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Ecology and the Environment
In everyday use, the terms “ecology” and “environment” may connote something normative – a social movement, Earth Day gatherings, a vision of proper relationships between humans and the rest of the natural world. In Christian environmental ethics or “ecological theology” this is frequently the case. Yet ecology, of course, is also – some would say primarily – a branch of science, and research on the environment may not have any obvious connection to environmentalism. A scholarly work that purports to be about Christianity and ecology may or may not have much to do with ecology as a science, except in a very general way, and the chances are good that it will have even less to do with evolutionary science, despite the importance of evolution for understanding the workings of nature. At the same time, however, Christian environmentalism is quite engaged with ideas and developments in certain areas of science. In order to understand this state of affairs, it is necessary to get a sense of how Christian environmentalism came into being and what forces have shaped it.
Green Critiques of Religion and Science
The academic field of religious environmentalism emerged somewhat later than the popular environmental movement of the 1960s. Ecotheology was a product of environmental critiques of both religious and scientific worldviews. The Judeo-Christian tradition in particular has often been the target of such critiques. The best known of these is Lynn White’s essay “The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis” published in the journal Science in 1967. White put forth what now seems an obvious claim that how people regard the natural world depends on how they understand themselves and their relationship to that world. Above all, “human ecology is deeply conditioned by beliefs about our nature and destiny – that is, by religion” (White 1967, 1206). Of course, beliefs about our nature and destiny also have much to do with science, and as ecotheology has evolved, its relationship to science has become complicated and quite interesting.
White’s critique encompassed aspects of both science and religion. He took aim at the Genesis doctrine of creation that granted humans, as creatures in God’s image, virtually unlimited dominion over the natural world, established a dualism between the physical and the spiritual (privileging the latter), and treated nature as incidental to the quest for human transcendence and other-worldly salvation. White argued that this worldview had driven out ancient pagan views that posited a natural world inhabited and animated by spirits. Though the point is often overlooked, White also believed that science and technology, as outgrowths of Judeo-Christianity (more specifically, of Western Christianity), also encouraged human mastery of and dominion over nature. Asian perspectives were less problematic, White asserted, insofar as they lack the nature–spirit dualism of Christianity. The belief that Buddhist traditions, for example, are inherently “greener” persists in ecotheology, as does a disagreement over whether religious or scientific attitudes toward nature are, on the whole, more culpable for environmental problems.
Because the Christian tradition received much of the blame, early responses to critiques such as White’s emerged largely from Christian theologians. Some of these defended Christianity by pointing out that biblical dominion, for example, implies human responsibility and stewardship of nature, not despotism; but a surprising number of theologians more or less conceded many of White’s points and set to work to rehabilitate the tradition (or to recover forgotten teachings and practices) in order to produce a more environmentally friendly version. Many Christian theologians focused on expanding Christian ethics – ethics of neighborly love and liberation – to include our nonhuman neighbors. The resulting ethics, however, have not been entirely compatible with scientific perspectives on the natural world. Ambivalence and selective use of science – as well as occasional outbreaks of enthusiasm for it – characterize much of Christian ecotheology.
The environmental movement in America in the 1960s was both inspired by science – at least in popular works and media – and nurtured by a deep distrust of scientific authority. Religious environmentalism within the academy shows a similar tendency to distrust science and its claims to authority. A central text that generated ecological concerns in both popular and academic circles was Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962). Writing in an era of unprecedented enthusiasm for chemical wonders such as DDT, Carson criticized indiscriminate use of pesticides and portrayed the chemical control of nature as a scientific and moral issue. Carson condemned inordinate faith in science and reckless disregard for the long-term consequences of chemical pest control. She dismissed the methods of chemical engineering and entomology as primitive, “Stone Age” science, “as crude as the cave man’s club” (297). Silent Spring called for greater caution and humility among scientists and chemical engineers, and urged citizens to cast a wary eye on science’s promise of a better and safer future. The branch of science that Carson upheld as offering the greatest promise was ecology, because it alone provided solutions through biological pest control (what is now called integrated pest management), and offered holistic, rather than compartmentalized, understanding of the natural world. This big-picture perspective could suggest to humans which interventions in nature were prudent and which might wreak greater havoc on what Carson called the “fabric of nature.” Shortly after Silent Spring, ecologist Paul Sears dubbed ecology the “subversive science” because “ecology affords a continuing critique of man’s operations within the ecosystem” (Sears 1962, 12). Like Carson he understood ecology as the least “particulate” and “specialized” of the sciences, and thus the least likely to provide shortsighted solutions without regard to larger ecological wholes and future generations. In this portrait of ecology as science of a different sort – inherently holistic, potentially subversive, and refreshingly countercultural – we see the merging of ecology as a normative perspective and ecology as a scientific discipline. For these early environmentalists, and many who read them, ecology was bound up with citizens’ right to know what was in their food, air, and water and with the growing conviction that “we should no longer accept the counsel of those who tell us that we must fill our world with poisonous chemicals” (Carson 1962, 278).
