her
people the land to do with as they please.
They are called to be stewards of the land, to care for and honor it as
a living, covenantal partner. This idea,
however, needs to be unpacked carefully.
From the Judeo-Christian perspective, stewardship is a relational trust
with roots in the Creation story. Both
before and after the Fall, Adam and Eve are called to be keepers of the
land. This charge has often been
misinterpreted: Adam and Eve are not
called to hold the land in subjugation, nor is this command a license to abuse
God’s good Creation. As Ernest Fortin
writes, “As stewards or custodians rather than the owners of creation, [Adam
and Eve] are to care for it and ‘guard’ it.”
Indeed, after he is created, “The Lord God took the man and put him in
the garden of Eden to till it and keep it,” according to Genesis 2:15. Later, God provided Adam with “a helper as
his partner.” After Adam and Eve’s
disobedience is discovered, God punishes Adam by stating:
“cursed is the ground because of
you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles
it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread
until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and
to dust you shall return.”
Throughout the history of Western
culture, though, the consequence of Adam’s sin has been interpreted as divine
punishment. This is somewhat of a
misinterpretation. Adam, as stated
above, is to be a keeper of the land before
and after his sin. After he sins,
his work becomes laborious, but his vocation does not change. It is interesting to note that one of Adam
and Eve’s first descendants, Cain, is also called to be “a tiller of the
ground” both before and after he kills his brother, Abel. As with his father, Cain’s work becomes more
difficult as a result of his disobedience: “’When you till the ground, it will
no longer yield to you its strength,” Yahweh tells Cain.
And
still there are a host of other biblical examples from both the Old and the New
Testaments. The point is simply that to
be a religious person (whether one is Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, or an
adherent of any number of other faiths) to be a religious person means that one
is to be a steward of God’s good earth.
Also,
people of faith need to start recognizing that the covenants that bind us to
one another go beyond the bounds of human relationships. A covenantal paradigm that involves God,
people, and the land must also include
the entire ecosystem: all species of animals, fish, micro-organisms, and
vegetation. The earth is not just the
theatre of our existence, but a complex, living biosphere which hosts a myriad
of intricate and interdependent life forms.
Human beings are just one in a myriad of species. The fact that we are the most advanced and
intelligent places the burden of responsibility (for lack of a better phrase)
on us all the more. As Nancy Wright and Donald
Kill state, “To be a steward is to be a servant.”
III:
The Necessity for Interfaith Dialogue
As
Hans Küng mentioned in the quote I shared with you earlier, “humankind can less
and less afford religions stirring up wars on this earth instead of making
peace; making people fanatical instead of seeking reconciliation; practicing
superiority instead of engaging in dialogue.”
How true! There is a sense in
which people of faith feel that in order to be “faithful,” they need to prove
that their religion is the only road to God and that all other faiths are
false, if not heretical. Now aside from
the fact that this reveals a great deal of insecurity, it also creates an
atmosphere that is combative and competitive.
Such an environment breeds intolerance and hatred. It does not lead religions to do what they
are called to do: to make God’s message of love, understanding, and cooperation
a reality. In terms of the environmental
crisis, interfaith dialogue and collaboration is not only a theological ideal;
it is absolutely essential if the
religions of the world want to really save the world — if they want to rescue
it from ecological collapse.
When it comes to
interfaith dialogue, people usually subscribe to one of three categories. (Now I am going to discuss these categories
from a Christian perspective, but one could view any religion through these
categories.) The first is exclusivism. A Christian exclusivist believes that only
Christians are saved. Everyone else is
doomed to the fires of hell. Either you
accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior (to quote the common catch
phrase) or you will not be saved. Inclusivism
is the second category. An inclusivist
believes that other religions are legitimate paths to God: Buddhism, Islam,
Hinduism, Judaism, Confucianism, and Taoism, among other faiths, are all viable
means of salvation. An inclusivist,
however, believes that these roads are valid because, somehow, Jesus Christ is
at work in these religions. In other
words, to use the words of another Roman Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner,
people of other faiths are anonymous Christians. They are saved through Christ whether they
realize it or not. The third category is
pluralism. A pluralist believes
that all religions (in and of themselves) are legitimate ways to God. A Muslim is a Muslim, not an anonymous
Christian. Ramon Panikkar explains this
by employing a popular metaphor: each religion is a separate path up a
mountain. All paths lead to the summit,
where they find God. And still there are
others, like John Cobb, John Hick, and Mark Heim, who describe the diverse
roads that separate religions follow in different ways. Suffice it to say, a pluralist sees and
honors the legitimacy of all faiths.
Now, I can see that
many of you are sitting there wondering, “Am I a pluralist? Yeah, that sounds right. No, maybe I’m an inclusivist. Actually, I’m an exclusivist! Does that make me a bad person.” View your own faith whichever way you want. That’s fine.
In a sense, I don’t care. But
even if you are an exclusivist, you must, for the sake of the environment and
the integrity of your own religion, you must approach interfaith dialogue as a pluralist
if we have any hope of resuscitating this fragile planet. Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists,
and followers of various Native American Nature Religions (Native Americans have
a great deal to teach us about having a genuine reverence for the earth, by the
way), people of different faiths need to see each other as covenantal partners
called to dialogue with one another to find viable solutions to the ecological
crisis.
A
paradigm shift needs to take place: a shift in which all the parties to
dialogue see one another, and especially the earth, as inextricably bound
together in the entire ecological drama.
If this does not happen, then we risk succumbing to a more quarrelsome approach
to interfaith relationships. Actually,
we risk far, far more.