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Increasing numbers of Christian
theologians and ethicists are responding to the
environmental challenge as the world gets hotter,
stormier, more unequal, crowded, violent, and
less biodiverse. Their response to a pervasive
ecological and social crisis comes none too soon,
since this crisis will deepen in coming decades
and will reach maximum stage at next century’s
midpoint. Exponential growth curves in resource
depletion, production, pollution, population,
migration, gene manipulation, and species extinction
will reach a point where they either crash disastrously
or moderate and stabilize sustainably. The most
probable scenario is a combination of overshoot
and collapse and a wise change of course, mixing
the clashing realities of deep suffering and hopeful
living.
What will Christian ecotheology
and ethics contribute to the struggle to secure
the well-being of the earth community in these
freighted times? This collaborative book underscores
a pivotal human obligation, in every place and
pursuit, to express respect and show care for
Earth as God’s creation and life’s home,
while seeking justice for biodiverse otherkind
as well as humankind. Toward that end, eighty
leading Christian scholars, together with concerned
observers, gathered at the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
on April 16–19, 1998, for a conference on “Christianity
and Ecology” organized by Mary Evelyn Tucker
and John Grim at the Harvard University Center
for the Study of World Religions. Papers presented
and discussed there, and published here, show
the impressive range of work being done to reexamine
and rediscover elements of scripture and tradition
and to refocus and re-present Christian theology
and ethics in ecologically alert terms.
Because Christianity’s multiple
traditions take competing and cooperative forms,
and convey emphases that can be constricting or
liberating, the authors of these essays were asked
to do three things: 1) to explore problematic
themes that contribute to ecological neglect or
abuse and/or suppressed elements in the traditions
that can make a positive contribution to ecological-social
healing; 2) to discuss new emphases needed in
Christian theology or ethics; and 3) to identify
praxis implications for church and society. They
were also enjoined not simply to review
past developments, but to offer constructive insights,
building on the last one-third century of ecumenical
Christian thought about the ecological crisis.1
Their contributions to this volume should acquaint
a much wider audience to the fact and progress
of significant ecotheological and ethical reflection—a
development of religious thought that is not yet
widely understood and appreciated, even in the
churches or among Christian scholars. This volume,
by featuring many key scholars grappling with
this subject matter, offers a unique, comprehensive
discussion of the responsive role of Christian
faith.
Ecotheology first surfaced noticeably
in North America through the Faith-Man-Nature
Group convened by Philip Joranson in 1963 with
support from the National Council of Churches.2
That initiative was stimulated by pioneering thinkers,
such as Joseph Sittler, whose 1961 speech to the
World Council of Churches called for earthy Christology
and greater emphasis on cosmic redemption. The
turn toward environmental theology was also influenced
by the prophetic nature writing of Rachael Carson,
in Silent Spring (1962), and by the movement
toward participatory environmentalism, which received
early expression in the Port Huron Statement (1962)
of Students for a Democratic Society.
In retrospect, we can see that a
few Christian thinkers anticipated, and then a
larger number joined, Lynn T. White, Jr., and
other environmental philosophers to grapple with
the disastrous assumptions underlying modern philosophical
and religious thought. The development of ecological
reflection by Christian theologians since the
l960s parallels the critique that has come from
philosophers and scientists about the problematic
of the modern era at the close of the millennium.
But theologians and religious ethicists are in
the best position to evaluate the negative and
positive contributions of the biblical and Christian
traditions to this crisis. These scholars recognize
that the ecological challenge confronts biblical
exegesis and Christian theology across the conservative-liberal
spectrum, on an even deeper level than was discerned
in liberation, Black, and feminist critiques of
recent decades.
First, Christian theology has
rediscovered that all of the earth community is
valuable to God, who continues to create, sustain,
and redeem the whole. God, understood in wholistic,
organic terms, relates directly to and cares for
the well-being of everykind, not just humankind.
Otherkind exist to enjoy being in their own right,
not only to function as companions or helpers
of humankind.
Christian faith and ethics are being
reoriented by the knowledge that the cosmos (and
this planet) bodies forth the power, wisdom, and
love of God. Christianity in the modern period
almost lost interest in the revelatory power of
the natural world and reinforced the tendency
to set humanity over against nature in a manipulative,
polluting way of life. Contemporary cosmology
rediscovers the universe and Earth’s nature
to be a dynamic relational system—in Thomas Berry’s
term, a “communion of subjects” with
whom humans are to live fittingly.