Few Christian environmentalists, past or present, take their cues directly from writers like Carson. Though she wrote with reverence and a sense of wonder for the natural world, Carson’s arguments made no direct appeal to traditional religion or religious morality.1 A certain suspicion of science, and a sense of ecology as countercultural, nevertheless pervades much of Christian ecological theology. Carolyn Merchant, whose book The Death of Nature (1980) strongly influenced a generation of environmentalists, likewise dubs ecology a “subversive science,” a science of interconnectedness that “reawakened interest in the values and concepts associated historically with the premodern organic world” (1980, xx). By organic Merchant means the world before nature was effectively “killed” by the mechanical philosophy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These scientific paradigms are blamed for reducing nature to dead matter in motion and disregarding the interconnected nature of life. The exception is often physics – not the physics of the scientific revolution but the “new physics” of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Fondness for recent discoveries in physics is accompanied by a peculiar turning away from modern biology. Christian ecotheologians cast an especially jaundiced eye on modern versions of Darwinism.
The Problem of Suffering and the Turn to Physics
The turn away from evolutionary biology in favor of physics would likely have puzzled Carson, who understood Darwinian dynamics such as predator–prey relationships to be the engine of nature. We tamper with this engine at great risk to ourselves and other life forms. Chemical tampering generates more intractable problems: bioaccumulation of pesticides up the food chain, and pesticide resistance that threatens to transform nature’s mixture of “weak” and “strong” insects into a population of “entirely tough resistant strains” (Carson 1962, 272). Among some Christian ecotheologians, however, it is precisely this portrait of Darwinian struggle between weak and strong that makes it an awkward fit with their religion. The common association of evolutionary theory with forms of Social Darwinism may partially account for uneasiness with evolutionary theory. If Darwinism is understood – however erroneously – to entail victory of the strong and fit over the weak or disadvantaged, it flies in the face of Christian ethics that prescribes preferential concern for the poor, sick, hungry, and downtrodden. The theory of natural selection brings the problem of suffering, and more generally, issues of theodicy, to the forefront. For example, some Christians advocate treating all organisms as valuable and attending, as Jesus would, to the bodily needs of organisms that comprise nature’s “poorest” and “neediest” (McFague 1997, 149) We ought to care for nature’s marginalized, despised, and oppressed beings, “healing the wounds of nature and feeding its starving creatures” just as a Christian community would focus on “feeding and healing its needy human beings” (McFague 1997, 149).
For a number of prominent Christian theologians, the idea that humans have obligations to reduce suffering in nature takes seriously a vision of the natural world as fallen from a more perfect condition and in need of restoration. This goal of restoring or redeeming nature finds support in biblical ideals of a past – or future – perfection and assumes nature’s suffering to be symptomatic of its corrupted state. Ecofeminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether envisions restoration of nature that ushers in “right relations” among all creatures and heals “nature’s enmity.” Passages of Isaiah suggest to her that “even the carnivorous conflict between animals will be overcome in the Peaceable Kingdom” (Ruether 1994, 213). For fellow ecofeminist Sallie McFague, ethical insights can be gleaned from biblical stories “in which the lion and the lamb, the child and the snake, lie down together; where there is food for all; where neither people nor animals are destroying one another” (McFague 1997, 158). A “peaceable kingdom of shalom and ecological harmony” in which “predatorial behavior will no longer characterize human and non-human relations” informs Michael Northcott’s interpretation of God’s will for creation (Northcott 1996, 194). Charles Birch anticipates a time when “paradise is regained, and everyone not only goes back to a nonmeat diet, but the friendliest relations subsist between all species” (Birch 1990, 67). Often it seems that the sort of natural community envisioned by many ecotheologians could come about only if evolutionary processes were halted.
