We present a guest essay from Melanie Griffin, director of Sierra Club's Partnerships Program.
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I've been a "professional environmentalist" for 25 years now. While the right wing paints a picture of environmentalists as negative obstructionists and prophets of doom and gloom, I don't fit that description and neither do most of my environmentally inclined friends. It's true we are forced to spend a lot of our time "stopping" things -- hazardous waste dumping, irresponsible development, oil drilling in America's Wildlife Refuges and the like. And if you're paying any attention at all to the current trends and predictions about global warming, or to the Bush Administration's unraveling of decades of basic environmental safeguards, you probably wonder how a career conservationist ever gets out of bed in the morning.
But let's face it, to dedicate your life to protecting the planet from basic human behaviors like greed and power and selfishness, you've got to be an optimist at heart. You have to believe that you can make a difference with your life -- that there is hope.
Even in these dark days for our public health and wild heritage, I believe there is real cause for hope. It seems that help is on the way from a "higher power." Everyday, I hear about Christians, Jewish leaders and other people of faith joining the struggle to protect creation. At the local level, congregations are greening their houses of worship with energy efficient technologies and natural lawn care, and even some high profile politically conservative evangelical leaders are speaking out about global warming and the extinction crisis.
The media is all abuzz about these strange bedfellows and unnatural allies. But I don't find the growing religious engagement in environmental issues all that surprising. As a committed Christian myself (I'm head elder at my church, consider myself "born again" and would call myself an evangelical if I didn't think it would clear the room) I wonder what has taken this alliance so long to come together.
A survey of Sierra Club members found that nearly half attend worship services at least monthly, they just don't necessarily talk about their spirituality at Club meetings. And most of the members of my church will tell you that they gain real insights into God when they are out in the natural world. They feel a sense of connection with the Creator when they enjoy creation, and they feel that it's part of their calling to protect it.
Whether this Christian environmental movement is a new alliance or simply many people like me finally putting the two separate halves of their lives together, it just makes sense. The themes of responsible stewardship, loving your neighbor (including future generations) and activism on behalf of the poor (who are most affected by polluting facilities) are age-old biblical principles.
In particular, I am hopeful that Christians and other people of faith can join together to bring healing to our nation, especially in these politically divisive times. It's so sad that some Christian leaders spend their time trying to divide people, instead of working to promote unity and solutions. And it's downright crazy that they have managed to turn the care of our planet into a partisan political issue. In my humble opinion, these folks need to step away from the politics of pride and power and realize that something is terribly amiss when Jesus' followers are working on the side of the powerful and the rich, instead of the poor and suffering.
I also believe that environmentalists need to reject those that preach cynicism and anger and instead tap into the optimism and hope that I believe fuels us at our deepest levels. And those of us who pray need to get over being shy about sharing the spiritual reasons for our activism. Together, people of faith -- Democrats and Republicans -- can bring hope to a hurting planet. We can care for creation as God intended. At least I hope so.
Comments
View as Flat
caniscandida Posted 6:09 pm
13 Oct 2006
Thank you also for using the powerful term "the extinction crisis." Plenty of writers in Grist refer often enough to aspects of that crisis; but I think it is fair to say that that impressive term is not much employed by them.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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amazingdrx Posted 1:45 am
14 Oct 2006
It's a spiritual reconvergence. Where the real spirit comes directly from nature. And surprisingly fits just fine into most organized religion?
Who is surprised by that though? Only the radical religious right that has tried to villify environmentalism for political ends.
The Roves of this world, who cynically use evangelicals for political ends while calling them nuts, are not surprised at all. And it scares the hell out of them. Given the nature/spirit connection, corporatist anti-environmentalism falls far short of reality.
Hold a church service or an enviro-political meeting out in the woods sometime.
Great essay Melanie! Great work.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Jason D Scorse Posted 6:23 am
15 Oct 2006
J.S.
Assistant Professor,
Monterey Institute of International Studies
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SMLowry Posted 9:41 am
15 Oct 2006
Holding a church service in the woods is a great idea. I believe there are churches (and not just Pagan) who have done it.
I've been putting together my little newsletter, Gaian Voices, and came across this quote I love:
"If you take the Christian Bible and put it out in the wind and rain, soon the paper on which the words are printed will be gone. Our bible is the wind and the rain. (Salish Elder)
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JackH Posted 9:42 am
15 Oct 2006
(I don't want to get into a debate on theology, but your characterization is extraordinarily, almost deliberately simplistic in a distorted way. Debating interpretations of specific Bible verses is one of those boring Internet atheist/theist "drop your pants and whip out the tape measure" games that can be amusing, but have little relevance. The real question goes far beyond your simplification, and no, Lynn White's essay isn't the final word).
Let's leave aside the feasibility and the morality of it for a second (I can think of a couple of places in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries that tried to destroy religion in the name of reason and secularism, and all of them seemed to involve very bad things happening to very large numbers of people) - this "all or nothing" idea is nothing more than an excuse for paralysis. The entire human race WILL NOT give up religion in the next 10 years. Ain't gonna happen. It does not appear that the environmental crisis will politely wait until humanity has a chance to get PC (philosophically correct).
Therefore, if it's a choice between having to hold your noses and tolerate the existence of people who think differently than you and watching the extinction of humanity and every higher life form on this planet because you didn't want to deal with "impure" people, I'll take the former. Every time.
I'm trying not too sound too exasperated, but this is a shining example of what I talked about in my first post, when I asked whether I was allowed to be an environmentalist. The attempts at a "unified revolutionary critique", I think, are disastrous mistakes nearly every time. There is no reason why everyone must be united on every issue in order to work with them. On this issue, I couldn't care less whether or not you believe as I do in everything else. I would only ask for the same courtesy.
