Coming Late to the Party

I confess that I have never had a great sense of immediacy with regard to the environment, ecology, and sustainability issues. Many of us coming out of evangelical backgrounds seem to have this legacy, tied to conservative politics: that creation has never been our responsibility, at least not in any meaningful way. This is first-off a theological short-coming that I've been trying deal with for awhile. Tied to that is desire to listen hard to the political debate this election season.

Over the last couple of days I have inadvertently stumbled into a number of different kinds of media dealing with issues of dramatic climate change due to irresponsible human stewardship of creation. I confess that I am no scientist. That should not be shocking. One of these sources is entertainment, in fact it is a movie trailer that exploits the apocalyptic end-game scenarios with which we seem so enthralled (and I confess I find it enthralling). The movie is called The Day After Tomorrow. That this is eco-apocalypse is interesting and follows a recent run of these kind of films including Deep Impact, Armageddon, and The Core. I am also a speculative (science) fiction reader who has been challenged by the likes of David Brin, and his book Earth. I think speculative fiction/entertainment can be an engaging way of assessing the cultural pulse, where issues can be dealt in a fictional format that are not dealt with, for whatever reason, in other more "serious" formats.

In no particular order here are a number of threads I have run across recently. Admittedly, I am on the front-end of a large learning curve. People more intelligent than I am take very different postions than those taken by the people I reference in this blog post. But the more I read, the more I am concerned by the Bush administration's unwillingness to address any of these issues.

Bill McKibben writes a challenging article in the new issue of Sojourners. I've been making my way through his book, Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age. The article is in the recent issue, Down to Earth Theology and is titled, Sins of Emission. The same issue has a challenging article written by Brian McLaren about how theology colors how one approaches the environment titled Consider the Turtles of the Field. Tony Campolo has been beating this drum for a long time, though in a different way than Brian.

Finally, there is this article from The Guardian Unlimited discussing a Pentagon report to the Bush administration about threats to national security as a result climate change and the administrations unwillingness to deal with it.

Comments

[ashley]

This issue is so complex that I find it difficult to even respond to what you've written...I think the bottom line for me is that I have always found it pretty shocking that so much of organized christianity in the US is geared toward maintaining the "American Way of Life (AWOL for short)." A life lived in pursuit of relationship with God/Christ/Holy Spirit, it seems to me, has to be many things, but is certainly not status quo, indeed has to challenge the AWOL precisely because it glorifies the individual, glorifies consumption, glorifies freedom, glorifies violence...The Beatitudes turn the world order (carried to its extreme in the AWOL) on its head, and I think that is what we have to do by our way of life as disciples. It does mean something in terms of how we care for our environment, because God created this earth and all that is in it not for us to eat up with our greedy mouths and SUVs, but as a work of love -- God created out of the infinite depths of who he is and called his creation good! And, can I just say, what did you expect from the Bush administration?

[Robert J. Bingaman]

I read that article from the Guardian last week, it is troubling to say the least. I think what is hard (and fun - in its own crazy way) is educating ourselves on the matter. We basically have to find out exactly what the Bush administration is doing, and what others think they ought to be doing. After reading that article (riddled with quotes from greenpeace), its hard to know the true extent of the threat - and what or where the threat actually is, it seems so vague. On the other side however, it is clear this isn't much of a concern for the Bush administration - and that is troubling...but the 100 million dollars that got him into office and the 200 million he has put away for this november begin to tell part of that story. The hard part for me is, in terms of the creation and its environment - what do we want? and how do we ask for it? (and no, I'm not asking who to vote for). This is a topic I plan on investigating much more in the coming months along with a few other election-related issues that I personally think are dare-I-say...more important.

[Paul]

Tim and others:
The Fortune magazine reporting of the same event provides a very different tone from the Guardian, emphasizing that the Pentagon report was a contingency plan, a hypothetical what-if scenario exploration, not a prediction. Which isn't to downplay the significance of the commissioning and release of the report. But if the Fortune article is accurate, then the Guardian report strikes me as irresponsible in its presentation.

http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,582584,00.html

The full article is no longer available for free, sorry.

[Tim Keel]

Hey Paul, thanks for the link. I understand what you're saying, but viewed as a whole I think the more disturbing aspect is the lack of engagement in the public discourse over this subject matter at all.

Ashley, I agree, there is a lot there. Organized Christianity is a complex reality that I have been trying to personally deconstruct for my own sake and I am increasingly coming to grips with the fact that many of the ways I have practiced my faith have been, while well-intentioned, not holistic enough. But rather than seeing that as some kind of political or sociological/demographic shortcoming, I really believe it stems from an inadequacy in of theology, specifically, our understanding of the nature and scope of the gospel. That realization is why I like Brian's article so much. It awakens new sensibilities that must be attended to.

Rob, I had this discussion that you raise with a couple of guys last week, speicifically about the impending election and how we ought to be responding. I look forward to dialoguing, as a community, this year as we approach the election.