Environmentalist: a person who is concerned with or advocates the protection of the environment (The New Oxford American Dictionary).

SYNOPSIS

Since the beginning of the modern environmental movement, secular environmentalists have claimed that historic Christianity is largely responsible for today’s environmental problems. The issue, however, is not what Christians think or how they behave, it’s what the Bible teaches with regard to environmental stewardship. There are two relevant teachings in Scripture that establish a foundation for developing a theology of nature and environmental stewardship.

Although God gave the family of man the authority to “rule over” creation, Scripture reveals that nature and wildlife are valuable to God independent of humanity. Numerous biblical passages reveal God’s provision and care for wildlife and His concern for the treatment of domesticated animals. He preserved rather than recreated animal life to repopulate the Earth after the flood. God made covenants after the flood and for the eschatological future that included nature and wildlife. He instructed the Israelites to use ecologically sensitive practices in farming and waste removal.

If God loves, finds joy in, and cares for nature—and did not give people carte blanche to use it solely for human consumption and comfort—what does Genesis 1:28 mean when it instructs mankind to “subdue” the Earth and to “have dominion” over “every living thing” (KJV)? It means stewardship. A careful study of relevant passages reveals that God charged the entire human race with the responsibility to be His caretakers over creation.

Christian environmental activism can provide tremendous evangelistic opportunities. This is especially true among young people and college students, who are generally more sensitive to environmental problems than most Americans—and tend to be unchurched.

Since the early 1960s, secular environmentalists have claimed that historic Christianity, as a world and life view, is largely responsible for today’s environmental problems.¹ In particular, they claim Genesis 1:28 grants the human race full authority to exploit and abuse nature with little regard for other life forms and natural objects. Unfortunately, many Christians have reinforced this perception by their apathy toward environmental issues and assumption that “environmentalism” is the agenda of political liberalism.

I’ve had several recent conversations with a Christian friend over various environmental issues that illustrate this. His response is always predictable: disdain. He is so programmed by the antienvironmental party line that any alleged environmental problem is merely a fabrication of the liberal imagination. To him all environmentalists are far-left, tree-hugging radicals who oppose any economic development that may even slightly damage nature or threaten wildlife. And that’s all there is to it.

It is true that there are overzealous environmental advocates and laws that defy common sense—in fact some are patently absurd. A case in point was reported in a San Diego newspaper. Apparently, the city of Encinitas, north of San Diego, wanted to obtain a permit to transport sand from a construction project to one of the city’s narrow beaches—not an unreasonable request. But the project required approval from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, California State Lands Commission, California Coastal Commission, two other state departments, and the San Diego Association of Governments—a total of eight separate agencies!² It’s no wonder practical-minded people sometimes get frustrated with governmental bureaucracies and vent their anger against environmentalists.

During one of our last discussions, I asked my friend this question: “What if God told us to take care of nature?” In other words, what if God instructed the human race to protect and manage wildlife, as well as forests, rivers, the land, and air? A simple and straightforward question—but one he refused to answer. The reason was obvious. If my friend admitted that God instructed mankind to care for and manage His creation, his attitude toward environmental activism would have to be reevaluated in light of biblical truth. That was something he was unwilling to do. If God instructed the human race to care for creation—who can argue against that? The task should become: how to do it.

There are two relevant teachings in Scripture that establish a foundation for developing a theology of nature and environmental stewardship:

1. GOD VALUES NATURE INDEPENDENT OF
(BUT NEVER ABOVE) PEOPLE

God had the human race in mind when He created Earth (Ps. 115:16). People have an exalted position in creation (Matt. 6:26; 10:31; 12:11–12), and are of greater value to God than animals (Luke 12:7, 24). Moreover, nature is to provide for human needs (Gen. 1:29; 9:3), and the family of man has a right to use it and the authority to “rule” over it (Gen. 1:28).³

Nevertheless, throughout the Bible, from Genesis 1 (all creation is “very good”—v. 31) through Revelation (“’The time has come…for destroying those who destroy theearth’”—Rev. 11:18), Scripture reveals that nature and wildlife are valuable to God independent of (but not above) humanity. It does not teach that God created the Earth solely for human consumption and comfort. Nor does the Bible give people permission to exploit nature or abuse the creatures with which we share the planet. They don’t belong to us; they belong to God: “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it” (Ps. 24:1).

The biblical fact is that God loves, provides for, and has great concern for the welfare of nature. He created a world designed to support animal life apart from humanity. Before the first creatures were spoken into existence, God created vegetation to produce “plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds” (Gen. 1:12). Thus, food and shelter were available when animal life began to inhabit the Earth (Gen. 1:30). After their creation, God charged the sea life, the birds of the air, and land-dwelling “livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals” to multiply and fill the seas and cover the Earth (Gen. 1:20–25). He gave rain “to water a land where no man lives, a desert with no one in it, to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass” (Job 38:26–27).

Prior to the worldwide flood, God took great care to save both wild and domesticated animals by placing them in the ark with Noah and his family (Gen. 6:19–7:3). God didn’t recreate animal life after the flood—He preserved it. Later, when the floodwaters had receded and the animals were released to repopulate the Earth (Gen. 8:17–18), God made a covenant that included all animal life: “Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: ‘I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that is with you—the birds, the livestock, and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth’” (Gen. 9:8–11).

The prophet Hosea spoke of another covenant that would occur in the distant, eschatological future, which will also include animals: “In that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the creatures that move along the ground. Bow and sword and battle I will abolish from the land, so that all may lie down in safety” (Hos. 2:18).

Throughout the Bible, animals have more than incidental roles in the affairs of people. Part of King Solomon’s wisdom was that “he described plant life, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of walls. He also taught about animals and birds, reptiles and fish” (1 Kings 4:33). Job tells his accusers that people can learn from animals (12:7). Sometimes God used animals for specific and unusual purposes. When God instructed the prophet Elijah to go into hiding, He used ravens to bring him food (1 Kings 17:1–5). God used a great fish to save Jonah’s life (Jon. 1:17) and a small fish to provide the money for Jesus and Peter to pay the temple tax (Matt. 17:24–27). Animals even accompanied Jesus during His temptation in the wilderness (Mark 1:13).

And, strangest of all, in the account of Balaam and his donkey, it was the donkey—not Balaam—that saw the angel sent to prevent Balaam from doing evil (Num. 22).

God further demonstrated His love and care for animals—alongside His love and care for people—in the Sabbath year instructions given to the Israelites: “For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops, but during the seventh year let the land lie unplowed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it and the wild animals may eat what they leave. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove” (Exod. 23:10–11, emphasis added; cf. Lev. 25:1–7).

Elsewhere Moses stated, “If you come across a bird’s nest beside the road, either in a tree or on the ground, and the mother is sitting on the young or on the eggs, do not take the mother with the young. You may take the young, but be sure to let the mother go” (Deut. 22:6). Here we see instructions to preserve breeding populations of animals harvested for human consumption. Had this injunction been followed throughout human history, there would be fewer endangered species today.

God is equally concerned that people treat domesticated animals humanely. This is expressed in Proverbs 12:10: “A righteous man cares for the need of his animals.” Similarly, Moses wrote, “Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest” (Exod. 23:12). Elsewhere Moses wrote, “If you see your brother’s donkey or his ox fallen on the road, do not ignore it. Help him get it to its feet” (Deut. 22:4); “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain” (i.e., allow it to eat some of the grain; Deut. 25:4). Even the Ten Commandments have a provision to care for domesticated animals: “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals” (Exod. 20:9–10, emphasis added).

A fascinating, but less familiar, example of God’s concern for domesticated animals is found in Jonah. After the prophet warned the Ninevites that they would be destroyed in forty days unless they repented, the king of Nineveh decreed that not only the people, but domestic animals fast and be covered with sackcloth (Jonah 3:7–8). Later, after the Ninevites repented, God conversed with Jonah (who was still angry because the hated Assyrians were spared) and revealed His compassion not only for the people, but for the animals: “Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city” (4:11)? God requires humane treatment for wild and domesticated animals.

Nowhere does the Bible communicate God’s love and joy for nature more beautifully, passionately, and poetically than Psalm 104. It recounts how God carefully prepared nature to support plant and animal life. It speaks of forest animals and sea life, of wild donkeys and wild goats, of birds, cattle, hyraxes, and lions. Psalm 104 reveals that all of these creatures depend on God for food and shelter—indeed, for the very breath of life:

          He makes springs pour water into the ravines;

               it flows between the mountains.

          They give water to all the beasts of the field;

               the wild donkeys quench their thirst.

          The birds of the air nest by the waters;

               they sing among the branches.…

          The trees of the LORD are well watered,

               the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.

          There the birds make their nests;

               the stork has its home in the pine trees.

          The high mountains belong to the wild goats;

               the crags are a refuge for the coneys [hyraxes].…

          You bring darkness, it becomes night,

               and all the beasts of the forest prowl.

          The lions roar for their prey

               and seek their food from God.…

          How many are your works, O LORD!

               In wisdom you made them all;

               the earth is full of your creatures.

          There is the sea, vast and spacious,

               teeming with creatures beyond number—

               living things both large and small.…

          These all look to you

               to give their food at the proper time.

          When you give it to them,

               they gather it up;

          when you open your hand,

               they are satisfied with good things.

          When you hide your face,

               they are terrified;

          when you take away their breath,

               they die and return to the dust.

          When you send your Spirit,

               they are created,

               and you renew the face of the earth.

                    (vv. 10–12; 16–18; 20–21; 24–25; 27–30)

Why does God express such heartfelt and earnest concern for nonhuman life? Because He values nature and the animals He created—and He derives immense joy from them: “For every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird in the mountains, and the creatures of the field are mine” (Ps. 50:10–11).

2. GOD GAVE HUMANS STEWARDSHIP
RESPONSIBILITIES OVER CREATION

If God loves, finds joy in, and cares for nature—and did not give people carte blanche to use it solely for human consumption and comfort—what does Genesis 1:28 mean when it instructs mankind to “subdue” the Earth and to “have dominion” over “every living thing” (KJV)? It means stewardship. Nature and nonhuman life belong to God (Ps. 24:1), but He gave the entire human race the responsibility to be His caretakers over creation.

In terms of purely physical creation, human beings are no different than other animals; we also depend on a healthy physical environment in order to survive. God said to Job, “Look at the Behemoth, which I made along with you” (Job 40:15). Likewise, Solomon wrote, “Man’s [his physical body] fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; man has no advantage over the animal.…All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return” (Eccl. 3:19–20).

This is only half the biblical story, however. As we saw, the Bible also reveals that people have an exalted position in creation. We are the “crown” of God’s creation, the culmination of the creation week (Ps. 8:4–6). In order to understand the relationship that exists between people and the rest of created life, it must be understood that the human race has a dual position in nature. Although Homo sapiens are one of countless millions of created life forms, we are unique and special to God (Ps. 139:13–16). Only people were created in His image (Gen. 1:26–27).

Being created in the divine image is to be endowed with responsibilities. This truth is important to understand in terms of developing a theology of nature. God ordained mankind to be stewards over nature and nonhuman life; we are to have the same loving concern for nature that God does. We are to care for it, protect it, maintain it, nurture it, and even, in a sense, “save” it (e.g., from exploitation and abuse).

Before we explore biblical stewardship, we need to examine a controversial passage in Genesis. It appears to contradict my assertion that God has not given the human race carte blanche to use nature as they choose without any regard for other created life. Critics almost universally use this passage to support their claim that the Bible promotes an exploitive attitude toward nature. I’m referring to Genesis 1:27–28, especially as it’s worded in the Authorized King James Version: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”

What, exactly, does the Bible mean when it exhorts the human race to “subdue” the Earth and to have “dominion” over nature? Does this passage allow—even encourage—people to misuse nature if it benefits humanity? No, it doesn’t.

The closest related passages to Genesis 1:27–28 are found in Genesis chapter 2. This chapter provides additional details about the creation of the first man and woman and the physical environment in which they lived. We’ll examine the passages in Genesis 2 that are related to Genesis 1:27–28.

The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

            Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed (2:7–8).

            The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it (2:15).

            So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man (2:21–22).

Genesis 2:7–8 relates that God created a garden in Eden and placed Adam, the first man, in it. Genesis 2:15 adds that Adam was instructed to “take care of” the garden. Only later, after these events occurred, did God create Eve, the first woman (21–22). In light of this chronology, it’s important to understand that God’s instructions to subdue” the Earth and to have “dominion” over nature was given after Eve was created and while the couple was living in the garden of Eden. How do we know this? The so-called dominion instructions were given to both Adam and Eve (Gen. 1:27–28). Thus, since Eve was created after Adam was placed in the garden—and before their banishment from Eden (chap. 3)—the “subdue” and “dominion” instructions had to have been given while the couple resided in the garden.

Why is this important? Because the harsh-sounding words “subdue” and “dominion” in Genesis 1:28 are softened and qualified due to the garden setting where the instructions were given. The natural environment in which Adam and Eve lived before the Fall was a paradise. It was free of thorns, thistles, and ferocious animals. It’s preposterous to think that the injunction to subdue the Earth and to have dominion over nature had anything to do with battling and destroying nature. There was nothing to conquer in the garden of Eden! Fulfilling Adam and Eve’s nutritional and other physical needs in the garden would not have necessitated toil and hardship. The couple could effortlessly select their food from the abundant plant life surrounding them (Gen. 2:9, 16). They didn’t even have to water the garden (v. 10). Whatever “subdue” and “dominion” mean in Genesis 1:28, they do not carry a despotic connotation or suggest the freedom to exploit nature.

Dominion in the sense of absolute authority is only the prerogative of God—whether it concerns nature or anything else. The words “subdue” and “dominion” imply that people have a stewardship or caretaker’s role over nature. People are custodians; they do not own the Earth.

The Bible illustrates the concept of biblical stewardship in several places. Perhaps the best illustration is found in the parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14–30). This parable speaks about a man who went on a long journey and entrusted his possessions to his slaves. He gave “talents” (large sums of money) to three of his slaves (vv. 14–15). When the master returned, he confronted the slaves to see how well they invested his money. Two of the slaves doubled the amount entrusted to them and were rewarded for their faithfulness. But the third slave failed to use his talent wisely and was severely punished.

In like manner, nature belongs to God—but He appointed the human race to be His stewards. Our responsibility is to care for the owner’s (God’s) property (cf. Lev. 25:23). And like the slaves in the parable of the talents, people will be held accountable for how well they perform this task that the Master entrusted to them.

This model of stewardship comes to life in Genesis 2:15: “The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” The Hebrew word in this passage for “ work” is abad, which is most often translated as “serve,” though it may also be translated “cultivate.” Likewise, the Hebrew word for “take care of it” is shamar, a word that implies watching over something, guarding and preserving it. The Hebrew meaning of these two words clearly instructs the first couple to watch over and tend the garden. Neither usage allows for plunder, exploitation, or abuse.

Adam’s caretaker role in nature was further illustrated when God instructed him to name the animals in Genesis 2:19. By relegating this authority to Adam, God not only demonstrated His personal interest in, and concern for, the animals He created, but also His desire for Adam to take responsibility for them. (By analogy, when people name their pets, they demonstrate their affection and assume the responsibility to take care of them.)

A similar stewardship role was later given to Noah. God commanded Noah to preserve in the ark a genetic stock of two of every kind of living creature (Gen. 6:19). This command was not qualified, so it must have included so-called “vermin” and predators. Thus, Noah’s stewardship responsibilities included all creatures, not just those that serve and are profitable to people.

God’s stewardship charge continued with the rise of the Jewish nation. Thousands of years before modern environmental laws, God required the Hebrews to curb pollution by properly disposing waste products (Deut. 23:12–13) and to avoid sowing their fields every seventh year in order to restore the soil (Lev. 25:2–5). (This was also to allow poor people and wild animals to eat what was left—see Exodus 23:11.) God also taught the Hebrews not to eat the fruit of newly planted trees for five years until the trees had time to mature (Lev. 19:23–25). During the conquest of Canaan, God instructed the Israelites to use only nonfruit trees to construct their siege machines: “Are the trees of the field people, that you should besiege them?” (Deut. 20:19).

God’s divine command for Adam to tend and care for the garden of Eden; Noah to preserve and care for the animals God would use to repopulate the Earth; and the Israelites to be careful stewards of the land God provided them can be extrapolated to include the entire human race and today’s natural world. Nowhere does the Bible teach that God’s edict to care for nature was limited to just Adam in the garden or to Noah and the Israelites. The entire human race receives the stewardship mandate.

The doctrine of stewardship—applied to nature and harmonized with the correct biblical meaning of subdue and dominion—acknowledges that nature is God’s property and that He delegated a caretaker’s role to humanity. A steward does not own what he or she protects. With this responsibility comes accountability. As the parable of the talents illustrates, we will be rewarded if we perform our stewardship role well—and can expect punishment if we don’t. Church historian and theologian Geoffrey Bromiley put it like this: God “will have words of commendation for those who work for the integrity of creation and words of rebuke for those who abuse his handiwork to selfish or wicked ends.”⁴

Unfortunately, the human race has failed to take its stewardship responsibilities over nature seriously—and we see the consequences of this everywhere across the globe: the extinction of thousands of plant and animal species; huge tracts of the Earth spoiled and contaminated; air and water pollution; loss of scenic rivers, forests, wetlands, and other irreplaceable wild habitats. The Bible teaches that God will hold mankind accountable for this disastrous irresponsibility. Revelation gives a grim warning of the fate of rebellious humanity that includes punishing people who “destroy the earth”:

            “The nations were angry;

                        and your wrath has come.