Remember those Saturday morning cartoons when the good guys and bad guys (say, the Superfriends and Lex Luthor) would temporarily band together to fight a greater threat? That's what I'm talking about.
We can fight over other things later. Let's do something now.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 10:53 am
15 Oct 2006
J.S.
Assistant Professor,
Monterey Institute of International Studies
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Jason D Scorse Posted 10:59 am
15 Oct 2006
J.S.
Assistant Professor,
Monterey Institute of International Studies
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bookerly Posted 7:38 pm
15 Oct 2006
JackH is correct, religion is not going to go away in the next ten years, so if we are going to save the planet, we need to work together.
(Of course, what all of the posts about religion seem to be talking about is "White" religion. I can't get Moyers show, but most of what I see written about Christians seems to imply that they are all white (or that only the white ones count, maybe).)
Since Christianity in America is largely segregated, we may need different approaches to talk to Christians of different colors. They may have different concerns and even beliefs.
Both sides need to practice a bit of tolerance. Non-believers can accept listening to the preaching they don't believe in during events, and believers can stop telling non-believers they are evil beings who are going to hell.... (There may be better examples, but these two came to mind) (grin).
In any case, save the world first, then fight over it!
patrick
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jjwfmme Posted 11:19 pm
15 Oct 2006
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bookerly Posted 8:14 pm
16 Oct 2006
Hi JjwFmme,
To be honest, I don't read Hitchens much, and Dawkins I read for his science, not politics. But thanks for the links, they were interesting and thought provoking.
(I like a lot of his scientific writing.)
I did prefer the let's get along approach of the late Stephen Jay Gould, but that's me. (grin).
I have good friends among all major religions (and quite a few minor ones too). What they all have in common is a tolerant and embracing outlook (which I think comes from their personality, but they insist comes from their beliefs).
Tolerance is a funny thing, I find myself getting along better with tolerant people I disagree with than I sometimes do with intolerant people I agree with.... (go figure!).
But there are issues of tolerance not just on the part of the non-religious towards religion, but the other way around.
I absolutely hope we can find common ground at least through global warming, then let future generations battle over the rest!!
(or not)
patrick
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Delay And Deny Posted 4:13 am
17 Oct 2006
I think that another good read for you would be the works of Christopher Alexander. His earlier "Pattern Language" and new quartet "Nature of Order" seem clear to me (http://www.patternlanguage.com/)...Man has the power to create architectures that have Life...the works of Man can be part of Nature, if built in the right way.
In fact, I believe in the Pattern Language, that Alexander abhors unmanaged land of any sort. He sees and ideal as each and every parcel of land having some sort of caretaker...one who is responsible...and rather than super dense cities and weedy unpopulated wilderness, we would make it something like pastoral England...with every acre, kept healthy and green, with common areas and free passage -- but yet under the care of Someone.
The Texeme Construct offers international text memetics construction and textcasting services.
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jjwfmme Posted 5:27 am
17 Oct 2006
I Sometimes worry about these online forums a bit. I think you can lose something when things are so anonymous. People can just talk past each other without seeing points of agreement, myself included sometimes.
No doubt our adversaries on the religious right are the ones with the worst problems with tolerance and hearing differing views. I think there's no comparison between their behavior and the occasional intolerant comment by a non-religious person towards religion.
But when these comments do occur, as they seem to more often these days, often it isn't flattering for our side. I think some people feel that if someone isn't a total rationalist, they're not worth dealing with. Now, an exclusive kind of rationalism is an important part of the liberal political tradition which has gradually evolved in the direction of technocracy.
But not everyone is a technocrat. And not everyone is a "card carrying rationalist" like a Richard Dawkins. And I think this is a good thing. So I don't believe that we're slumming, so to speak, if we include non-technocrats --even non-technocrats with a religious bent-- in our political life. They're worth having as allies. And if you meet some of them, they can actually can be pretty rational and have common sense.
So, shorter version: forming alliances with people in religious congregations is not slumming. It can be. But I when I hear categorical statements that it is (and you hear this sort of thing a lot from people like Dawkins and Hitchens) I find them hard to pass over and say nothing.
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bookerly Posted 8:12 am
17 Oct 2006
Hi Jabailo, I will check those links when I have time, thanks! They sound interesting.
Hi JJWFmme,
Mutual respect must be as real as it is mutual, or it doesn't work.
Which doesn't mean it has to tolerate everything and anything (for instance, I consider prejudice "disrespectful").
One idea is to have a bunch of different tents working on the same goal, rather than trying to fit all of the hotheads at either end in the same tent (then they tend to start yelling and everyone else leaves).
(grin).
I am not sure technocrats are any better than anyone else at understanding and articulating problems and solutions.
There is often a difference between saying "all are welcome" and meaning it. Having been an "outsider" in different groups, I can readily recognize which ones really welcome me and which say they do, but don't.
And so can others.
I like to look for groups which really welcome different kinds of people (they tend to have them) as opposed to groups which say "everyone is welcome", but strangely seemed to be composed of only one kind of person...
(See, I am trying to describe tolerance without labels... don't know it if makes sense.)
Years ago, I sat up all night drinking whiskey with a (then) leader of the religious right. In person, I found him charming, funny and quite friendly. Yet, were we to meet outside that particular place, we would have been sworn enemies.
Even our enemies are still human, alas, which doesn't make them any less enemies.
patrick
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