Check out the above article — cancer causing agents are part of the “fabric” of modern life…and so are heart-disease causing agents…and you can find them both at your local McDonald’s—

Particularly of interest is how important Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring has been in advancing ecological health in our country. Carson’s call to action I found to echo much of what the Biblical and Theological tradition of Christianity and Judaism teaches. She quotes Abraham Lincoln as her inspiration for her speaking out against the injustice against the environment she saw: “To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards out of men.” For those who see evil and not to speak against it is cowardly and evil.

As Steingraber points out: “When a scientific society acknowledges a trade organization as a ‘sustaining associate,’ Carson asked, whose voice do we hear when the society speaks–that of science or of industry?” (17) This is a pressing question for today.

Reflecting on Steingraber’s book I was forced to look more closely at my own life and the death of my mother in law three years ago and the current struggle with brain cancer of my mother’s husband. Cancer can strike simply because of heredity. And this is what I have assumed was the case with my mother’s husband. He has been a vegan for more than 2o years and eats organic. He lives in Maine along the coast, not near an industrial source. But he was a river rafting guide for years–could the paper mill contaminants in the river have given him cancer? Steingraber raises a very provocative point–even if you eat organic food you still can get cancer from the air you breathe, the water you drink, the very soil you walk on!

It is disconcerting to say the least, but there is still hope–hope that practices can change and that they WILL change. I wonder about my own practices…using a computer, a cell-phone, breathing in exhaust from cars near my house…

Cancer is truly an ecological issue–one that should deeply concern the church as well. We desperately need to combat the problem of toxic pollution. It is the sacred obligation of all who claim to live in fellowship with the Creator and Sustainer of the earth to help to eliminate “the threat to human health created by reckless pollution of the living world” (266).

Weather is the biggest factor for me–I still have not found my rain pants and so I cannot bike in the rain (nor do I really want to). And I don’t have mud-flaps on my bike so the water would just shoot up at me. The second biggest hurdle is timing. I don’t have a light on the front and back of my bike so I can’t bike at night. If I can’t get home before dark–then I can’t use the bike. It is really a cultivated habit–for it is after all EXERCISE. And it’s hard to stay disciplined when you don’t ‘feel like it.’

I am happy to be experimenting with this–and it has given me greater confidence to use my bike more often just to get around.

Preamble

We, the African-American Churches represent the historical consequences and exist as the response and result of race segregation and discrimination. Though our institutional life and existence are due to such historical circumstances, our being is of God manifested in the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth. We continue to live in the community of that Spirit.

Traditionally, the mission of our African-American Church reflects responses to the religious, social, economic, and political needs of our people. Accordingly, our Church has combined into one the model of Mary, gathered around the Word in preaching and sacraments, and the model of Martha, serving the basic human survival needs. (Luke 10:38-42). We recognize that presently those needs are intricately linked to the preservation of God’s Holy Creation which we are called to proclaim and protect.

It is that mission which has bought us together at the Black Church Environmental and Economic Justice Summit on December 1-2, 1993 in Washington, D.C. We have come as the leadership of the six historic Black Churches, members of the National Council of Churches of Christ, USA, together with local pastors, and lay leaders of our congregations under the theme: ‘The Earth is the Lords”. We have come to condemn environmental racism which leads to the disproportionate toxic dumping in our community. We have come to condemn the rampant materialism and greed of our society which contributes to the pollution of the earth.

As church leaders, who are committed to the full authority of the scripture, we are aware of the ways in which we, too, have degraded creation and fell short before the glory of God. It is out of that confession that we make the following commitments:

Commitment

We commit ourselves to be vigilant and steadfast as we deepen our resolve as servants of Jesus Christ to be faithful to the leading of the Holy Spirit in living out our environmental justice concerns. In these times, the Spirit leads the Church into an understanding of life as one: inter-related and inter-dependent; and into an understanding that human dominion is not mastery and control of nature, rather dominion is stewardship of creation.
]]> http://underthesacred.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/black-church-declaration-on-environmental-and-economic-justice/feed/ 0 mountainundertheinvisible http://underthesacred.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/episcopal-church-statements-on-caring-for-creation/ http://underthesacred.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/episcopal-church-statements-on-caring-for-creation/#comments Wed, 17 Mar 2010 18:51:58 +0000 Aaron http://underthesacred.wordpress.com/?p=17 ]]>

Episcopal Church Statements on the Environment:

1. General Convention Resolution 1991:

(concurring with a previous Anglican Communion resolution from Lambeth 1988)

“There are four inter-related areas in which the misuse of people or resources poses a threat to the life system of the planet, namely:

a. Unjust distribution of the world’s wealth

b. Social injustice within nations

c. The rise of militarism

d. Irreversible damage to the environment

The council encourages people everywhere to make changes, personal and corporate, in their attitudes and lifestyles, recognizing that the wholeness of living requires a right relationship with God, one’s neighbor and creation.”