            The time has come for judging the dead,

                        and for rewarding your servants the

                                    prophets

            and your saints and those who reverence

                        your name,

                        both small and great—

            and for destroying those who destroy the

                        earth.” (Rev. 11:18, emphasis added)

Commenting on this passage, Bible expositor Warren Wiersbe explained:

Sinful man has polluted and destroyed God’s wonderful creation; and he is going to pay for it.…Creation is for God’s praise and pleasure, and man has no right to usurp that which rightfully belongs to God.…

“[Those who] destroy the earth” refers to the rebellious earth-dwellers who will not submit to God. How ironic that these people live for the earth and its pleasures, yet at the same time are destroying the very earth that they worship! When man forgets that God is the Creator and he is the creature, he begins to exploit his God-given resources, and this brings destruction. Man is a steward of creation, not the owner.⁵

The mindset that all environmentalists are liberal radicals not only hinders real progress in identifying and formulating strategies to combat potentially serious environmental problems, but it gives Christianity an ecological black eye—and compromises what could be tremendous evangelistic opportunities. Christian environmental activism can have great appeal to secular and New Age unbelievers who think Christians are apathetic to environmental issues and who think non-Christian religions are better suited to formulate environmental ethics and stewardship guidelines. This is particularly true among young people and college students—who are generally more sensitive to environmental problems than most Americans and, at the same time, tend to be unchurched.

If we love God, we should make every effort to honor and protect what He considers important and valuable. So go outdoors and give tribute to God by being a good steward over His creation. This can be a special delight to Christians because we know personally the Author of all things wild and beautiful.

Dan Story is a Christian apologist and author of five books. This article is adapted from his current project, Is God an Environmentalist? Dan can be contacted at www.danstory.net.

NOTES:

1. One of the first and most well-known and widely quoted advocates of this theory was the late historian, Lynn White, Jr. In an address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1966, White presented his thesis that the historical source of the present “ecological crisis” was Western culture’s Judeo-Christian traditions, in particular its doctrine of creation. His influential lecture was later published: Lynn White, Jr., “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” Science, March 10, 1967. This article has since been reprinted and anthologized numerous times in scholarly journals and popular publications.
2. “Sand Gift Will Help Replenish Beaches,” San Diego Union-Tribune, January 9, 2009, B-1.
3. All Bible quotations are from the New International Version, except where otherwise noted.
4. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, “Eschatology: The Meaning of the End,” in God and Culture: Essays in Honor of Carl F. H. Henry, ed. D. A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 82.
5. Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary: An Exposition of the New Testament Comprising the Entire “BE” Series, vol. 2 (Colorado Springs: Victor Books, 1989), 584, 601.

First, as Dr. Jay Richards, who holds a PhD in philosophy and theology, points out, we should learn to ask the right questions and to ask them in the right order. Our initial question should be: Is global warming a reality? The answer is a qualified, yes. If we appropriate accurate averages over a hundred and fifty years and carefully consider current satellite data, it appears likely that we are experiencing a slight warming trend. We must, however, exercise extreme caution in the extrapolation of trends. It is instructive to note that the first Earth Day (April 22nd, 1970) was observed amid the specter of a looming ice age. Indeed, four years later Time pontificated that the “tell-tale signs” of an ice age were evident “everywhere.” The second question is this: If the globe is warming, are humans a significant factor? According to Dr. William M. Gray, a PhD in the geophysical sciences and a pioneer in the science of forecasting hurricanes, “The human impact on the atmosphere is simply too small to have a major effect on global temperatures.” And Gray is not alone. A quick Google search is sufficient to demonstrate that global warming is far from settled science. Third we should ask: Is global warming necessarily bad? In response, Dr. Richards notes that a thousand years ago during a medieval warming period European agriculture experienced an increase in productivity. Moreover, more deaths result from cold winters than hot summers. While common sense might lead us to conclude that a warming trend is far less dangerous than a new ice age, reality is there hasn’t been sufficient study to be sure. One thing is certain, however: sensationalism, sophistry, and sloppy journalism have done little to advance the ball. One need only think back a few years to Al Gore’s dire warnings of global catastrophe as a result of the Millennium Bug. And Gore does not stand alone. Media, magazines, and ministers collectively rode the Millennium Bug hard. Indeed, when my primary research project-published as The Millennium Bug Debugged-revealed that Y2K would not even be a top-ten news story in the year 2000, I became the object of controversy and contempt. One well-known Christian broadcaster went as far as to suggest that I would have the blood of millions on my hands for causing complacency within the body of Christ. Truth is, the real danger is in the ready-fire-aim syndrome.

Furthermore, as Christians we should carefully consider the cost of having our eyes on the wrong ball. If we participate in promoting political policies involving trillions of dollars, there should be convincing evidence that global warming is, as Gore contends, the most pressing problem facing the planet. As Richards points out, the Kyoto Protocol (a legally binding agreement under which industrialized countries would reduce their collective emissions of greenhouse gases by 5.2% compared to 1990) would cost the global economy tens of trillions of dollars. By comparison, providing clean water for areas of the world that currently have contaminated water could be accomplished for around 200 billion. It is a genuine tragedy that while Christian leaders were hyping Y2K in America, millions of God’s children were dying from malaria in Africa. And malaria is but one of the prevalent planetary problems. A whole range of issues from toxic waste to the war on terrorism could be addressed for a fraction of the cost. Point is: we dare not be wrong this time around!

Finally, what is incontrovertible is that Christians are called to be caretakers or stewards of God’s creation. As such, not only are we called to carry out the Great Commission, but we are commissioned to carry out the cultural mandate. In the words of cultural apologist Nancy Pearcey, we are to “develop the social world: build families, churches, schools, cities, governments, laws” as well as “plant crops, build bridges, design computers, compose music.” In other words, as crowning jewels of God’s creation we are to care for the created order. The tragedy is that those who approach catastrophic human-induced global warming with a healthy dose of skepticism are routinely castigated as environmental enemies. Moral judgments are meted out with breathless abandon on everything from the size of one’s family to the size of one’s family car. The aforementioned Baptist preacher, Buzz Thomas, goes so far as to judge those who have more than two children as “selfish” and “sinful.” In like fashion, leaders of the Evangelical Environmental Network have taken it upon themselves to posit that Jesus wouldn’t drive an SUV. They seem blithely unaware that their idiosyncratic fundamentalism often flies in the face of the facts. As should be obvious, there are myriad factors to be considered with respect to family size. Whether one has two or twelve children is less important than whether those children grow up to be selfless producers as opposed to merely selfish consumers. Likewise, fuel savings do not necessarily dwarf such factors as family size or family safety. As Richards has well said, “Fuel economy doesn’t trump the other factors, especially since some cars (such as hybrids) have better than average fuel economy, but require more energy both to construct and to recycle than do other, less fuel efficient cars. So an outside observer is in no position to make a moral judgment just by observing that you drive an SUV.”

In an age in which Christians are all too often characterized as “poor, undereducated, and easily led,” we should avoid lending credence to the stereotype. Instead we should commit ourselves to care for Christ’s creation with tender hearts as well as with tenacious minds.

For further study, see the Bible Answer Man broadcast with guest Jay Richards, March 18 and 19, 2008, audio CDs; available through the Christian Research Institute at www.equip.org.

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SYNOPSIS

From the earliest days of the modern environmental movement, American environmentalists have claimed that tribal societies are more ecologically sensitive than cultures embracing Christianity. They claim, moreover, that their intuitive environmentalism flows directly from their religious beliefs and practices. Animism is the religion of all tribal cultures worldwide.

The fact is, tribal people have rarely been model environmentalists and have often exploited nature. Nor does animism include doctrines that directly promote environmental ethics and stewardship. Although indigenous people throughout the world often express a deep respect and reverence for their natural surroundings, it is without a theological framework. Rather, what appears to be nature-honoring rituals and practices are actually attempts to manipulate and appease a hostile spirit world that permeates nature. The goal is not to protect or revere nature, but rather to seek the comfort, health, and safety of the tribe. Christianity, on the other hand, possesses the theological framework necessary for formulating environmental ethics and providing guidance in environmental stewardship.

Animists’ answers to life’s fundamental questions are shrouded in fear and ignorance. The only reliable answers must flow from an understanding of the true nature of God and victory over the demonic spiritual world.

Geologists identified the cause of the disastrous 7.0 magnitude earthquake that pulverized Haiti, on January 12, 2010, as a shifting fault located miles below the surface of the earth. Popular performer and voodoo priest Erol Josue’, however, thinks there was more to the quake than just a natural disaster. According to Elizabeth McAlister, voodoo expert at Wesleyan University and a friend of Josue’, the voodoo priest also believed the earthquake “was mother nature, the land of Haiti, rising up to defend herself against the erosion, deforestation, and environmental devastation that have been ongoing for the last few decades.”¹

Voodooism in Haiti blends elements of Roman Catholicism with African tribal religions, which were brought into the country by slaves. Like all animists, voodooists believe that spirits exist to “help govern humanity and the natural world” and should be honored and respected. When a voodooist cuts a tree, explained McAlister, “you are supposed to ask the tree first, and leave a small payment for the spirit of the tree.”²

This apparent reverence for nature, characteristic of all tribal societies, was a factor that prompted my wife and me to become enthusiastic supporters of American Indian Movement (AIM) that began in 1968. We read books on Native American cultures and traveled extensively throughout the Navajo, Hopi, and other reservations, visiting places now off limits to the public. To show our support for AIM’s goal of economic independence, autonomy, and the restoration of “illegally” seized lands, we placed a large bumper sticker on our 1973 Volkswagen camper that had a drawing of an Indian head nickel followed by the words: “The only Indian America ever loved.”

Like many young people caught up in the environmental and “back-to-the-land” movements in the 1970s, my wife and I believed that Native Americans were intuitively environmentalists. We also assumed-as did many environmentalists-that the alleged ecologically sensitive relationship with nature embraced by Native Americans and other indigenous people was a direct result of their religious beliefs and practices.

But is this true? And if so, is this a theological teaching or an unrelated side effect? I believe it’s the latter, and I’ll demonstrate in this article that any apparent ecological dimension present in tribal religions is actually merely a byproduct and not doctrine. Not only have tribal religions failed to restrain environmental degradation within their own cultures, but also they have no explicit theological teachings that people should protect and care for nature for nature’s sake.

TRIBAL SOCIETIES

There is a reason why Native American and other preliterary tribal societies throughout the world appear to have been more environmentally friendly than Western societies. For thousands of years, their way of life was closely tied to the land, and survival depended entirely on a successful relationship with the natural world. Unfortunately, however, this did not play out in effective conservation efforts among tribal societies. Few tribes lived in continuous harmony with nature, innocent of environmental abuse. Two examples illustrate this.

Native Americans (and other tribal cultures) often used fire to manipulate the environment for their own interests. This practice was widespread across the continent, and on the Great Plains fires could be a hundred miles across. Fires were used to drive and encircle animals so that they could be more easily killed; to create forage for animals the Indians depended on for food (or alternatively, to ruin forage and force animals into areas where they were more easily hunted); to improve pasture for horse herds; to clear land for crops; and even to “confuse, hinder, maim, or kill their enemies, Indian or white, to drive them from or into cover, or to mask their own actions.”³

Archaeologists have also documented that Indian tribes in North America sometimes engaged in massive overkill by stampeding entire bison herds over cliffs, slaying considerably more than the tribes could possibly use. Nor did Indians always use every portion of the kill, as often alleged. Frequently, just the best part of the meat was taken (the tongues and humps) and the rest was left to rot. Artist and anthropologist George Catlin, who lived several years among Native Americans in the early nineteenth century, reported an instance where 1,400 bison were slaughtered by Sioux Indians solely for their tongues: “From all that I could learn, not a skin or a pound of meat (except the tongues) was brought in [to trade at the fort].”⁴

In recent times, Native Americans have willingly accepted the negative consequences of modern technology in order to promote economic development. On the Navajo and Hopi reservations, strip mining and power plants provide jobs, but at the expense of pollution and “deeply scarred, stripped lands [that] will take centuries to recover.” Other tribes have shown an interest in reservations hosting waste-disposal sites, including radioactive waste.⁵

This is not said to disparage Native Americans or to deny the fact that indigenous people throughout the world, regardless of whether they were motivated by survival necessities or love for nature, typically embraced a deep respect for their natural surroundings. Many tribal people today express a great desire to protect the land. The question at hand is not whether tribal people exhibited a reverential and ecological sensitivity to nature, but whether those sentiments were an explicit teaching in their religious beliefs. Answering this question requires that we examine the religious beliefs of tribal societies before the influence of Christianity and Western culture.

ANIMISM

In the mid-nineteenth century, the new science of anthropology increased American and European contact with preliterary societies. Most of these scientists agreed that an enormous gulf existed between civilized man and the “savage”-and that the former was far superior to the latter in every way. Charles Darwin visited the coast of Tierra del Fuego and spent several months among some of the most “impoverished people on earth.” Nothing in their way of life appealed to him. Darwin wrote in his journal: “These poor wretches were stunted in their growth, their hideous faces bedaubed with white paint, their skins filthy and greasy, their hair entangled, their voices discordant, their gestures violent….I could not have believed how wide was the difference between savage and civilized man: it is greater than between a wild and domesticated animal, inasmuch as in man there is greater power of improvement.”⁶

The assumption that before contact with Christianity, tribal people lived in an idyllic relationship with their physical and spiritual surroundings is a fairly recent and largely mythical notion. It has only been since the last century that Darwin’s demeaning view was replaced by the “noble savage” image. The truth, however, is far different from this popular sentiment. The fact is, before Christian missionaries liberated many of them, tribal cultures were in bondage to religious beliefs that were embedded in a deep-seated fear of the spiritual world-and even their physical environments. The world of preliterary societies was not friendly and innocent; it was hostile, threatening, and had to be constantly appeased. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, most preliterary societies have either disappeared or have been radically altered by foreign cultures. Today, probably only 6.5 to 7.5 percent of the world’s population still lives in a “primitive” state.⁷ Nevertheless, tribal cultures exist in Asia, Australia, New Guinea, Indonesia, Africa, the Pacific Islands, and North and South America.

The religion of all preliterary societies, including Native Americans, is collectively called animism. Technically, animism is not so much a distinct religion as a belief or component of many religions, including Shinto, some forms of Hinduism, and neopaganism. In the United States, animistic beliefs are especially prevalent in New Age channeling and with personal spirit guides.⁸ Nevertheless, for the purpose of classification, animism can be considered the “religion” of indigenous cultures worldwide.

Like most religions, animism embraces a multiplicity of beliefs and a variety of religious practices. Nevertheless, there is one fundamental doctrine shared by all tribal societies. It has a direct bearing on what actually motivates their reverence for nature and apparent ecological sensitivity.

THE SPIRIT WORLD

The Perennial Dictionary of World Religions defines animism as, “The belief that all of reality is pervaded or inhabited by spirits or souls; the belief that all of reality is in some sense animate.”⁹ The operative word in this definition is “spirits.” The fundamental doctrine of animism is that most (if not all) living things are indwelt by spirits that have intelligence and volition identical to that of people. It is believed, for example, that many wild animals function similar to humans. They possess emotions and have the ability to reason and speak (although they usually remain silent). In fact, many animists believe that animals often have greater power and are more cunning than people.

Spirits may also dwell in inanimate objects and natural phenomena, such as trees, rocks, lightning, wind, rivers, lakes, caves, mountains, and numerous other strategic places. Wherever their locale, these spirits are considered unpredictable. They may be either malevolent or benevolent, and people must be careful to pay them proper respect and not to offend them.

Although most tribal cultures acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being, religious activities usually focus on the spirit world. Through sacrifices, prayers, and especially rituals, tribal people hope to appease the host of spirits that lurk throughout nature. The purpose of these activities is not to praise the spirits or nature itself, but to ward off evil, such as sickness and barren wives, and to enlist the aid of spiritual forces to help the tribe enjoy the good things in life: many children, successful hunting, plenty of food, wealth, respect, and long life.

The belief that a potentially hostile spirit world permeates all of nature is key to understanding the motivation behind many nature-honoring rituals-and tribal societies’ apparent reverence for nature. It turns out that this “reverence” is based more on fear than veneration. In their book, Understanding Folk Religions, Paul G. Hiebert, R. Daniel Shaw, and Tite Tie’nou wrote, “A final worldview theme that runs through nearly all folk religious belief systems is near constant fear and the need for security. In a world full of spirits, witchcraft, sorcery, black magic, curses, bad omens, broken taboos, angry ancestors, human enemies, and false accusations of many kinds, life is rarely carefree and secure.”¹⁰

So, on the one hand, tribal cultures possess a sense of kinship, respect, dependence, and gratitude toward their natural environments. On the other hand, every event in life-health, safety, marriage, childbirth, hunting, sowing, and building-is potentially at the mercy of harmful spiritual forces that must be manipulated or appeased.

Although the religious beliefs and practices observed in tribal societies are closely bound to nature, revering nature for nature’s sake is not their intent. Any apparent concern for nature’s welfare arising out of animism is a side effect, a byproduct, and not doctrine. Ecological sensitivity is incidental to acts of appeasement toward a hostile spirit world. It is not due to a benevolent relationship among deity, humans, and nature.