Second, adequate ecotheology explores
the complex relation between cosmology, spirituality,
and morality. It is necessary to rethink Christian
cosmology, God’s relation to the world, and
the vocation of humanity, with ecological seriousness
from “the ground.” Cosmologies built
on Greek philosophical dualism must be deeply
recast in the light of both the new “universe
story” and a recognition of the way the older
cosmologies were themselves rationalizations and
justifications of human domination over otherkind.
The ecological challenge brings
new dimensions to theological revisioning that
received little attention across the modern theological
spectrum. Now, all who do theology must reconsider
how to speak more meaningfully of theological
symbols, such as God, creation, soul/body, Christ,
sin, evil, salvation, and eschatology, in a world
facing deep environmental challenge.
Third, deep Christian thinking on
this subject is shaped not only by ecological
awareness, but also by a melding of sacramental
sensibility and covenantal commitment,3
both of which are required for sustainable community.
The goal is not to supplant sociocultural
critique with ecological motifs. Sound Christian
environmental thought and practice builds on the
reenvisioning of theology by social justice movements
and it deepens them by placing them in the context
of ecological crisis. The result is not ecology
versus justice, but theologies and ethics of “eco-justice,”
including specific foci, such as theologies of
ecofeminism and of environmental racism that explore
the link between ecological integrity and social
justice.
Fourth, in eco-justice theology,
the plight of the earth and of people, particularly
the most abused, are seen together. Eco-justice
theology and ethics are the focus of several recent
publications.4
In this spiritually grounded moral perspective,
all beings on earth make up one household (oikos),
that benefits from an economy (oikonomia)
that takes ecological and social stewardship (oikonomos)
seriously. Eco-justice provides a dynamic framework
for thought and action that fosters ecological
integrity with social-economic justice. It emerges
through constructive human responses that serve
environmental health and social equity together.
Christian thought of this kind challenges
both religious beliefs and rituals that are preoccupied
only with human salvation and expressions of grassroots
environmentalism that are indifferent to socioeconomic
justice. The basic norms of eco-justice ethics
include:
- solidarity with other people
and creatures—companions, victims, and allies—in
the earth community, reflecting a deep respect
for creation;
- ecological sustainability—environmentally
fitting habits of living and working that enable
life to flourish, utilizing ecologically and
socially appropriate technology;
- sufficiency as a standard of
organized sharing, requiring basic floors and
definite ceilings for equitable, or “fair,”
consumption; and
- socially just participation in
decisions about how to obtain sustenance and
to manage community life for the good in common
and the good of the commons.
These norms illumine a biblically
informed imperative to pursue in reinforcing ways
what is both ecologically fitting and socially
just. Solidarity comprehends the full dimensions
of the earth community and of interhuman obligation.
Sustainability gives high visibility to ecological
integrity and wise behavior throughout the resource-use
cycle. The third and fourth norms express the
requirement of distributive and participatory
justice in a world that has reached or is exceeding
resource, pollution, and population limits.5
The essays in this volume announce
that an ecological reformation, or eco-justice
reorientation, of Christian theology and ethics
is now prominently on the ecumenical agenda. The
need for ecological reformation arises from fundamental
failures of Christian and other religious traditions:
to adapt to the limiting conditions of life; to
recognize intricate and interdependent relationships
involving humankind with the rest of nature; and
to respond with benevolence and justice to “the
theological and biological fact of human kinship
with all other creatures.”6
Ecologically reformed Christian theology will
reinterpret basic doctrinal themes in ways that
integrate ecological insight and value and reconceive
Christian ethics to effectively encompass human
relationships with other beings in the biosphere.
Ecologically attuned faith and ethics should utilize
knowledge gained from contemporary biophysical
sciences and foster eco-justice praxis concerned
with reducing consumption and adopting habits
of sustainability, while encouraging the positive
responsibility of government to protect the commons,
preserve biodiversity, advance human environmental
rights, limit population-consumption growth, curtail
polluting technologies, and distribute the costs
equitably.
An ecological reformation of religion
and ethics intersects, rather than competes with,
struggles for racial and gender justice. With
enlightened awareness of both nature’s rights
and human rights, Christianity must recycle some
inherited categories that are socially and ecologically
dysfunctional. For example, it is time for Christians
to discard the pattern of colonial thinking and
gender hierarchy that the church built into its
doctrine of creation and that defined the popular
map of social relations (for more, see Rosemary
Radford Ruether, “Ecofeminism: The Challenge
to Theology,” in this volume).
