Christianity in the World Today

Dr. Dieter T. Hessel

This essay, addressing the critical issues and wisdom, is written by a Presbyterian minister and ethicist who directs the ecumenical program on ecology, justice and faith, and is editor of After Nature's Revolt, (fortress press, 1992).¹

The primary challenges and issues facing humanity

Among perennial challenges are the quest for meaningful human existence and the struggle for social justice and peace. Greater scientific and technological power over nature tempts humans to ignore creaturely limits and to make themselves the center of value. Human efforts to achieve inordinate security and comfort actually oppress and destroy other life, offending the source of existence and warping right relationships in earth community. Today, the rich/poor gap has become harsher. more than a billion people lack enough to eat, while another billion misuse resources and overconsume. Militarization brings mass death to the "meek" even as it allows the militarily powerful to retain unjust advantage over the earth's resources for a wealthy few.

Pressing new issues face humanity, including the degradation of the environment on a global scale and the negative impact of exploding human population growth on social systems and other species. The world's religions and governments have also been surprised by a new public health crisis worsened by aids, and by the breakdown of public and private morality, as well as by the failures of common educational systems, in commodified societies. Meanwhile, counterrevolutionary forms of cultural/religious fundamentalism foster crusading intolerance of other faiths or ethnic groups and threaten minority rights. Mature religion and politics, to the contrary, will foster multicultural appreciation, religious tolerance, civil liberties, gender equality and racial justice.

How Christians respond to these issues

First, rethink and reinterpret faith for these times. Pertinent christian faith expresses reverence for the creator, sustainer and redeemer of the cosmos, and corresponding respect for all of the creatures whom god loves and enjoys. Such faith guides compassionate and courageous human living. The norm for spirited humanity is set by Jesus of Nazareth, "pioneer of faith" and "Son of God," whom Christians perceive as reconciler of the world and sovereign of life. His prophetic and healing public ministry inaugurates the kingdom of god. Everyone is invited to enter this commonwealth, a community of shalom and sharing intended to encompass all known races, cultures, species, places. The church's role is to be the ecumenical social body of the crucified-risen Christ, celebrative of god's design, concerned for the well-being of all. Christian worship through word and sacrament and social witness in each locale visibly signify god's reign already operative but not yet fulfilled in history.

Secondly, embody an ethic of covenant faithfulness. a Christian ethics that is: a) based on the biblical story of god's love for creation and covenant with human creatures (humus = "from earth"), and b) responsive to the needs of the time, will foster and embody these values:

• love for human beings everywhere who are equally "created in the image of god," and respect for basic human rights,
• care for the well-being of near and distant neighbors, both human and otherkind, on this home planet,
• justice to the oppressed as well as generosity toward the deprived,
• prophetic denunciation of sin toward neighbor and nature, and idolatry or corruption in personal life and public affairs,
• frugality of lifestyle—neither strictness nor laxity—so that there may be sustainable sufficiency for all,
• nonviolent action to resist exploitation, and cooperative habits of coping with social conflict,
• renewal of community life and cultivation of civil processes for the common good.

Third, examine ambiguities of religious life. Christianity in the late modern era has partially embodied but often contradicted its faith affirmations and moral imperatives. Transformative faith leading toward biophilic harmony has been obscured by domineering or distorting tendencies. Christians have proclaimed "the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit," while acquiescing to racist, sexist, classist, naturist and ecclesiastical practices of domination. The church's emphasis on human rights worldwide has fostered liberation of the oppressed, but is in fragmentary ways captive to individualism, ethnocentrism and popular moralism.

On every continent, Christian communions have been coopted by the forces of destructive nationalism, and even now the ecumenical church remains shamefully divided over issues of gender justice and reproductive rights, added to ancient divisions over faith and order. Moreover, most local congregations lack racial and class heterogeneity, or constructive relations with other faith communities and popular movements for social change.

