I was sad to read Clive Hamilton giving short shift to the role of traditional religions (including Christianity) in dealing with the Anthropocene. After all, I mix with quite a few Christians who are passionate and active on environmental issues.
Still, I have to sadly admit that Clive has a point. Christian climate activists are decidedly in the minority. Aid agencies like TEAR and lobby groups like Common Grace and ARRCC have picked up the issue, but many Christians are disengaged and it is not something that has been talked about regularly in any of the churches I have been part of. When it does come up there will be the predictable skeptics and deniers, but many Christians will respond that while it's true and important, it's much more important for Christians to 'preach the gospel', by which they generally mean 'make converts'.
I find this frustrating but also familiar. It is exactly the same response I have heard over many years to suggestions that Christians should be concerned about issues of justice. 'Sure, it's important to feed the hungry and house the homeless, but shouldn't we be focused on preaching the gospel?'
Where does this come from? I think it has three sources.
The first is a strong sense of individualism that holds sway in many parts of the church as it does in our wider society. This suggests, often without examination, that all our problems are ultimately individual. Individual conversion is much more important than any kind of collective action. Hence, the same Christians don't make this response to issues like same sex, marriage or abortion about which they will often be passionately active - these issues are questions of individual morality.
Second is a kind of dualism which sees heaven and earth as separate. This earth is merely a temporary practice ground, following which we will spend eternity in some other place - either heaven or hell - which is essentially unconnected from this world.
The third is a view of eschatology (the study of the theology that concerns 'final events' or our final destiny) which sees God as bringing about the destruction of this current cosmos and starting again.
All these things can lead Christians to devalue the present (both socially and ecologically) and see conversion as a form of escape. They will often do good works, feeding the hungry or visiting the sick or whatever, but these will be seen as adjuncts to the important work of evangelism. This attitude is not necessarily conscious or examined, but it tends to underline what we do and where we put our time and effort.
As an antidote to this view, I would recommend the writings of Mick Pope. Mick is a Melbourne-based meteorologist and theologian and is a prominent voice urging Australian Christians to take our looming ecological crisis seriously. I interact with him online from time to time and met him briefly when he visited Brisbane earlier this year. He's also written a number of books about the intersection of climate change and theology. These are not tomes, they are short books, written for a general reader, and salted with pop culture references and terrible dad jokes to lighten what could otherwise be rather confronting subject matter.
Right before I read Clive Hamilton's Defiant Earth, I had worked my way through his most recent book, All Things New: God's Plan to Renew Our World .
All Things New is an attempt to address the eschatological question. How should we see the mounting evidence of ecological crisis in the light of Christian understandings of the future? Where do ecological crisis and environmental activism fit into Christian eschatology? How should this inform the way we live our lives here and now?
In the end it comes down to two competing views of eschatology. Premillennialism, the view that God will take Christians out of the world before destroying it and building a new one, has become dominant in the evangelical church in the past century. However, prior to the late 1800s most Christians held the view known as postmillennialism, the idea that God, in company with his people, will renew all things including this earth and everything in it, human and non-human.
To caricature this view a little, if you are a premillennialist you will not care much what happens to this world or to human societies, because you believe that God will soon destroy them anyway. Either we will die and be transported to heaven, our true home, or Christ will return and all that we now know, including all those who do not believe, will be swept away. Our overriding task on this earth is to rescue ourselves and as many others as we can through conversion. Working to rescue ecosystems or reform human society is just a waste of time, because God will destroy them anyway.
This view is very powerful, and all the more so because its influence has seeped from its source in small fundamentalist groups to the wider church, often guiding people who rarely if ever think about such things very deeply. Part of its power lies in its fitness for an atomised, individualistic culture in which we see ourselves as masters of our own destiny. It also feeds into (and is a special form of) the wider dualistic mindset which has pervaded the Christian church for much of its history - heaven vs earth, souls vs bodies. And it is psychologically appealing, allowing us to see a path of escape from the many problems which beset humans in the 21st century. But is it Biblical?
To answer this question, Pope takes his readers through the various passages which refer to the end. He focuses on passages such as this from Romans 8.