A reformation for the sake of eco-justice
rereads scripture as a basis for critiquing theological
tradition and reviving the right relatedness of
faith. Reinterpretation of scripture and critique
of tradition has resulted in “an ecumenical
consensus that has moved decisively beyond the
views which secularized nature as an object for
domination and justified careless and destructive
‘subduing’ of the earth.”7
In theology transformed by ecological awareness,
the paradigm of mastery over the earth is replaced
by a new model of healthy human-earth interrelationship
that has biblical resonance.
An ecological reformation redefines
faithfulness—that is, the human vocation—within
common life, including politics, where ecology
and justice flourish together, or not at all.
The focus is on right relatedness, earthy virtues,
and action for the earth community. The objective
is to specify human obligations, or our shared
vocation in every place and pursuit, to express
respect and care for Earth as God’s creation
and everykind’s home.
A reformation for the sake of eco-justice
also produces fresh ecclesial self-understanding
of the church’s role in ecumenical Earth.
A church committed to eco-justice ministry will
foster liturgical reform responsive to what God
is doing as Creator, Christ, and Spirit.
But at this late date, despite the
engagement of environmentally active members,
most of the churches remain quite slow to meet
the environmental challenge. The exciting prospect
of Christianity’s ecosocial transformation
contrasts sharply with the reality of sluggish
ecclesial life and rigid theologizing. A majority
of Christian communions and theologians on every
continent still think and act with old pictures
of the world and of humanity’s place therein,
rather than refocusing on the worldview, liturgy,
and praxis of eco-justice. Yet, there are signs
that significant elements of this world religion
are converting to the service of the earth community.
The essays in this volume emphasize constructive
resources of Christian theology and ethics to
guide movement in that direction.
Here we confront an important issue:
Is the religious defect regarding the environment
within Christian faith itself or in particular
expressions of church life and thought? Most ecotheologians
and the majority of the contributors to this volume
focus on the latter. They, and we, refuse to condemn
Christianity per se as anti-earth, or simply to
overthrow its symbol structure. But we agree that
some (often dominant) expressions of this world
religion are toxic or are at least complicit in
earth destruction. So, following the logic of
ecological science that something in the environment
is degraded wherever species of plants and animals
are threatened, theologians reflecting on the
environmental challenge discern that some forms
of religious thought, ritual, and practice are
unhealthy and threatening to the earth community.
Christian theology played a key
role in ecological and cultural malformation by
giving impetus to the modern, rational, scientific
conquest of nature. Now it can contribute to achieving
a sustainable human-earth relationship by utilizing
the relationality paradigm of contemporary physics
and ecology and connecting it effectively with
the eco-justice sensibility of biblical thought.
Toward that end, this volume presents leading-edge
essays and respondent commentaries on Christianity
and ecology (using “ecology” to refer
to natural and cultural systems facing pressure
from resource extraction, polluting technologies,
urban development, population growth, unbridled
consumerism, and political-economic domination).
The contributions to this volume
show how to recast Christian beliefs and ethics
in terms of their combined ecological and social
significance. They construe the subject broadly
and often reflect interdisciplinary awareness
in exploring eco-justice theology ethics, biblical
exegesis, and praxis. The essays are grouped in
five parts:
- Creator, Christ, and Spirit in
Ecological Perspective
- Vision, Vocation, and Virtues
for the Earth Community
- The Universal and Particular
in Ethics and Spirituality
- Toward Global Security and Sustainability
- Christian Praxis for Ecology
and Justice
In the lead essay of part one, Elizabeth
Johnson discusses cosmological dimensions of a
living faith that is reexamining the doctrinal
tradition and rediscovering creation. She explores
why both Catholicism and Protestantism in the
modern period lost interest in the natural world
and set humanity over against nature in a “violently
ruinous” way of life. Both the challenge
of modern science to traditional cosmology and
the renewed Augustinianism of the Reformation
served to focus Catholic and Protestant theologies
on an anthropocentric individualism no longer
connected with a vision of cosmic community. Johnson
then highlights the positive leads offered by
contemporary cosmology for rediscovering nature
as a dynamic relational system inclusive of the
human species. And she points to some new challenges
to the religious symbols and Christian praxis.