Nations with christian majorities have relied on military force much more than on peacemaking initiatives and cooperative development. Western economic ethics has favored democratic capitalism over policies and practices of social solidarity and ecological integrity. Newly awakened ecumenical concern for "integrity of creation" is still very anthropocentric and has just begun to explore intrinsic values in nature, or sacred dimensions of the evolutionary story.

Priestly celebrations of grace within nature will see earth, water and wind as sacramental, along with bread, wine and spirit. Prophetic responses to these times will seek "eco-justice"—social and economic equity coupled with ecological integrity and cooperative peacemaking for the sake of earth and people.

Ethical guidance in Christianity

Christians characteristically ask not: "what is the good?" but: "what purposes and patterns of conduct are in keeping with being faithful people of God?" since Pentecost, Christian communities have understood themselves to be people of "the way" (Acts 4:32--35; 18:24--26). The christian way is viewed as consistent with the expectations of the noachic and sinai covenants. A Christian ethical spirituality—"live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of christ"—is expressed in the communion meal and baptism, as well as in public preaching and social practice. The individualistic, bureaucratic and technocratic acids of modernity have corroded commitment to this way; intentional christian communities, though often ignored by mainline churches, have been primary bearers of the tradition.

People of the way have vision, values and virtues that are consistent with the basic themes, though not legal details, of the Hebrew covenant story. Today, Christians and Jews alike are rediscovering wisdom dimensions of covenant ethics, keyed to the rest-and-play sabbath purpose of creation's seventh day. for example, Exodus 23, Leviticus 19 and 25, plus Deuteronomy 15 summarize covenant laws that contain the implicit ecological and social wisdom of herding tribes and primitive agrarians living close to the land. Faithful people give animals frequent "time off" and let the land lie fallow at least once every seven years. Neither neighbors nor nature are to be exploited. earthkeeping humans are responsible for making sure that people, animals and the land have their times of rest, peace and restoration (Exodus 20:8-11; 23:10-12). It is a grand jubilee tradition (Leviticus 25 & 26, Luke 4:16-22) with much contemporary relevance.

Covenant teaching fosters an ethic of environmental care coupled with social justice. Moral responsibility toward land and beasts must be matched by justice toward the poor. An appropriate response to poverty, therefore, involves more than alms-giving; it entails debt relief, gleaning opportunities, equitable redistribution of land, as well as care for "strangers, widows and orphans."

Yet, despite deep appreciation of nature and reverential descriptions in the psalms, in job, in jesus' sermon on the mount, and despite Isaiah's hopeful vision of shalom, which includes a restored creation, scripture is punctuated with sad stories of land coveting and defilement. Some striking Biblical examples of eco-injustice are the tale of Naboth's vineyard (I Kings 21), Solomon's order to cut down the beloved cedars of lebanon to aggrandize Jerusalem (I Kings 5:6-11; Psalms 104:16), and the people's lament at becoming powerless tenant farmers after the return from exile (Nehemiah 5:3-5). Wherever human beings are unfaithful to the eco-social requirements of God's covenant, their idolatrous behavior has devastating consequences (Jeremiah 9:4-11); the land mourns, even the birds die (Hos. 4:3). Even so, there is hope for renewal of the covenant; God continually acts with justice and mercy to redeem creation.

Covenant ethics is concerned with right relationships within the whole web of created interdependency. It views Jesus Christ as the normative clue to faithful and fitting life. "Faithful" means loyal to the cause of God who makes covenant with creation after the flood, through the exodus, and at the incarnation. "Fitting" means practical human action consistent with the kingdom vision and covenant values. Responsible action "fits in" with everything that is going on and that is needed to solve problems. ²

The cross, the central symbol in the new covenant story, signifies God grappling with human sin, accepting and overcoming life's persistent suffering and perpetual perishing, and ultimately creation's comprehensive renewal, including harmonious human living with myriad species of animals and plants (as envisioned by the prophet Hosea 2:18-22). That is not all it means, but Christians can perceive Jesus' crucifixion-resurrection as the deed that reconciles human beings to God, each other and the world of creation—at-onement with nature and society, atunement to what God is doing with us and all other creatures. The gracious, enabling work of Christ brings responsive communities of faith into right relation with God, other people and the larger ecological-social environment with its bio-diversity.