2. Environmental Ministries

(as posted on their website www.episcopalchurch.org)

“Care and justice for all God’s creation is a core value of The Episcopal Church.

We are called to respect the kinship of all creation through education, advocacy, and action as part of our faith, and to help heal our disconnection from the rest of God’s creation.”

Nouwen talks about the complimentary aspects of a life of contemplation and ministry. This is a recurring theme for me which I have encountered in various authors including Dorothee Solle. This is a particularly personal theme for me as I’ve been exploring contemplative thinkers like Thomas Merton and Thomas Keating as well as liberationist and social justice oriented thinkers such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Leonardo Boff. Nouwen highlights how “the contemplative life is a life with a vision and the life of ministry is the life in which this vision is revealed to others” (52). I think it is essential to hold the two arms of the Christian life (Worship and Service) together. It is a tendency of course for some to emphasize on arm (contemplation) or the other (ministry).

What Nouwen does is paint a picture of the way these two aspects of the Christian life interact. Contemplation gives birth to service. But also service gives birth to contemplation. It is not a mechanistic relationship, but one of organic communion with God and with the neighbor. Another way of articulating this theme is to describe it as “simplicity and obedience” (57). This is the radical way that Christians are called to live and be in the world. “The absurd life is the opposite of the obedient life” (57).

Wendell Berry’s essay ‘The Pleasures of Eating’ does a wonderful job of showing in vivid language how we are inextricably bound together in the ecosystem of our earth simply through the act of eating. “Eating is an agricultural act” (105) he asserts again and again. Berry reiterates the thesis of Albert Howard emphasizing the web of cause and effect and interconnectedness of the earth’s systems: “we should understand ‘the whole problem of health in soil, plant, animal, and man as one great subject’” (108).

Philosophically Berry argues that only by doing can we know. “Only by growing some food for yourself can you become acquainted with the beautiful energy cycle that revolves from soil to seed to flower to fruit to food to offal to decay, and around again” (108). Knowledge only comes by participation, through involvement. As he states further, “A significant part of the pleasure of eating is in one’s accurate consciousness of the lives and the world from which food comes” (109). This ‘consciousness’ can only come from experience.

Reading David Shi’s essay ‘Epilogue from The Simple Life’ I was struck by an assertion that he mentions almost offhandedly: “All notions of moral excellence and spiritual commitment are by their very nature elitist, since few can live up to their dictates for long…the simple life [is]…destined to be a minority ethic” (144-145, 147). I have been struggling with this very question for a while now: Is the Christian life (truly lived) by it’s nature elitist? In other words, Will there always only be a small minority that truly live according to Jesus’ teachings and have a vital living relationship with God? The answer that I’ve had as my working hypothesis is: Yes. There will always only be a minority of people in the Church and in the world who will live truly virtuously.

But is this not being too pessimistic? The downside of the ‘elitism’ (bad choice of language) is that people can transform this insight into a badge of personal pride. A moral aristocracy can be created. But, I think properly understood it is a teaching that Jesus himself teaches when he describes the human predicament within God’s economy/ecology.  “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matthew 7: 13-14).

The problem is that we have  emphasized Jesus’ great welcome to all while downplaying the level of commitment and dedication that Jesus demands of those who choose to be his disciples. It is a paradox of sorts: All are welcome, all must radically change.

The essays revolve around the basic theme of stewardship broadly conceived. As in his essay on Virtue (60) he calls the current failure to steward the environment to be a failure of virtue–a moral failure. I found very compelling his idea that the economy, in our vice-filled society, is “dependent on sin” (62).

Basic to Orr’s thought is the concept that true intelligence, true virtue, true human mastery is shown in sustainability and the wisdom to act not just in short-sighted self interest but in the interest of the whole–of our whole human/nature ecosystem. As he states in his essay on Education, “True intelligence is long range and aims toward wholeness” (11).

I agree with Orr’s basic thesis which seems to be that morality must be ecological. I wonder how our society can begin to reverse some of the systemic “sins” which we daily participate in.

How can we repent of these sins and produce the “fruits that are in keeping with this repentance?”

So much of our society seems to be unsustainable and out of harmony with the natural cycles of the earth. The Church may be in need of a radical change in vision and practice. How can this be enacted from within the Christian narrative? Do we need to rethink our theology–re-teach our communities?