R ESPO ND I N G T O G OD I N T H E

WO R L D: A N E W E C O L OG IC A L &
EC OFEMI N I S T T H EO LOG Y

The tsunami which devastated countries around the Indian Ocean last December tragically brought home
the importance of and need for a political theology of the environment. For it showed that – despite all
humanity’s attempts to achieve political, economic and even military security – the forces of nature can
still and will overwhelm humanity. Indeed, the choice for all Christians and all peoples of the earth at this
time in History is how humanity will choose to allow God’s freedom in His purposes for His good
creation. What is posited here is that the root of our ills is not the distortion of the relation between man
and nature – the attempt to make ecology or environmental economics, or industrial ecology return us to
1 2
the Garden of Eden – but to acknowledge that the distortion is the relation between man and God.

Lyle A. Brecht  August 2005

1
“The Recovery of Eden story is the mainstream narrative of Western culture. It is perhaps the most
important mythology humans have developed to make sense of their relationship to the earth.” See Carolyn
Merchant, Reinventing Eden: The Fate of Nature in Western Culture (New York: Routledge, 2004), 2.
2
See John Milbank, “Out of the Greenhouse” in John Milbank, The Word Made Strange: Theology,
Language, Culture (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), 257-67.

DRAFT: 13-Aug-05 1
 R EPO ND I N G T O G OD I N T H E
WO R L D: A N E W E C O L OG IC A L &
EC OFEMI N I S T T H EO LOG Y
All human activity is a cry for forgiveness.3
Who shall absolve us from the guilt of the holocaust? Colonialism?
...A nuclear catastrophe? 4 The extinction of even one species?

Lyle A. Brecht
August 2005

Tiqqûn Hã‘ôlãm 5

Prolegomena & Theological Context: Two inextricable and unstoppable forces are
challenging conventional theological perspectives and causing a rethinking of
comfortable, cherished religious and cultural values, as well as the emergence of new
theological paradigms. These forces that are causing a rethinking of values and the
emergence of new theological paradigms represent unprecedented and unsustainable
stresses on the global environment. They are: (1) the increase in the world’s
population from ~6.5 billion today to an estimated 9.1 billion in 2050, a 40%
increase; 6 and (2) the new world economy that is driven by globalization and
technological innovation7 where both positive and negative influences flow between
the developed and the Third World.8

3
Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, trans. Edwyn C. Hoskyns (London: Oxford University Press,
1933), 97-8.
4
Rowan Williams, A Ray of Darkness: Sermons and Reflections (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications,
1995), 4.
5
“Mending the damaged world,” part of the Hasidic tradition. “In our dreams, pain that cannot forget falls
drop by drop upon the heart; and in our despair, against our will, comes wisdom by the awful grace of God
(from Aschylus’s Agamemnon). See Joseph Blenkinsopp, Treasures Old & New: Essays in the Theology of
the Pentateuch (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 52, 140.
6
Population Division, United Nations report, February 24, 2005. Virtually all the additional growth in
population will occur in less developed countries: from 5.3 billion today to 7.8 billion in 2050. The
population of developed countries is expected to remain at today’s level of ~1.2 billion over the same
period.
7
This technological innovation causes much good, but in many cases, much harm to the environment.
“Because we are rapidly advancing along this non sustainable course, the world’s environmental problems
will get resolved, in one way or another, within the lifetimes of the children and young adults alive

DRAFT: 13-Aug-05 2
What the best scientific, economic, and cultural evidence humankind presently possesses
indicates that:9
• At an accelerating rate we are destroying natural, existing habitats – the forests,
grasslands, wetlands, and deserts or converting them to man-made habitats (cities,
villages, farmlands, pastures, roads, golf courses).10 For example, through
unsustainable land practices, burning, logging, and acid rain from industrial
activities we are destroying many of the earth’s old-growth forests. These forests
are necessary to produce the oxygen and purify the air we breathe;

• While two billion of today’s population currently depend on the world’s fisheries
for protein, the majority of the world’s fisheries have been seriously degraded or
have already collapsed;11

• We are rapidly decreasing a significant fraction of wild species and populations of

the world’s flora and fauna and loosing their genetic information through habitat

today….The only question is whether they will become resolved in pleasant ways of our own choosing, or
in unpleasant ways not of our choice, such as warfare, genocide, starvation, disease epidemics, and
collapses of societies” (Diamond, 498).
8
For example, the First World exports its toxins to the Third World (e.g. The Inuit have the highest
concentration of neurotoxins and gender shifters such as toxaphene, mercury and PCPs of any human
population on earth. These toxic chemicals have been migrating from the tropics to Arctic food chains and
into the diets of northern peoples for decades, far exceeding levels considered safe for humans in the First
World.) and the Third World exports its diseases and problems to the First World (e.g. AIDS, SARS,
cholera, West Nile virus, illegal immigrants, terrorists, debt, etc.). See Jared Diamond, Collapse: How
Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (New York: Viking, 2005), 517.
9
Adapted from Elizabeth A. Johnson, Women, Earth, and Creator Spirit: 1993 Madeleva Lecture in
Spirituality (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1993), 507. A solid appraisal of the global environmental situation
is Stuart L. Pimm, The World According to Pimm: A Scientist Audits the Earth (New York: McGraw-Hill,
2001).
10
Diamond, 487. Has mankind become an embodiment of “The Destroyer” and the earth a new Abaddon?
In the Hebrew Bible and LXX, the agency of ‘The Destroyer’ was usually reserved for God or God’s
avenging angel(s) (Exod. 12:23) but was also used to designate a human agent of destruction (e.g. an
individual, group, or nation; Job 15:21; Isa 21:2; 49:17; Jer 48:8, 15, 18; Rev 11:18). Abaddon (Heb.
}a∑baddo®n) was used as a poetic synonym for the abode of the dead (the ‘bottomless pit’) or place of
destruction (ABD).

11
Diamond, 488. The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (SOFIA) report by the Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations says “24 percent of the world’s fisheries are
overexploited, depleted or in recovery from depletion. More than 50 percent are ‘fully exploited,’ or fished
to their maximum capacity to replenish. The remaining 21 percent are ‘moderately exploited and could
support modest increases in fishing and in harvests.’ ‘Stock depletion has implications for food security and
economic development, reduces social welfare in countries around the world and undermines the wellbeing
of underwater ecosystems,’ said Ichiro Nomura, FAO assistant director general for fisheries.” See U.S.
Department of State release available at http://usinfo.state.gov/gi/Archive/2005/Mar/08-613777.html
(accessed 05/13/05).

