Reading for Comps: An Americanist’s Jeremiad

#4) Food for thought as I read Joel Garreau’s 2010 article “Environmentalism as Religion” from The New Atlantis.  First of all, this is a really helpful article.  It suggests how much (or little) is known in the public media about religious (primarily Christians are mentioned in the article) Americans’ responses to environmentalism.  At one point Garreau says that the ecological movement has been influencing, and even “colonizing” Christianity, as the religion-like value system developed by the movement impacts the value system of certain groups within both Protestant and Catholic Christianity.  I do not disagree that these values systems have been interacting and influencing, but colonizing?

One of the first and best things that I learned in seminary is that there is a treasure trove full of theology that most Christians never come in contact with, on all kinds of topics.  Thankfully, one of those topics is nonhuman creation.  The tradition of St. Francis is important, but he’s not the only Christian who recognized the importance of nonhuman creation to the relationship between humans and God.  This reminds me that this is an avenue that I want to pursue in the dissertation.  Christianity doesn’t need to be colonized.  Lynn White was right in 1967, Christianity has a heck of a lot in its own history to offer to environmentalism.  I am grateful, though, that ecologists and environmentalists have given 20th and 21st century Christians a reason to go back and re-appropriate some of their forgotten creation theologies.

Another thought that occurs to me as I read this great article, is the theme that humans seem to invite science into the policies and standards of society as long as they successfully regulate nonhuman nature.  The moment that mention of human population trends, birth control, or carbon taxes show up – potential policies that (successfully or not) aim to protect humans from themselves – science is decidedly not welcome.  Of course, the process of science is embodied in the persons who engage with it, and not an objective entity that can be calmly ushered in and out of a meeting room.  People make scientific ideas about the environment, about human population, about Creation care, sound productive and healing, or biased and hurtful.  Communication is a key part of this intersection of religion and environmentalism as well.