For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
Or the line from Revelation 21 which supplies the book's title.
"Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!”
The picture he paints is decidedly inclusive. God's plan is not to wipe everything out and start again, but to renew what he has already made. This includes not only people, but the whole of creation. The oceans, forests and deserts, the animals and plants, the water and the air, will all be renewed along with us.
Christianity is not an escape-hatch from the world we live in. Instead, it is a call for us to begin the task of renewal which God has promised, to be the forerunners and heralds of God's reign on earth. This doesn't lead us into a foolish optimism. We live in the midst of the empire, in the midst of powers which are opposed to God and which are happy to despoil God's creation and leave the poor to suffer. We are called to struggle, not necessarily to triumph. However, we have God's promise of ultimate renewal to sustain us.
All this will certainly sound esoteric to anyone who is not a Christian, and even to many who are. Yet people with the dualistic mindset occupy many key positions in our nation, including our current Prime Minister. And dualistic Christians can be a brake on progress in addressing climate change, contributing to the 'well it really doesn't matter that much, we have more important concerns' attitude that seems to prevail in much of Australian society.
Mick Pope has also written about this question in his earlier book, A Climate of Justice: Loving Your Neighbour in a Warming World published in 2017. While Hamilton addresses the question in philosophical terms, Pope's approach is intensely practical and focused squarely on human wellbeing. In the Anthropocene, in the face of climate change and other ecological crises, it is no longer possible (if it ever was) to view social justice and environmentalism as separate concerns. If we love our neighbour, we will also care for the environment.
Still, I have to sadly admit that Clive has a point. Christian climate activists are decidedly in the minority. Aid agencies like TEAR and lobby groups like Common Grace and ARRCC have picked up the issue, but many Christians are disengaged and it is not something that has been talked about regularly in any of the churches I have been part of. When it does come up there will be the predictable skeptics and deniers, but many Christians will respond that while it's true and important, it's much more important for Christians to 'preach the gospel', by which they generally mean 'make converts'.
I find this frustrating but also familiar. It is exactly the same response I have heard over many years to suggestions that Christians should be concerned about issues of justice. 'Sure, it's important to feed the hungry and house the homeless, but shouldn't we be focused on preaching the gospel?'
Where does this come from? I think it has three sources.
The first is a strong sense of individualism that holds sway in many parts of the church as it does in our wider society. This suggests, often without examination, that all our problems are ultimately individual. Individual conversion is much more important than any kind of collective action. Hence, the same Christians don't make this response to issues like same sex, marriage or abortion about which they will often be passionately active - these issues are questions of individual morality.
Second is a kind of dualism which sees heaven and earth as separate. This earth is merely a temporary practice ground, following which we will spend eternity in some other place - either heaven or hell - which is essentially unconnected from this world.
The third is a view of eschatology (the study of the theology that concerns 'final events' or our final destiny) which sees God as bringing about the destruction of this current cosmos and starting again.
All these things can lead Christians to devalue the present (both socially and ecologically) and see conversion as a form of escape. They will often do good works, feeding the hungry or visiting the sick or whatever, but these will be seen as adjuncts to the important work of evangelism. This attitude is not necessarily conscious or examined, but it tends to underline what we do and where we put our time and effort.
As an antidote to this view, I would recommend the writings of Mick Pope. Mick is a Melbourne-based meteorologist and theologian and is a prominent voice urging Australian Christians to take our looming ecological crisis seriously. I interact with him online from time to time and met him briefly when he visited Brisbane earlier this year. He's also written a number of books about the intersection of climate change and theology. These are not tomes, they are short books, written for a general reader, and salted with pop culture references and terrible dad jokes to lighten what could otherwise be rather confronting subject matter.
***
All Things New is an attempt to address the eschatological question. How should we see the mounting evidence of ecological crisis in the light of Christian understandings of the future? Where do ecological crisis and environmental activism fit into Christian eschatology? How should this inform the way we live our lives here and now?In the end it comes down to two competing views of eschatology. Premillennialism, the view that God will take Christians out of the world before destroying it and building a new one, has become dominant in the evangelical church in the past century. However, prior to the late 1800s most Christians held the view known as postmillennialism, the idea that God, in company with his people, will renew all things including this earth and everything in it, human and non-human.
