Creation Care and Environmental Justice

By Maria Boccia, PhD
Professor of Pastoral Counseling and Psychology
Director of Graduate Programs in Counseling Charlotte campus

Yesterday, I was driving in my car listening to an NPR program called “The State of Things” which is produced by our local radio station at the University of North Carolina. They were describing the origins of the environmental justice movement, and interviewed the couple living in Warren County, North Carolina, who are credited with founding the movement. The story was an interesting account of their efforts to prevent their poor, predominantly black community from having a toxic waste landfill located in their community. In this story, the “environmental” aspect of the story is obvious. The “justice” aspect of this story is the way poor, and often predominantly minority, communities are exploited in this way. One aspect that caught my attention, however, which leads to this essay, was the couple’s rationale for their activism.

When the interviewer asked them what motivated them. They unabashedly declared, we are Christians, and we must take care of God’s creation. It is our duty. This was their motivation . . . . in the 1970s. As the story unfolded, their Christian commitment and how it motivated them to care for God’s creation wove in and out like a golden thread. It was a spiritual battle they were waging. It delighted me to hear this couple innocently declaring how their faith in the Creator God led them to engage in resisting the pollution of their community with toxic substances and in doing so gave birth to the environmental justice movement. All of that on NPR!

Today, I am more likely to hear evangelicals and other conservative Christians express criticism of environmental activism, and promoting development of all stripes. I’m always surprised by this, and that led me to reflect on why I find conservation issues so compelling. In my mind, it starts with the creation account. God created us in his image and gave us dominion over the creation. He placed us in the garden he had made and gave us the responsibility to tend it and cultivate it:

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

The Lord God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed. Out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. . . .Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” [1]

When I was an undergraduate, I learned about ecology as a biology major, I became a Christian, and I learned about creation. The juxtaposition of these three experiences intertwined to set me on a course to be a Christian who believes in conservation, and what today has come to be known as “creation care.” Ecology taught me about the complexity of the world and the utter interdependence of each element on every other element in the environment. We cannot survive without each other. You eliminate all the wolves and the deer population grows explosively. They overgraze the forest until all the trees die. They get hit by cars and people are injured or die. They starve to death. We protect designer species like the tiger by setting aside great tracts of land, which protect all of the creatures who live in that environment, not just the tiger. As our environment goes, so goes the planet, and so go us.

As a young Christian, I learned that God made the world. Not only that, but he made us stewards of it. He gave us dominion, but that dominion was a stewardship under his sovereignty. God still is the creator of it all and the sustainer of it all. As a Christian, therefore, I realized that someday I would stand before my Lord, my God and the Creator of all that is, and account for my stewardship of the creation over which he gave me dominion. I have, therefore, always been confused by the opposition I have encountered among so many evangelicals and otherwise conservative Christians to conservation or any aspect of the environmental movement. Granted, taken to its extreme, it can be both idolatrous and ultimately destructive to the environment it desires to protect. Furthermore, our dominion as the only creature made in the image of God, includes cultivation of that creation. Therefore, my environmentalism is not a blind “leave it alone it does best when left to itself” view of the creation. God gave us the stewardship of the creation in order for us to care for it, cultivate it, and use it responsibly, knowing that ultimately we will have to give an account of our stewardship to the true owner of everything that exists. To do anything less seems to me to be both disobedient to the God who created us for this purpose, and destructive to the creation of which we are stewards and to our witness to the God we serve before the unbelieving world.

---

^[1]New American Standard Bible : 1995 update. 1995 (Ge 1:26–28; 2:9-17). LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

The Bible in the World: Abolitionist, Contemporary and Future Perceptions

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

I just returned from the 2011 iteration of the Nida School of Translation Studies and the second residency of our new D.Min. track in Bible Translation, which took place in Misano Adriatico, Italy.

Faculty and Associates of the Nida School come from diverse places and perspectives with some coming from the field of Bible translation and others from the wider academic field of Translation Studies, with special affinity to Post-Colonial criticism and other ideological criticisms. For many people on one side (you can guess which one) the positive impact of the Bible in people’s lives and in society is perfectly obvious and the thought that Bible translation could contribute to injustice or oppression in the world is hard to believe. For many people on the other side (again, you can guess which one), it is obvious that the Bible and its translation have been part of oppressive imperialistic and colonizing powers and movements and that the Bible has shown itself to be a dangerous book with a problematical reception-history.