This is not to say that tribal people cannot feel a sense of wonder, awe, and reverence toward nature alongside of their religious beliefs. Of course they can-just the same as any other human being. Moreover, many tribal people today have a genuine, heartfelt desire to live in harmony with nature and promote environmental stewardship. But such reverence and desires are without a theological framework. Animism contains no religious principles or doctrines that give specific instructions on environmental stewardship.

Christianity, on the other hand, possesses the theological framework necessary for formulating environmental ethics and providing guidance in environmental stewardship. God personally and willfully created the natural world (Gen. 1:1; Heb. 11:3). It belongs to him (Ps. 24:1; 50:10-11). God takes pleasure in all creation (Gen. 1:31) and provides water, food, and habitats for wildlife (Ps. 104). Nature has value apart from (but never above) humanity (Gen. 9:8-11; Jon. 4:11). The Bible embraces ecologically sensitive principles that can be applied directly to environmental conservation and stewardship (e.g. Lev.19: 23-25; 25:1-7; Deut. 22:6-7; 23:12-13). Moreover, beginning with Adam and Eve, God assigned to the entire human race the responsibility to be his caretakers-his stewards-over creation (Gen. 1:28; 2:15, 19; 7:1-3).

Douglas Hayward, professor of anthropology at Biola University, observes that animists seek answers to the same “common existential questions asked by people everywhere”:

1. Can I find help in confronting the problems of living?

2. Can I find healing in times of sickness?

3. Can I find protection from malevolent beings?

4. How can I discharge my obligation to supernatural beings that may interact with me and my world?

5. How can I find meaning in life and in particular meaning to pain and suffering?

6. What is the source or origin of evil?¹¹

Sadly, in animistic societies, their answers to these fundamental questions are shrouded in fear and ignorance. The only reliable answers must flow from an understanding of the true nature of God and victory over the demonic spiritual world.

Here Jesus Christ becomes a beacon of hope and light. Christian missionaries and evangelists can provide trustworthy answers to these questions and faithful testimonies that Jesus has defeated the sinister spiritual beings that allegedly lurk throughout nature (Col. 1:13; Heb. 2:14). This allows animists (and all people) to enjoy nature and harvest its fruits-its foods, medicines, energy resources, and building materials-in a balanced economy that protects nature and its wild denizens against exploitation and abuse. This is the true “kinship” relationship with nature that God desires the human race to enjoy.

Dan Story is a Christian apologist and author of five books. This article is adapted from his current project, Is God an Environmentalist? Dan can be contacted at www.danstory.net.

NOTES

1. Elizabeth McAlister, “Voodoo’s View of the Quake in Haiti,” The Washington Post, http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2010/01/voodoos_view_of_the_quake_in_haiti.html, 1.

2. Ibid., 2.

3. Shepard Krech III, The Ecological Indian: Myth and History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 108. Chapter 4 gives a detailed account of how fire was used by Native Americans.

4. Excerpted from volume 1 of George Catlin, North American Indians: Being Letters and Notes on Their Manners, Customs, and Conditions, Written During Eight Years’ Travel amongst the Wildest Tribes of Indians in North America, 1832-1839, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Leary, Stuart and Co., 1913), in “America Needs a National Park,” American Environmentalism, ed. Greg Barton (San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2002), 172. See also Krech, chap. 5.

5. Krech, 215-20.

6. Quoted in Donald Worster, Nature’s Economy: The Roots of Ecology (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1979), 171.

7. Estimates vary on the worldwide population of indigenous peoples. For a list of various population estimates and their sources, see HTTP://WWW.ADHERENTS.COM/NA/NA_539.HTM.

8. Dean C. Halverson, “Animism: The Religion of the Tribal World,” International Journal of Frontier Missions 15, 2 (April-June, 1998): 59 (http://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/15_2_PDFs/01_Halverson_05.pdf).

9. Keith Crim, gen. ed., The Perennial Dictionary of World Religions (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), 37.

10. Paul G. Hiebert, R. Daniel Shaw, and Tite Tie’nou, Understanding Folk Religions: A Christian Response to Popular Beliefs and Practices (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999), 87.

11. Douglas J. Hayward, “The Evangelization of Animists: Power, Truth or Love Encounter?” International Journal of Frontier Missions 14, 4 (October-December, 1997): http://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/14_4_PDFs/01_Hayward_Animism.pdf.

While some would debate the validity of one or more of these concerns, no one with a grip on reality would argue that there are no valid environmental concerns at all. How then did we get to this place, and how do we change course to a more sustainable future? This magazine is not the place to tackle such complex questions, except as they bear on Christian apologetics-which they do, for it has long been fashion able to blame Christianity at least partly for the planet’s environmental woes.

The reasoning often follows this line: these crises were brought on by rapid and often unchecked industrialization and urbanization in the Western world and now are being multiplied by rapid and often unchecked industrialization and urbanization in the developing world. The original Industrial Revolution (beginning in eighteenth-century England) was often justified by appeal to the Dominion Mandate in Genesis 1:28, in which God commanded humanity to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (NASB; emphases added). Although other influences have since contributed to massive consumption of the earth’s resources for short-term benefit without proper regard for long-term consequences, critics allege that the Judeo-Christian creation story continues to play a key role in providing theological justification for environmental exploitation and abuse.

Many advocates of this view further argue that what we need now is a new creation myth that teaches an ethic of ecological balance and of reverence for the Earth. Such a New Age myth would use pantheism to infuse nature with a divine essence, put other forms of life on an equal footing with humanity, and portray all life on Earth not only as interconnected and interdependent, but also as evolving into a single planetary being and consciousness. Whether such people invoke the Gaia hypothesis (see Godawa’s article), the nature worship of neopagans, or the static (and therefore nonindustrial) cultures of animistic societies, they maintain that it’s time for Westerners to trade in their violent and polarizing sky god (i.e., Yahweh) for an embracing and holistic Earth goddess.

The attempt to promote a cultural conversion to such a new myth has been a serious enterprise for decades. I wrote about it at length in this magazine in the 1980s¹ and in my 1989 Baker book, A Crash Course on the New Age Movement. New myth advocates utilize both academic and popular media in works of both nonfiction and fiction. None have been more spectacular, with greater potential to effect such a conversion, however, than the unparalleled blockbuster movie, Avatar. Brian Godawa provides an incisive critique of the film while Dan Story adds helpful perspective on the related question of animism.

Due to space limitations, I can only briefly contribute to this discussion. First, the search for an eco-friendly religion begs the question of whether a religion is objectively true. Religion deals with ultimate questions such as the meaning of life, the basis and nature of morality, and the way to achieve both temporal and eternal salvation. One’s religion should be selected on the basis of its coherence with reality, not on its seeming pragmatic value in one or more areas of life.

Furthermore, if a religion does correspond with reality, then how could it be truly inferior to a false religion in any area of life? It must, in the final analysis, be superior. Therefore, if people have used true religion to justify environmental abuse, it must be that they have abused the religion as well as the environment by taking the religion’s teachings out of context.

But, the new myth advocate counters, didn’t God tell man to rule over the earth? Yes, but as I wrote twenty-four years ago, the scriptural model of rulership never allows the ruler to exploit and abuse his subjects: “On the contrary, it calls for care, protection, and wise, just administration (e.g., Ps. 72; 82; Jer. 22:1-5; Ezek. 34:1-22).”² Surely God entrusted the Earth to man as a stewardship, since He Himself never ceased to own it (Ps. 24:1; 50:12). Furthermore, “since God established an order in His creation, and gave us the capacity to understand it, then to the best of our ability, we are responsible to maintain it.”³ If God went to the extent of bringing every species to Noah for preservation on the Ark, then it follows that we are responsible likewise to preserve God’s amazing creations. If He saw fit to create a protective ozone layer in the atmosphere, then we would be fools not to redirect any human activity that is depleting it.⁴ The same reasoning applies to rainforest destruction, pollution, and any other byproduct of human activity that is diminishing or threatening God’s creation.

Certainly, a culture that follows the Dominion Mandate will be dynamic and not static, harnessing human ingenuity and natural resources to realize humanity’s God-given potential. But this is compatible with what reasonable environmentalists advocate, since they are not calling us to abandon civilization but rather to limit urban sprawl to a more appropriate scale, develop cleaner technology, protect unique ecosystems, and so forth.

Pantheism may seem to elevate nature by infusing it with a divine quality, but historically pantheism has rather produced indifference to nature by teaching it is a meaningless illusion to be overcome in order to achieve enlightenment. Pantheistic systems can only glamorize nature by inconsistently incorporating biblical notions of creation’s inherent goodness into their worldview.

The Bible provides the most solid ground possible (the very word of Almighty God) for both the inherent value of all creation (Gen. 1:31) and for the superior value of humanity that we humans instinctively sense to be true-for humans alone were created in the image of God (Gen. 1:26). The Bible therefore does not support some of the demands of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and other extreme environmental positions. If they or one of their loved ones were diagnosed with colon cancer, for example, how many PETA members would reject a successful immunization therapy if they found out it was developed by injecting colon cancer cells into rats?⁵ It seems in most cases an epiphany would occur and the superior value of a human being to a rat would at last be recognized.

Let the PETA members work for more humane methods of experimenting with animals without opposing all such experimentation, lest a greater evil than abuse of animals be committed. Without the dual poles of creation’s inherent value and humanity’s superior value providing the necessary tension in environmental ethics, what may appear to be humane treatment of animals at first light can prove to be inhumane treatment of our own kind under the full light of day. We see then that the Bible, coherent as always with reality, supports a doctrine of creation care, but it does so with a sense of proportion, rejecting any misguided doctrine of egalitarianism among all God’s creatures.

-Elliot Miller

NOTES

1 See Elliot Miller, “The ‘New Myth’: An Outline of New Age Ideology,” Forward 8, 4 (1986), http://journal.equip.org/articles/new-age-series-part-3-the-new-myth-; and Elliot Miller, “The ‘New Myth’: A Critique of New Age Ideology,” Forward 9, 1 (1986), http://journal.equip.org/articles/new-age-series-part-4-the-new-myth.

2 Miller, “The ‘New Myth’: A Critique.”

3 Ibid.

4 Efforts along these lines do seem to have turned the ozone depletion trend around. See “Ozone Layer Depletion Leveling Off, Satellite Data Show,” Science Daily, September 22, 2009, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090921134831.htm.

5 Such successful experiments have indeed been conducted. See Yongchun Cui, et al., “Unraveling the Mystery of γδ T Cell Recognizing Lipid A,” Cellular and Molecular Immunology 2, 5 (2005): 362 (http://www.cmi.ustc.edu.cn/2/5/359.pdf).

This article first appeared in Christian Research Journal, volume33, number2 (2010). For further information or to subscribe to the Christian Research Journal go to: http://www.equip.org

Avatar, the special effects extravaganza movie by James Cameron, has just recently become the number one box-office blockbuster of all time. But more importantly, we live in a global world, and Avatar is also number one in the worldwide box office, breaking $2.5 billion and passing up the previous reigning champion, Titanic-also by Cameron.

Because of its explicit religious worldview and political overtones, Avatar has drawn a flaming frenzy from news sites and blogs across the Internet. Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg wrote of it as plagiarized political propaganda: “Cameron rips off Hollywood clichés to the point you could cut and paste dialogue from ‘Pocahontas’ or ‘Dances with Wolves’ into ‘Avatar’ without appreciably changing the story.”¹ Liberal writer Jay Michaels defended it as a legitimate attack on monotheism because the pantheistic worldview of the third world natives in the movie, “not old-school-theology, holds the ideological promise of a more sustainable future on our planet.”² Liberal film critic Roger Ebert likened his viewing of Avatar to his viewing of Star Wars in 1977, calling it “not simply a sensational entertainment, although it is that. It’s a technical breakthrough…predestined to launch a cult.”

To be sure, the movie is a simplistic tale of Manichean morality without nuance, two-dimensional characters without complexity, and thinly veiled political propaganda without subtlety. But those who attack its faults are missing a much more important point: Avatar’s success cannot be dismissed. It is resonating with tens of millions of people around the planet. Regardless of Avatar’s faults, James Cameron knows storytelling better than his detractors. Ebert is right. It is not merely special effects entertainment; it is cult-like in its effect.

The movie Avatar is a worldwide box-office success, not merely because it is a technological marvel of special effects, but because it is a religious myth on the level of ancient texts like The Epic of Gilgamesh. First, it is a postmodern multicultural critique of America and Western civilization, where the good guys are primitive natives who worship nature, and the bad guys are greedy multinational energy corporations protected by warmongering mercenary militia, facilitated by the scientific depersonalization of nature. Images and concepts of many religions, including Hinduism, Animism, and Christianity are integrated into its multicultural story creating global appeal. Second, it is a narrative incarnation of the pagan worldview of earth worship as described in the Gaia Hypothesis, a scientific theory of planets as living organisms with consciousness. The notion of nature worship in opposition to the Judeo-Christian notion of man’s dominion over nature is an ancient theme that originates in Israel’s battle for the Promised Land with the pagan nature religion of the Canaanites. This same theme is at the heart of Avatar and it fuels environmental religion and hatred of the West in third world and socialist countries, resulting in a “battle of gods” over the future of the planet.

THE STORY

The hero of the story is Jake Sully, a crippled marine who arrives at a lush green planetary moon light-years from earth called Pandora. He replaces his deceased twin brother in a scientific experiment being headed by nature-loving scientist Grace Augustine. They have developed technology to splice human DNA with the DNA of the native inhabitants, called the Na’vi, ten feet-tall blue bipeds that dress, act, and worship like alien versions of historical Native Americans. This genetic engineering has led to the creation of Na’vi bodies without consciousness that can be remotely controlled like avatars in an online multi-player role-playing game. Jake gets in a tech pod that connects his consciousness to the Na’vi body, resulting in a remote virtual link, seeing and feeling through the avatar, similar to “jacking in” in The Matrix.

Jake soon discovers that his mission is to make contact with the Na’vi as “one of them,” for the purposes of a corporation that controls the project. That corporation is led by Parker Selfridge, a greedy capitalist fat cat who doesn’t care about the natives, but only wants to get them out of the way so he can exploit Pandora’s richest natural resource, “unobtainium.” The problem is that the Na’vi village is in a massive tree that sits over a massive deposit of that unobtainable resource.

Parker has hired a mercenary force of military men as security, led by the gritty, heartless, “take-no-prisoners” warmonger, Colonel Miles Quaritch. Quaritch enlists Jake to report secretly to him with military intel for nefarious purposes. Grace, the scientist, can’t stand either Parker or the natives and explore the natural and biological wonders of this world, in the manner of a Victorian naturalist.

We then follow Jake on his journey as he meets the Na’vi, who at first distrust him because they can smell his alien DNA, and don’t like anyone who speaks English. He wins their confidence, however, through Neytiri, a female Na’vi who rescues him in the forest. Neytiri is then commissioned to train Jake in all their Na’vi traditions.

He spends months learning how to hunt with a bow and arrow and ride the land beasts and flying dragons. He also enters into their religious views that seek to interact with the flow of energy that they believe unites all the life on the planet with Eywa, the Mother Goddess.

Just when Jake is falling in love with Neytiri and the Na’vi people, we see the monster-sized corporate machines clear-cutting the jungle on their way to blow up the Na’vi tree and scatter the Na’vi.

Jake escapes, but is rejected by the Na’vi because of his betrayal. But when he discovers that the military is on their way to blow up the sacred “Tree of Souls” that holds the souls of all the Na’vi ancestors, Jake switches sides and manages to regain the Na’vi’s trust and lead them in an all out battle against the “sky people” in their flying machines.

After Jake wins the day, he discovers that the sacred tree has the mystical power to transfer life from one organism to another. He decides to transfer his soul from his human body into the Na’vi avatar body he had been using, in order to permanently become a Na’vi and live the rest of his life with his love interest, Neytiri.

POSTMODERN MULTICULTURALISM

Avatar is a postmodern pagan myth of nature worship. It’s a condemnation of “Western imperialism” as racist scientific exploitation of the environment and a replacement of that worldview with the Gaia Hypothesis, a scientific theory that asserts that the earth is a living organism, and humanity a servant unto it.

If you want to know what worldview a filmmaker is attacking, look at the villain. The villain is the bad guy who we root for the hero to overcome. The way the villain (or antagonist) thinks and lives is condemned by the storyteller through the villain’s failure to win. Cameron’s trio of antagonists in Avatar are all archetypes of Western civilization: the corporation, the military, and science.

According to the postmodern narrative, the biggest evil in civilization is the corporation, which only cares about money, not people, and will exploit third world natives without a concern for destroying their sacred spaces or their lives. Parker is clearly depicted this way as he throws out racist epithets against the Na’vi as “blue monkeys” and “fly-bitten savages.” At first, he wants to avoid public outrage by negotiating with the Na’vi to get them to move, only because “killing the indigenous people looks bad.” When Jake turns against his own people, he questions the benefits to the Na’vi of making a deal with the humans, “for what, lite beer and blue jeans?” In this story, there is no benefit to primitive natives from Western civilization, only the plundering of natural resources and product exploitation of the masses.

Next in line of Western villains for postmodern storytelling is the military class, who are not peacekeepers protecting the freedom and lives of a people, but tools of the corporation to protect financial interests through violence against “the other.” Thus Quaritch is a warmongering mercenary who can’t wait to kill the Na’vi and, drinking his coffee in battle, muses over his decimation of both environment and creatures as if it were a fun party. And all of Quaritch’s bad guy militia is white. The only one that isn’t is the sole minority female pilot who mutinies with Jake.

