Christianity and the Climate Crisis: Theological Assets and Deficits

Introduction

This essay examines the complex relationship between North American Christianity and the climate crisis. While machinations on the economic, political, and ideological fronts continue over how to deal with the unfolding catastrophe, Christians also are taking stock of personal, institutional, and theological resources, to address what many believe is the greatest environmental challenge humanity has ever faced. ² This article focuses on theological resources pointed to by both tradition-based and progressive Christianity to address a calamity that threatens humanity’s food security as well as the survival of millions of flora and fauna. ³ It first looks at theological convictions found in statements made by church leaders meant to advance Christian engagement. It then examines the now legendary acerbic attacks made by historian Lynn White in the late 1960s, criticizing these same sorts of theological convictions for actually disabling environmental engagement. Centrally, it then turns to the progressive, eco-theology of Sallie McFague who, while echoing White’s concerns, offers more recent and thorough criticisms of tradition-based Christian theology, focusing especially on its propagating an outdated anthropology and earth-fleeing spiritualities. Constructively, McFague suggests how Christians of the affluent West might live in solidarity with endangered planetary life by embracing theology that is less anthropocentric, less earth-fleeing, and more culturally critical. Finally, the essay focuses on the tragic immediacy of the climate catastrophe, ⁴ suggesting that a North American culture of optimism and consumerism is causing millions to respond with indifference and denial, and that an activist-oriented pessimism may be a more mature and constructive response to the dire situation we now face.

Christian Statements on Climate Change

Though volumes have been written since the 1960s about Christianity’s culpability in environmental neglect, as well as about the resources it harbors to ameliorate such inattention, theological literature is only now emerging focused specifically on climate change. ⁵ This literature falls roughly into two camps: that which affirms environmental themes in scripture and tradition, and that which believes the basic tenets of the faith need to be reformulated. Whereas tradition-based Christianity remains oriented towards a religious ethos of belief in tenets grounded in authoritative tradition and scripture, progressive Christianity is oriented towards re-visioning these tenets in light of core principles of Christian identity, contemporary science, and the broader post-modern culture, to create a more socially engaged Christianity.

Tradition-based Christianity most often grounds its response to climate change on three interrelated biblical mandates laid upon humans as creatures singularly made in the image of God. These are to love God, to love the neighbour, and to be stewards of the earth. The Evangelical Climate Initiative’s (ECI) 2006 statement, for example, involving collaboration of over 300 evangelical leaders in the United States, gives clarion voice to these three mandates:

Christians must care about climate change because we love God the Creator and Jesus our Lord, through whom and for whom the creation was made. This is God’s world, and any damage that we do to God’s world is an offense against God Himself (Gen. 1; Ps. 24; Col. 1:16). Christians must care about climate change because we are called to love our neighbors, to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, and to protect and care for the least of these as though each was Jesus Christ himself (Mt. 22:34–40; Mt. 7:12; Mt. 25:31–46). Christians, noting the fact that most of the climate change problem is human induced, are reminded that when God made humanity he commissioned us to exercise stewardship over the earth and its creatures. Climate change is the latest evidence of our failure to exercise proper stewardship, and constitutes a critical opportunity for us to do better (Gen. 1:26–28). ⁶

Similarly, Pope Benedict XVI’s 2010 message, entitled ‘If You Want to Cultivate Peace, Protect Creation,’ calls for honoring the God-given mandate of stewardship and love of neighbor:

The Book of Genesis, in its very first pages, points to the wise design of the cosmos: it comes forth from God’s mind and finds its culmination in man and woman, made in the image and likeness of the Creator to “fill the earth” and to “have dominion over” it as “stewards” of God himself (cf. Gen 1:28). ⁷

That the ‘design of the cosmos’ culminates in man and woman made in the image of God puts a tremendous responsibility on humans, especially as they now prove to be perpetrators of inconceivable environmental degradation. As we will see, this human-centered assumption stands in stark contrast to an ecological reading of the status of humans as one species among many, interdependent with and interrelated to all other life forms, yet with a special nature-given role in the scheme of things.

A third example of the biblically legitimized special status of humans and their unique role as stewards of the earth is offered by Patriarch Bartholomew of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Here, love of neighbor and caring for nature are required because all of nature is sacred, including humans who have the unique qualities of being inherently rational and moral. He writes,

the natural environment is part of Creation and is characterized by sacredness. This is why its abuse and destruction is a sacrilegious and sinful act, revealing prideful despise toward the work of God the Creator. Humanity, too, is part of this Creation. Our rational nature, as well as the capacity to choose between good and evil, bestow upon us certain privileges as well as clear responsibilities. Unfortunately, however, human history is filled with numerous examples of misuse of these privileges, where the use and preservation of natural resources has been transformed into irrational abuse and, often, complete destruction, leading occasionally to the downfall of great civilizations. Indeed, the care for and protection of Creation constitutes the responsibility of everyone on an individual and collective level. ⁸

Each of these, and most other official church statements, whether Protestant, Roman Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox, share the same basic assumption: the natural world is a gift from God to be cared for by humans, inclusive especially of loving the human neighbor. They admonish Christians to recognize, mitigate, and help the most vulnerable, human and extra-human, to adapt to the life-diminishing threats of global warming.