Her respondent, Gordon Kaufman,
pushes the critique further. He sees the fundamental
anthropocentric model of God in the biblical tradition—a
volitional agent acting in history—as a major
impediment to an integration of theology and ecology.
To address this problem, Kaufman calls for a new
nonanthropological model of the Divine perceived
as the “serendipitous creativity” of
the universe.
This section’s second lead
essay, by Sallie McFague, proposes that Christianity
is actually well supplied with christological
perspectives, in the prophetic, sacramental, and
wisdom traditions, as well as eschatological,
process, and liberation theologies, that can be
extended to address ecological issues. McFague
outlines the features of an ecological Christology
that views “God with us” in full sacramental
and prophetic dimensions. She draws out the praxis
that eco-Christology implies, illustrating it
in terms of the costly responses needed from Christians
to meet climate change.
Kwok Pui-lan affirms this but notes
that social and cultural location diversifies
the ways Christians interpret scripture and find
eco-justice insights therein. Asian Christians,
like herself, have not suffered the split between
humanity and nature in the same way as Christians
in the West. Asian Christians are also suspicious
of the imperialist uses of themes such as the
“cosmic Christ.”
Mark Wallace presents an earth-centered
model of the Spirit, or nature-based pneumatology,
as the power of life-giving breath (ruach)continually
working to transform and renew all life-forms.
He recovers earth-centered biblical images of
the Spirit as “a healing and subversive life-form—as
water, light, dove, mother, fire, breath, and
wind.” Wallace finds that nature enfleshes
God’s trinitarian love and draws out the
implications for cruciform living in a sinful,
suffering world, especially “the killing
fields of urban America.” Wallace also suggests
that a theological vision of the Spirit incarnate
in suffering nature also renews in cosmic terms
the issues of how one can speak of God suffering
and dying.
Eleanor Rae affirms Wallace’s
emphasis on the immanent Spirit in nature but
questions the usefulness of emphasizing the suffering
Christ and salvation history. Rae draws attention
to Wisdom Woman as a crucially important biblical
image of the Spirit and to the process theology
concept of a consequent God as a powerful response
to creation’s suffering.
John Chryssavgis complements Wallace’s
model by providing a Greek Orthodox perspective
on the Spirit and on the sacredness of creation.
He proposes that, in the world of the icon, heaven
and earth, spirit and body, interpenetrate, restoring
communion between God and the natural world. In
the icon God is incarnate in matter, and matter
becomes a vehicle of the Spirit. He also suggests
other themes of the Orthodox traditions, such
as apophatic (mystical, aesthetic) theology, which
can be useful for ecological reflection.
Rosemary Radford Ruether concludes
this group of essays by showing the historical
development of the worldview dividing mind and
body, God and nature, that underlies theologies
of domination. She then sketches an ecofeminist
reconstruction of Christian belief about the self,
soul/body relations, finitude, evil, redemption,
God, Christ, and revelation. Heather Eaton responds
to Ruether by emphasizing the seriousness of the
flight from finitude and mortality and critiquing
the justifications of domination in Christian
theology. Eaton outlines the steps toward a deep
transformation of theology needed to become woman-
and nature- friendly.
Part two opens with an essay by
the noted “geologian” and cultural historian
Thomas Berry, which calls for an appropriate human
response to the new universe story. Berry reviews
the historical origins of deep-rooted human alienation
from the earth and Christian estrangement from
the universe and points to positive leads in Christian
thought for rapport between humans and the rest
of the natural community. Our “great work”
is to support a new pattern of human presence
on the planet.
Louke van Wensveen engages in a
dialogue between the “dirty virtues”
of nature conservation and the virtue tradition
of Thomistic ethics to show both the usefulness
and the limitations of this tradition for an ecological
ethic. She suggests going beyond the limits of
the Thomistic worldview by doing as he did rather
than according to what he said in his time—that
is, by integrating the new worldview of the science
of our time. Steven Bouma-Prediger affirms van
Wensveen’s direction and seeks to show the
usefulness of biblical stories in providing key
themes for an ecological virtue ethic.
Early challenges to the Christian
tradition by thinkers such as Lynn White saw the
Bible, and particularly the theme of “dominion,”
as a major cause of ecological crisis today. Biblical
exegetes have responded to this challenge by exploring
both alternative ways of reading such themes as
“dominion” and alternative traditions
within the Bible itself to shape an ecologically
positive vision of the relation of God, humanity,
and nature. By such exegetical quests they cut
away the overlay of modern anthropocentric interpretation,
exposing how much scripture has to offer as a
guiding resource for life with the rest of nature.