But "developed" and "developing" societies alike have yet to face the limits nature places on polluting economic growth and material consumption, and to adopt an ethic and practice of eco-justice that would keep the earth, achieve justice, build community. This ethic comes into sharp focus in terms of four norms: ecologically sustainable or environmentally fitting enterprise; socially just participation in obtaining sustenance and managing community life; sufficiency as an equitable standard of organized sharing that requires basic consumption floors and ceilings, and solidarity with other people and creatures/companions, victims and allies—in earth community. Observance of each ethical norm reinforces the others, serving the common eco-social good by joining what is socially just with what is ecologically right.

Enriching theological traditions

The covenant theology tradition, going back to Augustine, and behind him to both testaments, has prominence in the preceding portrait of Christianity. But there are several other important Christian approaches, rooted in tradition, which can be viewed as having complementary rather than competing effects on Christian witness in the contemporary world.

One of these is the wisdom tradition of Job, the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the New Testament gospel and epistles of John. Practical folk wisdom among Christians carries on the tradition, which is also folded into Biblical covenant faith and ethics, as we have seen. Suffice it to add here that from the Wisdom perspective, Jesus is understood to be the incarnate Word of God, logos of life and reason -- from the beginning to the end. The prologue to the book of "John" views the logos as involved immanently in the whole of God's creation, enlivening all living things while enlightening all that have such capacity.

Another approach is offered by mature evangelical Christianity (as distinct from crusading fundamentalism). It recognizes that to start and stay on a path of sustainable sufficiency for all requires spiritual conversion—change of heart and repentance moving toward sanctification that must be reinforced in a faithful, nurturing community. Saving grace is the joyous message so characteristic of 19th century Protestant hymnody. The crucial result of Christ's redemptive work is to restore human "mutability"—our ability to respond to God's call and to grow and change toward maturity. This is not possible by human willing alone. The gracious, saving work of Christ is necessary for the flourishing of responsible human activity.

Another Christian approach is the sacramental tradition, fostered by Catholic mystics, and supported in Anglican and Orthodox liturgy. It "ecstatically experiences the divine bodying forth in the cosmos, and beckons us into communion" (as Rosemary Radford Ruether writes in Gaia & God, HarperCollins, 1992). "We must start thinking of reality as the connecting links of a dance in which each part is equally vital to the whole, rather than [using] the linear competitive model in which the above prospers by defeating and suppressing what is below." The resulting ethical spirituality knows the value and transcience of selves in relation to the great Self, the living interdependence of all things, and the joy of personal communion within the matrix of life—a sacred community.

Passionist Fr. Thomas Berry, a contemporary interpreter of the sacramental tradition, recently discussed the question, "What are the conditions for entering into a Viable Future?"

• First condition: Recognize that the universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects. (A theology of stewardship misses the point that communion—deep rapport—is the primary experience.) Earth community is the sacred society where we have complementary manifestations of the divine.
• Second condition: Appreciate that the earth is primary; humans are derivative. So earth-healing comes first. All professions, business, education and religion must focus on the well-being of the whole community.
• Third condition: Come to grips with the fact that in the future nothing much will happen that humans are not involved in, given our numbers and power. This requires human subjectivity in contact with the subjectivity of the world. "All human activities must be judged primarily by the extent to which they generate and foster a mutually enhancing human/earth relationship."