Yet there is a problem. The problem is with the assumption that an all-powerful God created humans at the beginning of time to have ascendency over the rest of nature and that the natural world exists therefore as a gift to humans to be used for their sustenance, fecundity, and enjoyment. Critics argue that this assumption, which is central to the Judeo-Christian, mythological narrative, inevitably diminishes Christian environmental engagement generally, and now, most critically, attention to the climate crisis in particular. From the perspective of contemporary evolutionary science, critics point out this assumption is short of truth and is now proving pernicious in a world threatened by environmental degradation.

A classic example of taking this mythological storyline to task for its creating an ethos of nature-disengagement came from the historian Lynn White, who, in 1967, published a widely read and debated article entitled ‘The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis.’ Here, White attacked Christianity from a perspective outside of the governing mythological conviction that posits a creator God giving one species dominance in the order of creation. By Christianity making this assumption, and by having it adopted by Western culture at large, Christianity became ‘the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen’ in its assumption ‘that it is God’s will that man exploit nature for his proper ends.’ ⁹ He concludes that ‘until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man,’ and alternatively affirm the autonomy and equality of all parts of nature, the ‘orthodox Christian arrogance towards nature’ will prevail in science, technology and Western culture at large, such that any solution to the current ecological crisis will be forestalled. ¹⁰ For White, the subtle and complex merging of Enlightenment assumptions about the supremacy of human reason with the deeply entrenched belief in divinely ordained human ascendency has led to the unrelenting modern assault on the natural world.

White especially criticized biblical texts, such as Genesis 1:26–29, that affirmed humankind’s unique status of being made in the ‘image of God,’ of being given ‘dominion’ over the earth, seas, and all creatures therein, and of being mandated to ‘subdue the earth’ by multiplying and filling it. Two other texts with an anthropocentric perspective were pointed to: Genesis 9:1–3, in which all living things – in a state of fear and dread – are ‘delivered’ into human hands and Psalm 8:5–8 where humans are applauded for being crowned with honor and glory for being made a little less than God in the order of creation.

The degradation of the earth’s ecosystems and the portending extinction of close to one third of all living things at the hands of humans makes this singing biblical praise of humans now appear tragically ironic. Without descending into misanthropy, one can say that whatever the complex nuances of interpretation, the overall cultural trajectory created by these texts has led Westerners, Christian and otherwise, to assume humans stand above nature, and that nature’s primary purpose is to serve humans. On the climate front, this approach means that the oil we burn – on which industrial civilization is based – is explicitly or implicitly assumed to be divinely ordained for human use, and the aerial ocean into which we deposit our post-combustion residue a God-given repository for heat-trapping gaseous waste. The same rationale applies to extracting huge coal reserves that now hastens the climate disaster, given that supplies are almost limitless and burning it releases twice as much CO₂ as oil and eight times as much as natural gas. ¹¹

As one might expect, there are significant Christian voices of dissent against this human-centered myopia, but they seem to have marginal effect in preventing the vast majority of middle-class Christians, and non-Christians, from perpetuating an outdated anthropocentrism. ¹² Tradition-based Christianity, therefore, with a well-developed ethic of earth-stewardship, grounded in ancient texts, remains hampered by habits of theological thought that make it difficult to face the full scope of what Australian author Clive Hamilton and others anticipate will be a ‘radically transformed future … much more hostile to the survival and the flourishing of life.’ ¹³ In short, even with movements for ecological justice across the spectrum of North American Christianity, there remain deep structures of belief that limit traditional Christianity’s capacity to grasp, and to address, the magnitude of the unfolding catastrophe.

Sallie McFague’s Critique

Eco-theologian Sallie McFague offers an articulate and powerful critique of these conventional anthropological assumptions, believing they stand in the way of an ecologically informed, activist Christianity. Her aim is to inspire Christians to think and act in new ways in the face of the unprecedented challenge of climate change by viewing humans not as a species allocated by divine fiat the elevated status of an overseeing resource extractor but as one species among many in an interdependent and interrelated nexus of planetary and cosmic evolutionary unfolding. Speaking to Christians and non-Christians alike, McFague writes:

Were this feature of the scientific picture to become a permanent and deep aspect of our sensibility, it would be the beginning of an evolutionary, ecological, theological anthropology that could have immense significance in transforming how we think about ourselves as well as our relations and responsibilities toward other human beings, other species, and our home, planet earth. ¹⁴

Two Anthropologies: Individualistic and Ecological

To promote this change in Christian anthropological thinking, McFague criticizes the ‘individualistic anthropology’ solidly embedded in Christianity and Western culture at large. She forthrightly calls this anthropology a lie, with human-induced climate change its most recent exemplar. In contrast, she argues that the science-based assumptions making up an ‘ecological anthropology’ point to what really is the case: that humans are neither principal tenants nor owners of planet earth, but one species among many, interrelated and interdependent. ¹⁵ Hence, she proceeds to interrogate unexamined assumptions about who humans are that enfeeble Christian responses to the climate emergency as well as in ‘Western, democratic, capitalist, individualistic societies’ at large. ¹⁶ She writes:

