Climate Change, Apocalypticism, and Christian Failure—Part 3: Liberal Inaction
September 17, 2022 § 2 Comments
So conservative Christian doctrine holds that the wilderness is a place of temptation, nature is virtually synonymous with sin, and the Creator, not the creature, is to be worshipped, per Paul; and anyway, it will all be destroyed in an immanent apocalypse, just as is it deserves. “Oh sinner man, where ya gonna run to . . .” goes the African American spiritual—“well, I ran to the forest but the forest was a-burnin’, ran to the forest was a-burnin’ . . ., on that judgment day.”
Meanwhile, the liberal Christian answer—earth stewardship theology—holds that creation is utterly good, per Genesis, and destroying it is a sin. However, the Christian communities who might actually act on their stewardship mandate, who care about climate change and might do something about it, don’t actually care enough to do more than wring their hands, it seems. I think I see several reasons for this.
First, the gospel of Jesus is all about justice for the (human) oppressed, but it has basically nothing to say about justice for animals, plants, ecosystems, the climate, or the planet, at least not in any clear way. And if Jesus doesn’t talk about it, then why should we care so much? Meanwhile, Jesus was himself an apocalyptic, a truth that many liberal Christians choose to ignore. His “Little Apocalypse” in Mark 13 and its parallels in Matthew and Luke are not as cosmic as Revelation, but they have their share of human suffering and a remnant surviving. Not long before delivering that sermon, he had actually cursed an innocent fig tree.
Second, I think that many liberal Christians may be shy of apocalyptic thinking, even now when the real thing is happening right in front of us, because of a kind of cognitive/theological dissonance—it’s scriptural, yes, so theoretically we should take it seriously, but the fundamentalists take it so far down an unhinged path that it’s nerve-wracking and difficult to talk about it even in a reasonable way, for fear of association, and we don’t like what it says.
Third, this thing is so big. What are you going to do that makes a difference about climate change? Only truly radical transformation will make a difference. And the changes required will have to take place at every level, from the individual household up to meta-national corporations and nation states, which, frankly, isn’t going to happen. Closer to home, that means congregations will have to reimagine themselves as households with their role to play in completely restructuring how we live on this earth.
All this will require down-sizing sacrifice—our sacrifice, not Christ’s. One of my definitions of “liberal” is a politics that takes its analysis and action up to, but not past, the point at which it threatens its own status quo. Will liberal Christian (or Quaker) communities commit to the sacrifices that will be required of us? I suspect not, not until the apocalypse is upon us and we have no choice, when drought, famine, heat, storms, and war threaten our own status quo.
The modern liberal Christian answer to ecological devastation is earth stewardship theology, the belief that we don’t own creation, God does (“the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof”) and we are just his caretakers, that it is a sin to be bad caretakers, and that the proper structure for practicing stewardship is covenant, binding and reciprocal promises and responsibilities between ourselves, our God, and the land we live on. But what are the terms of this covenant, in what ways is it binding, and where do we see it actually happening?
It’s been sixty years since Rachel Carson published Silent Spring and Christian theologians began responding to the crisis she described with their earth stewardship theology. Sixty years and it still hasn’t reached seminary curricula and spiritual formation programs in any meaningful way, or, by consequence, the parish pulpit and congregational practice, let alone our spirituality and forms of worship.
A final reason for this failure of liberal Christians to deal with climate change in a meaningful way so far, I suspect, is that even liberal Christianity sees itself as a system of belief, rather than as a vehicle for direct experience of God. Christian belief systems are, by definition, built on scripture as foundation, and especially on Christian scripture, and most especially, on Paul. Where is climate change in the Bible and in the Christian message it gives rise to?
The only way to get real about climate change is to refocus on experience rather than belief, letting go of the Bible as the ultimate source of revelation at least enough to experience something else. But what—experience what?
In the next post, I want to look at the nature of Christian religious experience to see what hope might lie there.
Then I want to explore the possible Quaker contributions.
Through the Flaming Sword 
The situation is bleak indeed as you describe. But we must not despair. We actually can’t afford to. We don’t have that luxury. The core problem, it seems to me, is not Christianity or the Bible but Materialism (the philosophy) and international corporate power devoted as it is to neoliberalism. This should be our focus, surely. Neoliberalism needs eradicating (not amelioration or ‘humanising’); and all our activism, in my view, is best directed towards that aim.
For me the most important statement in this post is: “even liberal Christianity sees itself as a system of belief, rather than as a vehicle for direct experience of God.” If Friends have a role to play that might have an impact on awareness of the looming catastrophe it will arise in ministry that originates in and promotes Experiential Faith and Practices.
Am I hopeful? Nope.