ON GREEN CHRISTIANITY
July 15th 2001
The next issue, Number 63, will appear on September 15th 2001.
A reader, MM, writes:
- It is my opinion that one of the greatest tragedies to the environment was the Old Testament's: "..... let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." Followed closely by ...... "Be fruitful, and multiply ......". Combine the two with the New Testament concept that the world is but a rest-stop on the road to the hereafter and you have the recipe for the greatest disaster to befall the planet since the comet that started the ice age ......... MM
There is no doubt that the Bible was perceived by generations of Christians, up to the nineteenth century, as the sole literally true source of basic information and moral precepts that we need in life. That perception is part of the reason why Christianised societies in particular and following the precepts quoted by MM, have been historically in the lead in dominating and exploiting everything in sight. Bible-based exploitation of the planet has been extended globally to the exploitation of peoples outside the group of European Christians and locally to the exploitation of their own women and children.
The evils associated with traditional Biblical teaching are of course not confined to the Christian world. The worlds of other religions have often been just as bad as indeed have been the ephemeral secularisms of the short-lived USSR and its clients. To be exploitative, you do not have to be Christian - but, historically, it has often helped.
An early essentially 'green' challenge to the sanctity of the scriptures, that I remember from my boyhood years, was made by Dean W R Inge (then of St Paul's Cathedral, London UK) in the 1930's. He said words to the effect that
'go forth and people the earth was OK when there were only few of us but perhaps it is not such a good idea when there are two thousand million of us'. What the Dean would say now - when there are six thousand million of us and increasing - is not hard to guess.
It is now increasingly fashionable in religious circles - as in others - to express genuine concern for our impact upon the environment. The special problem facing Christian Greens is to explain away the awkward thought that their forebears, for many centuries, simply misunderstood the Bible passages alluded to by our correspondent, MM. Either Christians, in the past, have been dim or the Inspired Word of God is so obscure that only modern liberal Christians truly understand it. The modern liberal Christians have either to ditch their Biblical-interpretation inheritance or their environmental concern.
The standard practice of liberal Christians, when faced with dilemmas of this kind, is to make words mean what they want them to mean. In connection with Green Concern, the word "dominion" has ceased to be read as control and is now read as stewardship. Chalk has become a code word for cheese.
It need hardly be stressed here that Green Concern is, in principle, very real and proper. There are now more living people than the total of all previously living people and so, quantitatively, the human impact on the planet is far greater than it has ever been. Moreover we are releasing, into the biosphere, substances far different from those which the natural checks and balances have had, previously, to cope with.
The biggest danger, in the area of environmental policy, is that opportunist governments and others will adopt measures that seem to be green , that feel green. What is needed is rigorous environmental assessment of what we do, and propose to do, and this means more science, not less science. Green piety and green spin will simply not do.
One of our most famous spokesman for Green Concern - Prince Charles - has said that we need to be more "spiritual" in our approach to environmentalism. We must not view the environment "as a laboratory". Poppycock!
If we wish to get green policies right then we need to have knowledge of causes and effects in the workings of the environment; such knowledge is obtainable only by accepting the investigative disciplines of the laboratory ...... observation, experiment, inference and cross checking of ideas against experience. A laboratory contains valuable fragile things; good practice requires us neither to run our laboratory down nor to blow it up. The biosphere is like that.
Policy decisions should be based more on the laboratory model and less upon the temple model. It is precisely MM's point that the spiritual model of our world has helped us to drift into the mess we are in. This planet is where we live; we should not see it as the modish cuddly toy of the concerned mind - as an icon of New Piety.
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