To caricature this view a little, if you are a premillennialist you will not care much what happens to this world or to human societies, because you believe that God will soon destroy them anyway. Either we will die and be transported to heaven, our true home, or Christ will return and all that we now know, including all those who do not believe, will be swept away. Our overriding task on this earth is to rescue ourselves and as many others as we can through conversion. Working to rescue ecosystems or reform human society is just a waste of time, because God will destroy them anyway.
This view is very powerful, and all the more so because its influence has seeped from its source in small fundamentalist groups to the wider church, often guiding people who rarely if ever think about such things very deeply. Part of its power lies in its fitness for an atomised, individualistic culture in which we see ourselves as masters of our own destiny. It also feeds into (and is a special form of) the wider dualistic mindset which has pervaded the Christian church for much of its history - heaven vs earth, souls vs bodies. And it is psychologically appealing, allowing us to see a path of escape from the many problems which beset humans in the 21st century. But is it Biblical?
To answer this question, Pope takes his readers through the various passages which refer to the end. He focuses on passages such as this from Romans 8.
For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
Or the line from Revelation 21 which supplies the book's title.
"Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!”
The picture he paints is decidedly inclusive. God's plan is not to wipe everything out and start again, but to renew what he has already made. This includes not only people, but the whole of creation. The oceans, forests and deserts, the animals and plants, the water and the air, will all be renewed along with us.
Christianity is not an escape-hatch from the world we live in. Instead, it is a call for us to begin the task of renewal which God has promised, to be the forerunners and heralds of God's reign on earth. This doesn't lead us into a foolish optimism. We live in the midst of the empire, in the midst of powers which are opposed to God and which are happy to despoil God's creation and leave the poor to suffer. We are called to struggle, not necessarily to triumph. However, we have God's promise of ultimate renewal to sustain us.
All this will certainly sound esoteric to anyone who is not a Christian, and even to many who are. Yet people with the dualistic mindset occupy many key positions in our nation, including our current Prime Minister. And dualistic Christians can be a brake on progress in addressing climate change, contributing to the 'well it really doesn't matter that much, we have more important concerns' attitude that seems to prevail in much of Australian society.
***
A related duality, which we often see within the church, is the distinction between the natural and the human. There is a view which prevails in the church and in the wider society that the earth is there for us to use, and that humans are our primary or even our only concern. If species go extinct or ecosystems are lost that is sad, but it may be a necessary cost to ensure that humans prosper, or have jobs, or whatever. Clive Hamilton discusses this in secular terms as the 'subject/object divide', the product of the Enlightenment beginning with Immanuel Kant. In Christian terms, it is expressed in the idea taken from Genesis 1, that humans are to "fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground."
This idea can be challenged theologically. If, as Pope argues in All Things New, God cares about and is renewing the whole creation then it is our Christian duty to care for it, not simply exploit it. However, Hamilton points to a more practical problem. In the Anthropocene it is no longer possible to separate the two. The earth has reached its limits, and is no longer simply passively receiving our attentions. It is fighting back, becoming increasingly unpredictable.
Mick Pope has also written about this question in his earlier book, A Climate of Justice: Loving Your Neighbour in a Warming World published in 2017. While Hamilton addresses the question in philosophical terms, Pope's approach is intensely practical and focused squarely on human wellbeing. In the Anthropocene, in the face of climate change and other ecological crises, it is no longer possible (if it ever was) to view social justice and environmentalism as separate concerns. If we love our neighbour, we will also care for the environment.
This is a short book on a huge subject, and his approach is to illustrate with a few examples rather than treat the question comprehensively. The four central chapters of the book deal with four key ways in which climate change impacts on core social justice concerns. These are not hypothetical future projections - they are current impacts of climate change occurring right now, and only likely to get worse as the world continues to warm.