Darwin himself, who recoiled from suffering in any form, felt this problem keenly with regard to the natural world. According to his Autobiography his refusal to accept that a benevolent Creator would have made a natural world so filled with suffering, sentient beings ultimately turned him away from theism. “A being so powerful and so full of knowledge as a God who could create the universe, is to our finite minds omnipotent and omniscient, and it revolts our understanding to suppose that his benevolence is not unbounded, for what advantage can there be in the sufferings of millions of the lower animals throughout almost endless time?” (Darwin 1958, 90). The amount of suffering in the natural world accords well with the theory of natural selection, Darwin believed, but not with belief in God.
Christian ecotheologians have taken up Darwin’s problem of theodicy and run with it – in a variety of directions. As recurring motifs of peaceable kingdoms and restored Eden suggest, one approach sees the task of ecological ethics as eliminating suffering as much as possible, often without much clarity regarding natural as opposed to human or cultural sources of suffering. Another common approach is to portray nature as a place where suffering and conflict is in a minor key, whereas instances of symbiosis, cooperation, and benign forms of interdependence are much the norm. Here again, ecology is seen as more than a science of biotic communities; it provides “guidelines” and exhibits principles of “cooperation and interdependency” (Ruether 1994, 56–57). Ecology, understood as a blueprint for communal harmony and right relationships, is foregrounded, while evolution, evocative of pain, and strife, recedes into the background.
A number of related approaches can loosely be categorized as liberation theologies. Liberation theology emerged in Latin American during the 1960s with Gustavo Gutiérrez’s Theology of Liberation (1973). The movement put the gospel of Jesus into dialogue with Marxist perspectives on struggle and oppression, in order to address earthly injustices – social, economic, and political. Liberation theology influences the work of Christian ecofeminists such as McFague and Ruether who discern parallels between oppression of women and minorities and the oppression of nonhuman life forms, as well as by process thinkers such as Charles Birch and John Cobb who integrate the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead with Christian theology. Process theologians understand God as inseparable from, and affected by, natural processes. God is posited as a force or presence that “lures” the natural world forward in noncoercive ways; the direction nature takes is a product both of God’s intentionality and the actions of all organisms. This account understands all entities as potential subjects capable of experience, subjecthood, and creative response. All therefore have value and should be shielded from unnecessary suffering. Science and the scientific worldview are themselves major sources of unnecessary suffering, some process thinkers point out. Charles Birch and John Cobb call for liberation of life from objectifying and mechanistic scientific categories and conceptions. Most scientific investigation regards living entities as mere objects or machines, not subjects, they argue. “If we can liberate the concept of life we might better be able to liberate life itself” Birch and Cobb argue (1981, 68).
What many of these ecotheologians have in common is advocacy of an “ecological model,” an alternative paradigm to the objectifying and reductionist approaches they criticize. Despite its name, the ecological model is largely informed by “developments in other sciences, especially the so-called ‘new physics’ ” (Hay 2002, 129). This is particularly true of some process thinkers. The new or “postmodern” physics – quantum theory and special relativity – reveals a universe of complex, interrelated events, not an atomistic array of objects. Radical continuity and relationality of all entities to their environments, as well as the dissolution of absolute distinctions between subject and object or observer and the observed, are the welcome messages of the new physics, according to this account. As claims to objectivity in science are undermined, so are harmful attitudes that objectify life.