Cameron also makes a political allusion to the Bush administration’s War on Terror as being morally equivalent to this exploitation of Pandora. The human warmongers use phrases and slogans against the Na’vi reminiscent of Bush-era phrases such as “shock and awe,” “pre-emptive attack,” and “we will fight terror with terror.”³ The mercenary military is an obvious parallel of Blackwater, a Bush-era private security force employed in Iraq. RDA, the big energy corporation led by Parker, is an apparent analogy to Halliburton, the energy company attacked by Bush opponents for its alleged question able interests in the war. One of the good guys fighting with Jake against the corporate military onslaught refers to their impossible odds as “martyrdom,” a moral equivalency of freedom fighters with Islamic insurgents and terrorists in Iraq.

Last on the list of questionable characters in this postmodern narrative is the scientist, who depersonalizes nature in the name of materialistic explanation and helps create the very technology that exploits, indeed, “rapes” Mother Earth-or in this case, Mother Pandora. This is a more complex character because in the story, Grace begins as a begrudging tool of the corporation, with an impersonal interest in the alien biology, but ends up falling in love with the Na’vi and providing the scientific theory that supports their religious beliefs. Their religion of the oneness of all things in the Goddess (explained below) is described as an “electro-communication between the trees,” and all things. “It’s not pagan voodoo,” she proclaims, “it’s a biological global network.” The Na’vi’s religious mystical beliefs are supported by science.⁴

In one of the very few subtleties of the film, Western civilization is also linked with Christianity. The scientist’s name, Grace, happens to be the name of a defining doctrine of historic Christianity. The namesake of her surname, Augustine, is an ancient fourth-century church father who was considered one of the foremost influences on Western civilization. He taught the dominion mandate of Genesis for man to rule over creation, subduing it, as well as cultivating and keeping it.⁵

This depersonalization of nature and its subjugation to man was the philosophical foundation of science. The Enlightenment then dispensed with this Christian foundation and turned science into a materialistic pursuit of exploitation. Grace is shown in pictures on a refrigerator with the natives, teaching them and learning from them, a visual parallel to missionaries who are historically known for this kind of ministry to primitive peoples. Apparently, the scientist as the moral conscience of cross-cultural concern has replaced the Christian.

Another subtle reference is in the name “sky people,” given to the earthlings who have descended from the sky to Pandora. The sky father (god) and his patriarchal nomads killing and replacing the earth mother (goddess) and her matriarchal farmers is another narrative used against Christianity that was made popular by anthropologist James Frazer in his classic on comparative religions, The Golden Bough.⁶

The true global multicultural appeal of Avatar lies in its Matrix-like syncretism of many religions and cultures: Hinduism (powerful deities of Hinduism are blue like the Na’vi), Animism (Na’vi mirroring Native Americans and other primitive tribes), Judaism (Navi is the Hebrew word for prophet), Christianity and other Christ stories (the messianic anointing and journey of Jake), religious environmentalism (Gaia theory), and pantheism and panentheism (the oneness of all living things).

PANTHEISM/PANENTHEISM

If you want to know the worldview that a filmmaker is affirming, look at the good guys. Look at the hero and how he ends up seeing the world. In Avatar, the worldview of the good guys (the Na’vi) that the hero ends up embracing is a pagan religion of nature worship. The Na’vi are clearly the “oppressed” and exploited third world indigenous peoples of Pandora.

The Na’vi worship Eywa, the Great Mother goddess, who is described as “a network of energy that flows through all living things,” connecting them as carriers of the deity whose energy is “borrowed, and someday we will have to give it back.” This panentheist belief of a deity within all living things is further exegeted as a “oneness” or unity between those things. God is in all and all is part of God. Like Native American religion, the Na’vi kill animals for food, and then speak to their prey as a “brother whose spirit goes to Eywa, and the body to the earth.” Their sacred burial ground is the “Tree of Souls” that contains the souls of their dead ancestors to whom they petition. When they accept Jake into their community through ritual, they create a circle of interlocking hands connecting to each other, symbolizing their oneness in Eywa. The Na’vi are able to unite with horse-like beasts and flying dragons through an organic connection that allows the beast and rider to move symbiotically as one creature.

Jake turns out to be a multicultural messianic redeemer for the Na’vi, incarnate in their flesh, yet from the sky above. When he is first discovered by Neytiri, she mistrusts him until she sees a “sign from Eywa” that persuades her he may be an anointed one: Seeds that are pure in spirit from the Tree of Souls float down on him and bathe him in a transfiguration of mystical light. Later in the story, he becomes the warrior who will free their people by leading them in battle against the forces of darkness. And when he does so, it is through the “Great Mother” fighting back with him, as all the animals that once sought to eat each other now become a united army fighting the marauding militia of humans.

Samantha Smith, in her book Goddess Earth: Exposing the Pagan Agenda in the Environmental Movement, lays out three major principles of historic paganism, much of which is embedded within the worldview of Avatar:

Animism-the belief that everything is imbued with a soul;

Polytheism-the belief that many gods exist and each one has a function to preside over various aspects of nature and life;

Pantheism-the belief that all things, animate and inanimate, including the earth and humans, are manifestations of God; God is all.⁷

The pagan religious dogma of the interconnectedness of all life and the pantheistic deity that emerges to protect it is verified by the scientist as being a biological organic response of the planet seeking to maintain an equilibrium of life. There is a name on Earth for this theory, and that name is the Gaia Hypothesis.

THE GAIA HYPOTHESIS

In the 1960s, scientist James Lovelock formulated a theory related to his work detecting life on Mars for NASA. He hypothesized that the earth’s biosphere, atmosphere, oceans and soil was a complex entity, “constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life.”⁸ Earth is a self-regulating living organism with a consciousness. He called this the Gaia Hypothesis, based on the Greek goddess of the earth, Gaia. In later years, noted microbiologist Lynn Margulis collaborated with Lovelock to develop the theory, attracting both scientific and public attention.

On his Web site, Lovelock writes of a current Gaia movement to return to the ancient Greek notion of a symbiotic dance between religion and science: “In those days, science and theology were one and science, although less precise, had soul. As time passed this warm relationship faded and was replaced by the frigidity of the schoolmen…Now at last there are signs of a change. Science becomes holistic again and rediscovers soul.”⁹

Gaia theory is apparent in Avatar’s pantheistic “Great Mother” who, as Neytiri explains, “does not take sides” in the battle with earthlings, “She protects only the balance of life.” So Gaia comes alive when all the animals on Pandora unite as one force to protect the sacred Tree of Souls (the cerebral cortex of Pandora) from destruction by the marauding crusaders. The scientific justification of a pagan religious worldview that drives the Gaia Hypothesis is readily apparent throughout Avatar. Many of the religious beliefs of the Na’vi have natural biological explanations. The Na’vi’s have the ability to become one with other living things through their “neural queue,” a hair-like extension of their nervous system that has living tendrils.¹⁰ These tendrils look and operate exactly like fiber optic cables-the naturalistic explanation of a mystical belief. When Jake transfers his consciousness into the Na’vi body, the tendrils of the Tree of Souls (a neural network of fiber optic cables) connects to his cerebellum and relocates his soul like a computer upload of software from one hard drive to another. When Grace, the materialist scientist, is dying while connected to the Tree of Souls, even she converts and says to Jake, “The Great Mother, the All Mother, She’s real. I’m with her.” In the Gospel according to Avatar, Gaia is a personal emergent consciousness with scientific foundation and religious expression.

Although most scientists do not seek such explicit syncretism of religion with science, influential members of the environmentalist movement do. A seminal thinker in the origins of modern environmentalism was Lynn White, professor of history at Princeton, who wrote in 1967 of “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis”: “By destroying pagan animism [the belief that natural objects have souls], Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects…Since the roots of our trouble are so largely religious, the remedy must also be essentially religious, whether we call it that or not.”¹¹

Nobel Prize-winning global spokesman for environmentalism Al Gore affirmed Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis of a living sacred earth entity in contrast with orthodox Christian doctrine of a desacralized nature and a unique image of God in human beings. He concluded that “it is the myriad slight strands from earth’s web of life-woven so distinctly into our essence…that reflects the image of God, faintly. By experiencing nature in its fullest-our own and that of all creation-with our senses and with our spiritual imagination, we can glimpse, ‘bright shining as the sun,’ an infinite image of God.”¹²

A CLOSER LOOK

Space does not permit a detailed critique of the philosophies of animism, panentheism, and pantheism that are embedded within Avatar. What I want to do is a brief deconstruction of the narrative of Avatar, illustrating its own internal contradictions and anomalies as a paradigm of political and religious prejudices.

First, as a postmodern multicultural narrative, Avatar suffers the condemnation of its own accusations. Its attack on Western civilization and elevation of primitivism through the journey of the hero is by its own multicultural standards, a “white savior” racist myth. It reinforces imperialist notions of scientifically ignorant primitives being saved from superior forces by a white man who is anointed above them (remember Jake’s transfiguration?), condescends to be one of them, and redeems them through his superior technological and cultural transcendence. As one political writer concluded, “The ethnic Na’vi, the film suggests, need the white man to save them because, as a less developed race, they lack the intelligence and fortitude to overcome their adversaries by themselves.”¹³

Second, Avatar is also an exaltation of the “noble savage” myth, made popular by eighteenth-century Romantic Jean-Jacques Rousseau that imagines “an idealized concept of uncivilized man, who symbolizes the innate goodness of one not exposed to the corrupting influences of civilization.”¹⁴ This is a common Hollywood motif that shows up in movies such as Pocahontas and Dances with Wolves, which portray peace-loving indigenous peoples at one with nature-a politically constructed fiction that doesn’t bear out in historical reality. Depraved cultural traditions such as female circumcision, head hunting, cannibalism, human sacrifice, slavery, and bloodthirsty warring are commonly present in indigenous tribes unaffected by Western civilization throughout history. It is not civilization, but human nature that is corrupt. The tragic reality of pagan culture is more like the bloodthirsty human sacrifice of Apocalypto than the oneness of all life of Avatar.

The other conceit of Avatar’s mythology of oneness with nature is in its moral condemnation of humanity and beatification of nature. Like the noble savage, this is another self-referential absurdity. If the “circle of life,” that is, the cycle of “eat or be eaten” is indeed a harmonious beauty, then humans cannot be condemned for consuming natural resources, which is in effect eating the life of others. Humans are just as much a part of nature as anything else, and moral condemnation of gluttonous excess and exploitation is arbitrary subjective manipulation by those being eaten. Blowing up trees, killing Na’vi, and consuming unobtainium is just as natural as Na’vi killing and eating viperwolves and Thanators killing and eating Na’vi.

According to the dominant global narrative of natural selection assumed in the film, the extinction of species is a natural process of “the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.”¹⁵ Richard Dawkins’s infamous description of natural selection as “blind, pitiless indifference” is exactly the description of Selfridge and Quaritch’s characters. No amount of rationalizing about “cooperation” and “group selection” can change the fact that the circle of life that is nature is in fact hostile, “nasty, brutish and short,” destructive, “red in tooth and claw,” and full of thorns and thistles-which brings us to the war of cultural narratives: Earth and nature worship versus man’s dominion stewardship.

ANCIENT/MODERN SACRED MYTHMAKING

I believe that the reason for Avatar’s success lies in James Cameron’s skill as a mythmaker. Avatar is essentially a postmodern pagan myth on the level of the Babylonian Enuma Elish or the Ugaritic Baal Cycle of ancient Mesopotamia. Like Avatar, these epic myths were tales of warring deities of nature embodying the claims of religious and political supremacy.

Despite our very scientific modern culture, mythology still connects with our human hearts because it appeals to transcendence, that is, a reality outside of the world that gives meaning and purpose to our existence within the world. Humanity, created as it is in the image of God, craves transcendence regardless of our technological advancement. Unfortunately, as the apostle Paul revealed, that craving for the transcendent God is suppressed out of moral guilt (Rom. 1:18-21) and results in pagan worship of the environment as the most primal natural instinct. Humanity exchanges the truth of God for a lie, and worships and serves the creature and creation rather than the Creator (Rom. 1:25).

The battle between cultural narratives of worshipping Creator or creation is an ancient one. Augustine was right (the church father, not the fictional character): the creation narrative of Genesis 1 teaches man’s rulership over the environment with a corresponding need to bring it into subjection (Gen. 1:26-28).¹⁶ Critics of Judeo-Christianity are right when they suggest that the Bible desacralized nature by draining the deity out of it, but wrong when they conclude that such theology necessarily leads to destructive exploitation of the environment. Genesis also teaches man’s responsible stewardship over the earth (Gen. 2:15). In paganism, man is the earth’s servant, but in the Bible, man is the earth’s steward.

“Myths,” as Ronald Simkins writes, “are simply narrative elaborations of culturally shared perceptions of reality.”¹⁷ One of the purposes of mythic narratives in modern as well as ancient times is to encode literarily the religious and political overthrow of one culture by another. When new kings or kingdoms would rise to power in the ancient world, they would often displace the vassal culture’s creation stories with their own stories of how their deities triumphed over others to create the world in which they now lived. Ancient Near Eastern scholars call this battle “chaoskampf.” It denotes deity struggling over the forces of chaos to create order in the social and national lives of a people.¹⁸

The Enuma Elish tells the story of the Babylonian deity Marduk’s battle with Tiamat, the sea goddess of chaos, and his ascendancy to power in the Mesopotamian pantheon, giving literary mythical justification to the rise of Babylon as an ancient world power.¹⁹ The Baal Cycle of Ugarit tells the story of the storm god “Baal the Conqueror,” and his epiphany in becoming “Lord of the earth” in Canaan by defeating the god of chaos, Yamm (the Sea).²⁰

Even Moses, according to scholar Bruce Reichenbach, wrote Genesis 1 “as a theological-political document that describes how the Supreme Monarch establishes his kingdom and thereby justifies his claim to exclusive possession of everything in it.”²¹ God was preparing Israel to displace the pagan Canaanites and their gods both physically and literarily so He inspired Moses’ authorship of the creation account to express that ancient Near Eastern motif of establishing transcendent authority.²²

Avatar is a chaoskampf myth that incarnates the battle of worldviews and their gods, of Gaia overcoming the destructive forces of chaos (the Christian West) to establish order through earth and nature worship. It is a modern narrative of the most ancient conflict of worldviews.

A WAR OF NARRATIVES

Atheistic and secular humanistic texts of materialism are quaint myths, but ultimately inadequate in describing reality. Only a transcendent personal divinity will satisfy the hearts and imaginations of humanity. We are not in a culture war. We are in a war of gods, and the three dominant religions proclaiming the supremacy of their deity over the earth are Christianity (Jesus), Islam (Allah), and Paganism (Gaia).

Christian mythic narratives in movies such as Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia have surely captured the imaginations of many. For the moment, Avatar, like a newly written Epic of Gilgamesh, heralds the rising influence of a pagan global religion of nature worship that posits humanity, not as a unique creature in God’s image ruling over nature and the earth as God’s vice regent, but as a common part of nature, serving the earth and its ruling authority over all energy and life. It’s not that Avatar is itself the game changer, but rather, that it is part of a cultural wave of ideas affecting all areas of global culture, from religion to entertainment to science to politics-promising pagan redemption, but providing subordination and slavery to nature.

Brian Godawa is the screenwriter of To End All Wars and the author of Hollywood Worldviews: Watching Films with Wisdom and Discernment (InterVarsity Press, 2009 updated), and Word Pictures: Knowing God through Story and Imagination (InterVarsity Press, 2009).

NOTES

1 http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTE4NTY2MTM0MDIzZDFiZDhlYTMwNDkyOTJjYzhmZWE=.

2 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-michaelson/the-meaning-of-avatareve_b_400912.html?view=screen.

3 Although fighting “terror with terror” is not a Bush administration phrase, it indicates Cameron’s interpretation of exactly what America was doing. In other words, the Iraq war is not just, it is the moral equivalence of terror.

4 Ironically, this reduction of religious beliefs to natural causes is normally used to demythologize religion, but in the face of Christian “dominion,” it magically morphs into a mysticism/science fusion against the West. After all, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

5 Augustine of Hippo, The City of God XII, 24, Confessions, XIII, 23.

6 http://www.archive.org/stream/goldenboughstudy01frazuoft#page/n11/mode/2up.

7 Quoted in “The Pagan Roots of Environmentalism,” American Policy Center Web site: http://www.americanpolicy.org/un/thepaganroots.htm.

8 James Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1979, 1987, 1995, 2000), 10.

9 http://www.ecolo.org/lovelock/what_is_Gaia.html.

10 http://james-camerons-avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Queue.

11 http://www.zbi.ee/~kalevi/lwhite.htm, quoted in Joseph Brean, “The Green Fervour,” National Post, Saturday, February 10, 2007: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=07407be3-1f9f-4f41-a16a-5a286a5b374c.

12 Al Gore, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (New York: Rodale, 1992, 2006), 264-65.

13 Will Heaven, http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/willheaven/100020488/james-cameronsavatar-is-a-stylish-film-marred-by-its-racist-subtext/.

14 “Noble Savage,” Encyclopedia Britannica online: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/416988/noble-savage.

15 The subtitle of Charles Darwin’s game changing On the Origin of the Species.

16 The original Hebrew words for “rule over” and “subdue” are military and governmental words that include forceful power.

