Chapter 12 - HOLY WATER, SACRED LAND
Roger Ray, D.Min.
January 12, 2014
A tall, beautiful model strides confidently across our TV screens assuring us that coal is our friend, providing both abundant energy and economically important jobs for Americans. Is she trying to persuade us to rush down to the mall and buy some coal? No, but the apparent motivation for such campaign advertisements is not always the only one. Clean coal, which is different from coal only because you say "clean" first, is a myth that the coal industry wants to sell to the voting public so that environmental concerns about the impact of coal on our water, air and global temperatures will not interfere with their profits.
But more than that, buying advertisement from corporate media is a way of protecting a vulnerable industry from unfavorable news coverage. In the same way the hospitals run PR ad campaigns advertising the services of their physicians when most of us have little choice in which cancer service or emergency room we might go to. We use the one that is in our insurance provider group. But when hospitals buy up large blocks of print and broadcast advertising, they are trying to protect themselves from investigative reporting.
In some instances, where the disaster is bigger than mere bribes can manage, governments have been known to step in and silence the media rather than depending on the uncertainty of trying to buy influence. More than a year after the damaged reactor in Fukushima, Japan began leaking radiation into the adjoining ocean water, the government passed a law preventing any coverage of the environmental risks. The law carries a potential of ten years in prison for any journalists who actually do what we depend upon journalists to do.
It is understandable that the government has an interest in avoiding public panic but repressing important and possibly life saving information is shameful at best and more likely a kind of governmental malfeasance.
Similarly, in North Carolina and Virginia, state legislators have refused to fund research into anything related to global warming or rising sea levels as if refusing to address the science related to what is happening to their shores will somehow keep it from happening. After Hurricane Sandy, the largest and most devastating storm in America's history hit New Jersey, that state's Republican governor began to show a great deal more respect for the more fact based conversation about how human dependence on fossil fuels is pushing our planet towards a dangerous tipping point of climate disaster.
Major world religions have had a hard time getting a handle on the topic of environmental ethics. There are a number of important explanations for our past failure, all of which are barriers we must over come.
First, western religions have been very text oriented, seeking authoritative direction from their scriptures, all of which were written in a time when the balance of power between the earth and humans was decidedly on the side of nature. While we find examples of cherishing life, discovering awe in nature and declarations that certain rivers or places were uniquely holy, there is much more about domination and fear of nature in all of our ancient scriptures.
Progressives must get past this devotion to ancient religious literature. We do not, for example, have to find a way to interpret the Genesis creation story to create an environmental urgency nor do we have to play fast and loose with truth claims about either Native American or Druid spirituality to insist that we will find substantive direction from these or any other ancient sources. The motivation for trying to make the Genesis account a demand from God to care for the planet is, at one level, laudable but doing so requires abandoning our efforts at moving away from supernatural theism and the assumption that God somehow wrote the Bible. You can certainly find examples of a more respectful approach to creation in some primitive religion sources but you can also find contradictions that would only foster more debate about issues that are, substantively, beyond debate in the real world.
The modern world is in a present crisis, not foreseen by ancient prophets or in ancient texts. Now is a time when we must apply our devotion to both ethics and truth to join the moral will of the faith community to the information provided by environmental scientists.
Secondly, we have, at times, associated our religion with too specific pieces of land or rivers. Poets often express more urgent truths than do our holy scriptures. I love the line in Michael Franti's song "Hello, Bonjour" where the poet boldly states, "Every drop of water is holy water and every piece of land is holy land." Again, the Jewish claim of a Promised Land, the Christian identity with holy sites, Hindu attribution of holy status to one river and Muslim claims to traditional governance of specific nations and holy sites undermines the larger issue that there is nothing about Jerusalem that is more holy than Lexington, KY or more sacred about Mecca than can be found in Belize City. The Florida swamp is a part of the same earth as the Grand Canyon or the Alps. Our reverence for one place or body of water should not be determined by tradition, or what we may have believed happened there in our own faith history but that we are a part of the earth and all of the parts of the earth are connected to one another.
Finally, there has been way too much emphasis placed on belief in an afterlife that can devalue the only world we actually know exists and whose existence we can now threaten. Even for those who feel the need to hold onto belief in an afterlife, I would offer the corrective of Søren Kierkegaard who cautioned that there are things that are true when they are whispered that become false when they are shouted. Belief in heaven may bring comfort to the dying and solace to the grieving but this belief has been used to dismiss efforts at saving this world because, as some legislators have asserted, God is in charge of the world and nothing will happen to it without God's approval.
From my perspective, the spiritual passion to protect our planet is also threefold. The first is simply a reverence and awe for the creation in all of its wonder and beauty. Henry David Thoreau was not the first to find more of the divine in nature than in church and he will not be the last. One should not exclude the other but they should certainly be partners in inspiring and educating the spirit of both.