Western societies have spent the last three hundred years internalizing an anthropology of radical individualism; we must now internalize a profoundly different anthropology if our planet is to survive and flourish. While it is difficult to imagine, let alone internalize – and live – this new anthropology, nowhere is it more evident that we must do so than with the issue of climate change. ¹⁷

She points out that this individualistic anthropology makes the following erroneous assumptions detrimental to environmental sustainability. It assumes, for example, that each person has the right to maximize personal pleasure and gain, that each is only responsible for their own life (by working hard and competing for scarce resources), that each is free to treat others (human and extra-human) as means to greater self-sufficiency, and finally that each should be rewarded for achievement without consideration of impacts on other people or the extra-human world. ¹⁸ Though most often assumed benign, these assumptions are clearly false according to ecological reality, have shaped a culture that rarely affirms the need to distribute ‘basic resources so all might live decently,’ ¹⁹ and taken together make up what McFague labels as the modern ‘dream of individualistic glory.’ ²⁰ In fact, each is a component of a quite relative, socially constructed picture of human life particular to the last four hundred years of modern Western history. To elaborate, McFague looks at two historically intertwined factors promoting this illusory dream of individualism. One is the Christian preoccupation with individual, otherworldly salvation, which intensified in the post-reformation era, ²¹ and the other is the emergence of modern secularism and its enamourment with ‘individualism, consumerism, and technology.’ ²²

The Christian Dream of Individualistic Glory

McFague asserts that a significant part of the post-reformation theological heritage of the last four centuries has given rise to the prominence of a ‘sky down,’ individualistic Christian anthropology. Here, Christians think of themselves as a little lower than angels, primarily duty-bound to God, secondarily to other humans, and seldom to the earth and its creatures. Hence, the natural world became the mere backdrop to the salvation drama between God and humans, with ecosystems and biotic communities marginalized. Put simply, human history became ascendant over nature which is, in fact, the sustaining womb of life.

McFague therefore invites Christians, Protestants especially (for whom the lone individual before God was and is the dominant image), to abandon this disregard for nature and invites them to see humans as one species among many, as earthlings and planetary citizens, and not as heaven-bound children of an otherworldly being. ²³ She encourages rejection of the toxic assumption that this earth is merely a temporary residence where Christians wait before returning to their true home with God in heaven. To counter this earth-fleeing sentiment, she proposes nurturing a post-modern, anthropological sensibility not dissimilar to what was present in medieval Christian culture and that engendered a felt sense of being at home on earth. She writes:

The medieval picture … was in many ways a successful model integrating God, humans, and the world, with nature as symbolic of God and hence as a way to God. It brought these three crucial elements of any worldview into a coherent unity: people lived in close proximity to other animals and plants while at the same time seeing them as emblems of God ²⁴

Her call is therefore for a Christian evolution of consciousness that echoes a return to a non-dual, embodied sense of belonging to the earth and its life forms. This in turn requires a collective deconditioning of the Western sense of human superiority and separateness, and the development of an alternative, inner sense of caring friendliness towards other living things and the earth itself.

The emergence of modern secularism is a second factor in the emergence of the current dream of individualistic glory. Here, Protestant individualism combined with the ‘dualistic mechanism’ of the seventeenth-century scientific revolution to erode even further, in the post-Reformation era, the medieval felt sense of being embedded in nature, interdependent and interrelated with the earth and its life forms. ²⁵ Humans were now assumed to be singularly unique subjects in an objectified world that existed solely to satisfy human needs and desires. ²⁶ The result was a subject-object dualism that assumed human superiority because of reason, and thus the ascendancy of human subjectivity over an objectified nature. In turn, nature lost its long-standing status as the dominant significant other with its own subjectivity, needs and wants, and in relationship to which human wellbeing had been gauged. What hence emerged was the Western arrogant eye that objectified, distanced, and ignored the subjectivity of extra-human others, thus legitimizing control and subjugation. ²⁷ While for most of human history the earth was considered full of interdependent life-forms as subjects, and as a subject herself (mother earth), it was now viewed as a machine with many parts, external to humans, and to be used for human pleasure, comfort, and profit.

McFague adds further that the writings of Rene Descartes played an especially important role in establishing the secular roots of this modern, individualistic trajectory. Critical of Descartes’ contribution, she writes, rather amusingly:

the assumption that human beings are unrelated to nature would have never occurred to most people. But it did occur to seventeenth-century philosopher Rene Descartes, whose famous dictum, “I think therefore I am,” located human existence in the mind. The only connection of the lofty mind with the human body (and thus with the rest of nature) was, for Descartes, through the narrow channel of the pineal gland! This quaint and absurd suggestion, which a medieval peasant, a Native person, or a contemporary ecologist, would receive with hearty guffaws, was calmly accepted by the Enlightenment and became received opinion as human beings were increasingly removed from all contamination by nature. ²⁸

In stark contrast to Descartes, we now know human existence is not centrally located in the mind but that the mind is located in the body, which is itself the basis of thoughts and feelings. Hence, McFague encourages abandonment of this singular Western preoccupation with the power of human reason to manipulate and control nature for the sake of human comfort, convenience, and safety.