The turn to physics in ecotheology is also motivated by rejection of a so-called “neo-Darwinian paradigm.” Neo-Darwinism often has no consistent or clear meaning in this context. In the history of science, the term refers to the synthesis of Darwin’s theory of natural selection with modern genetics (the rediscovery of Mendel’s work on genes, and the later discovery of DNA). In theological contexts, however, the term acts as a kind of “code for views of the evolutionary process that a variety of persons and groups are not comfortable with” (Goodenough 2005, 370). Critics charge that neo-Darwinism entails, for example, commitment to atheistic worldviews, genetic determinism, purposeless variation, and a blind, uncaring, mechanical process of natural selection. In other words, neo-Darwinism is the latest version of mechanical philosophies like those that Merchant faulted for bringing death to what was once a vital, enchanted world; but the mechanical model in its neo-Darwinian incarnation is even more pernicious insofar as it mechanizes humans as well, who are portrayed as robots – “survival machines” – programmed by their genes (Dawkins 2006a). Now even humans “are asked to interpret ourselves as matter in motion” (Cobb 2007, 43). Ecology and the new physics, by contrast, are understood as sister sciences pointing to a more accurate and ethically rich picture of interconnectedness, relationality, and active subjecthood. “Both the new physics, with its stress on self-organising, spontaneous systems, and ecology, with its insistence on the primacy of relationality, are at least potential rivals to the mechanistic paradigm” (Hay 2002, 151). It is worth noting that many of these complaints against neo-Darwinism are also voiced by proponents of intelligent design (ID) who show a similar distaste for the perceived excesses of materialism in modern biology. ID critics charge that modern biology is committed to a conception of matter as reductionistic as those promulgated in the seventeenth century. Michael Behe contends that nature shows “irreducible” complexity, and like process theologians who discern purpose, initiative, and active agency in all entities, he insists on a more “active” and self-organizing view of life than modern gene-centered biology allows (Behe 1996).2
“Storied” Nature and the Rapprochement of Science and Religion
In contrast to apparent convergence between some process thinkers and design arguments, ecotheologian John Haught has defended evolutionary theism against incursions from ID. A Roman Catholic theologian who served as an expert witness in the 2005 Kitzmiller vs. Dover trial over intelligent design, Haught considers Darwin’s theory a gift to theology that enriches rather than diminishes it. In his view, ID bears a striking resemblance to the scientism of neo-Darwinian and neo-atheist writers such as Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. Invoking a metaphor of nature as a book, he argues that both ID and materialist biology display a basic “reading problem,” and excessive literalism with regard to Darwin’s theory. Haught advocates layered explanation or explanatory pluralism, which entails that virtually any phenomenon in our experience can be explained at different levels. Science appropriately deals with questions at the level of natural causes, not questions about ultimate meaning and purpose. Essentially both ID and materialist biology conflate science with ideology. Both “compress what could be a rich hierarchy of explanations into a one-dimensional Flatland where scientific and ultimate levels either become indistinguishable, or else they are forced to compete for the single explanatory slot available” (Haught 2003, 91).
Though influenced by some of the same philosophers and theologians as process thinkers such as Whitehead as well as Teilhard de Chardin, Haught posits greater independence and autonomy of the natural world from God. He emphasizes nature’s contingency and spontaneity – key features of a Darwinian account – as consistent with a theological interpretation of God as differentiated from creation. It might appear that this move simply reasserts the dualism of God and nature that critics such as White see as integral to Christianity’s neglect of nature. Haught’s account is somewhat more nuanced in that he sees God’s relationship to the universe as one of interdependence and “dialogical intimacy,” not separation. Citing Teilhard, he stresses that “true union differentiates” (Haught 2007, 54). Interestingly, Haught’s account directly takes up Darwin’s claim that a God whose benevolence is “not unbounded” would not create a world with so much suffering and waste. Nature’s autonomy and spontaneity reflect the noncontrolling, self-giving, “boundless love” of God, Haught argues. It is a sign of God’s infinite love of the world that he allows it to be, much as a parent enables a child’s autonomy. “A more directive, dictatorial deity might bring the universe to completion in one magical moment.” Such a world might have greater stability and fewer tragic elements, “But what a bland, lifeless, storyless world that would be” (Haught 2007, 54–55).