Theodore Hiebert engages in this
kind of evaluation of the creation stories of
Genesis. He shows that the tradition of dominion
in Genesis 1 cannot just be explained away as
a benign concept of “stewardship.” Rather,
it reveals the worldview and social location of
its priestly authors who saw the human relation
to God in the light of their own view of themselves
as unique representatives of divine sovereignty,
set apart from and over the rest of nature. But
this is not the only perspective on the God/human/nature
relation in Genesis. The quest for a more ecological
anthropology should consult the Genesis 2–3 tradition
where humanity and the rest of nature are all
seen as sharing a common substance as “earth
creatures,” made from the same soil and all
sharing the Creator’s vivifying breath. This
tradition reflects the worldview of the farmers
of Israel and is more conducive to an ecological
solidarity of humans with the rest of creation.
The concluding book of the New Testament,
Revelation, offers particular challenges to an
ecological theology with its apocalyptic vision
of God’s destruction and re-creation of nature.
Theologian Catherine Keller views as ecologically
problematic the vision of salvation in this book
in which “there will be no more sea.”
She sees this theme as reflecting a deep negativity
in aspects of theological tradition toward the
“watery deep” as the symbol of chaos,
often associated with the female body, that is
to be abolished in order to “save” the
world. By contrast, she suggests that a nature-friendly
theology must come to terms with chaos and integrate
it into our worldview, rather than seek to abolish
it. Mary Ann Hinsdale appreciates Keller’s
method as “truly ecological in its attempt
to reuse, recycle . . . and renew the text/tradition”
while also opening it up to resonant contemporary
art, music, and ritual. She finds it to be a model
of fully ecosystemic theology, rooted in human
experience of the “depths” of the sea,
that would nurture appropriate Christian practices.
Barbara Rossing takes a sharply
different view than does Keller of Revelation’s
possibilities for ecological theology. She sees
hostility to the “sea” and the quest
to abolish it as a sociopolitical, not an ontological,
symbol. The sea represents the trade economy of
imperial Rome, and its abolition is a part of
creating a restored human environment rooted in
a restored nature. By abolishing the imperialism
of Babylon (Rome), with its vast system of injustice
to humans and exploitation of nature, a renewed
world where God dwells in our midst is envisioned,
empowering us to struggle for eco-justice in society.
Part three reexamines some basic
tasks of Christian ethics to meet the environmental
challenge. James Nash and Cristina Traina explore
an ecologically sensitized and reformed natural
law approach that can challenge and overcome the
strongly anthropocentric views of nature and hierarchical
moral teachings dominant in church tradition.
After a careful critique of that tradition, Nash
recommends following nature in the sense of “ecosystemic
compatibility,” or fittingness that accommodates
biological limits and cycles to assure sustainability.
Traina’s response complements Nash’s
discussion by emphasizing natural law’s theological
character, concerned with “fulfilling temporal
ends in a way that advances or coheres with transcendent
ends.” We use our reason and creativity to
shape ourselves and our surroundings for the common
good within physical limits and social possibilities,
as well as “within the transcendent bounds
of our ultimate telos.” Our responsibility
is to understand the places of humans and other
entities with the global ecosystem and then to
fit into its directionality and order.
Daniel Cowdin focuses on the moral
status of otherkind in Christian ethics. His essay
is informed by recent environmental philosophy
and surveys the theological state of the question.
He notes that the life and sentience approaches
to the moral status of otherkind fit more easily
into the Christian narrative than does a land
ethic. But, following Aldo Leopold in extending
moral obligation to the land, human activity should
enhance, not jeopardize, ecosystemic integrity,
stability, and beauty, while also caring for individual
organisms and creatures, informed by the promise
of “new creation.”
Zoologist Calvin DeWitt concentrates
on such biblical texts as Job 40:15–24, celebrating
Behemoth (the hippopotamus), in God’s second
speech from the whirlwind. What at first was seen
merely as a target for arrow, bullet, or harpoon,
is so marvelous and beautiful and fit to its habitat
that only its Maker has “author-ity”
to extinguish its life or its kind. Otherkind
are the handiwork of the Lord. Respectful people
behold them thankfully and “con-serve”
them in their habitats.