17 Ronald Simkins, Creator and Creation: Nature in the Worldview of Ancient Israel (Peabody, MS: Hendrickson, 1994), 46.

18 Bernard F. Batto, Slaying the Dragon: Mythmaking in the Biblical Tradition (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992), 75-77.

19 Alexander Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis: The Story of Creation (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1942, 1963), 14.

20 Michael David Coogan, trans., Stories from Ancient Canaan (Louisville, KY: Westminster Press), 75-115.

21 Bruce R. Reichenbach, “Genesis 1 as a Theological-Political Narrative of Kingdom Establishment,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 13, 1 (2003): 48.

22 This explanation of a theological-political purpose behind Genesis does not mean it is fictional or any less truthful as God’s Word.

Please tell us on Facebook: What do you think about the movie Avatar?

Avatar, the special effects extravaganza movie by James Cameron, has just recently become the number one box-office blockbuster of all time. But more importantly, we live in a global world, and Avatar is also number one in the worldwide box office, breaking $2.5 billion and passing up the previous reigning champion, Titanic-also by Cameron.

Because of its explicit religious worldview and political overtones, Avatar has drawn a flaming frenzy from news sites and blogs across the Internet. Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg wrote of it as plagiarized political propaganda: “Cameron rips off Hollywood clichés to the point you could cut and paste dialogue from ‘Pocahontas’ or ‘Dances with Wolves’ into ‘Avatar’ without appreciably changing the story.”¹ Liberal writer Jay Michaels defended it as a legitimate attack on monotheism because the pantheistic worldview of the third world natives in the movie, “not old-school-theology, holds the ideological promise of a more sustainable future on our planet.”² Liberal film critic Roger Ebert likened his viewing of Avatar to his viewing of Star Wars in 1977, calling it “not simply a sensational entertainment, although it is that. It’s a technical breakthrough…predestined to launch a cult.”

To be sure, the movie is a simplistic tale of Manichean morality without nuance, two-dimensional characters without complexity, and thinly veiled political propaganda without subtlety. But those who attack its faults are missing a much more important point: Avatar’s success cannot be dismissed. It is resonating with tens of millions of people around the planet. Regardless of Avatar’s faults, James Cameron knows storytelling better than his detractors. Ebert is right. It is not merely special effects entertainment; it is cult-like in its effect.

The movie Avatar is a worldwide box-office success, not merely because it is a technological marvel of special effects, but because it is a religious myth on the level of ancient texts like The Epic of Gilgamesh. First, it is a postmodern multicultural critique of America and Western civilization, where the good guys are primitive natives who worship nature, and the bad guys are greedy multinational energy corporations protected by warmongering mercenary militia, facilitated by the scientific depersonalization of nature. Images and concepts of many religions, including Hinduism, Animism, and Christianity are integrated into its multicultural story creating global appeal. Second, it is a narrative incarnation of the pagan worldview of earth worship as described in the Gaia Hypothesis, a scientific theory of planets as living organisms with consciousness. The notion of nature worship in opposition to the Judeo-Christian notion of man’s dominion over nature is an ancient theme that originates in Israel’s battle for the Promised Land with the pagan nature religion of the Canaanites. This same theme is at the heart of Avatar and it fuels environmental religion and hatred of the West in third world and socialist countries, resulting in a “battle of gods” over the future of the planet.

THE STORY

The hero of the story is Jake Sully, a crippled marine who arrives at a lush green planetary moon light-years from earth called Pandora. He replaces his deceased twin brother in a scientific experiment being headed by nature-loving scientist Grace Augustine. They have developed technology to splice human DNA with the DNA of the native inhabitants, called the Na’vi, ten feet-tall blue bipeds that dress, act, and worship like alien versions of historical Native Americans. This genetic engineering has led to the creation of Na’vi bodies without consciousness that can be remotely controlled like avatars in an online multi-player role-playing game. Jake gets in a tech pod that connects his consciousness to the Na’vi body, resulting in a remote virtual link, seeing and feeling through the avatar, similar to “jacking in” in The Matrix.

Jake soon discovers that his mission is to make contact with the Na’vi as “one of them,” for the purposes of a corporation that controls the project. That corporation is led by Parker Selfridge, a greedy capitalist fat cat who doesn’t care about the natives, but only wants to get them out of the way so he can exploit Pandora’s richest natural resource, “unobtainium.” The problem is that the Na’vi village is in a massive tree that sits over a massive deposit of that unobtainable resource.

Parker has hired a mercenary force of military men as security, led by the gritty, heartless, “take-no-prisoners” warmonger, Colonel Miles Quaritch. Quaritch enlists Jake to report secretly to him with military intel for nefarious purposes. Grace, the scientist, can’t stand either Parker or the natives and explore the natural and biological wonders of this world, in the manner of a Victorian naturalist.

We then follow Jake on his journey as he meets the Na’vi, who at first distrust him because they can smell his alien DNA, and don’t like anyone who speaks English. He wins their confidence, however, through Neytiri, a female Na’vi who rescues him in the forest. Neytiri is then commissioned to train Jake in all their Na’vi traditions.

He spends months learning how to hunt with a bow and arrow and ride the land beasts and flying dragons. He also enters into their religious views that seek to interact with the flow of energy that they believe unites all the life on the planet with Eywa, the Mother Goddess.

Just when Jake is falling in love with Neytiri and the Na’vi people, we see the monster-sized corporate machines clear-cutting the jungle on their way to blow up the Na’vi tree and scatter the Na’vi.

Jake escapes, but is rejected by the Na’vi because of his betrayal. But when he discovers that the military is on their way to blow up the sacred “Tree of Souls” that holds the souls of all the Na’vi ancestors, Jake switches sides and manages to regain the Na’vi’s trust and lead them in an all out battle against the “sky people” in their flying machines.

After Jake wins the day, he discovers that the sacred tree has the mystical power to transfer life from one organism to another. He decides to transfer his soul from his human body into the Na’vi avatar body he had been using, in order to permanently become a Na’vi and live the rest of his life with his love interest, Neytiri.

POSTMODERN MULTICULTURALISM

Avatar is a postmodern pagan myth of nature worship. It’s a condemnation of “Western imperialism” as racist scientific exploitation of the environment and a replacement of that worldview with the Gaia Hypothesis, a scientific theory that asserts that the earth is a living organism, and humanity a servant unto it.

If you want to know what worldview a filmmaker is attacking, look at the villain. The villain is the bad guy who we root for the hero to overcome. The way the villain (or antagonist) thinks and lives is condemned by the storyteller through the villain’s failure to win. Cameron’s trio of antagonists in Avatar are all archetypes of Western civilization: the corporation, the military, and science.

According to the postmodern narrative, the biggest evil in civilization is the corporation, which only cares about money, not people, and will exploit third world natives without a concern for destroying their sacred spaces or their lives. Parker is clearly depicted this way as he throws out racist epithets against the Na’vi as “blue monkeys” and “fly-bitten savages.” At first, he wants to avoid public outrage by negotiating with the Na’vi to get them to move, only because “killing the indigenous people looks bad.” When Jake turns against his own people, he questions the benefits to the Na’vi of making a deal with the humans, “for what, lite beer and blue jeans?” In this story, there is no benefit to primitive natives from Western civilization, only the plundering of natural resources and product exploitation of the masses.

Next in line of Western villains for postmodern storytelling is the military class, who are not peacekeepers protecting the freedom and lives of a people, but tools of the corporation to protect financial interests through violence against “the other.” Thus Quaritch is a warmongering mercenary who can’t wait to kill the Na’vi and, drinking his coffee in battle, muses over his decimation of both environment and creatures as if it were a fun party. And all of Quaritch’s bad guy militia is white. The only one that isn’t is the sole minority female pilot who mutinies with Jake.

Cameron also makes a political allusion to the Bush administration’s War on Terror as being morally equivalent to this exploitation of Pandora. The human warmongers use phrases and slogans against the Na’vi reminiscent of Bush-era phrases such as “shock and awe,” “pre-emptive attack,” and “we will fight terror with terror.”³ The mercenary military is an obvious parallel of Blackwater, a Bush-era private security force employed in Iraq. RDA, the big energy corporation led by Parker, is an apparent analogy to Halliburton, the energy company attacked by Bush opponents for its alleged question able interests in the war. One of the good guys fighting with Jake against the corporate military onslaught refers to their impossible odds as “martyrdom,” a moral equivalency of freedom fighters with Islamic insurgents and terrorists in Iraq.

Last on the list of questionable characters in this postmodern narrative is the scientist, who depersonalizes nature in the name of materialistic explanation and helps create the very technology that exploits, indeed, “rapes” Mother Earth-or in this case, Mother Pandora. This is a more complex character because in the story, Grace begins as a begrudging tool of the corporation, with an impersonal interest in the alien biology, but ends up falling in love with the Na’vi and providing the scientific theory that supports their religious beliefs. Their religion of the oneness of all things in the Goddess (explained below) is described as an “electro-communication between the trees,” and all things. “It’s not pagan voodoo,” she proclaims, “it’s a biological global network.” The Na’vi’s religious mystical beliefs are supported by science.⁴

In one of the very few subtleties of the film, Western civilization is also linked with Christianity. The scientist’s name, Grace, happens to be the name of a defining doctrine of historic Christianity. The namesake of her surname, Augustine, is an ancient fourth-century church father who was considered one of the foremost influences on Western civilization. He taught the dominion mandate of Genesis for man to rule over creation, subduing it, as well as cultivating and keeping it.⁵

This depersonalization of nature and its subjugation to man was the philosophical foundation of science. The Enlightenment then dispensed with this Christian foundation and turned science into a materialistic pursuit of exploitation. Grace is shown in pictures on a refrigerator with the natives, teaching them and learning from them, a visual parallel to missionaries who are historically known for this kind of ministry to primitive peoples. Apparently, the scientist as the moral conscience of cross-cultural concern has replaced the Christian.

Another subtle reference is in the name “sky people,” given to the earthlings who have descended from the sky to Pandora. The sky father (god) and his patriarchal nomads killing and replacing the earth mother (goddess) and her matriarchal farmers is another narrative used against Christianity that was made popular by anthropologist James Frazer in his classic on comparative religions, The Golden Bough.⁶

The true global multicultural appeal of Avatar lies in its Matrix-like syncretism of many religions and cultures: Hinduism (powerful deities of Hinduism are blue like the Na’vi), Animism (Na’vi mirroring Native Americans and other primitive tribes), Judaism (Navi is the Hebrew word for prophet), Christianity and other Christ stories (the messianic anointing and journey of Jake), religious environmentalism (Gaia theory), and pantheism and panentheism (the oneness of all living things).

PANTHEISM/PANENTHEISM

If you want to know the worldview that a filmmaker is affirming, look at the good guys. Look at the hero and how he ends up seeing the world. In Avatar, the worldview of the good guys (the Na’vi) that the hero ends up embracing is a pagan religion of nature worship. The Na’vi are clearly the “oppressed” and exploited third world indigenous peoples of Pandora.

The Na’vi worship Eywa, the Great Mother goddess, who is described as “a network of energy that flows through all living things,” connecting them as carriers of the deity whose energy is “borrowed, and someday we will have to give it back.” This panentheist belief of a deity within all living things is further exegeted as a “oneness” or unity between those things. God is in all and all is part of God. Like Native American religion, the Na’vi kill animals for food, and then speak to their prey as a “brother whose spirit goes to Eywa, and the body to the earth.” Their sacred burial ground is the “Tree of Souls” that contains the souls of their dead ancestors to whom they petition. When they accept Jake into their community through ritual, they create a circle of interlocking hands connecting to each other, symbolizing their oneness in Eywa. The Na’vi are able to unite with horse-like beasts and flying dragons through an organic connection that allows the beast and rider to move symbiotically as one creature.

Jake turns out to be a multicultural messianic redeemer for the Na’vi, incarnate in their flesh, yet from the sky above. When he is first discovered by Neytiri, she mistrusts him until she sees a “sign from Eywa” that persuades her he may be an anointed one: Seeds that are pure in spirit from the Tree of Souls float down on him and bathe him in a transfiguration of mystical light. Later in the story, he becomes the warrior who will free their people by leading them in battle against the forces of darkness. And when he does so, it is through the “Great Mother” fighting back with him, as all the animals that once sought to eat each other now become a united army fighting the marauding militia of humans.

Samantha Smith, in her book Goddess Earth: Exposing the Pagan Agenda in the Environmental Movement, lays out three major principles of historic paganism, much of which is embedded within the worldview of Avatar:

Animism-the belief that everything is imbued with a soul;

Polytheism-the belief that many gods exist and each one has a function to preside over various aspects of nature and life;

Pantheism-the belief that all things, animate and inanimate, including the earth and humans, are manifestations of God; God is all.⁷

The pagan religious dogma of the interconnectedness of all life and the pantheistic deity that emerges to protect it is verified by the scientist as being a biological organic response of the planet seeking to maintain an equilibrium of life. There is a name on Earth for this theory, and that name is the Gaia Hypothesis.

THE GAIA HYPOTHESIS

In the 1960s, scientist James Lovelock formulated a theory related to his work detecting life on Mars for NASA. He hypothesized that the earth’s biosphere, atmosphere, oceans and soil was a complex entity, “constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life.”⁸ Earth is a self-regulating living organism with a consciousness. He called this the Gaia Hypothesis, based on the Greek goddess of the earth, Gaia. In later years, noted microbiologist Lynn Margulis collaborated with Lovelock to develop the theory, attracting both scientific and public attention.

On his Web site, Lovelock writes of a current Gaia movement to return to the ancient Greek notion of a symbiotic dance between religion and science: “In those days, science and theology were one and science, although less precise, had soul. As time passed this warm relationship faded and was replaced by the frigidity of the schoolmen…Now at last there are signs of a change. Science becomes holistic again and rediscovers soul.”⁹

Gaia theory is apparent in Avatar’s pantheistic “Great Mother” who, as Neytiri explains, “does not take sides” in the battle with earthlings, “She protects only the balance of life.” So Gaia comes alive when all the animals on Pandora unite as one force to protect the sacred Tree of Souls (the cerebral cortex of Pandora) from destruction by the marauding crusaders. The scientific justification of a pagan religious worldview that drives the Gaia Hypothesis is readily apparent throughout Avatar. Many of the religious beliefs of the Na’vi have natural biological explanations. The Na’vi’s have the ability to become one with other living things through their “neural queue,” a hair-like extension of their nervous system that has living tendrils.¹⁰ These tendrils look and operate exactly like fiber optic cables-the naturalistic explanation of a mystical belief. When Jake transfers his consciousness into the Na’vi body, the tendrils of the Tree of Souls (a neural network of fiber optic cables) connects to his cerebellum and relocates his soul like a computer upload of software from one hard drive to another. When Grace, the materialist scientist, is dying while connected to the Tree of Souls, even she converts and says to Jake, “The Great Mother, the All Mother, She’s real. I’m with her.” In the Gospel according to Avatar, Gaia is a personal emergent consciousness with scientific foundation and religious expression.

Although most scientists do not seek such explicit syncretism of religion with science, influential members of the environmentalist movement do. A seminal thinker in the origins of modern environmentalism was Lynn White, professor of history at Princeton, who wrote in 1967 of “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis”: “By destroying pagan animism [the belief that natural objects have souls], Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects…Since the roots of our trouble are so largely religious, the remedy must also be essentially religious, whether we call it that or not.”¹¹

Nobel Prize-winning global spokesman for environmentalism Al Gore affirmed Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis of a living sacred earth entity in contrast with orthodox Christian doctrine of a desacralized nature and a unique image of God in human beings. He concluded that “it is the myriad slight strands from earth’s web of life-woven so distinctly into our essence…that reflects the image of God, faintly. By experiencing nature in its fullest-our own and that of all creation-with our senses and with our spiritual imagination, we can glimpse, ‘bright shining as the sun,’ an infinite image of God.”¹²

A CLOSER LOOK

Space does not permit a detailed critique of the philosophies of animism, panentheism, and pantheism that are embedded within Avatar. What I want to do is a brief deconstruction of the narrative of Avatar, illustrating its own internal contradictions and anomalies as a paradigm of political and religious prejudices.

First, as a postmodern multicultural narrative, Avatar suffers the condemnation of its own accusations. Its attack on Western civilization and elevation of primitivism through the journey of the hero is by its own multicultural standards, a “white savior” racist myth. It reinforces imperialist notions of scientifically ignorant primitives being saved from superior forces by a white man who is anointed above them (remember Jake’s transfiguration?), condescends to be one of them, and redeems them through his superior technological and cultural transcendence. As one political writer concluded, “The ethnic Na’vi, the film suggests, need the white man to save them because, as a less developed race, they lack the intelligence and fortitude to overcome their adversaries by themselves.”¹³

Second, Avatar is also an exaltation of the “noble savage” myth, made popular by eighteenth-century Romantic Jean-Jacques Rousseau that imagines “an idealized concept of uncivilized man, who symbolizes the innate goodness of one not exposed to the corrupting influences of civilization.”¹⁴ This is a common Hollywood motif that shows up in movies such as Pocahontas and Dances with Wolves, which portray peace-loving indigenous peoples at one with nature-a politically constructed fiction that doesn’t bear out in historical reality. Depraved cultural traditions such as female circumcision, head hunting, cannibalism, human sacrifice, slavery, and bloodthirsty warring are commonly present in indigenous tribes unaffected by Western civilization throughout history. It is not civilization, but human nature that is corrupt. The tragic reality of pagan culture is more like the bloodthirsty human sacrifice of Apocalypto than the oneness of all life of Avatar.