I think this is another of those instances where each side tends to be correct in what it affirms but reductionist in what it denies. That is, the Bible has led millions of people to peace, forgiveness, grace and hope, and have led to the establishment of hospitals, schools, orphanages, and innumerable charitable ministries around the world. And it has also been used through the centuries to support unjust and oppressive institutions, relationships and behaviors.

On the flight home from Italy I began reading Allen Dwight Callahan’s The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). Although I’ve only read the first four chapters so far I can say I highly recommend it (for what I have read so far). But it has also provided a remarkable parallel to what I had just observed at the Nida School.

Callahan discusses the opposing positions of Frederick Douglass (whom I have mentioned in an earlier ETC post) and Henry Highland Garnet in a debate that took place in New York in 1849:

“Douglass and Garnet were both African Americans. Both had escaped slavery from Maryland’s Eastern Shore. But their respective experiences of slavery, literacy, and religion—and so their respective experiences of the Bible—were profoundly different, and those differences crystallized in diametrically opposed views of the Bible's liberating power…. Garnet saw the liberating power of the Bible as self-evident. It was so for him: he assumed it would be so for slaves in the South who might manage to read or have read to them a contraband copy of the holy scriptures that he knew so well” (page 22).

Callahan reminds us that “the abolitionists of the North and the planter class of the South read from the same Bible. Long before Lincoln, Douglass had learned that the Bible was the highest authority of American slavery and the strongest link in the chain of oppression and violence that warranted slavery as the sacred basis for the Christian culture of what would become the Confederacy” (23).

“Bitter experience had taught Douglass and other slaves and former slaves that the master class of the United States bore a whip in one hand and a Bible in the other. It was this Bible that Garnet and his colleagues were now proposing to send to the South” (23).

“Douglass anticipated that the Bibles sent to the South would become raw material for proslavery propaganda” since he “knew intimately what Garnet's limited experience with slavery could not teach: that the justice of the Bible was not self-evident. Douglass had begun to learn the Bible as a slave, and he knew that some people reading the Bible under the slave regime remained tone-deaf to its message of justice” (24).

The two former slaves held dramatically different perceptions of the Bible’s role in either combating or supporting injustice and oppression in ways that directly parallel perceptions found today (over 160 years later) among those who also see the Bible as naturally supporting one side or the other of this justice/injustice divide. So abolitionist and contemporary perceptions of the Bible are similarly divided. What will it take if future perceptions of the Bible are not to be similarly divided on this crucial point?

We who love the Bible cannot afford to be naïve about the fact that while it does and should do great good in people’s lives and in the world (including supporting battles against slavery, prejudice and other social evils) it has also been used to promote and/or justify oppressive relationships, institutions or cultural realities, including crusades, inquisition, slavery, apartheid, genocide, the abuse of women, children and minorities. It has been used to empower the powerful at the expense of the powerless.

How can we work to make sure that it serves as a weapon of justice rather than an accessory to injustice? Callahan points out that “none of Jesus’s words have been more influential—and more troublesome for the ideology of American slavery—than the Golden Rule: ‘Do unto others what you would have them do unto you’ (Matt. 7:12). Simple observance of this simple principle would have rendered American slavery impossible” (35). Of course, the Golden Rule turns out to be a paraphrase of the command to love our neighbor as ourselves (found in Leviticus 19:18 and repeatedly cited by Jesus and his apostles [Matt. 5:43; 19:19; 22:39; Mark 12:31; Rom. 13:9; Gal. 5:14; Jas. 2:8]). So we are brought back again to Jesus’ own hermeneutic of love.

In his teaching On Christian Doctrine (1.36-37), Saint Augustine of Hippo stressed the importance of a hermeneutic of love. He argued that “[t]he fulfillment and end of scripture is the love of God and our neighbor.” Furthermore, “[t]hat interpretation of Scripture which builds us up in love is not perniciously deceptive nor mendacious, even though it be faulty…. Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought. If, on the other hand, a man draws a meaning from them that may be used for the building up of love, even though he does not happen upon the precise meaning which the author whom he reads intended to express in that place, his error is not pernicious, and he is wholly clear from the charge of deception.”

What if future generations could not look back (as I have just done with Callahan’s help) and continue to see that the same contradictory patterns continued through the 21^st century? What if the hermeneutic of Jesus, Augustine, abolitionists and others, a hermeneutic of love for God and neighbor might become so widely accepted that those that continue to interpret the Bible abusively would find themselves without any significant following due to a widespread awareness of such tragic abuse?