What does appreciation of these features of the natural world imply for ecological ethics? Haught is less clear on this point. Like many ecotheologians influenced by Teilhard, he sees humans as part of the “great work,” or great story of God’s creation. Realizing our embeddedness in this great story revitalizes ethical engagement and discourages environmentally destructive practices. Humans play a significant role in “renewing and extending” creation into the future (Haught 2010, 147). Haught interprets the cosmos as akin to an unfinished, unperfected but compelling narrative and understands God as beckoning us – and the universe as a whole – toward a future of undefined promise. God “arrives from out of the future to give new life to the creation and fresh hope to human history” (Haught 2010, 135). Haught believes that this conception of a universe oriented toward future fulfillment and completion can ground ecological-ethical responsibility, but it could just as well undermine it, since humans may place responsibility for the fate of nature in God’s hands. It is also questionable whether Haught’s future-oriented universe is scientifically coherent. His claim that nature is most intelligible with reference to a metaphysics of the future implies that current scientific knowledge – based upon present experimentation, as well as the causal efficacy of the past – is unreliable at best.
Science as the source of a rich narrative, a “story of the universe,” resonates with many Christian thinkers. Like Haught, environmental philosopher and theologian Holmes Rolston III, considered by many to be the founder of environmental ethics, likens nature to a story whose meaning acquires greater depth with the advent of Darwinian theory: “One reason that evolution is a much richer and more welcome theory than was the former belief in fixity of species is that it makes possible vaster depths of story” (Rolston 2006, 275). Rolston sees “systemic” processes such as speciation, predator–prey interactions, and other ecosystem dynamics as productive of higher values, even though (or precisely because) these processes often entail suffering for individual organisms. In some of his writing, Rolston grafts these ideas onto a central Christian paradigm of “cruciform nature” where suffering is generative of values in the system as a whole. Rolston cites examples of the intelligence, beauty, and speed that is achieved by predator species in the evolutionary process and argues that much of what is valuable in nature could not have occurred in the absence of predation. Predation is an instance of value capture rather than value loss: the prey organism’s life is lost, but at the species level both predator and prey gain. The predatory process allows species “to rise higher on the trophic pyramid, funded by capturing resources from below for greater achievements in sentience, cognition and mobility” (Rolston 1992a, 254). As for the prey, its species too “may gain as the population is regulated, as selection for better skills at avoiding predation takes place” (Rolston 1992a, 254).
By locating the value of evolution in systems rather than (only) in individual organisms, Rolston argues, we can see nature’s narrative not as one of unmitigated or pointless pain but one of “suffering through to something higher” (Rolston 2006, 145). This accords well with the Christian tradition which never eschews suffering as a means of achieving divine purposes: “The way of nature,” Rolston argues, “is the way of the cross” (2006, 146). Beyond the continuous production of systemic values in nature that are driven by pain and other “disvalues,” there is no further redemption for organisms, and no perfected state against which the present natural world is to be judged. Rolston resists any censuring of nature with reference to ideals of its past or future: “A peaceable natural kingdom, where the lion lies down with the lamb … is a cultural metaphor and cannot be interpreted in censure of natural history” (Rolston 1992b, 131). Biblical injunctions to feed hungry persons do not require feeding hungry animals in nature. Because Rolston believes that suffering is not necessarily contrary to the intentions of the Creator, he endorses a largely noninterventionist environmental ethic. Interventions in “wild” nature are warranted primarily when human past interventions have compromised or disrupted nature’s functioning, but we do not intervene to protect individual organisms from the forces of natural selection and ecosystem interactions, though they involve pain, hunger, and disease. Seen from a systemic standpoint, pain in natural contexts is instrumental, not pointless, even though it may not benefit the individual organism who suffers. Critics charge Rolston with setting up too rigid a distinction between nature and culture, but his arguments offer guidelines not found in much of ecotheology regarding when we ought and ought not to intervene in the suffering of nonhuman animals.