The other conceit of Avatar’s mythology of oneness with nature is in its moral condemnation of humanity and beatification of nature. Like the noble savage, this is another self-referential absurdity. If the “circle of life,” that is, the cycle of “eat or be eaten” is indeed a harmonious beauty, then humans cannot be condemned for consuming natural resources, which is in effect eating the life of others. Humans are just as much a part of nature as anything else, and moral condemnation of gluttonous excess and exploitation is arbitrary subjective manipulation by those being eaten. Blowing up trees, killing Na’vi, and consuming unobtainium is just as natural as Na’vi killing and eating viperwolves and Thanators killing and eating Na’vi.

According to the dominant global narrative of natural selection assumed in the film, the extinction of species is a natural process of “the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.”¹⁵ Richard Dawkins’s infamous description of natural selection as “blind, pitiless indifference” is exactly the description of Selfridge and Quaritch’s characters. No amount of rationalizing about “cooperation” and “group selection” can change the fact that the circle of life that is nature is in fact hostile, “nasty, brutish and short,” destructive, “red in tooth and claw,” and full of thorns and thistles-which brings us to the war of cultural narratives: Earth and nature worship versus man’s dominion stewardship.

ANCIENT/MODERN SACRED MYTHMAKING

I believe that the reason for Avatar’s success lies in James Cameron’s skill as a mythmaker. Avatar is essentially a postmodern pagan myth on the level of the Babylonian Enuma Elish or the Ugaritic Baal Cycle of ancient Mesopotamia. Like Avatar, these epic myths were tales of warring deities of nature embodying the claims of religious and political supremacy.

Despite our very scientific modern culture, mythology still connects with our human hearts because it appeals to transcendence, that is, a reality outside of the world that gives meaning and purpose to our existence within the world. Humanity, created as it is in the image of God, craves transcendence regardless of our technological advancement. Unfortunately, as the apostle Paul revealed, that craving for the transcendent God is suppressed out of moral guilt (Rom. 1:18-21) and results in pagan worship of the environment as the most primal natural instinct. Humanity exchanges the truth of God for a lie, and worships and serves the creature and creation rather than the Creator (Rom. 1:25).

The battle between cultural narratives of worshipping Creator or creation is an ancient one. Augustine was right (the church father, not the fictional character): the creation narrative of Genesis 1 teaches man’s rulership over the environment with a corresponding need to bring it into subjection (Gen. 1:26-28).¹⁶ Critics of Judeo-Christianity are right when they suggest that the Bible desacralized nature by draining the deity out of it, but wrong when they conclude that such theology necessarily leads to destructive exploitation of the environment. Genesis also teaches man’s responsible stewardship over the earth (Gen. 2:15). In paganism, man is the earth’s servant, but in the Bible, man is the earth’s steward.

“Myths,” as Ronald Simkins writes, “are simply narrative elaborations of culturally shared perceptions of reality.”¹⁷ One of the purposes of mythic narratives in modern as well as ancient times is to encode literarily the religious and political overthrow of one culture by another. When new kings or kingdoms would rise to power in the ancient world, they would often displace the vassal culture’s creation stories with their own stories of how their deities triumphed over others to create the world in which they now lived. Ancient Near Eastern scholars call this battle “chaoskampf.” It denotes deity struggling over the forces of chaos to create order in the social and national lives of a people.¹⁸

The Enuma Elish tells the story of the Babylonian deity Marduk’s battle with Tiamat, the sea goddess of chaos, and his ascendancy to power in the Mesopotamian pantheon, giving literary mythical justification to the rise of Babylon as an ancient world power.¹⁹ The Baal Cycle of Ugarit tells the story of the storm god “Baal the Conqueror,” and his epiphany in becoming “Lord of the earth” in Canaan by defeating the god of chaos, Yamm (the Sea).²⁰

Even Moses, according to scholar Bruce Reichenbach, wrote Genesis 1 “as a theological-political document that describes how the Supreme Monarch establishes his kingdom and thereby justifies his claim to exclusive possession of everything in it.”²¹ God was preparing Israel to displace the pagan Canaanites and their gods both physically and literarily so He inspired Moses’ authorship of the creation account to express that ancient Near Eastern motif of establishing transcendent authority.²²

Avatar is a chaoskampf myth that incarnates the battle of worldviews and their gods, of Gaia overcoming the destructive forces of chaos (the Christian West) to establish order through earth and nature worship. It is a modern narrative of the most ancient conflict of worldviews.

A WAR OF NARRATIVES

Atheistic and secular humanistic texts of materialism are quaint myths, but ultimately inadequate in describing reality. Only a transcendent personal divinity will satisfy the hearts and imaginations of humanity. We are not in a culture war. We are in a war of gods, and the three dominant religions proclaiming the supremacy of their deity over the earth are Christianity (Jesus), Islam (Allah), and Paganism (Gaia).

Christian mythic narratives in movies such as Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia have surely captured the imaginations of many. For the moment, Avatar, like a newly written Epic of Gilgamesh, heralds the rising influence of a pagan global religion of nature worship that posits humanity, not as a unique creature in God’s image ruling over nature and the earth as God’s vice regent, but as a common part of nature, serving the earth and its ruling authority over all energy and life. It’s not that Avatar is itself the game changer, but rather, that it is part of a cultural wave of ideas affecting all areas of global culture, from religion to entertainment to science to politics-promising pagan redemption, but providing subordination and slavery to nature.

Brian Godawa is the screenwriter of To End All Wars and the author of Hollywood Worldviews: Watching Films with Wisdom and Discernment (InterVarsity Press, 2009 updated), and Word Pictures: Knowing God through Story and Imagination (InterVarsity Press, 2009).

NOTES

1 http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTE4NTY2MTM0MDIzZDFiZDhlYTMwNDkyOTJjYzhmZWE=.

2 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-michaelson/the-meaning-of-avatareve_b_400912.html?view=screen.

3 Although fighting “terror with terror” is not a Bush administration phrase, it indicates Cameron’s interpretation of exactly what America was doing. In other words, the Iraq war is not just, it is the moral equivalence of terror.

4 Ironically, this reduction of religious beliefs to natural causes is normally used to demythologize religion, but in the face of Christian “dominion,” it magically morphs into a mysticism/science fusion against the West. After all, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

5 Augustine of Hippo, The City of God XII, 24, Confessions, XIII, 23.

6 http://www.archive.org/stream/goldenboughstudy01frazuoft#page/n11/mode/2up.

7 Quoted in “The Pagan Roots of Environmentalism,” American Policy Center Web site: http://www.americanpolicy.org/un/thepaganroots.htm.

8 James Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1979, 1987, 1995, 2000), 10.

9 http://www.ecolo.org/lovelock/what_is_Gaia.html.

10 http://james-camerons-avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Queue.

11 http://www.zbi.ee/~kalevi/lwhite.htm, quoted in Joseph Brean, “The Green Fervour,” National Post, Saturday, February 10, 2007: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=07407be3-1f9f-4f41-a16a-5a286a5b374c.

12 Al Gore, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (New York: Rodale, 1992, 2006), 264-65.

13 Will Heaven, http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/willheaven/100020488/james-cameronsavatar-is-a-stylish-film-marred-by-its-racist-subtext/.

14 “Noble Savage,” Encyclopedia Britannica online: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/416988/noble-savage.

15 The subtitle of Charles Darwin’s game changing On the Origin of the Species.

16 The original Hebrew words for “rule over” and “subdue” are military and governmental words that include forceful power.

17 Ronald Simkins, Creator and Creation: Nature in the Worldview of Ancient Israel (Peabody, MS: Hendrickson, 1994), 46.

18 Bernard F. Batto, Slaying the Dragon: Mythmaking in the Biblical Tradition (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992), 75-77.

19 Alexander Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis: The Story of Creation (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1942, 1963), 14.

20 Michael David Coogan, trans., Stories from Ancient Canaan (Louisville, KY: Westminster Press), 75-115.

21 Bruce R. Reichenbach, “Genesis 1 as a Theological-Political Narrative of Kingdom Establishment,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 13, 1 (2003): 48.

22 This explanation of a theological-political purpose behind Genesis does not mean it is fictional or any less truthful as God’s Word.

The claim that Christianity teaches care for the environment has been challenged from both outside and inside the church. By those outside the church, the Christian faith has been accused of holding to a theology that encourages exploitation of the environment. This is based on both a misreading of Scripture as well as the unfortunate practice of some Christians. Those inside the church have put forth five challenges: (1) the utilitarian earth view, (2) the gnostic world view, (3) the conflation of earthkeeping with environmentalism, (4) the “fear of Samaritans syndrome,” and (5) the no crisis/no stewardship philosophy. None of these challenges withstands the testimony of Scripture.

God created the world, holds everything together, and reconciles all things through Jesus Christ. Since the days of the early church, followers of Jesus Christ have known this remarkable teaching of Colossians 1:15-20, and for centuries prior to the Incarnation, God had also been affirmed as Creator. Since “the earth is the Lord’s,” humanity’s responsibility to “serve and keep” God’s creation had been part of the belief and action of God’s people for millennia (Ps. 19:1; Gen. 2:15). Thus since 1967 the claim of Lynn White, Jr., that the “Judeo-Christian tradition” was the cause of “our ecologic crisis” has been troubling.¹ White’s paper, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” which has been reprinted in numerous textbooks and other anthologies, is the main reason college students learn that Christians are the problem. “God planned all of this explicitly for man’s benefit and rule: no item in the physical creation had any purpose save to serve man’s purposes” was White’s assessment of the Christian attitude toward God’s creation.²

AN APOLOGETIC TO OUTSIDE CRITICS

Francis Schaeffer was among the first Christian apologists to respond to White’s complaint. “The Christian is called upon to exhibit this dominion, but exhibit it rightly; treating the thing as having value in itself, exercising dominion without being destructive.”³ Moreover, as far back as 1554, John Calvin had interpreted dominion to mean a responsible care and keeping that does not neglect, injure, abuse, degrade, dissipate, corrupt, mar, or ruin the earth.⁴

God’s economy — “God’s plan or system for government of the world”⁵ — is always the context and framework within which the human economy works. A literal reading of Genesis 2:15 puts it thus: “And Jehovah God taketh the man and causeth him to rest in the garden of Eden, to serve it and to keep it.”⁶ Serving and keeping creation,⁷ not oppressive domination, is the biblical idea of economy. Jesus Christ — our model — reenforces this. The image of God (2 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15) takes “the very nature of a servant”(Phil. 2:6-7). And Christians follow the Creator-Servant — the second Adam — joining Him in His reconciliation of all things to God, undoing the damage of the first Adam by doing what Adam was supposed to do.⁸ Moreover, they cultivate society as part of God’s creation while seeking and preserving truth,⁹ establishing civility, erecting civilized societies, and building the church of Christ on earth.¹⁰ They demonstrate that “a truly biblical Christianity has a real answer to the ecological crisis.”¹¹

AN APOLOGETIC TO CRITICS WITHIN THE CHURCH

The first 25 years following White’s paper saw the production of scores of defenses to outside critics.¹² Recently, however, challenges to the view that the Bible teaches being a custodian of God’s creation have even come from critics within Christendom. These challenges include views that (1) the earth and everything in it belong to humanity; (2) the material world is unimportant or evil; (3) Christian earthkeepers are “environmentalists”; (4) environmentalists are frequently New Agers, and New Agers should be shunned; and (5) since there is no environmental crisis, biblical earthkeeping is unnecessary.

1.) The earth and everything in it belongs to man (Utilitarian Earth View). The first clear challenge from within came from James Watt, a professing evangelical, who became U.S. Secretary of the Interior under Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s. In his article, “Ours Is the Earth,”¹³ and numerous articles since 1981, he made clear that he viewed earth as “merely a temporary way station on the road to eternal life…The earth was put here by the Lord for His people to subdue and to use for profitable purposes on their way to the hereafter.”¹⁴ Christian ethicist, Susan Bratton, herself an evangelical, countered Watt’s article, pointing to the Bible’s proclamation, “The earth is the Lord’s, and all it contains.”¹⁵ Bratton concluded that “his philosophy of management stems largely from economic and political considerations”¹⁶ and that “his economic and political views also greatly influence his ecotheology.”¹⁷ Watt’s beliefs and actions complicated the Christian apologetic response to outside critics because they seemed to validate White’s claim against Christians. Thus apologists have had to remind critics within Christendom that the earth and everything in it is the Lord’s and that the earth has other purposes than merely serving human needs.¹⁸

2.) The material world is unimportant or evil (Gnostic World View). Another challenge from within is a dualistic view that teaches the separation between matter and spirit, while arguing that the material world is evil. Christian apologists counter this notion with New Testament texts that affirm matter in the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus, the resurrection of the body, and the reconciliation of all things to God.¹⁹ God loves the cosmos (John 3:16), pouring out divine love to all creation. Mirroring God’s knowledge and love, we work to know and care for God’s world. As it is inconceivable to honor Rembrandt and yet despise his paintings, so also is it inconceivable to honor the Creator and yet despise His works and workings. To the Creator of matter, matter matters.

While honoring God, we also need to know how creation works. We need to know the human economy so we can maintain, refine, and employ it in our service to God’s economy. If we are careless about science and economics — not caring about how they work and what they describe, creation’s economy will suffer. Inside critics who would disparage the material world have made it necessary for apologists to reaffirm the importance of the material world to its Creator as well as the disciplines for knowing and caring for it.

3. Christian earthkeepers are environmentalists (Conflation of Earthkeeping with Environmentalism). A third challenge within Christendom is lumping all who care for creation into the category “environmentalist.” Thus Christians who practice earthkeeping out of dedication to God may be unjustly identified with pantheism (identification of the world with God), paganism, and violent tactics, thereby raising suspicion of other Christians. A student of mine, for example, was chided by another for “having New Age tendencies” when she, out of Christian conviction, picked up a discarded aluminum can along a campus sidewalk.

Moreover, new believers might be expected to abandon “environmental interests.” Another student, upon her conversion, had been taught that caring for creation was inimical to accepting Christ; her mentor had taught her that Christ is a beautiful Savior, but not the Lord of creation. This challenge by inside critics has moved apologists to call for discernment and care when judging fellow Christians’ actions toward creation.

4.) Stay away from New Agers (Fear of Samaritans Syndrome). While New Age belief is a problem that needs to be addressed,²⁰ there is a greater problem: shunning “New Agers” and thereby denying them the opportunity to hear the gospel. After a speech I gave to a New Age organization on the New Testament meaning of the Kingdom of God, many of the 250 conferees inquired about the gospel. Only two had been connected with a church; the rest had not heard the gospel message.

As the conference concluded, their leaders asked why Christian picketers were treating them as evil people. Regrettably, these people would not have heard even from me had I not mistaken them for a Christian group when I accepted their invitation to speak. The apologetic response in this instance has led us to discover that many in the New Age do not know God and have not yet been told the gospel, which they desperately need and which we should share with them.

5.) Since there is no ecological crisis, earthkeeping is not necessary (No Crisis/No Stewardship Philosophy). Finally, many people are engaging in debates over whether there is even an environmental crisis. Underlying this debate are the troubling implications that we need to have more or better data before we can take action and that if things are not as bad as we thought (or are getting better or never were bad at all), we do not have to act.

The biblical imperative, however, is for stewardship on behalf of God’s creation no matter what the condition of creation. Christian environmental stewardship is not crisis management but a way of life. God’s call to serve and keep the garden is our calling whether it is our vegetable garden or the whole of creation, and no matter if it is being degraded, staying the same, or improving. We need not have all the data, but we must be dedicated to imaging God’s love for the world in our lives and landscapes. Responding apologetically to inside critics on this matter has shown that responsible stewardship is not an option but a continuing privilege and responsibility.

RESPONDING IN TRUTH

Our society is discovering that environmental problems are more spiritual than technological. People everywhere are looking for the way, the truth, and the life. The time is ripe for offering the living water that only Christ gives to the world as an expression of God’s love. The time has come for us to carefully seek to learn all that the Bible teaches us about the Creator, creation, and stewardship of His world. We must seek to understand what creation reveals about God’s divinity, sustaining presence, and everlasting power. We must discover what creation teaches us about its God-given order and the principles by which it works. We must not selfishly keep the good news to ourselves. We must tell. We should so behave on earth that our testimony to our Creator is clear. We should so behave on earth that heaven will not be a shock to us.