Secondly, environmental issues have a huge social justice concern. Many of the major sources of pollution are profit driven industries that are choosing short-term gain over long term environmental health. Also, the poor of every nation generally wind up living in the areas where these industries dispose of their harmful byproducts. The resources of the earth should not be the sole possession of those who have manipulated governments and banking interests into giving them exploitative rights that are, in any rational analysis, not the right of any individual or narrow interest. We an innately understand that the air belongs to all of us but it would be helpful if we could maintain some of that sense of global connection when it comes to real estate. As we saw in the 2004 tsunami in southeast Asia, when the rising sea level and stronger storm surges send a wall of water onto shore, in most countries, it is the poor who are living there in very poorly constructed homes who are the most vulnerable.
Finally, this is a matter of compassion for future generations. The present generation that stands on the face of the earth does not have a right to use up the earth that will shortly be inherited by future generations. We talk about owning land as a part of our economic and personal safety interests but how can any mortal own something that lasts forever? We are stewards of the land and as stewards we have a much more vital interest that trumps our desire for personal profit.
This should go without being said. What could be more obvious than the fact that we must leave behind a planet that can be successfully inhabited by future generations and yet sometimes the most obvious truths are the ones the faith community must repeat the most often and the most loudly.
It would not be difficult to become exhausted with the virtual panic in the voices of many environmental advocates. However, we should not fail to note when we have become convinced that it needed to be done, we have been able to reverse the trends of planetary degradation. We have been able to restore forests, clean up rivers and lakes. We even, through individual effort and changes in governmental policies, reversed the erosion of the ozone layer of our atmosphere even though no one goes camping in the ozone layer or posts vacation pictures from there on their Face Book page.
People can, when given the correct information and the reason to act on it, stop poisoning their own habitat. Environmentalists often look more like Michael Moore than that lady who keeps telling us that we should have more coal in our breakfast cereal because mercury poisoning isn't all that bad but we have to first choose not to be either gullible or fatalistic.
Understanding how to care for the earth is complicated and it takes an investment of energy and, at many junctures, personal sacrifice will be necessary to make the needed changes in our use of the earth.
The largest consumption of fossil fuels is expended in two arenas, the heating and cooling of our homes and in transportation and this is where we must concentrate our efforts. It would be wonderful if we were all motivated to do the right thing because it is the right thing to do, however, human nature being what it is, doing the right thing is always a bit easier if it saves us some money at the same time. Strengthening our conscience and protecting our financial resources are not always mutually exclusive.
Learning to recycle, to refrain from using disposable items, insulating our homes and being more cautious about the use of energy with our appliances, lights, television as well has heating and cooling can all lower our bills while acting to save the planet. Investing in energy efficient light bulbs, water heaters and appliances have upfront costs but they promise long-term savings.
Transportation is a larger and more complex issue. Larger, more powerful vehicles are attractive to us for comfort, safety, and utility and for reliability in inclement weather. However, choosing smaller, hybrid or alternative energy transportation is an option for most of us and it is something we can do proactively to help conserve limited resources and to cut back on pollution.
Still, a huge percentage of the consumption of gasoline in major cities is used by drivers who are looking for parking places. All of us have experienced sitting for long periods of time in traffic jams where there are rows and rows of cars, stopped in multiple lanes as far as the eye can see, all burning fuel while waiting to move.
The creation of energy efficient mass transit would require a sea change in priorities for nations such as ours. We are not only accustomed to private transportation but our economy is deeply invested in the manufacture, sales and maintenance of automobiles and all of the accompanying road construction. Both government and private corporate interests will continue to use their influence to keep Americans in cars.
Mass transit could cut down on pollution, consumption of fossil fuels, traffic accidents, the amount of land taken up in parking, personally owned garage space and the time it takes to move from one place to another. There certainly would be a huge upfront investment to build this kind of infrastructure but that is a small concern compared to the hurdle of persuading Americans to want mass transit rather than bigger cars and more highways.
The technology exists. Other nations have taken great strides in this direction. All that stands between us and making huge progress in protecting both our environment and our personal incomes is the collective will to change.
The most important task of the ancient prophets, of the early church and of any meaningful incarnation of the church in the future is to speak truth to power. Our news media is almost exclusively corporate owned and profit driven. Even our public media is influenced by government grants and corporate sponsorship. The church must maintain its independence from profit driven interests and even find the courage to be faithful to the truth in the face of changing public opinions.
Pastors are not environmental experts but we sure do need to expose ourselves to their research and insights. We need to articulate a passionate, informed and prophetic message to a public that may not hear the imperative truth about our ecology anywhere else.
One of my favorite old hymns, "Once to Every Man (sic) and Nation," says, "Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne, yet that scaffold sways the future." I fear that too much of the main stream church is cowering in a self-defensive posture, trying to hold onto its meager existence for another generation. What I am trying to say to you about being bold in the area of environmental activism is what William Shedd meant when he said, "A ship in harbor is safe but that is not what ships are for." The church exists for telling the truth and given the crisis that is at hand in the environment it is past time that we stop being afraid of the consequences of being prophetic because the consequences of silent consent are surely much worse!