The myopic assumptive trajectory of Descartes’ thinking was energized further by the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century’s explosive enthusiasm for the powers of reason, and thus laying the groundwork for the currently dominant, and now perilous, individualist, nature-removed anthropocentrism. The tragic result is the non-negotiable Western emphasis on the individual, and the freedom to determine his or her own destiny in total disregard for the needs of nature.

Before moving on, it is helpful to summarize the factors that set the stage for an almost total assault on nature, reducing it to the status of resource and sewer: the historical emergence of a newly found passion for the exercise of reason as the hallmark of human ascendency over a constraining nature, the revolutionary exercising of freedom (in mind, body and spirit) from ‘the chains of tradition and institutional control,’ ²⁹ the sixteenth century Protestant Reformation’s emphasis on religious and political freedom, and Descartes’ rather silly mind-body dualism.

A further and final feature of this Western dream of individualistic glory, that deepened the demise of the long abandoned view of nature as living subject, and with profound implications for the climate crisis, was Adam Smith’s appropriation of the Reformation’s emphasis on sinfulness which he interpreted, for the most part, as insatiable acquisitiveness. As an eighteenth century social philosopher and pioneer of political economy, Smith believed that the abundance of human selfishness could be harnessed for the common good by means of an invisible hand, which meant people could be counted on to pursue their own self-interest within a free-market, producing healthy competition and increased production and sales of high quality goods. What he did not foresee, of course, was the insatiable nature of human acquisitiveness, a global population reaching 9 to 10 billion, and a run-away global consumerism stripping the planet of its natural resources and diminishing its capacity to support life. ³⁰

Hence, both Reformation and Enlightenment anthropological assumptions concerning the innate, God-given freedom of the individual, along with the belief that individuals are inherently selfish, shaped the modern economic theory that is now central to so-called free market capitalism, a capitalism proving deadly to a world crying out for more equitable distribution and preservation of nature’s diminishing resources.

Ecological Anthropology

This individualistic anthropology, with its Christian and secular determinants, now stands in stark contrast to what is needed: an ecological anthropology shaped by what McFague calls the ‘common creation story’ which now anchors our current post-modern, scientific worldview. This all-encompassing evolutionary story is not specific to any one culture or religion, nor does it stress the centrality of humans. Hence, it is a non-anthropocentric common creation story. Planetary and cosmic in scope, it stresses the radical interdependence and interrelatedness of all living things, asserting, in the words of McFague, that ‘All things living and all things not living are products of the same primal explosion and evolutionary history and hence interrelated in an internal way right from the beginning. We are therefore distant cousins to the stars and near relations to the oceans, plants, and all other living creatures on our planet.’ ³¹ The post-Reformation, modernist assumption that humans had ascendency over nature – and in the eyes of God – is therefore simply incompatible with the current scientific consensus about who we are. For ecological science, nature is not at all mere backdrop to the divine drama of human salvation. Rather, the common creation story points to a 15 billion year-old evolutionary process resulting in everything, including our 4 billion year-old planet and the bursting forth of life on it, inclusive of human animals. This ongoing pageant of evolutionary complexification demonstrates that all living and non-living things are singularly unique and profoundly interrelated. ³² Hence, the model of humans seeking their own ‘individual salvation, whether through material or spiritual means, is not only anachronistic to our current sense of reality, but dangerous.’ ³³ The desperate need now, in light of climate change disaster, ³⁴ is to see ourselves as one species among millions on a fragile planetary home. For Christians, this means understanding themselves ‘from the earth up’ and not from the ‘sky down,’ ³⁵ as creatures evolved along with all others out of the generative physical and biological processes of the earth and the cosmos at large.

The Need to Re-vision Christian Spirituality

McFague challenges Christians further to re-vision their understanding of spirituality in light of this common creation story, and simultaneously abandon the antiquated, individualistic anthropology foundational to many, if not most, Christian spiritualities. Her criticism is that individualistic spirituality harbors two outdated assumptions, each with negative ecological implications. The first, as already discussed, is that humans are the only unique and distinct subjects in an otherwise objectified world. The second is that God is an out-of-this-world, transcendent, supernatural being.

The first assumption is obsolete in light of ecology’s insight that humans are constituted inter-subjectively through relationships with other living creatures within the biospheric web of life. Christian spirituality, therefore, should no longer be grounded in an exchange relationship with a supernatural being for the sake of individual earthly and heavenly rewards, but in a process of becoming more fully human through nurturing relationships with the earth, its life forms (including humans), and the cosmos as a whole. Hence, Christians are invited to embrace an ecological spirituality where humans partner with God to promote beauty and an abundance of life on earth. As in other liberation, political, and feminist theologies, McFague revisions spirituality as encounters with God in all things, and as living life in solidarity with the poor – human and extra human. It is therefore not primarily about satisfying the needs of individual hearts and souls, but about caring for all creatures who all experience struggle, longing, and fear in the face of transient existence. Salvation means satisfying the basic needs of others by promoting the flourishing of life.