NOTES

¹Lynn White, Jr., “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” Science 155 (1967): 1203-7.²Ibid., 1205.³Francis Schaeffer, Pollution and the Death of Man: The Christian View of Ecology (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1970), 72.⁴John Calvin, commentary on Genesis 2:15 in Commentaries on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis (Grand Rapids: 1948). This teaching is strongly reenforced by Revelation 11:18: “The time has come…for destroying those who destroy the earth.”⁵This definition, interestingly, is the first definition of “economy” in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1981).⁶Young’s Literal Translation of the Holy Bible: A Revised Edition (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1953).⁷This is the title of the book by Douglas John Hall, Imaging God: Dominion as Service (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986).⁸See Ronald Manahan, “Christ as the Second Adam,” The Environment and the Christian: What Can We Learn from the New Testament? C. B. DeWitt, ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1991), 45-56, who writes, “The work of the last Adam is as broad as the reach of the damage of the first Adam” (55).⁹See, for example, Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), xv-xxiii, 126-92, 409-17.¹⁰See Richard Mouw, Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1992) and Ronald Manahan, A Re-Examination of the Cultural Mandate: An Analysis and Evaluation of the Dominion Materials (doctoral dissertation, Grace Theological Seminary, 1985).¹¹Schaeffer, 81. The term “crisis,” employed by Schaeffer here, should be used advisedly. I agree with Ron Elsdon that in most situations “it is wrong to refer to an environmental crisis, since this word implies the existence in time of a sudden and decisive change, either for better or worse.” Ron Elson, Bent World: A Christian Response to the Environmental Crisis (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1981), 9.¹²See Joseph Sheldon, Rediscovery of Creation: A Bibliographical Study of the Church’s Response to the Environmental Crisis (Metuchen, NJ and London: ATLA and Scarecrow Press).¹³James Watt, “Ours Is the Earth,” Saturday Evening Post (January/February 1982), 74-75, cited by Bratton (see note 15).¹⁴Ron Wolf, “God, James Watt, and the Public Land,” Audubon 83(3) (May 1981):65, cited by Bratton.¹⁵Susan Bratton, “The Ecotheology of James Watt,” Environmental Ethics 5(3): 225-36. Here Bratton is quoting Ps. 24:1, New American Standard Bible (Philadelphia: A. J. Holman Co., 1973). See also Psalm 104:24 and 1 Corinthians 10:26.¹⁶Ibid., 225.¹⁷Ibid., 234.¹⁸For example, to express God’s goodness and creativity (Gen. 1 and 2); for God’s pleasure in His creatures (Job 38–40); to bring God praise (Ps. 104, 148); to witness to God’s glory, divinity, and everlasting power (Ps. 19:1; Acts 14:17; Rom. 1:20); and to induce human beings to seek Him (Acts 17:27).¹⁹See, for example, Ray VanLeeuwen, “Christ’s Resurrection and the Creation’s Vindication,” The Environment and the Christian, 57-71.²⁰See Douglas R. Groothuis, Unmasking the New Age (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986)

THE CASE AGAINST RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM

by Ronald Nash

Summary

The environment in America is cleaner today than at any time in this century. Despite all the good that the environmental movement has accomplished, it is time to step back and recognize some of its significant weaknesses. For one thing, extremists have co-opted the environmental movement while motivated by hidden religious and political agendas having nothing to do with environmental issues. The environmental movement also needs to mature and realize that success in dealing with future environmental problems will require more than appeals to emotion; it will need careful thinking and more attention to good science. Meanwhile, Christians need to recognize the warning signs of environmental extremism and act accordingly.

Thanks to the efforts of people who care about the environment, Americans today enjoy the benefits of an environment that is cleaner than at any time in the past 50 years.¹ No one that I know wishes to turn back the clock and wipe out the important environmental gains of the past 30 years, but many knowledgeable people are beginning to express concern about extremists in the environmental movement. One feature of radical environmentalism is the often disguised religious and political agendas to which many of the extremists are committed. Radical environmentalism is not about good stewardship or conservation; it’s about using the environment issue for ulterior religious or political reasons. More often than not, radical environmentalists base their activities upon bad or unsupported scientific claims.

MAJOR TYPES OF RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM

Three major branches of radical environmentalism exist, commonly known as the Greens, the deep ecologists, and the animal rights movement. The group known as the Greens is the most politically sophisticated, a fact that explains the care they take to hide their true agenda from the public. This movement has become the new home for hard-line socialists who want coercive governments to function as the mechanism for destroying private property rights. This may explain why members of this group are sometimes called “the watermelon environmentalists” — green on the outside, but red on the inside.

The deep ecologists are pantheistic fanatics with New Age, Hindu, or Buddhist overtones. Such organizations as “Greenpeace” and “Earth First” represent this group. Members of this movement favor radical confrontation, which leads them to be far less pragmatic than the Greens. The pantheism of the deep ecologists teaches “that all organisms and entities in the ecosphere… are equal in intrinsic worth.”² As one proponent says, “Unless the need were urgent, I could no more sink the blade of an ax into the tissues of a living tree than I could drive it into the flesh of a fellow human.”³ Ac-cording to David Foreman, “A human life has no more intrinsic value than an individual grizzly bear life. If it came down to a confrontation between a grizzly and a friend, I’m not sure whose side I would be on. But I do know humans are a disease, a cancer on nature.”⁴

The animal rights movement is also pantheistic. It believes all of life is one, indivisible whole. No form of life is better than another. One of its favorite terms is “speciesism,” which it defines as a bias

for one’s own species against others. Humans are the only creatures who can be guilty of speciesism, which makes it the radical environmentalist’s corollary to racism and sexism. The best-known organization representing this movement is People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).⁵

Many radical environmentalists do not have the environment as their top priority. In 1992 the top 12 environmental groups raised $638 million. Six-figure salaries abound in the offices of these organizations. Saving the environment has proven for some to be an easy path to financial success. A second motivating factor is the political agenda of a new breed of socialists, who regard private ownership of property as a major source of evil on the planet. A third motivating factor is the New Age religion of people in the Greenpeace and Earth First organizations. Political and social radicals love the implicit revolutionary nature of contemporary environmentalism; they see it as a way of mobilizing the masses into supporting their radical agenda.

Vice President Al Gore’s 1992 book, Earth in the Balance, exhibits many traits of environmental extremism. Gore asks Americans to embark “on an all-out effort to use every policy and program, every law and institution, every treaty and alliance, every tactic and strategy, every plan and course of action — to use, in short, every means to halt the destruction of the environment and to preserve and nurture our ecological system.”⁶ Writing in The Yale Law Journal, Robert Hahn calls Gore’s position the “kitchen sink” theory of environmental policy. In other words, it is a policy in which we are supposed to do everything all at once, oblivious to cost or necessity. ⁷

EVANGELICALS AND RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM

It is hardly news that the theological and cultural liberals who control the National and World Council of Churches have ties to environmental extremist groups. What is surprising is the ease with which many evangelicals have embraced elements of environmental extremism.

Evangelicals need to be perceptive enough to recognize the dangerous religious and cultural implications of radical environmentalism. Alas, such is not the case. Friends of mine have stumbled into public gatherings where evangelicals and perceived allies from the other side of the theological tracks have been found together fervently singing hymns to “Mother Earth,” an exercise with clearly pantheistic overtones. Other evangelicals unthinkingly urge Christians to support one or another radical environmentalist organization. To a large extent, this evangelical fascination with environmental extremism is part of a larger surrender to the cultural political ideology of the religious left, a phenomenon I discuss in my 1996 book, Why the Left Is Not Right: The Religious Left: Who They Are and What They Believe (Zondervan).

One representative of the evangelical left, Tony Campolo, claims to recognize the dangers of environmental extremism, especially the dangerous links to pantheism, the worship of nature in place of God, and an antibiblical elevation of all forms of life to an equal status with human beings. These concerns are supposedly reflected in the title to Campolo’s 1992 book, How to Rescue the Earth without Worshipping Nature.⁸ However, Wilbur Bullock, a retired professor of zoology at the University of New Hampshire, notes that Campolo often bases his claims “on some very selective manipulation of Scripture as well as reliance on considerable nonbiblical emotional mysticism.”⁹ Bullock puzzles over Campolo’s tendency to worry that worms might feel pain and that hateful talk might lead plants to wither and die. Campolo’s casual indifference to his own warnings that Christians should not regard all life as equally valuable especially troubles Bullock. According to Campolo, “One of the ways Christians can demonstrate their readiness to be led by the Holy Spirit is by making a commitment to the animal rights movement.”¹⁰

This evangelical scientist’s verdict on Campolo’s book is highly critical: “We need to be concerned with rescuing the earth. We will be held responsible as stewards for what we have done to counter the effects of sin on God’s creation. We must attempt this ‘rescue’ on biblical terms. ‘Nature’ is God’s creation — nature is not God. Mankind is to use but not abuse nature. In spite of his excellent title, Campolo’s approach is too close to worshipping nature. For that reason I cannot recommend this book as a real contribution to the Christian approach to environmental problems.”¹¹

Christians need to show more discernment when joining various environmentalist movements. Radical organizations have always found ways of using impressionable, unthinking people to follow their lead. The importance of recognizing the hidden, often anti-Christian agendas of some of these groups cannot be emphasized too much.

ECOLOGICAL HYSTERIA

Economist Peter Hill uses the term “ecological hysteria” to refer to a common technique of the environmental extremists. As Hill explains, “The news is continually filled with stories of where the next disaster is coming from and how we are on the brink of destruction from one catastrophic event or another. Pesticide poisoning, global warming, acid rain, asbestos, radon and electromagnetic radiation are among the many dangers that are about to overtake us….American citizens have been only too ready to accept the worst-case scenarios and many regard careful scientific inquiry into the extent of these dangers as irrelevant.”¹² A good example is the alar scare that caused so much needless harm to apple growers in the late 1970s. Other examples include the well-known hysteria generated by scares of alleged global warming, thinning of the ozone layer, acid rain, and the like.

Joseph Bast and his coauthors provide a report card on the current status of putative environmental crises. They argue, for example, that the “crisis” of acid rain has been disproven and never was a problem; that global warming and ozone depletion are disproven theories that are not currently problems; that threats from automobiles and nuclear power plants used to be problems but now have been nearly solved in the West; that pesticides and toxic chemicals continue to be problems but can be managed with careful action; and that deforestation and resource depletion are problems largely in third world countries.¹³

NATURAL POLLUTION

Radical environmentalists are silent about the many kinds of pollution created by natural phenomena. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, humans have produced far less air pollution than that produced by just three volcanic eruptions: Krakatoa in Indonesia (1883), Katmai in Alaska (1912), and Hekla in Iceland ( 1947). When Mt. St. Helens exploded in 1980, it poured 910,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. When Mexico’s El Chicon erupted in 1982, it released 100,000,000 tons of sulfur. Other volcanoes that spewed hundreds of thousands of tons of pollutants into the atmosphere include Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines (1991) and Mt. St. Augustine in Alaska (1976). Environmentalists who worry about the effect of chlorine on stratospheric ozone seldom mention that volcanoes and other natural phenomena pump 650 million tons of chlorine into the atmosphere each year, many times the amount of stratospheric chlorine traceable to such chloro-fluoro carbons as freon.

OTHER CRITICISMS OF RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM

Space limits me from providing detail on a number of other problems of radical environmentalism, including the environmentalists’ silence about the staggering environmental destruction that has occurred in socialist states, pollution that will take decades and trillions of dollars to clean up. This silence, from people who typically regard big government as the planet’s savior from pollution, merits more attention. While improvements in the environment are important, several critics of environmentalism contend that even more improvement could have been achieved without the massive increases in governmental bureaucracy in America and the enormous costs of governmental regulation that followed.

The environmental movement today is in desperate need of growing up. Much of its early success resulted from appeals to emotion rather than to more rational approaches to problems. It needs to think less about the present and begin the more difficult task of addressing long-term solutions — solutions that will require careful attention to good science.

I don’t know anyone who wants people to drink polluted water, breathe polluted air, or eat carcinogens for supper. No thoughtful Christian can support contempt or disregard for God’s creation. Wise Christians will practice stewardship with regard to God’s creation. In effect, the concept of stewardship allows us to use nature, but not to abuse it. Wise Christians will therefore respect a prudent environmentalism but will oppose those extremists who seek to exploit concern for the environment for the sake of their own hidden religious and political agendas.

NOTES

¹See Joseph L. Bast, Peter J. Hill, and Richard C. Rue, Eco-Sanity (Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1994), ch. 2.² Bill Devall and George Sessions, Deep Ecology (Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, 1985), 67.³ Edward Abbey, “The Crooked Wood,” Audubon 77 (November 1975), 25.⁴Quoted by Douglas S. Looney, “Protector or Provocateur?” Sports Illustrated, 27 May 1991, 54. The quote comes from Dave Foreman, Confessions of an Eco-Warrior (New York: Harmoney Books, 1991), 54.⁵For a Christian critique of the animal rights movement, see Harold O. J. Brown, “Hiding among the Animals,” Christian Research Journal, Summer 1996, 10-19.⁶Albert Gore, Earth in the Balance (New York: Plume, 1992), 274.⁷Robert W. Hahn, “Toward a New Environmental Paradigm,” The Yale Law Journal, May 1993, 1740.⁸(Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1992).⁹Wilbur L. Bullock, a book review in Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 45 (1993): 138.¹⁰Campolo, 71.¹¹Bullock, 138.¹²Peter J. Hill, “Environmental Theology: A Judaic-Christian Defense,” unpublished paper, Wheaton College Economics Department (1993), 18.¹³For documentation of these claims, see Bast, 178.

A RESPONSE TO RONALD NASH

by Calvin B. DeWitt

I join Professor Nash in affirming the need for “clear thinking and good science.” And I agree that extremism is a problem of our time. As Christians we need to strive for truth and civility, not hysteria, on issues concerning God’s creation. As Nash rightly points out, we already have made significant progress on caring for creation and should not “turn back the clock and wipe out the important environmental gains of the past 30 years.”

I think we also agree that we must deal with extremists by ministering to them in civil and Christian ways, not by denying them the opportunity to learn that Jesus Christ is the Lord of creation. Thus, while being discerning, we also must be caring, bringing them the Good News. My concern is not that there are extremists (there always are), but rather, that we act extremely toward them in showing them by our words and lives that Jesus Christ is Lord of creation. Recently, for example, when I spoke to a Deep Ecology group, I found they had never heard the biblical teachings on caring for creation. Afterward, three of the 15 members began attending discussions on creation stewardship at the local evangelical campus ministry.

I agree with Nash that we must seek and avail ourselves of the means for finding the truth, including “good science.” His illustration of chlorine is a case in point. As free hydrogen is highly reactive but not when part of the water molecule, H2O, so is free chlorine highly reactive but not when part of chloroflourocarbon (CFC) molecules. While we know scientifically that volcanoes annually put immense quantities of chlorine into the atmosphere, we also know that chlorine in this form is highly reactive — as in swimming pools and water treatment plants — quickly forming compounds that make it unreactive. But chlorine that is a part of CFCs such as Freon is not reactive at all, but is innocuous. Unlike free chlorine, which is “wild” and quickly “tamed” by reacting with other things, the chlorine in CFCs is “tame” until it is hit by solar ultraviolet radiation 25-40 kilometers above the earth’s surface, where it becomes “wild” and free — quickly binding with ozone to produce oxygen, and thus destroying the ozone. Remarkably, the chlorine (temporarily bound to oxygen atoms) is then released again as free chlorine, free to repeat the process time and again. The problem, of course, is that the ozone molecules in the stratosphere are one of God’s remarkable provisions for shielding the earth from our sun’s ultraviolet radiation. The ozone layer intercepts life-destroying ultraviolet rays that radiate from the sun, preventing them from reaching the earth.¹

This example of “clear thinking and good science” just brought the Nobel Prize in chemistry to its discoverers, Professors Paul Crutzen, Mario Molina, and F. Sherwood Rowland. “It is the first time the Nobel Prize has recognized research into man-made impacts on the environment. The discoveries led to an international environmental treaty which by the end of this year bans the production of industrial chemicals that reduce the ozone layer,” states the news release of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. I respectfully submit that the scientific understanding of ozone chemistry and the protective ozone layer is trivialized by commentators such as Joseph Bast and his coauthors in their “report card” when they say that ozone depletion is a “disproven theory.”

As we do not consult tabloids or other uninformed sources for clear thinking about moral truth, neither should we consult poorly informed sources on how the world works or on how things are going in creation, no matter how good their intentions may be. We must, as Nash so rightly points out, get to “clear thinking and good science.” And that is pretty easy to come by.²

I believe we also must be careful in making judgments about extremism. For example, in citing a book that “exhibits many traits of environmental extremism,” Nash also opens the question of the “extremism” of Noah. The author he cites writes, “Noah is commanded by God to take into his ark at least two of every living species in order to save them from the flood — a commandment that might appear in modern form as: Thou shalt preserve biodiversity….In spite of the clear message from a careful reading of this and other Scriptures, critics have gained currency….” And then this writer asks the question that should grip every believer, “How can one glorify the Creator while heaping contempt on the creation?” A careful reading of Genesis 6–9 will show that Noah fits pretty well within Robert Hahn’s definition (cited by Nash) of the “kitchen sink theory of environmental policy” — “a policy in which we are supposed to do everything all at once, oblivious to cost or necessity.” Nevertheless, Noah and the ark must be taken seriously.

Finally, I agree with Nash that we must avoid hysteria. While I also understand his citing Joseph Bast “that deforestation and resource depletion are problems largely in third world countries,” I must ask, Is that not also part of God’s creation? and, Are we uninvolved in its destruction? An even bigger question is this: Is Jesus Christ Lord of creation? If our answer is yes, then what happens anywhere in creation must be of interest to believers. And if our neighbor’s house — or the forests of Brazil or Surinam — is on fire, a person should be allowed to “pull the alarm” without being considered extreme or called an “alarmist.” In fact, if we are to take Ezekiel 33 and 34 seriously, it might even be our God-given duty.