It is my prayer that God might bring that about and glorify himself through the church in that way… “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (Ephesians 3:20-21; ESV)

What ticks God off . . .

By Maria Boccia, PhD
Professor of Pastoral Counseling and Psychology
Director of Graduate Programs in Counseling Charlotte campus

February is “Black History Month” and GCTS-Charlotte has decided to celebrate this with a series of special chapels during our Saturday classes. This past Saturday, our own Dr. Rod Cooper, the Kenneth and Jean Hansen Professor of Discipleship and Leadership Development, was the speaker. I would like to share with you some of his thoughts from Saturday. He started with the story of a confrontation on the steps of a church in Jackson, Mississippi in 1965. “. . . at the top of the front steps stood a row of White ushers, arms linked barring the entrance to the church. There were 4 or 5 Black men dressed in suits standing at the bottom of those same steps, facing the doors. As one of the Black men approached the top step, an usher disengaged his arms from the others and smashed the would-be visitor in the face sending him sprawling down the steps to the ground. Inside, you could hear the congregation and the choir singing the hymn, >Love divine, all loves excellingY= Do you know what really ticks God off C its when people who say they belong to him don=t act like HimCespecially those who say they believe in HIS word.”

Dr. Cooper reminded us of the history of Israel. They were God=s chosen people, chosen to represent God to the rest of the world, different from all the cultures around them. Or they at least they were supposed to be. Instead, however, they tended to conform to the surrounding cultures - wanting a king, worshiping other gods, making unholy sacrifices. But AGod will not stand for his name to be trashed and his word to be broken. It is at those times that God sends a prophet. Prophets speak thus saith the LordCProphets get in the face of people who claim to know Him and admonish them to get their behavior in line with their belief system. . . . In the fullness of timeCGod sends prophets.@

AThere was another nation that rose up and proclaimed that it also believed in God and his word. The critical documents written for that nation were based upon the principles and beliefs of ONE bookCthe Bible. In factC180 of the first 200 colleges of this nation were Christian. God takes his word seriouslyCand those who say they believe it and when their behavior doesn=t match the wordChe sends a prophet. For you see if there is one thing that God cannot stand B it=s when people who say they know him don=t act like him and trash his reputation.@

We now have a national holiday celebrating the contribution of Dr. Martin Luther King. Dr King is a national hero, and his reputation has been sanitized - he was a great civil rights leader, a man pursuing social justice, etc. Dr. Cooper told us about how Dr. Martin Luther King saw is calling. After his first arrest and night in jail in 1963, at the age of 26, he questioned whether he was doing the right thing, especially putting his wife and child at risk for this cause. Dr. King prayed, and God spoke to him in Micah 6:8 A And what does the Lord require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?@ Dr. Martin Luther King was not a social activist. He was a Prophet of God called to a people who claimed his name but did not live as God had called them to live.

Micah 6:8 describes the work of Dr. King, and tells us what are the distinguishing characteristics of a people who belong to God. This is not a suggestionCthis is a direct command. In fact it is a requirement to be called Amy people.@

To do justice: ADoing justice means to be ethically responsible and to take action. God is not a God who passively sits by and does nothing but he invades history to change the system to right wrongs. He did this when he said to PharaohClet my people goChe came to set the captive free. When we are prophetic about injustice and invade the system to change the systemCwe are acting on God=s behalfCwe are doing what a Good God would doCwe are doing justice.@

To love kindness: ATo love kindness literally means to respond to others with a spirit of generosityCgraceCand loyalty. It is the belief that love overpowers evil and truth overcomes wrong. It is the belief that essentially in the other person=s heart. there is a desire to do the right thing.@

To walk humbly with your God: ADr. King knew that in order to change the system with an attitude of love it would take a strong abiding relationship with God. Dr. King knew that when you attempt change in God=s power and in God=s way you will get God=s results. The word Awalk@ means to accompany. To stay close enough to God to get your orders from Him. Humility says I know where I have come fromCand it is only by God=s grace. Humility says that the battle is the Lord=s Humility is standing stillCand watching the salvation of God.@

Dr. Cooper told the story of a inventor who developed a new car. He brought the blue-prints to potential investors. The investors questioned whether it would work. The inventor invited them outside, where a model of the car waited. They went for a ride and discovered it was exactly what the blueprints said it would be. Then Dr. Cooper challenged all of us: the Bible is God=s blueprint for how we should live. Can others look at our lives and see the same thing in there as they read in God=s Word?