The second assumption, also antiquated in light of modern cosmology, is that God is an other-worldly being who periodically circumvents the laws of nature to reward or punish members of one planetary species: humans. This way of thinking is ecologically dangerous in light of climate change because it too severely narrows God’s interest to humans. As corrective, McFague invites Christians to imagine the entire universe (stars, bones, gases, water, planets, frogs, sperm whales, etc.) as the locus of the divine, or in the words of her favorite metaphor, the body of God. If the universe is the body of God then there is no spirit separate from matter and all things are always in-spirited everywhere throughout the universe. The antiquated picture of God as an interventionist, super-being, transcendent to a universe that is fixed, hierarchically ordered, and teleologically directed is then replaced by re-visioning God as the fully relational, embodied, generative and preserving force in all things. ³⁶ No longer is God a disembodied and separate being, a distant, monarchial king who rules from afar, but is re-imagined as the breath that is the dynamic vitality of the universe and the source of life. ³⁷

McFague’s revisioned spirituality therefore invites Christians to become intimately familiar with the life circumstances of others – human and extra-human – so needs can be attended to effectively. ³⁸ The ‘Western subject-object dualistic sense of self’ needs to be replaced by an acknowledgment, in McFague’s words, that we ourselves ‘would not, could not, exist apart from others’ ³⁹ and that all living things, including humans, are constituted relationally from prenatal existence onward, and at no time are we isolated and apart from other living things. She thereby proposes a subject-subject model of knowing, rather than an agent-thing/subject-object model, in order to promote greater caring of other people, animals, trees, plants, mountains, oceans, etc. ⁴⁰ In seeing others as subjects, intimately related to us yet separate, complex and marvelously different, the still culturally dominant subject-object way of knowing, that fosters an ‘arrogant eye’ and that objectifies and cannibalizes the other, and reduces nature to a collection of ‘things’ that exist solely for the sake of human aggrandizement, is abandoned. The subject-subject model, on the other hand, views ‘others’ with a child-like ‘loving eye’ recognizing they exist ‘in themselves, for themselves, as subjects.’ ⁴¹ Learning to care for these earth-others involves, then, gathering local and detailed knowledge while also assuming a sense of detachment out of respect for their difference. ⁴² For example, McFague suggests that ‘Teaching a child to care for a Goldfish – learning about its needs, respecting its otherness, delighting in its shimmering colors and swimming skills – is therefore a better education in caring than is a lecture on global warming.’

In conclusion, McFague argues that the catastrophe of global warming is not going to be addressed adequately until there emerges a new way of being in relation to the natural world. Understanding the appalling reticence to ameliorate the deteriorating situation will always be less than complete until the subtle, often unconscious assumptions about nature – and ourselves – carried in our minds and hearts, are recognized and transformed. These assumptions have been shaped by all that we have been taught from the womb onward as well as our genetic inheritances for self-preservation and avoidance of discomfort, pain, and suffering. Yet the influences of nature and nurture intermingle in each of us, shaping almost instinctively our mental, emotional, and bodily responses to the natural world and our planetary co-inhabitants. McFague’s project attempts valiantly, therefore, to modify these habitual Christian and Western patterns of thought that in turn modify the more visceral responses we have to encounters with life forms other than our own and to the climate catastrophe effecting all living things. This is a grand project, but maybe it does begin humbly, as McFague suggests, by teaching our children and ourselves to pay loving attention to just one living thing in all of its particularity and grandness. This can then lead to honoring its fragile existence by not inflicting undue harm and by nurturing the conditions that would allow it to flourish and experience life abundant, no matter how short or circumscribed that life may be.

Limitations of McFague’s Proposals

It is important, however, to recognize the magnitude of what McFague is calling for. She envisions nothing less than a wholesale transformation of consciousness in order to step back from climate catastrophe. She asks middle-class North Americans – especially Christians – to understand themselves not as monadic individuals competing for scarce resources, but as members of only one planetary life-form, interdependent and interrelated to all others within the fragile and complex nexus of life. Simultaneously, she encourages rapid recognition that, in a historically unprecedented way, humans are now responsible for destabilizing the conditions for life on earth, without perhaps the ability to reverse the changes underway. The ultimate question remains, therefore, is there enough time for such an evolutionary human advancement, before points of no return are reached (tipping points and feedback loops) and geoengineering research is pulled from the labs into the real world as last ditch efforts to prevent unimaginable climate chaos? ⁴³