Chapter 2 deals with overseas aid. Both our government aid programs and our private giving to aid organisations aim to relieve poverty and promote development in poorer nations and communities. Climate change is increasingly impacting on quality of life in these communities, yet our aid is slow to catch up both in quantity and focus. In our giving we need to recognise that adapting to the effects of climate change will be a key consideration in these programs. As impacts accelerate, we will need to be more generous, not less.
Chapter 3 talks about the increase in slavery around the world. Slavery is far from new, and it has multiple causes. However, climate change increases poor people's risk of enslavement. Droughts and floods in already poor rural communities leave people without even the most basic means of subsistence. They have few choices and are vulnerable to exploitation from people who promise them employment or education, take them from their communities and then enslave them, including in forced factory labour and forced prostitution. Once ensnared they have little chance of escape and corrupt law enforcement officials collaborate in their enslavement. We can combat this problem at the end point, through programs that help rescue and rehabilitate people trapped in slavery, or at the source, through programs that help poor communities to adapt.
Chapter 4 discusses the global refugee crisis in which the number of displaced persons seeking refuge is at an all-time high. Of course, people are fleeing many things - war, tyranny, religious and ethnic persecution. However, these situations can be exacerbated by climate change. For instance the Syrian civil war, which has left millions displaced, was triggered in part by a prolonged drought resulting from climate change. In the future we may also see a growth in 'pure' climate refugees - people whose homes become uninhabitable as a result of climate change. A number of Pacific nations face inundation and their people will need to find new places to live. In the face of this crisis Pope reminds us of the Old Testament teaching about welcoming the foreigner and stranger. However, across the world's wealthy nations we see increasing resistance and hostility towards refugees and immigrants, expressed in Trump's wall, the fences barring passage from Syria and Iraq into Europe, Australia's offshore gulags and the rise of the far right around the world.
Finally, Chapter 5 brings us home to Australia and the impact of climate change on Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. The first Australians already endure the effects of colonisation, with historic injustices still unresolved and a huge gap in wellbeing between them and other Australians. Climate change, largely caused by the actions of the colonisers not the colonised, exacerbates this gap in a number of ways. For instance, the Torres Strait islands are experiencing rising sea levels and increasing inundation. Aboriginal communities across northern Australia are faced with multiple challenges including increased heat waves and heat stress, water insecurity and increased damage from cyclones and floods. These impacts make the challenge of righting those historic wrongs more urgent, and more complex.
These four examples are bookended by two chapters which talk directly and simply about why Christians should be concerned about these things. Chapter 1 deals with the core Christian ethic of love for neighbour and the implications of this love in the context of global justice and injustice. If we love our neighbour as ourselves, we will seek for them what we desire for ourselves. Chapter 6 presents a sterner challenge, outlining the church's prophetic role in speaking the truth to power and being witnesses to God's justice in our communities.
***
The bottom line from both these books, and from much other writing and thinking on the subject, is that 'preaching the gospel' should not be defined narrowly as winning converts or 'saving souls'. The gospel is God's good news for humans and for the world, and preaching it (as well as living it) involves proclaiming and being good news here and now, to our fellow humans and to God's good earth, which God is renewing. Mick Pope gives us both something of the theological reasons why this is the case, and some practical ways for us to move forward with this task. There is much more that could be said, but this would get you started.
To finish, a word of warning, and one of encouragement. I often find this subject overwhelming. The scope of our ecological crisis is massive, and the governments and communities of the world are achingly slow to respond. Every one of the four specific justice issues discussed in A Climate of Justice is a massive challenge in itself. Despite Australians rating climate change our number one issue in our recent election, we just re-elected a government that has frustrated every effort at mitigation in the past two decades.
For some, it will be comfort enough to know that God is in control and has promised to renew everything in his own time. Personally, I lack this kind of faith. Maybe this is a fault, but it is what it is.
Instead, I'll finish with something Mick shared with us during his talk in Brisbane a couple of months ago. I think it may have come originally from Tom Wright. Working for the Kingdom of God, he said, is like building a cathedral. It is a large, intricate and well designed structure. However, we have only been assigned the preparation of a single stone. We can't understand or picture how the cathedral will look All we can do is the best job we possibly can on our own stone, trusting that others are doing the same and the Master Builder is putting it all together in the way he intends.
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