A movement gaining great momentum within ecotheology, and with the scientifically literate public, is the Universe Story (variously called The Great Story and The New Story). Some offshoots of this movement go by the name Epic of Evolution, and its proponents range from atheists to religious naturalists to more or less traditional Christians. I focus here primarily on figures who have emerged within the Christian tradition, but as some general background will suggest, the movement has a much broader reach. The central figure in this movement is Thomas Berry, a Roman Catholic priest who was strongly influenced by Teilhard’s work, as well as Eastern philosophy and religion, Native American religions, and the science of cosmology. Berry characterized himself as a “geologian” – a historian of the earth and earth processes. The New Story tells the scientific narrative of the universe – the whole, unfolding cosmogenesis – in mythopoeic form. Because the Universe Story is proffered as a common creation myth for all life and all cultures, Berry and his co-author (cosmologist Brian Swimme) avoid the strongly Christian language of Teilhard. We find ourselves in a new “ecozoic age” in which the universe, in the form of humans, has become conscious of itself. This story allows us to know our place in the universe, to experience profound kinship with all life, and to discern our obligations to safeguard the future unfolding of the great story. Each of our lives comprises a personal evolution embedded within the great cosmic unfolding. The Universe Story thus confers meaning to individual lives while reminding us that, from the grand perspective of the cosmos, it makes little sense to think of our species as having dominion over earth. Since Berry’s death in 2009 at age 94, his work has been carried forward most notably by Mary Evelyn Tucker, a theologian with expertise in Confucianism and founder of the Forum on Religion and Ecology. Tucker has teamed up with Brian Swimme to create a documentary film called Journey of the Universe that “draws together scientific discoveries in astronomy, geology, biology, ecology, and biodiversity with humanistic insights concerning the nature of the universe … to inspire a new and closer relationship with Earth in a period of growing environmental and social crisis.”3
The idea that scientific narratives of nature have mythic potential and ethical import is integral to the work of some ecotheologians. However, the core idea of these movements – captured in the phrase “the epic of evolution” – can be traced to sociobiologist and entomologist E. O. Wilson. The phrase appears in his Pulitzer Prize-winning On Human Nature (1978) and in Consilience (1999). “The epic of evolution is probably the best myth we will ever have” Wilson argues (1978, 201). Wilson’s phrase is featured prominently on a variety of web sites advocating the Epic of Evolution and the Universe Story. Though Wilson has often characterized science and religion as competitors for explanatory power – a struggle he predicts science will eventually win – his phrase has been appropriated by many who want to see reconciliation between science and religion (as opposed to religion superseded by science). One of the most prominent advocates of a sacralized epic of evolution – if prominence can be gauged by media attention – is Michael Dowd, a conservative Christian pastor turned evolutionary “evangelist.” Along with his wife, science writer Connie Barlow, Dowd tours the country in a van decorated with symbols of a Jesus fish kissing a Darwin fish.4 Together they spread the gospel of evolution, and host “evolutionary revivals” for audiences that include children and adults, in both secular and religious venues (ranging widely over the more moderate Christian denominations).
Dowd’s book Thank God for Evolution (2008) encourages people to see the meaning of their lives within the context of the sacred narrative of evolution. Like Berry before him, Dowd is influenced by thinkers such as Teilhard but also by contemporary work in evolutionary biology and psychology. He combines insights from evolutionary theorists who are often engaged in heated disputes with one another over the details of evolutionary processes: Richard Dawkins and Simon Conway Morris, for example, or E. O. Wilson and Stephen Jay Gould. Dowd writes glowing reviews of Dawkins’s work – he seems to regard Dawkins’s The Greatest Show on Earth (2009) as a sort of companion book to Thank God for Evolution – and he counts among his favorite evolutionary psychologists Stephen Pinker and David Sloan Wilson, from whom he draws, respectively, his views about our unchosen animal nature and the general trajectory of cooperative social arrangements in evolution. Dowd enthusiastically embraces evolutionary psychology’s potential to explain human failings that have traditionally been blamed on sin or Satan – drug, food, and sex addictions, infidelity, impulses to cruelty – as well as gender differences and other inherited tendencies “deeply rooted in our reptilian brain” (Dowd 2008, 171). “From a science-based, evolutionary perspective, there is no place for belief in a literal Satan” he notes; “nevertheless, personalizing or relationalizing the forces of evil – especially those within us – can be helpful, whether or not we choose to use the words Satan or the Devil” (Dowd 2008, 169).