Clive Hamilton, Professor of Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne, Australia, suggests that the changes authors like McFague are calling for (as visionary and as necessary as they are) are unrealistic in the time afforded. Hamilton certainly agrees with McFague that the climate crisis is largely attributable to historical and socio-cultural determinants that preceded and were concomitant with the burning of fossil fuels over the last two centuries. He also agrees that the seminal cause of our current crisis is the remaking of consciousness that occurred at the end of the seventeenth century with the ‘arrival of the so-called mechanical philosophy,’ ⁴⁴ as well as the subsequent abandonment of earlier hermeticist sensibilities that assumed the impenetrable, mysterious and spirit-filled nature of the natural world. He points out that through the centuries of the early modern period, certain romantic thinkers and movements resisted this mechanical worldview but failed to shape cultural consciousness at large in much the same way that New Age movements, now mirroring the hermeticist sentiments of old, are also failing to diminish the grip of the current anthropocentric-materialistic worldview. ⁴⁵

However, Hamilton’s thinking differs from McFague’s in one important way: he simply does not believe there is enough time to bring about the transformation of consciousness required to avert climate catastrophe. He points out, rather bleakly, that transformations in consciousness occur over generations, not decades, which is what is now required. For example, he points to the transformation that took place from the pre-modern to the modern era. While pre-modern people assumed nature to be mystified and spirit-filled, modern people eventually came to view it as devoid of inner essence, form, or life-force. This was a slow, multi-generational transformation in how humans understood themselves and the extra-human world. To elaborate, he points to the influence that Descartes and others had in shaping an understanding of the natural world – as mere matter and motion – which was itself preceded by ‘a philosophical break that occurred … three centuries earlier within the dominant theological school of Scholasticism,’ where it was assumed that reality was ‘characterized by clarity and distinctness, and so … graspable by the human intellect.’ ⁴⁶ Hence, it was this prior, multi-generational shift that laid the groundwork for Descartes’ own views that eventually became central to the newly emerging collective consciousness of the West. ⁴⁷

Hamilton therefore concludes, as does this author, that in light of the immediacy of the climate crisis, there is no time for a similar slow, multi-generational transformation away from the current materialistic appraisal of nature, toward a worldview inclusive of a re-mythologized nature. Though inspiring, cogent, and necessary, McFague’s clarion call for a Christian, ecological anthropology, and an eco-spirituality based on intimate and tactile attention to the extra-human world, is asking too much, too late, in the climate crisis.

In addition, and perhaps the greatest challenge to McFague’s call for transformation, is the fact that North American Christians (progressives and conservatives) are inexorably immersed in a consumer culture underpinned by the assumption that humans have ascendency over nature because of divine fiat and superior reason. I believe, therefore, and I am sure Hamilton would agree, that McFague’s heroic efforts to engender an eco-friendly form of consciousness will inevitably, and tragically, be overpowered by the insatiable quest for material comforts and the addictions of the consumer self. As pessimistic as this may sound, the cultural milieu of North American comfort, affluence, and consumerism has become then, the irresistible warm blanket in which any newly adopted Christian anthropology and spirituality will be wrapped, no matter how counter-cultural or radical. Her creative theological proposals will thus be lost in the burgeoning, and seemingly unstoppable, globally expansive consumerism which, as Hamilton points out, is currently restructuring human consciousness to the same extent that the Industrial Revolution did earlier. ⁴⁸

Hence, the reason why progressive Christian proposals calling Christians to think and act differently in light of the climate crisis will likely remain barely realized is the same as the reason why efforts to address climate change are failing throughout the so-called developed world: each asks affluent consumers to change their consumption behavior, which is like asking them to change the socially constructed essence of who they are, the very core of their identity, and to live much less comfortable lives.

How Then to Respond to the Climate Crisis?

In 2009, approximately 100 climate scientists attended a conference at Oxford, England, entitled ‘4 Degrees and Beyond: Implications of a Global Change of 4+ Degrees for People, Ecosystems, and the Earth-system.’ ⁴⁹ There, a consensus emerged that a 3 to 4 degree Celsius increase in global average temperature was no longer considered alarmist, as was the case in the 2007 IPCC report. It was now considered realistic, given the ongoing failures of binding international agreements to limit emissions. Hence, the realistic expectation was that a 3 to 4 degree increase was well on its way to making the earth hotter than it has been in the last 25 million years. ⁵⁰ In light of this foreboding prospect, along with the persistence of powerful political, economic, and cultural forces that resist the changes required to prevent such a future, it is hard to be optimistic about the world in which our children and grandchildren will be living.

In addition, uncritically accepting the North American cultural orientation toward optimism is itself dangerous. Certainly, optimism motivates people to fight for a more livable future. However, as Hamilton points out, maintaining it in the face of a worsening climate scenario, and clinging to the belief that the climate future can be made better, may indicate North Americans are disconnected from reality. ⁵¹ If so, optimism is then an indicator of dysfunctional denial and avoidance in the face of the unfolding tragedy. Remaining in the cultural trance of optimism further engenders an inability to recognize the dark shadow cast by the approaching calamity. It also indicates zero capacity for disillusionment in a culture with no provision for failure and one that cannot imagine the Western dream of individualistic glory coming to an end. Something is not well in a culture where any perceived threat to the politically, religiously, and economically legitimized myth of endless progress is quickly met with denial, hostility, and aggression.