Other chapters in part three highlight
the aesthetic dimensions of ecotheology. Douglas
Burton-Christie, following the lead of Amos Wilder,
discusses “creative theopoetics” to
revitalize Christian theology—especially its understanding
of the Word Incarnate—by revisiting its own most
profound mythic and poetic resources and paying
attention to the insights of contemporary nature
writing. Peter Lee engages in a dialogue between
Christian and Chinese traditions on the ideas
of goodness, beauty, and holiness, showing the
complementarity of the two traditions on these
themes. Heup Young Kim affirms Lee’s efforts
to synthesize Christian and Asian traditions,
but he finds the mystical and sacramental traditions
of Christianity more helpful than the rationalist
forms of Protestantism that Lee has employed for
this purpose. Kim also calls for a more critical
look at the imperial and paternalist aspects of
the Chinese tradition and the need to integrate
social justice with cosmic harmony.
Paul Knitter leads us toward deep
ecumenicity, which is concerned with finding common
ground on a common earth: “The more deeply
religious persons become ecologically attuned,
the more effectively they will become ecumenically
connected.” We have an ethical challenge
to elaborate a way of acting in the world for
the good of earth community. Religions provide
the foundation by envisioning the sacred, fostering
ethical reflection, and engendering political
responsibility.
Several essays in part four focus
on meeting urgent environmental problems with
Christian ethical discipline. Ian Barbour explores
the contributions of science in understanding
human environmental impacts and fostering awareness
of ecological interdependence. Scientific insights
converge with religious thought in affirming respect
for all forms of life and in expressing the need
to become stewards of life’s continuity.
We are called to respect the evolutionary wisdom
and divine activity embodied in the natural world,
to be accountable to the common good and future
generations, and to foster a communal and less
resource-consumptive vision of the good life.
Daniel Maguire declares the world
religions are in default for failing to address
the realities of the population-consumption explosion.
He critiques the influence of religious natalism,
environmental racism, and sacralized marketism
on the attitudes and behavior of affluent Christians
in particular. Susan Power Bratton and James Martin-Schramm
point the way toward constructive responses in
the church’s ministry and in social policy.
David Hallman surveys the role played
by the ecumenical movement in grappling with human-induced
climate change—a fundamental problem of justice
and ethics precipitated by the rich industrialized
nations, with disproportionate consequences on
poor developing countries and future generations.
William French and Preston Williams concentrate
on public policies for sustainability. French
examines some of the forces driving the global
growth agenda and emphasizes the stake that Christian
communities have in promoting ecological sustainability.
In the policy arena, he urges the promotion of
green (or carbon) taxes to help restrain unsustainable
patterns of resource and energy use, habitat destruction,
species extinction, and population growth.
Patterns of religious thought and
ritual function to provide a binding sense of
what on Earth is sacred and the role of humans
therein. If that is what concerns religion, then
we find ourselves in the throes of a life-and-death
struggle between historic world religions that
fostered “oikonomia” and an ultramodern
religion of “economism,” as John Cobb
labels it,8
that depletes the world’s natural “resources”
for profit and fosters “consumption”
for happiness at the expense of sustainable communities
and biodiverse ecosystems. The church must become
more engaged with protecting natural places and
building community while resisting false worship
of a universal, “free” market system
driven by globalized capitalist investment.
What pattern of ecclesial and social
praxis is needed to meet the environmental challenge?
The final group of essays, part five, focuses
on the churches’ role in eco-justice ministry
and citizenship. Larry Rasmussen opens this section
with an important overview of the church’s
eco-justice mission in an increasingly urbanized
society. That mission, in his words, is to address
the social and ecological questions together for
the sake of comprehensive sustainability in a
time of economic “globalization,” in
which nature, knowledge, and culture —all life’s
human and nonhuman communities—are being recast.
Praxis for ecology and justice involves
participation in earth stewardship, for example,
through Zimbabwaen tree planting by earthkeeping
churches in Southern Africa as described by Marthinus
Daneel. Martin Robra’s response emphasizes
that the earthkeeping ministry of African Independent
Churches exemplifies the cultural adaptability
of Christian symbols. It also challenges the way
Christians in the North have accommodated to the
culture of domination. The Zimbabwean example
enjoins churches everywhere to develop “practical
consciousness” that results in a lifestyle
of ecology and justice.