Adequate theological and ethical responses to the environmental challenge will encompass (in a wholistic way) both created reality and human subjectivity. William French of Loyola University, Chicago emphasizes the "need to move beyond dualistic thinking that suggests we must choose between focusing on subjectivity or creation, freedom or natural necessity, historical consciousness or ecological sensitivity" (in Journal of Religion, 1992). Just as subject-centered theology need not turn against creation, critical creation-centered theology need and should not reject the importance of human subjectivity or constructive historical projects.

Adequate theology and ethics will pay close attention to the "view from below" even as it also learns to listen to nature. The feminist or egalitarian insight is catching hold that

Domination of women has provided a key link, both socially and symbolically, to domination of earth; hence the tendency in patriarchal cultures to link women with earth, matter and nature, while identifying males with sky, intellect and transcendent spirit.... The work of eco-justice and the work of spirituality are interrelated, the outer and inner aspects of one process of conversion and transformation ... [involving] a reordering to bring about just and loving interrelationships between men and women, between races and nations, between groups presently stratified into social classes, manifest in great disparities of access to the means of life.³

Poor and indigenous communities of people who are most affected by economic exploitation and environmental destruction have important things to teach us about living in harmony with nature and caring for place. Such communities have priority justice claims on religious, educational, business and political organizations.

Finally, in response to modern physics, biology and ecology, we should note the maturing of a more philosophical and interdisciplinary style of Christian "process thought," as fostered by John Cobb. His thought in *The Liberation of Life* (1981, with biologist Charles Birch) asserts the need for an organic or ecological view of God and reality that does not construe God as a substance isolated from the world. God is inherently related to the world, indwelling all eco-social systems, which by their nature are intrinsically interconnected communities. Rev. Carol Johnston, a student of Cobb, notes that,

"When relations are conceived as inherent, then the person is both influenced by relations with others and influences them. In this context, justice is a matter of the quality of relationships ... characterized by freedom, participation and solidarity. Recognition of inherent relatedness establishes the need to take marginalized people and externalized ecosystems into account.... All entities have a right to be respected appropriate to their degree of intrinsic value and to their importance to the possibility of value in others.4

To cultivate a renewed spirituality that undergirds an ethic of care for earth community is the special obligation of religious leaders, clergy and lay, in these times. Otherwise, many more people will suffer from environmental degradation and social injustice, while numerous special places and wondrous otherkind will not be saved; sooner or later they also will fall to the utilitarian logic of the developers.

Authentic spirituality features awe, respect, humane pace, justice and generosity, not *intensively efficient use of all being, as goes the instrumental logic of modern life and business. Authentic spirituality loves the suffering ones, aspires toward harmony with the wilderness, shows deep respect for the dignity of animals, plants, mountains and waters. Such religion celebrates spirit in creation, inculcates an ethic of genuine care for vulnerable people, creatures, eco-systems, as it appropriates the wisdom of nature and of long-standing communities.

In this web of life, religious people will praise and participate in the "economy of God" on this planetary home, foster loving deeds of eco-justice, build communities that model sufficiency, join with others to envision and move toward reverential, sustainable development (and foster corporate responsibility consistent with this goal). They will also explore urban and rural dimensions of ecology, encourage appropriate technologies at home and abroad, participate in community organizations that are working for environmental and economic justice, while they express integrity in both individual and institutional lifestyle, consistent with a spirituality of creation-justice-peace.

Notes

1. Dieter Hessel also served the national staff of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) for 25 years as coordinator of social education and of social policy development. His most recent book is The Church's Public Role: Retrospect and Prospect; Wm.B. Eerdmans, 1993.

2. See Charles McCoy, "Creation and Covenant: A Comprehensive Vision for Environmental Ethics," in Covenant for a New Creation, CarolS. Robb and Carl J. Casebolt, eds.; Orbis Books, 1991.

3. Ruether, Gaia & God.

4. "Economics, Eco-Justice, and the Doctrine of God," in DieterT. Hessel, ed., After Nature's Revolt; Fortress Press, 1992. Also see Herman Daly and John B. Cobb, Jr., For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future; Beacon Press, rev. edition 1993.