DRAFT: 13-Aug-05 3
 destruction, the introduction of toxins into the environment, and unsustainable
land management practices.12 Once a species is extinct, we cannot bring them
back;

• Through unsustainable land use practices we are causing soil erosion at rates 10 to
40 times the rates of soil formation, salinization of once productive cropland, loss
of soil fertility, and soil acidification and alkalinization;13

• The world’s economies are almost entirely dependant on carbon-based fuels for
energy; fuel sources which are finite and limited;14

• The world’s freshwater resources are finite and rapidly shrinking as more crops
need to be irrigated and world population increases;15

12
Extinction rates are usually estimated indirectly from principles of biogeography. Although no precise
measurement of the numbers of species being extinguished can be made (because the exact number of
species inhabiting the earth is unknown), best guess estimates are that species extinction as the result of
human impacts on the environment are presently running approximately 1,000 – 10,000 times greater than
the background natural rate of extinction (excluding episodic events, like the ‘Great Extinction’ ~250
million years ago that saw 95% of life disappear). The problem with this situation, for example, is that
presently humankind use only 7,000 kinds of plant species for food, although there are at least 75,000
edible plants in existence, many that are potentially superior to the crop plants in widest use. Also, there are
other thousands of species of bacteria, yeasts and other microorganisms that carry genetic information
potentially capable of producing medicines that cure human and livestock diseases, substances for soil
restoration, and new materials useful to mankind. See E. O. Wilson, “The Current State of Biodiversity” in
E. O. Wilson, editor, Biodiversity (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1988), 10, 11, 13, and 15.
13
Diamond, 489-90. “Soil erosion constitutes the most serious continuing farm problem in the United
States;...no other modern nation of the Western Hemisphere, north of the equator, is wasting its agricultural
lands as rapidly as the United States….vast areas have been laid waste in China, Persia and other old
countries, but those countries used their lands for thousand of years, whereas we have used the oldest of
ours for only about three hundred years, the greater part for only about forty to eighty years.” See Hugh
Hammond Bennett, United States Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service,
available at http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/about/history/speeches/19321104.html (accessed 05/13/05). The
National Cooperative Soil Survey identifies and maps over 20,000 different kinds of soil in the United
States.
14
Diamond, 490. Cheap oil, which underpins America’s economy, for example, “is now becoming an even
greater source of weakness: its volatile price erodes prosperity; its vulnerabilities undermine security; its
emissions destabilize climate. Moreover, the quest to attain oil creates dangerous new rivalries and
tarnishes America’s moral standing….surprisingly, it will cost less to displace all of the oil the United
States now uses than it will cost to buy that oil. In an average year, Americans will spend more than $300
billion for retail oil. Between 1975-2003, Americans paid foreign countries $2.2 trillion for imported oil.
This export of U.S. wealth in turn results in a $4-$14 billion economic cost to the U.S. economy in lost
purchasing power. See Amory B. Lovins, et. al., Winning the Oil Endgame (Snowmass, CO: Rocky
Mountain Institute, 2005), ix, 15, 20.
15
Diamond, 490. For example, “only one-third of the water that annually runs into the sea is accessible to
humans. Of this, more than half is already being appropriated and used….China, with 22 percent of the
world’s population and only 6 percent of its fresh water, is [already] in serious trouble. See Marq de
Villiers, Water: The Fate of our Most Precious Resource (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 24:5. “By the
middle of this century, at worst, 7 billion people in 60 countries will be faced with water scarcity, and, at
best, 2 billion in 48 countries, depending on factors like population growth and policy-making. Climate

DRAFT: 13-Aug-05 4
 • Even the amount of solar energy available from the earth’s sun is a finite, fixed
amount per acre, limited by the earth’s orbit around the sun, the geometry of
living plants, and the biochemistry of photosynthesis.16

• We are releasing toxins into the earth’s atmosphere that act as poisons of the
earth’s life-support systems. Some toxins that are in the ecosphere cannot be
recaptured.17 We are slowly making parts of the earth unfit for life;18

• Alien (non-native) species introduced inadvertently and sometimes deliberately

by man are causing huge economic losses worldwide. For example, alien species
costs the U.S. $120 billion annually in economic losses.19

• Through the chemicals we discharge into the air, we have torn a hole in the
earth’s ozone layer that protects us from the ultraviolet radiation from the sun and
caused global warming;20

change will account for an estimated 20 per cent of this increase in global water scarcity.” See “Political
Inertia Exacerbates Water Crisis, Says World Water Development Report,” First UN System-Wide
Evaluation of Global Water Resources (March 7, 2003) available at
http://www.unis.unvienna.org/unis/pressrels/2003/sag119.html (accessed 05/13/05).
16
Diamond, 491. A good explanation of how this biochemistry initiated by a photon from the sun works is
available at http://www.hhmi.princeton.edu/sw/2001/phughs/Hughes/BioWeb/Photosynthesis.html
(accessed 05/13/05).
17
Air pollution, rather than being a local problem is slowly being understood by science as a global
problem; what happens in Beijing will affect Boston, what happens in Boston will affect Paris. We can no
longer look at air quality as a local, or even regional concern. For example, although over 160 million tons
of pollution are emitted into the air each year in the United States, and approximately 121 million people
live in areas where monitored air was unhealthy because of high levels of the six principal air pollutants,
this is a significant improvement (~29% better) over the toxins released into the air by U.S. industry in
1970. However, we now know that the air over the U.S. is polluted not just by U.S.-based industry, but also
by industrial activities in China and other places around the world. See “Air Trends,” U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency, available at http://www.epa.gov/air/airtrends/ (accessed 05/14/05).
18
One of the places we may be making unfit for life are the wombs of women living in industrialized
countries. A recent report by the Environmental Working Group based on tests of 10 samples of umbilical-
cord blood taken from women in the U.S. by the American Red Cross found an average of 287
contaminants in the blood, including mercury, fire retardants, pesticides and the Teflon chemical PFOA.
What this means is that unborn babies are “soaking in a stew of chemicals, including mercury, gasoline
byproducts and pesticides” (Reuters, Friday, July 15, 2005; A08).
19
"Environmental and Economic Costs Associated with Non-indigenous Species in the United States" by
David Pimentel, a professor in Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
20
Global warming is evolving much faster than most would have imagined even ten years ago. Despite
significant dollars spent to convince us that (a) global warming is not happening; or (b) it is happening, but
it is so inconsequential as to be negligible; or (c) global warming is good for us; or (d) global warming is
too big a problem for us to do anything about; or (e) it is already ‘too late’ to do anything about it; global
warming is undeniably due to human activities, its existence is not controversial among the vast majority of
experts and international business leaders, and the best understanding by virtually all world governments

DRAFT: 13-Aug-05 5
 • The per capita impact for the world’s population is continuing to rise, it is not
decreasing. For example, a First World citizen presently consumes 32 times more
resources than a Third World citizen and produces 32 times more waste than do
Third World citizens.21

• Environmental stresses are creating the conditions for outbreaks of new disease
organisms and pandemics in certain areas of the world.22

• Governments’ focus on preparation for war by stockpiling nuclear weapons and

other CBRN weapons of mass destruction23 threatens the biological integrity of
all natural systems that are the precondition for life on earth.24

other than the U.S. is that there are responsible policies that can prevent the most serious environmental,
economic, and health consequences from global warming.

