To Care for Creation by Stephen Ellingson

Author:Stephen Ellingson [Ellingson, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Sociology, Religion, Religion; Politics & State, Religion & Science, Science, Environmental Science
ISBN: 9780226367415
Google: NbScDAAAQBAJ
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2016-08-26T04:09:34+00:00

Bridging across Traditions

Many ecumenical and interfaith REMOs struggle to find a message that will resonate with audiences from several different traditions. Rather than drilling down into a particular tradition and then showing how the tradition provides the requisite scriptural or theological warrants for environmentalism, many REMOs emphasize the shared general values of different religions in their new green ethic. Most commonly, interfaith REMOs talk about at least one of four common ideals or values shared by the three Abrahamic religions: the sacredness of creation; stewardship; justice for the poor or most adversely affected by environmental problems and intergenerational equity. Bea Moorhead, executive director of Texas Interfaith Power and Light (TIPL), summarizes this practice in her response to my question about how she speaks to different kinds of religious groups:

I would say working across all the religious traditions, there are four main reasons that people of faith come back to environmental concerns. One of them is the idea of Genesis, the idea of stewardship; whether you’re a Christian or not, you probably hark back to that idea of stewardship. One of them is the least of these; the idea of the impact on other people of environmental action and degradation, things like that. One of them is inter-generational—equity, which is a broadly held religious concern. . . . And then there is this idea of the holiness of all creation, which is expressed in different ways in different faiths but always is at least sort of suggesting to people that quite apart from anything that has to do with you, we have reason from our religious traditions to think that the creation is important to the Creator just because of itself, its own inherent merit. We look at Job as probably a really good and convenient example of that in the Abrahamic tradition. But the Muslim tradition certainly has a very strong thread of that.40

Moorhead identifies the common ground constituents of TIPL share and argues that these provide the reasons for cooperation and joint action. In her essay for the Sacred Food Project, Clare Butterfield (Faith in Place [FIP]) stresses how the Abrahamic traditions share a common anthropology that must compel Jews, Christians, and Muslims to take on the role of “caretaker for the earth—of steward for the fertility of the earth,” and then connects this to the three religions’ shared teachings about justice for those who are hurt by oppressive, dangerous, and unhealthy agricultural practices and outcomes (for example, the farm workers and consumers made ill by pesticides).41 Butterfield provides scriptural warrants for environmentalism and does so in order to signal an interfaith audience that FIP is aware and respectful of each tradition, and that the shared ideals in their sacred texts should bind them together to promote sustainable agriculture.

A handful of interfaith and ecumenical REMOs touch on the sacredness of creation in their appeals for support and action but then emphasize the environmental issues facing the world. Here the argument is that the scope and seriousness of global environmental problems, especially climate change, transcend religious differences.

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