Perhaps the more pressing question is whether there is any place in this account for belief in a literal God. Dowd has drawn fire from some Christians for his support of the new atheists. Dowd’s internet essay titled “Thank God for the New Atheists” depicts Dawkins and Sam Harris as prophets of God who “call us into right relationship with our time” and with “Reality.”5 Judging by Dawkins’s commentary on forms of religious naturalism based in scientific narratives, it seems unlikely that he would return Dowd’s compliments. Dawkins has taken scientists to task – notably, biologist and epic of evolution advocate Ursula Goodenough – who resort to religious language to express feelings of wonder and awe, when they do not believe in a supreme being, an afterlife, or any of the trappings of traditional religion. “As far as I can tell,” Dawkins writes in A Devil’s Chaplain, “my ‘atheistic’ views are identical to Ursula Goodenough’s ‘religious’ ones. One of us is misusing the English language, and I don’t think it’s me” (Dawkins 2003, 146). What Dawkins dismisses as “neo-deistic pseudo-religion” (Dawkins 2003, 146) would likely encompass Dowd’s worldview as well, as Dowd often equates God with a great “wholeness” or the universe itself.
Regarding questions of ecological ethics, Dowd’s account, like Thomas Berry’s, aims to create a sense of belonging with the universe, to motivate responsible behavior and appropriate moral sensibilities toward all life. An important upshot of the sacred story is the recognition of our true selves as an expanded self, undifferentiated from our environment. Echoing the insights of deep ecology, Dowd argues that “what we imagine as our environment is actually not ‘out there’ separate from us. Rather, each one of us in inextricably linked to vast, ancient, and potent cosmological, geological, and biological processes. … Earth is my larger self” (Dowd 2008, 290). Great Story cosmology tells us that whatever we do to the earth we do to our Self (248).
Conclusion: Science and the Future of Christianity
The rise of Christian environmentalism in the last several decades might be characterized as a story of disenchantment and re-enchantment. That is, the impetus for this movement can be traced to the widespread perception that the natural world has been systematically disenchanted – stripped of value, purged of sacred, awesome, or wondrous dimensions. Since science and religion are both deemed culpable for nature’s disenchantment, and since there is little consensus as to which is more culpable and why, options for re-enchantment continue to emerge from both scientific and religious perspectives – and sometimes from combinations of both. Which of these major forces – science or religion – has the potential to recapture awe and wonder, and to instill a sense of connection to other life forms and the universe generally? As I see it, some form of this question drives much of the current discussion about science, religion, and the environment. Writers like Richard Dawkins and E. O. Wilson seek to persuade us that science provides all the wonder, awe, and meaning we shall ever need: “the true evolutionary epic, retold as poetry, is as intrinsically ennobling as any religious epic” (Wilson 1999, 265). Scientific forms are superior to religious forms of wonder, because scientific wonder is grounded in empirical realities or evoked by an increasingly comprehensive understanding of the structure of our universe (Dawkins 1998; Wilson 1999). As more and more religious believers are persuaded that science does indeed have the potential to weave powerful narratives in mythopoeic language with universal appeal and ethical import, what will become of traditional faiths such as Christianity? Is religion even necessary for such forms of enchantment? The answer depends in part on how one defines religion. Dawkins sees all religious belief as delusional and has made clear his hope that reason will prevail (2006b). Some scholars of religion believe that a science-inspired, global form of civic “green religion” that stresses “ecological interdependence, an affective connection to the earth as home and to nonhumans as kin” may gain ascendance over traditional faiths not easily reconciled with science (Taylor 2010, 196–197).