Praxis involves environmental justice
organizing in North American communities, as Vernice
Miller-Travis illustrates in her narrative account.
Praxis also requires more focused religious leadership,
the subject of the chapter by William Somplatsky-Jarman,
Walter Grazer, and Stan LeQuire, who describe
the work being done among and by Christians in
the United States through the National Religious
Partnership for the Environment.
Patricia Mische reminds us that
eco-justice praxis is instilled through a communal
ethos and habits of earthkeeping at local and
bioregional levels. Praxis also involves reform
of liturgy and spiritual practice; and it includes
nonpartisan political advocacy, as exemplified
by civil society organizations, such as Global
Education Associates.
Part five is followed by Rosemary
Radford Ruether’s concluding essay on the
centrality of eco-justice in authentic Christian
witness. For Ruether, this is not a new or marginal
emphasis for Christian life and thought; rather,
it is central to a full understanding of the church’s
mission as witness to and participant in God’s
redemption of creation.
This volume on Christianity and
ecology appears roughly a one-third century after
Christians began to rethink biblical exegesis,
theology, and ethics for planetary well-being.
It illustrates much of the major work being done
by Christian scholars to meet the environmental
challenge. We trust that the creative spiritual
and moral insights in these essays will encourage
readers and churches to strengthen and deepen
an emerging, vital consensus that the gospel calls
Christians to be engaged, with others of good
will, in a healing struggle for the well-being
of everykind and of diverse communities under
increasing ecosocial stress.
1
For well-documented critical surveys, see the
overview essay and annotations of Peter W. Bakken,
Joan Gibb Engel, and J. Ronald Engel, Ecology,
Justice, and Christian Faith: A Critical Guide
to the Literature (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood
Press, 1995); and chapters on state-of- the-art
scholarship in Theology for Earth Community:
A Field Guide, ed. Dieter T. Hessel (Maryknoll,
N.Y.: Orbis, 1996).
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2
Early Christian scholarly work by the Faith-Man-Nature
Group, exemplifying “The Greening of Religion,”
is described in Roderick F. Nash, The Rights
of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics
(Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press,
1989) 87–120. For an ecologically aware history
of Christian doctrine, see H. Paul Santmire, The
Travail of Nature: The Ambiguous Ecological Promise
of Christian Theology (Philadelphia, Pa.:
Fortress, 1985). An overview of North American
ecumenical Christian environmental response since
the 1960s is provided by Dieter T. Hessel, “Where
Were/Are the U.S. Churches in the Environmental
Movement?” in Theology for Earth Community:
A Field Guide (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1996)
199–207.
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3
Rosemary Radford Ruether, who introduced this
distinction in Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist
Theology of Earth Healing (San Francisco:
HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), discusses it further
in the conclusion to this present volume.
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4
See, After Nature’s Revolt: Eco-Justice
and Theology, ed. Dieter T. Hessel (Minneapolis,
Minn.: Fortress, 1992); Good News for Animals?
Christian Approaches to Animal Well-Being,
ed. Charles Pinches and Jay B. McDaniel (Maryknoll,
N.Y.: Orbis, 1993); “Concern for Creation:
Voices on the Theology of Creation,” in Tro
and Tanke, ed. Viggo Mortensen (Lutheran World
Federation) 5 (1995); “And God Saw That
It Was Good”: Catholic Theology and the Environment,
ed. Drew Christiansen and Walter Grazer (Washington,
D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1996);
“Eco-Justice and the Environment,” in
American Journal of Theology and Philosophy
18, no. 1 (January 1997) ed. Jerome A. Stone;
and Stephen Bede Scharper, Redeeming the Time:
A Political Theology of the Environment (New
York: Continuum, 1997).
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5
For a discussion of these eco-justice norms, see
Dieter Hessel, “Ecumenical Ethics for Earth
Community,” Theology and Public Policy
8, nos. 1–2 (summer/winter 1996): 17–29.
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6
James A. Nash, “Toward the Ecological Reformation
of Christianity,” Interpretation 50,
no. 1 (January 1996) 5–15.
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7
See Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, “Creation
in Ecumenical Theology,” in Ecotheology:
Voices from South and North, ed. David G.
Hallman (Geneva: World Council of Churches Publications;
Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1994) 103.
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8
See Herman E. Daly and John B. Cobb, Jr., For
the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward
Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable
Future, 2d ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994).
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