Today, the concentration of CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere is ~376ppm, the highest level in the past
420,000 years and already climate change is the primary factor in an estimated 150,000 deaths per year
(World Health Organization data). CO2 from burning carbon based fuels comprises ~half of the greenhouse
gases released annually into the earth’s atmosphere and 90% of the greenhouse gases produced by the U.S.
economy. See James Gustave Speth, “Climate Change after the Elections: What we can do in America”
(December 2004) available at http://www.redskyatmorning.com/ downloads/afterword_paperback_
010505.pdf (accessed 01/24/05), 3, 9.

There is now solid scientific evidence that suffocating global warming, not an asteroid, is to blame for the
worst mass-extinction on Earth (the “Great Dying”) 250 million years ago (Science, 01/21/05). Long-term
warming caused by continuous volcanic eruptions in Siberia is believed to have dramatically reduced
oxygen and nutrients in the ocean and on the land producing a devastating effect. Life suffocated (hypoxia)
or starved. As Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC; appointed to this post in 2001 at the request of the Bush Administration) told an international
conference in Mauritius in January 2005: “Climate change is for real. We have just a small window of
opportunity and it is closing rapidly. There is not a moment to lose….[We have] already reached the level
of dangerous concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.” See Geoffry Lean, “Global Warming
Approaching Point of No Return, Warns Leading Climate Expert” (Sunday, January 23, 2005), The
Financial Times (London England), at http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/ headlines05/
0123-01.htm (accessed 02/08/05).
21
Diamond, 495. For example, “every year, 300 to 500 million tonnes of heavy metals, solvents, toxic
sludge and other wastes accumulate in water resources from industry. More than 80 per cent of the world’s
hazardous waste is produced in the United States and other industrial countries.” See “Political Inertia
Exacerbates Water Crisis, Says World Water Development Report,” First UN System-Wide Evaluation of
Global Water Resources (March 7, 2003) available at
http://www.unis.unvienna.org/unis/pressrels/2003/sag119.html (accessed 05/13/05).
22
“The problems of failing states and the tremendous drain on resources in developing countries from
AIDS and other pandemics, environmental stress, and corruption affect our ability to partner with allies and
friends to meet humanitarian needs in the interest of promoting stability and democracy. This, in turn, poses
challenges and requirements…germane to the suppression of terrorism and limiting the spread of WMD,
delivery systems, and advanced conventional weapons. See “Security Threats to the United States,”
Thomas Fingar, Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Research, Statement Before the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence, Washington, DC (February 16, 2005) available at
http://www.state.gov/s/inr/rls/42445.htm (accessed 05/13/05).

DRAFT: 13-Aug-05 6
Rethinking Ecofeminist & Ecological Theology

Ecofeminist and ecological theology asks if Christians, by their inaction and

disengagement,25 are promoting ecocide,26 the degradation of God’s ‘good creation.’27 At

23
C = Chemical; B = biological; R = radiological; N = nuclear. Nuclear threats are categorically different
and more horrendous in their potential impact on the world’s ecological integrity and human population
than any of the other man-made threats under CBRN.
24
“Countries pursuing their parochial self-interest are unlikely to fully account for….managing
environmental spillover [externalities]….Neither the costs of environmental degradation not the benefits of
environmental protection” are typically accounted for in national income accounts and the timing
separation of costs and benefits creates perverse incentives to defer into the future necessary changes to
economic and environmental policy. See Charles S. Pearson, Economics and the Global Environment
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 341; Lamont C. Hempel, “Climate Policy on the
installment Plan” in Norman J. Vig and Michael E. Kraft, Environmental Policy: New Directions for the
Twenty-First Century, 5th Edition (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2003), 321..
25
This is a diplomatic way of saying, “inattention, narcissism and almost unbelievably foolish
complacency.” See James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age,
Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century (Boston: Atlantic
Monthly Press, 2005).
26
As used here, “ecocide” means the inattention to environmental issues that can singly or when combined
cause collapse of natural and man-made systems that humans depend upon to sustain life and culture. Some
of these environmental issues include: (1) deforestation and habitat destruction; (2) soil problems (erosion,
salinization, and soil fertility); (3) water management problems; (4) over-hunting; (5) over-fishing; (6) the
effects of introduced species on native species; (7) human population growth; and (8) the increased per
capita impact of human activity on their local environment (Diamond, 6).
27
Not all agree that ecocide is occurring. In his controversial book, The Skeptical Environmentalist
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) Danish statistician Bjørn Lomborg lists the broad litany of
environmental problems: "forests are shrinking, water tables are falling, soils are eroding, wetlands are
disappearing, fisheries are collapsing, rangelands are deteriorating, rivers are running dry, temperatures are
rising, coral reefs are dying, and plant and animal species are disappearing." Lomborg claims to refute all
the evidence that environmental degradation is occurring. He accuses scientists and environmental
organizations of making false and exaggerated claims about the world’s environmental problems. He
concludes that population growth is not a problem, that there is plenty of freshwater around, that
deforestation rates and species extinctions are grossly exaggerated, that the pollution battle has been largely
won, and that global warming is too expensive to fix. He claims that his reanalysis of environmental data
measures "the real state of the world."

However, the third UN report on the Global Environmental Outlook found "indisputable evidence of
continuing and widespread environmental degradation". It said policy measures have not been able to
counter the pressures of unsustainable consumption levels in rich countries and increasing numbers of
desperately poor people in the developing world. It specifically noted problems of water stress, species
extinction, depletion of fish stocks, land degradation, forest loss, urban air pollution in developing countries
and increasing greenhouse gas emissions. That is the depressing picture that comes from scientific analysis,
supported by virtually all scientific communities in countries around the world, including the U.S.

Lomborg’s analysis itself suffers from a fatal fallacy that economists call “misplaced concreteness.” This
involves abstracting truth from over-generalized numerical analysis of particular instances – in this case,
applying a theory of value based only on individualistic maximization of subjective satisfaction, as well as
imagining that creation has only economic value attributed according to present utility. Lomborg’s
argument essentially boils down to the best and only way to clean-up the environment is through

DRAFT: 13-Aug-05 7
its foundations, modern theology is being questioned as a representational paradigm for
discovering truth that evolved from the Enlightenment’s notion that reality could be
known entirely through empirical means (e.g. historical-critical research) discovered by
an observer mapping a pre-given world ‘out there’ from an Archimedes Point outside the
system of investigation.28 Ecological theology posits that modern Christian theology is
insufficiently instantiated and constraining of humankind’s relation to God by positioning
human agency as sufficient and limiting of God’s freedom.29

Post-Enlightenment Christian theology conceives of God’s imago Dei as humankind

alone, with human agency to dominate nature, and man as dominant over woman. Thus,
its view of reality is hierarchal, paternalistic, and reductionist and is accused of leading to
“the exploitation of nature, unchecked commercial and industrial expansion and
subordination of women.”30 The argument continues by accusing conventional, post-
Enlightenment theology of preferring piety over engagement, and offering salvation as an
ethereal realm unrelated to physical reality of the creation of this world and God’s

“economic growth.” However, no amount of wealth will bring back extinct species, adjust CO2 levels in the
atmosphere beyond a certain point so that we won’t suffocate, or restore saline land on any human time
scale. Some environmental problems happen in areas that are fragile (susceptible to damage) or lack
resilience (potential for recovery from damage) and are irreversible beyond a tipping point.