As religious environmentalists turn to science for materials from which to construct a new mythology, it is worth remembering that science is not the same thing as nature. One need not be an opponent of science to appreciate that the forms of wonder it generates, and the knowledge it produces, may or may not be conducive to positive feelings of connection with or ethical behavior toward the natural world. Rachel Carson, who was no enemy of science, would remind us that wonder in science may come at the expense of natural and human wellbeing. Some Christians, moreover, would want to remind us that God is not the same thing as nature, either. Although the trend in Christian environmentalism has, on the whole, been toward nondualism of spirit and matter or reconceptualization of God as inseparable from natural processes, some Christian environmentalists retain very sharp distinctions between the Creator and the Creation. One such example is the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN), a conservative Christian organization promoting “creation care” modeled on the teachings of Jesus and applied to issues of environmental justice and climate change.6 EEN affirms belief in a transcendent God who remains wholly other to his Creation and they remain vigilant against idolizing the latter. The natural world deserves our care simply because it is the work of God and belongs ultimately to God. For the many Christians who are not also scholars of religion, such an approach to environmental problems may have far greater common-sense appeal than abstruse theories of academic theologians or scientists. For the present time at least, Christians concerned about environmental issues have a wide range of options from which to choose.
Notes
1 For a discussion of Carson and other nature writers and environmentalists who exemplify green spirituality, see Taylor (2010). Carson’s environmental commitments were strongly influenced by her Presbyterian upbringing. See Sideris (2008).
2 The similarity to ID is particularly apparent in some of process theologian David Ray Griffin’s work.
3 Film description available at http://www.journeyoftheuniverse.org/synopsis/.
4 A cancer diagnosis in 2009 led to the canceling of many of Dowd’s speaking engagements.
5 Available at http://www.everydaychristian.com/blogs/post/7748/.
6 EEN campaigns against sport-utility vehicles with advertisements asking “What Would Jesus Drive?”
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Haught, John. 2003. Deeper than Darwin. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Haught, John. 2007. Darwin and Contemporary Theology. Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology, 11(1), pp. 44–57.
Haught, John. 2010. Making Sense of Evolution. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox.
Hay, Peter. 2002. Main Currents in Western Environmental Thought. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
McFague, Sallie. 1997. Super, Natural Christians: How We Should Love Nature. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress.
Merchant, Carolyn. 1980. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row.
Northcott, Michael. 1996. The Environment and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rolston, Holmes, III. 1992a. Disvalues in Nature. The Monist, 75, pp. 250–278.
Rolston, Holmes, III. 1992b. Wildlife and Wildlands. In Dieter Hessel, ed. After Nature’s Revolt. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, pp. 122–143.
Rolston, Holmes, III. 2006. Science and Religion: A Critical Survey. West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press.
Ruether, Rosemary Radford. 1994. Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Ethic of Earth Healing. San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins.
Sears, Paul. 1962. Ecology – a Subversive Subject. Bioscience, July, pp. 11–13.
Sideris, Lisa. 2008. “The Secular and Religious Sources of Rachel Carson’s Sense of Wonder.” In Lisa Sideris and Kathleen Dean Moore, eds. Rachel Carson: Legacy and Challenge. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, pp. 232–250.
Taylor, Bron. 2010. Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
White, Lynn, Jr. 1967. The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis. Science, 155(3767), pp. 1203–1207.
Wilson, E. O. 1978. On Human Nature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wilson, E. O. 1999. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York: Vintage.
Further Reading
Dawkins, Richard. 2006. The God Delusion. London: Bantam. Dawkins’s statement on religious faith as “belief without evidence” and arguments against the existence of God hypothesis.
Sideris, Lisa. 2003. Environmental Ethics, Ecological Theology, and Natural Selection. New York: Columbia University Press. Examines the neglect or distortion of evolutionary theory in Christian ecotheology.
Swimme, Brian and Berry, Thomas. 1992. The Universe Story. San Francisco, CA: Harper. A mythopoeic account of the complete history of our universe.
Taylor, Bron, ed. 2005. Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature. London: Continuum. Definitive, multicultural guide to the religion–nature interface, including new religious movements and green spirituality.