Some 30 years ago, Protestant theologian Douglas John Hall described well this North American penchant for repression and denial, though with different historical and political circumstances in the background, especially the regressive policies of the Reagan administration in the White House at that time. In calling Christians to a ‘revolution of values and vision,’ Hall recognized that an ‘extensive and honest inquiry’ into the ‘embryonic discontent and sense of alienation that people were feeling was first required.’ ⁵² He recognized that without the cultural capacity to entertain the possibility of the demise of the American dream, unrestrained forces of repression would be released in the form of individual and collective violence against others and the natural world. He therefore advocated on behalf of the capacity for disillusionment, the absence and repression of which is dangerous for North Americans, as well as the rest of the world given the military and cultural might wielded. Hall wrote:

It is, I believe, our very capacity for disillusionment that creates our growing potentiality for wisdom, hope, and life. But so long as disenchantment with our foundational and rhetorical worldview is prevented from direct expression, and must instead work itself out in defensive and aggressive political and economic behavior, it is no advantage at all but only an increasing threat to ourselves and to the world at large. We stand at the edge of a metaphorical Red Sea, where an open acknowledgment of our “impasse” (Bellah) could become the catalyst for the courage we need to seek passage into a better future; where living through the impossibility could open to us a new possibility. Yet there can be no admission of the impossible, no recognition of our subtle suffering under the yoke of a dream-become-illusion – we must repress it – unless a frame of reference were given, on whose basis we could feel the permission forthrightly to face our limits, and honestly confess the pain that we must now hide. Without such a point of vantage, exposure to our real condition – our “poverty” (Bellah) – would only prove debilitating. ⁵³

The frame of reference that Hall hoped could supply Christians with a vantage point from which to understand the North American predicament of the decline of the American dream was a theology of the cross, articulated by Martin Luther and others, who held what Hall considered a realistic appraisal of human nature as well as historical projects that are always flawed and incomplete given human self-centeredness and anthropocentric myopia. Following the realism of Reinhold Niebuhr and other theologians of the mid-twentieth century, Hall concluded that North Americans are peculiarly unable to entertain the prospect that:

evil could be native to the human condition as such, and therefore could be found in some form also in our social context…. For the world-view which has been our foundational philosophy taught us to expect continuing manifestations of darkness in that Old World, but to look upon this continent as “mankind’s great second chance.” ⁵⁴

Clive Hamilton echoes the key points of Hall’s earlier critique of North American culture. He argues that the alternative to cultural entrapment by blind optimism is to accept bravely the disillusionment that comes with needing to ‘abandon most of the comfortable beliefs that have sustained [our]… sense of the world as a stable and civilizing place.’ ⁵⁵ Even more shockingly, this abandonment means accepting that ‘Nature has turned against us and can no longer be relied upon to provide the conditions for the flourishing of life.’ ⁵⁶ This heart-stopping possibility throws us then into a place ‘of desolation and hopelessness’ which is a place of grieving from which most will run, angrily denying the severity or very existence of the problem, as is demonstrated in so much of the denial that abounds in North America today. ⁵⁷

Hamilton further speculates that grieving will take different forms among those who accept the above scenario and the subsequent loss of life’s meaning based on consumption, technology and the hope for a better future for our children, grandchildren, and life generally on planet earth. For ‘early mourners,’ this grief will express itself in experiences of isolation and loneliness, accompanied by the temptation to keep quiet about the nightmare scenarios unfolding for fear of alienating others. Their temptation will be to bury their anxiety and deep pessimism about the planet’s future. ⁵⁸ Others will express their grief in a way that will exacerbate the problem. They will voraciously consume, believing falsely that more consumer comforts will create more protection against the mounting human and extra-human suffering that climate change is intensifying. Still others will grieve in a more mature and healthy way. After passing through stages of disbelief and anger, these people will accept the reality of climate disruptions, carefully and consciously process their sense of loss and disillusionment, and then act to adopt more pro-social values and to live less materialistic lives. ⁵⁹ These will be important actors on the climate front. They will be those not silenced by their grief nor thrown into intensified consumption, but motivated to limit further climate decay, as well as prepare the next generations for life in a more hostile natural world.

Hence, being pessimistic about the climate future does not necessarily mean being helplessly immobilized. It means accepting the reality of climate disorder, grieving over the loss of life now and in the future and, most importantly, acting with courage against all odds to prepare the next generation for life in a much warmer and chaotic world. It also means acting to mitigate more warming in the multiple ways that are now possible, personally and collectively. Adaptation and mitigation are priority actions that will follow from people with a live sense of planetary citizenship and who are not immobilized by all that will be lost in a world rapidly warmed. These people will choose to live without belief in the optimism fairies that will be sent by the titans and high priests of industry and government, as well as legitimized by the religious pundits in order to assure ongoing and ever-increasing global consumption.