I have thought about why otherwise intelligent people can not ‘see’ that environmental degradation is
happening around them, even as they interpret a common set of data available to everyone to arrive at
‘facts’ that support their viewpoint. Maybe what we are seeing is a phenomenon similar to that experienced
by many tsunami victims in December 2004 in South Asia who passively watched the tidal wave approach.
The magnitude of the reality was just too large, too different from normal experienced reality, to process
the data in front of their own eyes. They could not really ‘see’ the tsunami, thus could not get out of its
destructive path.
28
Postmodernism rejects this paradigm for understanding the world as hopelessly naïve. Neither the world
nor the observer are pre-given but exist together in contexts that have a history, and whose history is
evolving over time. There is no Archimedes Point outside the system of investigation from which the
observer can look into the system and discover the truth. Thus, all truth is context-bound; the hermeneutic
approach we choose to interpret reality determines the portion of reality we see. Postmodern thinkers
include Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida. See Ken Wilber, A Brief History of
Everything, rev. ed. (Boston: Shambhala, 2000), 54-5, 89.
29
A good example of the mis-relation between man and God that illustrates the prevalence of the
assumption that human agency is sufficient and limiting of God’s freedom might be the ‘science’ of
economics, which is organized around ‘Gossen’s golden rule’ (Herman Gossen, The Laws of Human
Relations [1854]): “Organize your actions for your own benefit” for “God implanted self-interest in the
human breast as the motive force of progress.” Thus, “the concern for justice, fairness, or well-being of the
community as a whole” is misplaced. What is prime most is “the unlimited quest for personal gain.” Such a
view is not only another case of ‘misplaced concreteness’ in defining Homo economicus as a creature of
God without Christian character values or ethics, but limiting of God’s freedom in Creation. See Herman
Daly & John B. Cobb, Jr., For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, the
Environment, and a Sustainable Future (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), 89.
30
Karen J. Warren, “Introduction” in Michael E. Zimmerman, J. Baird Callicott, George Sessions, Karen J.
Warren, and John Clark (Eds.), Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1993), 253-267.

DRAFT: 13-Aug-05 8
enfleshment in nature. It goes on with claims that Baptism and the Eucharist are
disconnected with the community of life and God’s sovereignty in the life of human
community.

Basically, Ecofeminism and ecological theology states that what is needed today is a
theology that is capable of addressing the real world in which the vast majority of
humans live, as well as the world in which the much fewer privileged elite live;31 a world
that often denies that environmental degradation is real and enacts policies for economies
based entirely on waste and destruction of the natural world.32

The impetus and theological backgroud for these theological views have evolved
primarily from Liberation33 and Feminist theology34, influenced by Process theology,35
ecology,36 Aldo Leopold’s land ethic,37 character (virtue) ethics38 and ecocentrist

31
Today, 20% of the world’s population living in 30 or so of the wealthiest countries, consume 85% of the
total annual output of the world’s production of goods and services (Rischard, 8).
32
For Jews, “the well-being of the land and the quality of Israel’s life are causally linked, and both are
predicated on Israel’s observance of God’s will….The covenant between Israel and God implied specific
laws intended to protect God’s land and ensure its continued vitality.” See Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, ed.,
“Introduction: Judaism and the Natural World ” in Judaism and Ecology (Center for the Study of World
Religions, Harvard Divinity School: Religions of the World and Ecology Series, 2002) available at
http://environment.harvard.edu/religion/publications/books/book_series/cswr/judaismintr.html (accessed
01/31/05). Environmental degradation for Muslims “is merely a symptom of the broader…calamity that
human societies are not living in accordance with God’s will. A just society, one in which humans relate to
each other and to God as they should, will be one in which environmental problems simply will not exist.”
See Richard Foltz, “Introduction” in Islam and Ecology (Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard
Divinity School: Religions of the World and Ecology Series, 2003) available at
http://environment.harvard.edu/religion/publications/books/book_series/cswr/islamint.html (accessed
01/31/05).
33
See notes for EFM.4.26 on Liberation theology (attached hereto).
34
See notes for EFM 4.27 on Feminist theology (attached).
35
See notes for EFM.4.25 on Process theology (attached).
36
Ecology is essentially a profound new way of perceiving and cognitively organizing the reality of the
natural world by understanding the interactions of natural systems. See J. Baird Callicott, In Defense of the
Land Ethic: Essays in Environmental Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 5;
Eugene Odum and Gary W. Barrett. Fundamentals of Ecology, 5th edition (Brooks Cole, 2004).
37
The two most revolutionary features of Aldo Leopold’s land ethic (Leopold was a forester and naturalist
who believed that we should apply Christian ethics from the perspective of the land) are: (1) the shift in
emphasis from the individual to the community of life, and (2) the shift in emphasis from human beings to
nature (anthropocentrism to ecocentrism). See Callicott, 8; Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1968). [In economics, ‘land’ is the inclusive term for nature, creation, the
world, the environment, or the earth.]
38
Alisdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theology has been most influential. “Without the
virtues we cannot protect ourselves and each other against neglect, defective sympathies, stupidity,
acquisitiveness, and malice.” See Alisdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings
Need the Virtues (Chicago: Open Court, 1999), 98.

DRAFT: 13-Aug-05 9
philosophy.39 The attempt has been to develop a theology that repositions Christianity
from a focus on interior spirituality based on an andocentric40 and anthropomorphic41
conception of God to an understanding based on a doctrine of God where God
interpenetrates all things.42 Thus, the “renewal of creation, the salvation of the individual,
and the liberation of the people are all seen as necessary components of the work of God
in Christ.”43 Rather than a transcendent, anthropomorphic God of Genesis 1, there is an
attempt to recapture an incarnational, immanent, and eco-centric God where day to day
pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge of God’s immanence in all of
creation (Ps.19:2)44 and Christ is the enfleshment of Sophia/Wisdom through whom all
things came into being through her…in her was life, and the life was the light of all
creation that shines in the darkness of chaos. (John 1:3-5).45

