Pastoral Suggestions for Christian Ethics inside Climate Injustice

Pastoral Suggestions for Christian Ethics inside
Climate Injustice

Rev. Douglas Olds (all rights reserved)

12 November 2018

As global society continues its descent into atmospheric disruption and climate change, we in the Church are tasked with discerning God’s will with regards to an appropriate relationship with nature and with the victims of climate injustice. Our station is as God’s trustees inside the natural world.  Trusteeship, which I believe better conveys the Hebrew idea of radah in Gen. 1.28 traditionally translated as “dominion”—trusteeship incorporates the ideas of stewardship found in Jesus’ parables’; creation care; and a mutual fiduciary relationship between God and humanity that requires human “faithkeeping” for the sake of the poor and the unborn.  Trusteeship is human faith’s reciprocal responsibility to keep God’s faith in us as we abide in nature and take only a justifiable portion of its fruits.  Trusteeship maintains the life-giving sufficiency of nature for sharing its fruits with the poor and for future generations.  Christian society is grossly failing in its trusteeship designated by God inside of our household in nature.  Environmental racism, climatological injustice, and intergenerational deprivation and exclusion from earth’s provident core all are afflictions of human brokenness, fear and greed. The most immediate fruits of nature being abused and over-extracted are the primary life-giving sources of water and air. 

Idolatry is the sin against God for which no one can make human intercession.  Despite our continued prayers against the crisis of Climate change and injustice, our intercessions with God are NOT apparently working.  I believe that God is angry—very angry--with idolatry behind the current structure of our political economy of extraction and combustion at the expense of the global poor, minorities, developing world women, the young, and the unborn.

I assert that the Church needs a way to crack open social and individual consciences that deny and passively accept without resistance the extractive and carbon-intensive economy that is ruining our natural household and children’s future. The word like as a fire, the hammer that breaketh the rock (Jer 23.29) of our passivity and denial is the forceful and prophetic charge of idolatry against the ongoing evil of extraction/fracking, rampant combustion heedless of environmental and social costs, and climate Injustice.

So what are we to do? I submit we must “Recognize this emergency for what it is, the shattering interruption of our ordinary priorities and projects, the shock of our lives jolting all … to discern and give [our] own signal contributions toward turning this gigantic ship that is our shared Western economic system.”[3]

I intend to convey three applications for the current Climate Injustice crisis: 1) to stimulate individual lifestyle changes that bring on decarbonization and more focused trusteeship of nature without waiting for others or society to act first. By this, we can make a personal difference, model and witness to others the need for virtue development, and set the conditions for the Holy Spirit to bring about social change.  2) to name the combustion-powered extractive economy as a human-fabricated idol, and frame it as the primary example of the broken human relationship with God and God’s creation. And 3) to suggest that traditional Christian concerns which subordinate nature to human utilitarian and economic interests are countered by the Psalms (esp. 148) that endow natural creatures with God’s love and situate them no less than humanity as givers of God’s praise. This is nature’s intrinsic value beyond its use to humankind.

The postmodern neglect of traditional moral language of God’s anger at sin and idolatry--and a social conscience enfeebled from the moral gout derived from combustion fueled lifestyles--has enabled and promoted run-amok violations of human trusteeship of nature and justice to proceed.  Secular ethical resources are at an impasse in cracking open our conscience on the issue of climate injustice so that meaningful social and personal change results. Ethical arguments are never-resolving about who is responsible--whether it is individuals or nations, at what point in history responsibility and climate debts to others began accruing, how justly to share the burden of climate debts, how justly to proceed with a blend of greenhouse gas emission reduction and costly adaptation to continuing environmental changes.  It is time for the Church to recover its moral nerve and move forcefully to mediate secular and social ethical impasses, to enhance and enable its Ecological and Atmospheric witness.  We the Church need to step up with a leading voice to resist and roll back the combustion economy, to combat its delusions and idolatry. And we need to match our voice with the integrity of our decarbonizing personal lifestyle and consumer practices. For Whosoever herds ashes rather than seeks nature’s peace will surely be confounded by a coming whirlwind.

My takeaway from SR 15 of the IPCC released on October 8 is that ecological destruction will continue to get worse over the next 30 years even if we immediately implement the Paris Agreement reductions of Greenhouse Gas Emission. If we can break the systemic intransigence on this issue, we can stop global warming at 1.5 degrees C IF we act now. But further adverse effects are baked in to the greenhouse effect momentum even in the best case.

I have two pastoral recommendations for dealing with the oncoming onslaught of worsening climate news: hope, like thrift, is a virtue, and as such, must be consciously cultivated so we can keep active. Make a regular inventory of your thankfulness and blessings, counting off your appreciations of natural beauty and harmonies. Second: feel yourself connected to the larger global awakening and movement on this issue of combating climate injustice. If you try to face it stoically and alone, you will be overwhelmed by the accruing bad news. Cultivate the virtues of hope, thrift, and social connection as you fight the good fight against global warming and climate injustice. For strength and guidance, pray to the Holy Spirit.

 [1] Koster, Hilda P. “Trafficked Lands: Sexual Violence, Oil, and Structural Evil in the Dakotas.” In Planetary Solidarity: Global Women’s Voices on Christian Doctrine and Climate Justice, edited by Kim, Grace Ji-Sun and Koster, Hilda P., 155–178. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2017.

[2] Global temperature rise of just 2 degrees Celsius could increase intergroup conflicts (such as civil wars) by over 50 percent.  https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/01/climate-change-and-violence_n_3692023.html?ir=Green&utm_campaign=080213&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Alert-green&utm_content=Title#slide=2364899

[3] Lisa E. Dahill. “Rewilding Christian Spirituality: Outdoor Sacraments and the Life of the World.” Manuscript. 2015 presidential address to the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality, titled “Into Local Waters: Rewilding the Study of Christian Spirituality,” and forthcoming in Fall 2016 in Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality.

[4] Teresa A. Myers et. al. “A Public Health Frame Arouses Hopeful Emotions About Climate Change. Climatic Change 113, 2013.