Hence, the wonders of optimism, no matter how persuasively conjured, will not prevent a future that is already here. In addition, accompanying ongoing actions of mitigation, adaptation, and preparation will be undertaken with an air of sadness for what will be and what will be no more. McFague offers her own lament for a world now experiencing the mundane horrors of human and extra human life struggling for food and water, ‘the stench of pollution in the sky and ocean, the battle for decreasing parcels of arable land, [and] the search for basic medical care and education.’ ⁶⁰ Her lament deepens when she envisions the saddest prospect of all: future generations – or perhaps children of this current generation – who will subsequently:

set their sights lower: … will not expect shade trees in the cities or forests in the country any more than they will expect a better future for their children. They will, among other things, learn to live with “much beauty irrevocably lost,” but by then they may not even miss it. They will have grown used to a hotter, drier planet, with many more people and many fewer trees, flowers, and other animals. Perhaps eventually they will even lose their sense of horror at the loss, the diminishment, that all of us have brought about in our own home, planet earth. Perhaps they will eventually learn not to feel the pain. ⁶¹

This heartbreaking prophetic lament foreshadows an emerging cultural sadness over the ongoing environmental degradation that our children and their children will have to contend with. It is sadness, however, that is little expressed because of the threat it poses to the non-negotiable Western icons of optimism and infinite economic growth and progress. The legacy of passing on to our children a world with fewer flora and fauna, less potable water, more frequent severe weather, less arable land, acidified oceans, and a climate struggling to recalibrate itself due to sudden injections of greenhouse gases, is not what anyone in our culture of growth and optimism wants to hear, especially in North America where worship of optimism and growth is sacrosanct.

Conclusion

It may appear a dreadful admission, but it is not clear to this author, as an educator and father, how to prepare the next generation for this form of climate dystopia. Educational pedagogy has always called for instilling some modicum of optimism about the future in students, along with healthy doses of realism from the diverse disciplines. At the same time, we should not perpetuate the delusion that we can improve or prevent our climatic future, without, of course, entering into very dark and dangerous experiments with geoengineering. ⁶²

Hence, as Hamilton argues, and given the currently anticipated 3 to 4° C increase in temperature, perhaps pessimism is the most reasonable attitude to assume, and to cling to illusions that the future will be just fine is delusional and dangerous. Perhaps the comment recounted to me by my son, made by his environmental studies professor recently, is honest and apropos. In paraphrase, the professor said: ‘I am just happy I won’t be around to have to deal with what you’ll have to deal with as a result of climate change.’ Here is an academic daring to depart from the North American cultural norm of optimism, a culture that teaches ‘primary school children how to be more optimistic’ and that convinces them that ‘hopes are realized through personal achievements.’ ⁶³ The dream of individualistic glory is therefore centrally grounded in the attitude of optimism, without which, God forbid, it might falter and die. Although a caricature, the saying in the United States that ‘a homeless person is just a millionaire down on his luck’ is still apropos in a culture soaked in official sanguinity and self-reliance.

Hence, this essay concludes that the influence Christians can have on the climate future will be negligible, given the immediate requirement of taking-leave of consumer-shaped consciousness, and no time to effect such a change. What is thus required is to lay the groundwork for a worldview that can serve some helpful purpose in the climate diminished world that our children will be watching unfold and that their children will be living in. This could very well be a world that engenders a new worldview, inclusive of a new form of nature spirituality not dissimilar to what McFague proposes, and that is born out of the then requisite of living closer to nature with newly developed sensibilities for its mystery and grandeur, and devoid of the assumption that humans have mastery over it. In the words of Hamilton:

After a long period of psychological disruption stability will return only with the emergence of a new understanding of the Earth, a story to replace the one in which the globe is seen as a repository of resources to fuel endless growth. The new narrative will reflect a world no longer subject to human will but governed by forces largely beyond our control. In that sense the new story will be closer to those of pre-modern cultures where daily lives and destinies were in the hands of all-powerful invisible forces. ⁶⁴

What is required then is nothing short of a revised anthropological vision that re-appraises human participation in the natural order of things in order to bring about a sustainable future for future generations. Some new form of counter-cultural narrative is necessary to prepare the next generation for a future that looks even bleaker when one considers the growing consensus that the world has already passed ‘peak oil,’ making the challenge to sustain the current fossil fuel based, industrial platform of production impossible to sustain, and, without foresight and planning, limit the possibility of quickly converting economies to alternative energies with the remaining fossil fuel resources. ⁶⁵ Add to this the stunning thought of global population exploding to 9 or 10 billion, and the dystopic vision of the future settles into the mind like a thud.

Finally, perhaps the most hopeful prospect is that McFague’s proposals, though marginally influential in current circles of tradition-based, majority Christianity, may yet make a tiny contribution to the eventual emergence of a far different form of consciousness, wherein human lives unfold in intimate and caring connection to the maternal surround that is mother earth, and in a post-carbon world. She therefore may be offering us a glimpse of a way of understanding ourselves and others that could yet help, in some unforeseeable way, our species survive, if not thrive, on the surface of this particular planet.