39
Ecocentrists advocate a shift from the individual (either human beings or higher animals such as
dolphins, whales, and primates) to terrestrial nature – the ecosystem as a whole (Callicott, 3-4).
40
Centered on, emphasizing or dominated by males or masculine interests.
41
Conception or understanding of the world as existing entirely for humankind; interpreting reality only
from a purely human point-of-view; focusing exclusively on human welfare and the intrinsic value of
human beings. The environment enters into theology only as an area of human agency to be acted on, with
no intrinsic value other than to serve humankind (Callicott, 2).
42
God’s incarnational presence in History, as manifest in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. See Jürgen
Moltman, In the End – The Beginning: The Life of Hope (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 158. “God
penetrates the world in the same way as honey in the comb” (Tertullian, Adv. Herm. 44.1).
43
“The cosmological context – the assertion that the Redeemer is the creator – is deeply rooted in Hebrew
faith and surfaces in John’s incarnational Christology, Paul’s cosmic Christ, Irenaeus’ notion of Christ
recapitulating all of creation, as well as in the sacramental motifs of Augustine and Thomas.” See Sallie
McFague, “An Ecological Christology: Does Christianity Have It? in Christianity and Ecology, edited by
Dieter T. Hessel and Rosemary Radford Ruether (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2002), 29.
44
“God has been speaking to us from all eternity through everything that exists.” See Douglass Burton-
Christie, “Word beneath the Water: Logos, Cosmos, and the Spirit of Place” in Hessel and Ruether, 318.
45
“The Word is apprehended in and through the world” (Burton-Christie, 319). As God was present in
heaven and on earth, manifesting himself in creation, his “immanent-abiding presence in the tabernacle at
the ark foreshadowed his incarnate presence in Jesus Christ. ‘The Word became flesh and made his
dwelling among us’ (e˙skh/nwsen, i.e., he tented, or tabernacled, John 1:14)….The covenant promise “I
will be their God, and they will be my people (reiterated in Heb 8:10b; esp. 2 Cor 6:16) is thus fulfilled in
Christ saying, “I will be with you” (John 13:33)….. [T]he promise extends into the present in that ‘he
entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence’ (Heb 9:24)….believers (and the church)
have become the dwelling place of the Lord in a new way (1 Cor 6:19; 2 Cor 6:16; Eph 2:22). And…the
promise extends forever, when ‘the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his
Christ,’ where he will reign on his throne forever and ever, world without end (Eph 3:21; Rev 7:15–17;
11:15; 22:1–5)” [NIDOTTE].

DRAFT: 13-Aug-05 10
From this new perspective it becomes appropriate to re-imagine metaphors that describe
the earth as the “body of God;”46 where the beauty and sacredness of the world
reawakens us from “autism with regard to the natural cosmos… [where] Christ is God’s
categorical affirmation and assumption of the whole world” (John 1:9) 47 and the Spirit is
the breath of all life “experienced in a God-centered life lived in communion…. of
mutual love, of mutual giving and receiving, of being with one another [and all of
creation] in ecstatic shared life”48 and God is free to be God.

However, this proposed doctrine of God is insufficient. Imbuing creation and Nature with
God’s immanence is not a solution for a rebirth of wonder in the Church and a return to
the countercultural claims of the first Pauline Christian churches49 that resisted the
imperial mentality of an economic system “based on the exploitation of power, the
exhaustion of natural resources, the misuse of people, and the waste of products.”50

46
This not Pantheistic but Trinitarian in that it approaches Creation and creatures as that which the
transcendent God interpenetrates and whose relationship to represents communion as God becomes
incarnate in all that exists. See Sallie McFague, The Body of God: An Ecological Theology (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 1993). For example, in Process theology God is the only being in the process of the universe
that is able to feel the impact of all the particular events as they happen. The unexhausted divine self ever
energizes in nature and history (God’s providence). The world is to be seen as the body of God.
47
John Chryssavgis, “The World of the Icon and Creation: An Orthodox Perspective on Ecology and
Pneumatology” in Hessel and Ruether, 83, 89. Christ “is Himself the Word of God…who in His invisible
form pervades us universally in the whole world, and encompasses it length and breadth and height and
depth” (Irenaeus) quoted in Burton-Christie, 321. This revives the ancient Jewish wisdom tradition of
Shekinah, “the feminine manifestation of the divine” which in early Christianity became the Logos, “the
pre-existent form of the incarnate Christ.” See Amy-Jill Levine, “Lecture Twenty-Two: Wisdom
Literature” in The Old Testament (DVD; Chantilly Va.: The Teaching Company, 2001), 45.
48
“Light cannot be separated from what makes visible, and it is impossible for you to recognize Christ, the
Image of the invisible God, unless the Spirit enlightens you. Once you see the Image, you cannot ignore the
Light….when we see Christ…it is always through the illumination of the Spirit” (Basil of Caesarea, On the
Holy Spirit, 26.64 in St. Basil the Great on the Holy Spirit, trans. David Anderson (Crestwood, NY: St.
Vladamir’s Seminary Press, 1980), 97 quoted in Denis Edwards, Breath of Life: A Theology of the Creator
Spirit (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004), 29-30.
49
This theological perspective may also be thought of as deconstructionist. That is, meaning is contextually
determined and contexts are infinitely extendable (boundless). For example, in order to derive meaning
from a text, we must always be sensitive to background contexts. Thus, all texts must be interpreted; the
hermeneutic approach we choose to interpret text is important. For not all interpretations of a text are valid.
The validity of our interpretation must always be checked within a community of interpreters who are more
knowledgeable than we are about the text in question. Deconstructionist thinkers include Jacques Derrida
and Michel Foucault (Wilber, 89).
50
Wendell Berry, “Racism and the Economy,” in The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of
Wendell Berry, edited and introduced by Norman Wirzba (Washington, DC: Shoemaker and Hoard, 2002),
53. “The imperial power of Rome [was based] on a system of ‘political tyranny and economic
exploitation,’ founded on conquest and maintained by violence and oppression.” See Miroslav Volf,

DRAFT: 13-Aug-05 11
Re-imbuing Nature with God’s immanence both limits God’s freedom and does not
address the primary need to heal man’s relationship to God. For “God is to be identified
with neither heaven nor earth, because God is ‘wholly other,’ not a member of any
universe” conceived in purely human terms.51 Instead, what is required is to remember
the distinction between man and God and to reconstitute our relationship to this ‘wholly
other’ God as the basis for human hope,52 and like Jeremiah (31:31-34) in his day, look to
a reconstruction of our lives as members of the Church in glad obedience to the God of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who liberated the Israelites from captivity in Egypt and who
created the world and everything in it.53

Just as in Jeremiah’s day, this relationship to a ‘wholly other’ God that allows God the
freedom to be God is political. It is a political theological stance to the world and history
whereby man is being called to embody the alternative consciousness of Christ in the face
of the denying King and his royal consciousness; a consciousness which refuses to see
the “indifferent affluence, cynical oppression, and presumptive religion” that so grossly
violates God’s freedom of creation and action.54

If we want to behave as Christians, at a minimum, we have a political ministry of grief; to

share the anguish of the God and the groaning of all creation (Rom. 8:22). Also, if we call
ourselves Christians, we have a political task to participate in the alternative community

Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1996), 296.
51
Timothy J. Gorringe, Karl Barth: Against Hegemony (Christian Theology in Context; Oxford, Oxford
University Press, 1999), 58.
52
The Spirit is understood “not as a metaphysical entity but as a healing life-force which engenders human
flourishing as well as the welfare of the planet.” See Mark I. Wallace, “The Wounded Spirit as the Basis for
Hope in an Age of Radical Ecology,” in Hessel and Ruether, 53.
53
Walter Brueggemann, An Introduction to the Old Testament: The Canon and Christian Imagination
(Louisville: John Knox Press, 2003), 189. The Orthodoxy in Jeremiah’s day was: (1) We are YHWH’s
chosen people, enjoying the blessings of our covenant relationship w/ YHWH forged at Sinai; (2) YHWH
has granted land to our ancestors and we are the inheritors of that land grant; (3) YHWH has promised a
perpetual dynastic reign of the house of David; (4) God would not let Jerusalem fall because that is where
YHWH’s temple stood. Jeremiah’s radical critique of this Orthodoxy was: (1) It is true that YHWH and the
people are covenantal partners, but the people are not living up to their side of the covenant; (2) Israel’s
failure to obey God also forfeits their rights to the land granted by God; (3) Judah’s leaders have blatantly
broken God’s laws and instead of ruling faithfully to protect the poor and downtrodden are “oppressors,
perpetrators of violence and bloodshed;” (4) Because of the abominations committed in the Temple, it has
become polluted and YHWH is abandoning the Temple and will no longer protect Jerusalem. See Katheryn
Pfisterer Darr, “The Book of Ezekiel,” New Interpreters Bible Vol. VI (Louisville, Abingdon, 2001), 1082-
4.
54
Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 2nd Ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 47.

DRAFT: 13-Aug-05 12
of the Church that is capable of calling into question the prevailing royal consciousness
that claims hegemony over creation and denies God’s sovereignty and limits his freedom.

The Church is really the community of remembrance whose task it is to remember for I
am with you – declares YHWH – to deliver you (Jer. 1:19b, NJPS). Thus, the Church’s
political stance is to resist and to not “succumb to denial, cynicism, or assimilation” but
to re-imagine an alternative world, the kingdom of God. The Church’s mortal enemies
are the maintainers of the status-quo who deceive not only themselves but others that
there is no illness or suffering (Rom 8:18). What is at issue is whether humankind’s grief
“can be audible and visible enough…to permit God’s newness” to be revealed in His
creation and His History.55

Thus, the political task of theology today is “to bring to public expression those very
hopes and yearnings [for God’s creation and the liberation of all humankind] that have
been denied so long and suppressed so deeply that we no longer know that they are
there.” Most importantly, it is in the Church’s “public expression of hope as a way of
subverting the dominant royal embrace of despair” that our human community will find
the imagination to ensure the survival of the planet Earth.56 For there is no way in which
God’s project to bring the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth can succeed if the Earth
project fails.57

Ecological theology and “ecofeminist critiques58 posit a theological system rooted in a

desire to flee the actual conditions of life – vulnerability, finitude, and mortality – and a
theological structure based on a perceived need to dominate, exploit, and conquer in
order to escape these conditions.”59 This theology claims that “the basic problem before

55
Walter Brueggemann, Hopeful Imagination: Prophetic Voices in Exile (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1986), 14, 42.
56
Brueggemann 1986, 65.
57
Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988), 127.
58
“Women must see that there can be no liberation for them and no solution to the ecological crisis within
a society whose fundamental model of relationships continues to be one of domination. They must unite the
demands of the women's movement with those of the ecological movement to envision a radical reshaping
of the basic socioeconomic relations and the underlying values of this society.” See Rosemary Radford
Ruether, New Woman, New Earth: Sexist Ideologies and Human Liberation (New York: Seabury Press,
1975), 204.
59
Heather Eaton, “Response to Rosemary Radford Ruether: Ecofeminism and Theology – Challenges,
Confrontations, and Recommendations,” in Hessel and Ruether, 113.

DRAFT: 13-Aug-05 13
us is how to recover a sense of a sacred universe. We cannot save ourselves without
saving the world in which we live…. [The] urgency is to save the beauty and wonder of a
gracious world designed as a place suitable for the Divine indwelling, a place where the
meeting of the Divine and the human”60are open to transformation – the in-breaking of
“cosmological moments of grace”; of “God’s sacramental offering” that includes not only
humankind, but all of life, the Earth itself, and all of God’s good creation. Ecofeminism
believes that it offers new models for us to use to think about reality – to elicit a new
ways of understanding the world and how we come to know it (an alternate epistemology
not dominated by hierarchal, paternalistic ways of knowing and explaining reality).61

But these claims are just fancy dressing, if the basic issue of man’s relationship to God is
not addressed. This relationship is one of praxis more so than doxology. For it is what
man does and reveals by his action as he allows God to be free that reveals the basis of
this relationship. Ultimately these actions are political. For they either reveal man’s
complacency and acquiescence to the proffered and abusive hegemony of the prevailing
human system of power or they are open to God’s freedom and against the false
hegemony of human power systems.

For the Church, “the power of truth is a power different from the power of Caesar….The
instrument of this power is not violence, but witness….to point to the truth, not to
produce the truth” (i.e. manufacture the truth through instruments of power).62 The
political basis of the Church is to offer a new perspective; a stance of liberation that
resists the powers and principalities; “essentially a decision not to be passive, not to be a
victim, but equally not to avoid passivity by simply reproducing the violence” being done
to God’s freedom in the world.63

What witness by the Church is called for? To begin, we need to witness to a new political
theology for how we live on Earth: (1) not only do we have duties and responsibilities to
future generations, but (2) we also have duties to other species and to all of God’s

60
Thomas Berry, “Christianity’s Role in the Earth Project,” in Hessel and Ruether, 131, 133, 134.
61
Ivone Gebara, Longing for Running Water: Ecofeminism and Liberation, Biblical Reflections on
Ministry (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1999), 22.

62
Volf, 267.
63
Rowan Williams, Writing in the Dust: After September 11th (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 25.

DRAFT: 13-Aug-05 14
creation.64 It is time to develop political theological virtues in ourselves and in our
children.65 The confessing Church’s vocation, in response, is to help us read Scripture
anew66 so that we may see the depth of God’s love within every aspect of Creation and
learn to give ourselves over to the in-breaking of the Spirit in our lives so that we can be
a witness again for Christ in the world.67

Some Principles of a Political Ecological Theology

1. God is the creator of all of creation68 and loves the world.69 This means that her
creation is ‘good’ and that “all things are consistent, justly ordered, and have
integrity,” whether apparent to humankind or not, and “intrinsic worth apart from
their utility.”70

64
James Gustave Speth, Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).
65
See chart on “The Ecological Virtues” (attached).
66
The discipline of figural reading, the whole Scripture read literally as "wholly figuring Christ,” may be a
help. Given the variety, depth, and tensions within Scripture, two elements are built into such a discipline:
first, a self-correcting accountability for interpretation is encouraged as all Scripture is read in relation to
other parts of Scripture, allowing even the most repugnant or uninteresting or peripheral to be potentially
revealing; and second is that in reading Scripture always with “Christ's fundamental life as referent and
explicator, the very character of Christ himself is constantly reordered to human understanding.” This was
the form of reading of Scripture Karl Barth did, for example, which enabled him to ‘see’ the reality of the
abusive powers during his day and have the courage to witness (as Christ did in his day) as to the truth in
his Barman Declaration (Ephraim Radner, personal correspondence 01/21/05).
67
Ephraim Radner, Hope among the Fragments: The Broken Church and its Engagement of Scripture
(Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2004), 67. The ekklesia is a community called into being by God’s grace; as
such, it belongs to God, and it is called to obey God’s will as set forth through apostolic teaching and
example. This community is the primary addressee of God. The primary sphere of moral concern is not the
character of the individual but the corporate obedience of the church. The church is a countercultural
community of discipleship; a community in which people can find security and can act w/ moral
confidence. See Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament (HarperSanFrancisco, 1996).
68
I am the LORD, who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth
by myself (Isa. 44:24).
69
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not
perish but might have eternal life (John 3:16).
70
Calvin B. Dewitt, “Behemoth and Batrachians in the Eye of God: Responsibility to Other Kinds in
Biblical Perspective” in Hessel and Ruether, 306. God’s absolute power over the kosmos (“heaven and
earth” and History) comes from the fact that he is the Creator.

DRAFT: 13-Aug-05 15
 2. “Neither the creation, nor any of her creatures belong to human beings, but to
their Creator, who cares for all of it….they must be treated with respect and cared
for.”71

3. Because humankind is part of God’s creation, we do not stand apart and separate
from ‘the environment’ but are part of God’s wholeness, along with the biosphere
and the Earth. “The Lord God took humankind (adam) and put us in the garden of
Eden (‘the Earth’) to con-serve it (ábad) and to keep it (shamar)” in all its vitality,
energy and beauty (Gen. 2:15). As God keeps us, so should we keep God’s
Earth.72

4. Human beings are worthy creatures and as God’s imago Dei, “have a special
honor of imaging God’s love for the world.” Just as “every creature reflects back
something of the love God pours out through all creation” humankind’s job is to
con-serve and keep the Earth.73

5. The whole creation gives testimony to God’s divinity and everlasting power (Ps.
19).74 But God is not merely acting in history. He has a purpose: to establish the
kingdom of God here on Earth.75

71
Ibid, 306. Theologically, the term creation (baœra},Heb.; ktiísis, Gk.) means the dynamic bringing into
existence of all there is by God. This is not a one-time act of origination, but a continual, ongoing
succession of creative actions by the Creator. All of heaven and earth and all of history depends on God, is
directed by Her, and owes Her obedience. Creation provides the setting for doing God’s will.
72
Dewitt, 301-3, 307. Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees (Our Ecological Footprint [Gabriola Island,
BC: New Society Publishers, 1996]) call the supporting land required to feed and clothe a human
population the "ecological footprint." “They have calculated the ecological footprint of the average
American at 12.6 acres, the average (Asian) Indian at one acre, and the world average at 4.4 acres.”
Presently, "humanity's ecological footprint is as much as 30 percent larger than nature can sustain in the
long run.” See “Last Chance for Civilization” May 10, 2005 by Ernest Partridge, The Crisis Papers
accessed 05/12/05 at http://www.democraticunderground.com/crisis/05/010_ep.html.
73
Ibid 307.
74
Dewitt 309. God’s majesty and radiance is built-in to the very structure of life; both in his creation of all
there is and in his instruction to humankind for remembrance and acknowledgement of this relationship.
75
Moltmann 2004, 153-4. “A more appropriate translation of the Gk phrase basileia tou theou (reflecting
the Heb. phrase malku®t s¥aœmayim) would be ‘reign of God’” (ABD). “‘The kingdom of God’ for Jesus [may
have been] an alternative way of speaking of the age to come, of heaven, and of the way heaven impacts on
earth.” See James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, Vol. 1 (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2003), 487.

DRAFT: 13-Aug-05 16
 6. “True freedom [for humankind] is not the ‘torment of choice’ with its doubts and
threats; it is simple, undivided joy in” God’s good creation.76 The truth is to “look
beyond, and through, the dark horizon” of today’s sufferings (Rom. 8:18) “into
the daybreak of God’s new day, his kingdom come – here on Earth.77

7. There are four ways in which the crucified Christ challenges the perpetrators of
the violence of ecocide:

a. “The cross breaks the cycle of violence…. By suffering violence as an

innocent victim, he took upon himself the aggression of the persecutors.
He broke the vicious cycle of violence by absorbing it….and sought to
overcome evil by doing good.”78

b. “The cross lays bare the mechanism of scapegoating….his innocence, his

truthfulness and his justice – was reason enough for hatred.”79 How much
do we hate the earth as we engage in ecocide, the willful degrading of
God’s good creation? Is the Earth merely our latest scapegoat for
something much deeper that is wrong in the heart of humanity?

c. “The cross is part of Jesus’ struggle for God’s truth and justice” against an
opposing imperial mentality attempting to preserve the status quo. “It
takes the struggle against deception and oppression to transform
nonviolence from barren negativity into creative possibility.”80 Just as

76
Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God (San Francisco: Harper & Row
Publishers, 1981), 55. Maybe this joy in God’s good creation is just what the metaphor “the kingdom of
God” means – a post-history time (Endzeit) where the end will return to the pre-history time (Urzeit) and
“heaven will be paradise restored” (Dunn, 485).
77
Moltmann 2004, 153-4. One way of thinking about the coming of the kingdom of God is that it expresses
the “hope [] that the two dimensions, heaven and earth, at present separated…will be united together, so
that there will be new heavens and new earth.” See N.T. Wright, Following Jesus (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1994), 101.
78
Volf, 291-2.
79
Ibid 291-2. According to René Girard, a historical anthropologist of religion, “The Gospel Revelation is
the definitive formulation of a truth already partially disclosed in the Old Testament….the truth that God
himself accepts the role of the victim…so that he can save us all….by revealing how violent contagion
[scapegoating] poisons communities.” See René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightening (Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis Books, 2002), 130-1.
80
Volf, 291-2.

DRAFT: 13-Aug-05 17
 Jesus did in his day, Christians today are being called to witness to the
truth concerning God’s good creation.

d. “The cross is a divine embrace of the deceitful and the unjust…an act of
forgiveness…meant to…create a new world…a world without deception
and injustice….There can be no redemption unless the truth about the
world is told and justice is done.”81

Jesus’ death on the cross is the paradigm for faithfulness to God in the world.82 To be
Jesus’ disciple is to obey his call to bear the cross; to be like him. Thus, our actions are
not to be judged in their ability to produce results the world recognizes, but in their
correspondence to Jesus’ example. The community as a whole is called to follow in the
way of Jesus’ suffering. This includes a call to those who possess power and privilege to
surrender it for the sake of the weak.83

Ultimately, to participate in the kingdom of God means accepting that God’s

compassion84 toward us is the source of our hope; consequently, compassion85 must be
the foundation of our behavior.86 Compassion will lead us to care about the least in our
community and the Earth that Jesus died on the cross to redeem.

81
Ibid 294.
82
According to Hebrews, for example, “Faithfulness means simple things, like hospitality to strangers
(13:2), care for the prisoner ‘as though in prison with them’ (Heb. 13:3), fidelity to our spouses (13:4, and
sharing what we have (13:6…[it] may also mean suffering (5:7-9; 12:3-5).” See Linda Maloney, editor,
Education for Ministry: The New Testament, Year Two, 4th Edition, revised (Sewanee: University of the
South, 2000), 462.
83
Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament (HarperSanFrancisco, 1996).

84
hΩesed: for example, as part of God’s response to the apostasy of worshiping the Golden Calf in Exodus
32–34, Moses hears the Lord’s self-proclamation as One who is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and
abounding in hesed and faithfulness, keeping hesed for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and
sin” (ABD).
85
}aœheœb: which connotes humankind’s willingness to walk with God. For example, in the She∑ma{ (Deut
6:4–5): “you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your
might.” “The She∑ma{ speaks of Israel’s love for God in the context of the covenant established at Sinai,
using terminology familiar from the political rhetoric of the culture. Here the love that God commands
from Israel is not primarily a matter of intimate affection, but is to be expressed by obedience to God’s
commandments, serving God, showing reverence for God, and being loyal to God alone (Deut. 10:12; 11:1,
22; 30:16)” [ABD].
86
“Living in the kingdom of heaven means changing our desires so that we willingly locate ourselves
where the poor and oppressed are.” See Ellen F. Davis, “Preserving Virtues: Renewing the Tradition of the

DRAFT: 13-Aug-05 18
The compassion we sow is the evidence of the love that Jesus spoke about as the greatest
commandment of the Law.87 And, the call to repentance (Lk. 24.47; Acts 2.38) includes
precisely the call to reform individual lives and community practices in accordance with
the prophetic vision of justice – as set forth in the Torah88 and that stands as the
foundation of Jesus’ kerygma of the kingdom of God.89 This justice includes justice for
the oppressed and unfortunate – of humans, otherkind (non-human life),90 and the Earth –
all part of God’s body and ‘good creation.’91

The fundamental morality and underpinnings of a political ecological theology are

somewhat similar across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam:

Sages” in William P. Brown, editor, Character & Scripture: Moral Formation, Community, and Biblical
Interpretation (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2002), 194.
87
He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with
all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. (Matt. 22:37-38). Love is the “essential
eschatological reality” (Carl Holladay) “where the impression of the cross is continually manifested in
Word, sacrament, and deed” in human communion with life, God, and the other. See Alexandria R. Brown,
“Character Formation or Character Transformation? The Challenge of Cruciform Exegesis for Character
Ethics in Paul” in William P. Brown, 288-9.
88
In the Torah, the Hebrew words used to denote the concept of justice (sΩ§d⋲aœq aœh, sΩed⋲eq, misûpaœt)√ , which are
often used together, connote a way of life that is imbued with judgment/justice and righteousness (acting
according to a proper [God’s] standard, doing what is right, being in the right) and are probably best
understood as a hendiadys, that is, two terms that can be translated as “righteous judgment” or “social
justice” (ABD).
89
“Kingdom of God” was a politically charged saying in 1st Century Judaism: it would have been heard as
declaring the righteous restoration of Israel’s freedom from outside domination. The church’s role in this
vision is transformation – turning the world upside down – not through armed rebellion but through
formation of a counter-cultural community that provides an alternative witness to the status quo. The Holy
Spirit empowers this work and witness of the church. When the Spirit is at work, liberation is underway.
The Holy Spirit provides not only God’s continuing presence w/in the community, but also a source of
continuing revelation.
90
“Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them.
Now we face the question whether still higher “standard of living” is worth the cost in things natural, wild
and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the
chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech” (Leopold, vii).
91
For example, “the justice which Christ will bring about for all and everything is not the justice that
establishes what is good and evil, and the retributive justice which rewards the good and punishes the
wicked. It is God’s creative justice, which brings the victims’ justice and puts the perpetrator’s right”
(Moltmann 2004, 193). God’s creative justice applies for all of creation, not only for the “healing of the
sick, the feeding of the hungry, the care of the neglected and despised, and the forgiveness of sins.” See
Lisa Sowle Cahill, Love Your Enemies: Discipleship, Pacifism, and Just War Theory (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 1994), 37.

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 • Sacred scripture “tells us the kinds of people we are to become if we are to hear
its message faithfully.”

• Sacred scripture “is both a historical document and a canonical and sacred text for
a believing community.

• Sacred scripture contains information that is “useful to guide behavior today.”

• “Human love and justice is modeled for us in [sacred] scripture” (e.g. “the Golden
Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you” [Matt. 7:12; Luke
6:31]).92

Given these starting assumptions, the following predicates for a political ecological
theology and the form of justice that flows from this paradigm may be equally true for
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam:

1. Human history and human institutions and political arrangements are not
“‘secular” in the sense of being outside God’s plan for humanity.” Thus, morality
and human justice (see above tenets) “should inform a person’s public life in
community.”

2. “Made in the image and likeness of God, all people have a human dignity and
fundamental rights that are independent of their gender, age, nationality, ethnic
origin, religion, or economic status.”

3. “The fullness of human life is found in community with others.”

4. Moses/Christ/Mohammed’s “message imposes a prophetic mandate to speak for

those who have no one to speak for them [the powerless: the ‘poor’, the ‘widow,’
the ‘orphan,’ and the ‘stranger in the land’], to be a defender of the defenseless.”

5. To “misuse [] the world’s resources or [appropriate] them by a minority of the

world’s population betrays the gift of creation” and distorts our community with
others (see #3 above).

92
John R. Donahue, S.J., “The Bishop and the Proclamation of Biblical Justice’” in David A. Stosur, ed.,
Unfailing Patience and Sound Teaching: Reflections on Episcopal Ministry in Honor of Rembert G.
Weakland, O.S.B. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2003), 246-248.

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“On earth, we belong to one human family and as such have mutual obligations to
provide the development of all peoples across the world.”93

Be the change you want to see in the world – Mahatma Gandhi

(Jesus Christ certainly was that!)

93
Donahue, 240-2.

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