Most of all, in dealing with our stewardship responsibility for creation, we must acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord of creation by what we say and sing, and also by what we do. People should know by our work and lives that we follow — in word and deed — the Son, who is beautiful Savior and Lord of creation.³

NOTES

¹See J. G. Anderson, D. W. Toohey, and W. H. Brune, Science 251 (39-45): 1991; and M. J. Molina and F. S. Rowland, Nature 249 (810): 1974.²For example, one can consult textbooks in environmental science, such as Bernard J. Nebel and Richard T. Wright, Environmental Science: The Way the World Works, 4th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1993), and search the Internet for “Conventions on Climate, Ozone, and Biodiversity.”³See C. B. DeWitt, Earth-Wise: A Biblical Response to Environmental Issues (Grand Rapids: CRC Publications, 1994), a small book written for adult Sunday School discussion. A bibliography of Christian stewardship publications is available from Au Sable Institute, 731 State St., Madison, WI 53711, or call (608) 255-0950.

A RESPONSE TO CALVIN B. DEWITT

by Ronald Nash

DeWitt greatly exaggerates alleged evangelical lack of interest in the environment. He spends much of his article condemning Christians for not caring about the environment, when in fact it is DeWitt’s brand of radical environmentalism they shun. Many Christians believe that we should act prudently to stop pollution and other forms of environmental harm, but avoid environmental extremism that does little but fill the coffers of extremist environmental groups and expand the size and power of a coercive government.¹

DeWitt tells us we ought to care about God’s creation, when the important issue is how our concern for the creation should be manifested. On this issue, DeWitt’s article has nothing to say. What does seem clear is that “concern for the environment” is not legitimate in DeWitt’s thinking unless it manifests itself in his kinds of actions. As I explain in my book about the religious left,² ideology, arrogance, or misinformation about the other side blinds many cultural liberals in the evangelical camp. This leads them to think that any person who disagrees with them does so because of some moral or intellectual failing. DeWitt appears to question the Christian profession of one evangelical who differed with his view of the environment. It is possible, I suppose, that DeWitt may attempt to brand me as an environmental ne’er-do-well. However, my moderate, centrist position on the continuum of environmental views cannot be reduced to any of the five positions he critiques in his article.

DeWitt thinks the ecotheology of those Christians whose environmental views he disdains really flows from their economic and political views, and not the Scriptures. Yet does DeWitt really think that his own economic and political views have had no influence on his ecotheology? Does he really believe he draws his views exclusively from Scripture with absolutely no input from secular sources that just happen to be on the far left of both the political and environmental spectrum? His article’s use of Scripture suggests otherwise.

An indication of how DeWitt’s environmental extremism acts as a filter for his understanding of Scripture appears in his handling of John 3:16, which DeWitt quotes as support for his claim that God loves the physical universe. The Greek term kosmos, translated as “world” in the text, does not mean the physical universe. It refers to the personal world of humankind for whom Christ died. DeWitt’s claim that John 3:16 teaches that God pours “out divine love to all creation” suggests that he thinks Jesus died for flies, tadpoles, shrimp, rocks, rivers, and trees — an obvious indication that either his judgment or his handling of Scripture merits careful scrutiny. When an author attempts to use John 3:16 as a proof-text for radical environmentalism, ideology has clearly taken control of his hermeneutic. Another sign of questionable theology appears when DeWitt writes, “To the Creator of matter, matter matters.” DeWitt certainly appears to suggest here that God values inanimate matter in such a way as to place it on the same level with human beings.

DeWitt reportedly was a member of a group urging congressional support for a problematic endangered species act. He justified his political activism on the grounds that the Genesis account of Noah’s ark mandates such legislation. DeWitt’s position conveniently ignores the fact that all animals other than those saved in the ark were destroyed in the flood sent by God. Genesis 6–8 would hardly seem to be a relevant proof-text for politicians debating a highly questionable piece of legislation dealing with endangered species. To make things worse for his case, 2 Peter 3 teaches that the Flood foreshadows the Day of the Lord in which God will destroy the earth by fire. Neither the destruction of animal life during the Flood in Noah’s day nor the promised destruction of the world in the future seems compatible with DeWitt’s eccentric reading of John 3:16.

Nothing in my comments should be construed as lack of interest toward the earth or its nonhuman population. I simply think it’s interesting to see the odd ways in which religious left extremists twist Scripture to suit the political and environmental presuppositions that form their ecotheology.

Since the primary agent of environmental activism is big government, it is interesting to ask why so many environmentalists ignore the abominable environmental record of socialist states — the epitome of big and coercive government. Furthermore, I cannot help but wonder why DeWitt’s article is silent about the significant improvements in the environment in the United States in the past two decades. At least in the United States, the environment today is cleaner than at any time in the past 50 years. (For information about the many scientists who question extremist claims about global warming, acid rain, ozone depletion, and other alleged crises of the present, see chapter 4 of the book Eco-Sanity.³)

Harold O. J. Brown recently noted how the ecology movement has become “increasingly captive to essentially non-Christian and intellectually indefensible ideas.”⁴ He warns of “an ominous link between radical feminist religion and ecology,” and he notes how “essentially pagan and idolatrous ideas are being insinuated into Western consciousness under the cloak of concern for the environment, personalized as ‘Mother Earth’ and increasingly worshipped as the goddess Gaia.”⁵ Interestingly, the extremist views found in Vice President Gore’s Earth in the Balance include praise for advocates of the Gaia principle.

While Brown believes that Christian concern for ecology is appropriate, he regrets that insufficient “serious biblical thought is being given to the problem. As a consequence, legitimate concern for the environment and the future of humanity on an earth with limited resources is being infiltrated with and captivated by some of the most eccentric and quasi-pagan varieties of radical feminism. Many church circles — especially but not only the World Council of Churches — have already gone far towards abandoning biblical monotheism in favor of a syncretistic, pantheistic preoccupation with the recently invented goddess Gaia.”⁶

And where does Calvin DeWitt stand on all this? I have searched his article in vain for any warnings about this pantheistic worship of nature. Indeed, his discussion of proponents of New Age pantheism obscures the issue by failing to see the difference between New Age persons, whom we should love and witness to, and the New Age ideology, which has no place in a biblically informed ecotheology.

NOTES

¹See James Gills and Ronald Nash, Government Is Too Big (Tarpon Springs, FL: St. Luke’s Institute, 1996).²Ronald Nash, Why the Left Is Not Right: The Religious Left: Who They Are and What They Believe (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996).³Joseph L. Bast, et al, Eco-Sanity (Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1994).⁴Harold O. J. Brown, “Living by Gaia’s Laws?” The Religion and Society Report, September 1996, 5.⁵Ibid.⁶Ibid.

by Ronald Nash

Summary

The environment in America is cleaner today than at any time in this century. Despite all the good that the environmental movement has accomplished, it is time to step back and recognize some of its significant weaknesses. For one thing, extremists have co-opted the environmental movement while motivated by hidden religious and political agendas having nothing to do with environmental issues. The environmental movement also needs to mature and realize that success in dealing with future environmental problems will require more than appeals to emotion; it will need careful thinking and more attention to good science. Meanwhile, Christians need to recognize the warning signs of environmental extremism and act accordingly.

Thanks to the efforts of people who care about the environment, Americans today enjoy the benefits of an environment that is cleaner than at any time in the past 50 years.¹ No one that I know wishes to turn back the clock and wipe out the important environmental gains of the past 30 years, but many knowledgeable people are beginning to express concern about extremists in the environmental movement. One feature of radical environmentalism is the often disguised religious and political agendas to which many of the extremists are committed. Radical environmentalism is not about good stewardship or conservation; it’s about using the environment issue for ulterior religious or political reasons. More often than not, radical environmentalists base their activities upon bad or unsupported scientific claims.

MAJOR TYPES OF RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM

Three major branches of radical environmentalism exist, commonly known as the Greens, the deep ecologists, and the animal rights movement. The group known as the Greens is the most politically sophisticated, a fact that explains the care they take to hide their true agenda from the public. This movement has become the new home for hard-line socialists who want coercive governments to function as the mechanism for destroying private property rights. This may explain why members of this group are sometimes called “the watermelon environmentalists” — green on the outside, but red on the inside.

The deep ecologists are pantheistic fanatics with New Age, Hindu, or Buddhist overtones. Such organizations as “Greenpeace” and “Earth First” represent this group. Members of this movement favor radical confrontation, which leads them to be far less pragmatic than the Greens. The pantheism of the deep ecologists teaches “that all organisms and entities in the ecosphere… are equal in intrinsic worth.”² As one proponent says, “Unless the need were urgent, I could no more sink the blade of an ax into the tissues of a living tree than I could drive it into the flesh of a fellow human.”³ Ac-cording to David Foreman, “A human life has no more intrinsic value than an individual grizzly bear life. If it came down to a confrontation between a grizzly and a friend, I’m not sure whose side I would be on. But I do know humans are a disease, a cancer on nature.”⁴

The animal rights movement is also pantheistic. It believes all of life is one, indivisible whole. No form of life is better than another. One of its favorite terms is “speciesism,” which it defines as a bias

for one’s own species against others. Humans are the only creatures who can be guilty of speciesism, which makes it the radical environmentalist’s corollary to racism and sexism. The best-known organization representing this movement is People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).⁵

Many radical environmentalists do not have the environment as their top priority. In 1992 the top 12 environmental groups raised $638 million. Six-figure salaries abound in the offices of these organizations. Saving the environment has proven for some to be an easy path to financial success. A second motivating factor is the political agenda of a new breed of socialists, who regard private ownership of property as a major source of evil on the planet. A third motivating factor is the New Age religion of people in the Greenpeace and Earth First organizations. Political and social radicals love the implicit revolutionary nature of contemporary environmentalism; they see it as a way of mobilizing the masses into supporting their radical agenda.

Vice President Al Gore’s 1992 book, Earth in the Balance, exhibits many traits of environmental extremism. Gore asks Americans to embark “on an all-out effort to use every policy and program, every law and institution, every treaty and alliance, every tactic and strategy, every plan and course of action — to use, in short, every means to halt the destruction of the environment and to preserve and nurture our ecological system.”⁶ Writing in The Yale Law Journal, Robert Hahn calls Gore’s position the “kitchen sink” theory of environmental policy. In other words, it is a policy in which we are supposed to do everything all at once, oblivious to cost or necessity. ⁷

EVANGELICALS AND RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM

It is hardly news that the theological and cultural liberals who control the National and World Council of Churches have ties to environmental extremist groups. What is surprising is the ease with which many evangelicals have embraced elements of environmental extremism.

Evangelicals need to be perceptive enough to recognize the dangerous religious and cultural implications of radical environmentalism. Alas, such is not the case. Friends of mine have stumbled into public gatherings where evangelicals and perceived allies from the other side of the theological tracks have been found together fervently singing hymns to “Mother Earth,” an exercise with clearly pantheistic overtones. Other evangelicals unthinkingly urge Christians to support one or another radical environmentalist organization. To a large extent, this evangelical fascination with environmental extremism is part of a larger surrender to the cultural political ideology of the religious left, a phenomenon I discuss in my 1996 book, Why the Left Is Not Right: The Religious Left: Who They Are and What They Believe (Zondervan).

One representative of the evangelical left, Tony Campolo, claims to recognize the dangers of environmental extremism, especially the dangerous links to pantheism, the worship of nature in place of God, and an antibiblical elevation of all forms of life to an equal status with human beings. These concerns are supposedly reflected in the title to Campolo’s 1992 book, How to Rescue the Earth without Worshipping Nature.⁸ However, Wilbur Bullock, a retired professor of zoology at the University of New Hampshire, notes that Campolo often bases his claims “on some very selective manipulation of Scripture as well as reliance on considerable nonbiblical emotional mysticism.”⁹ Bullock puzzles over Campolo’s tendency to worry that worms might feel pain and that hateful talk might lead plants to wither and die. Campolo’s casual indifference to his own warnings that Christians should not regard all life as equally valuable especially troubles Bullock. According to Campolo, “One of the ways Christians can demonstrate their readiness to be led by the Holy Spirit is by making a commitment to the animal rights movement.”¹⁰

This evangelical scientist’s verdict on Campolo’s book is highly critical: “We need to be concerned with rescuing the earth. We will be held responsible as stewards for what we have done to counter the effects of sin on God’s creation. We must attempt this ‘rescue’ on biblical terms. ‘Nature’ is God’s creation — nature is not God. Mankind is to use but not abuse nature. In spite of his excellent title, Campolo’s approach is too close to worshipping nature. For that reason I cannot recommend this book as a real contribution to the Christian approach to environmental problems.”¹¹

Christians need to show more discernment when joining various environmentalist movements. Radical organizations have always found ways of using impressionable, unthinking people to follow their lead. The importance of recognizing the hidden, often anti-Christian agendas of some of these groups cannot be emphasized too much.

ECOLOGICAL HYSTERIA

Economist Peter Hill uses the term “ecological hysteria” to refer to a common technique of the environmental extremists. As Hill explains, “The news is continually filled with stories of where the next disaster is coming from and how we are on the brink of destruction from one catastrophic event or another. Pesticide poisoning, global warming, acid rain, asbestos, radon and electromagnetic radiation are among the many dangers that are about to overtake us….American citizens have been only too ready to accept the worst-case scenarios and many regard careful scientific inquiry into the extent of these dangers as irrelevant.”¹² A good example is the alar scare that caused so much needless harm to apple growers in the late 1970s. Other examples include the well-known hysteria generated by scares of alleged global warming, thinning of the ozone layer, acid rain, and the like.

Joseph Bast and his coauthors provide a report card on the current status of putative environmental crises. They argue, for example, that the “crisis” of acid rain has been disproven and never was a problem; that global warming and ozone depletion are disproven theories that are not currently problems; that threats from automobiles and nuclear power plants used to be problems but now have been nearly solved in the West; that pesticides and toxic chemicals continue to be problems but can be managed with careful action; and that deforestation and resource depletion are problems largely in third world countries.¹³

NATURAL POLLUTION

Radical environmentalists are silent about the many kinds of pollution created by natural phenomena. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, humans have produced far less air pollution than that produced by just three volcanic eruptions: Krakatoa in Indonesia (1883), Katmai in Alaska (1912), and Hekla in Iceland ( 1947). When Mt. St. Helens exploded in 1980, it poured 910,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. When Mexico’s El Chicon erupted in 1982, it released 100,000,000 tons of sulfur. Other volcanoes that spewed hundreds of thousands of tons of pollutants into the atmosphere include Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines (1991) and Mt. St. Augustine in Alaska (1976). Environmentalists who worry about the effect of chlorine on stratospheric ozone seldom mention that volcanoes and other natural phenomena pump 650 million tons of chlorine into the atmosphere each year, many times the amount of stratospheric chlorine traceable to such chloro-fluoro carbons as freon.

OTHER CRITICISMS OF RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM

Space limits me from providing detail on a number of other problems of radical environmentalism, including the environmentalists’ silence about the staggering environmental destruction that has occurred in socialist states, pollution that will take decades and trillions of dollars to clean up. This silence, from people who typically regard big government as the planet’s savior from pollution, merits more attention. While improvements in the environment are important, several critics of environmentalism contend that even more improvement could have been achieved without the massive increases in governmental bureaucracy in America and the enormous costs of governmental regulation that followed.

The environmental movement today is in desperate need of growing up. Much of its early success resulted from appeals to emotion rather than to more rational approaches to problems. It needs to think less about the present and begin the more difficult task of addressing long-term solutions — solutions that will require careful attention to good science.

I don’t know anyone who wants people to drink polluted water, breathe polluted air, or eat carcinogens for supper. No thoughtful Christian can support contempt or disregard for God’s creation. Wise Christians will practice stewardship with regard to God’s creation. In effect, the concept of stewardship allows us to use nature, but not to abuse it. Wise Christians will therefore respect a prudent environmentalism but will oppose those extremists who seek to exploit concern for the environment for the sake of their own hidden religious and political agendas.

NOTES

¹See Joseph L. Bast, Peter J. Hill, and Richard C. Rue, Eco-Sanity (Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1994), ch. 2.² Bill Devall and George Sessions, Deep Ecology (Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, 1985), 67.³ Edward Abbey, “The Crooked Wood,” Audubon 77 (November 1975), 25.⁴Quoted by Douglas S. Looney, “Protector or Provocateur?” Sports Illustrated, 27 May 1991, 54. The quote comes from Dave Foreman, Confessions of an Eco-Warrior (New York: Harmoney Books, 1991), 54.⁵For a Christian critique of the animal rights movement, see Harold O. J. Brown, “Hiding among the Animals,” Christian Research Journal, Summer 1996, 10-19.⁶Albert Gore, Earth in the Balance (New York: Plume, 1992), 274.⁷Robert W. Hahn, “Toward a New Environmental Paradigm,” The Yale Law Journal, May 1993, 1740.⁸(Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1992).⁹Wilbur L. Bullock, a book review in Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 45 (1993): 138.¹⁰Campolo, 71.¹¹Bullock, 138.¹²Peter J. Hill, “Environmental Theology: A Judaic-Christian Defense,” unpublished paper, Wheaton College Economics Department (1993), 18.¹³For documentation of these claims, see Bast, 178.

A RESPONSE TO RONALD NASH

by Calvin B. DeWitt

I join Professor Nash in affirming the need for “clear thinking and good science.” And I agree that extremism is a problem of our time. As Christians we need to strive for truth and civility, not hysteria, on issues concerning God’s creation. As Nash rightly points out, we already have made significant progress on caring for creation and should not “turn back the clock and wipe out the important environmental gains of the past 30 years.”

I think we also agree that we must deal with extremists by ministering to them in civil and Christian ways, not by denying them the opportunity to learn that Jesus Christ is the Lord of creation. Thus, while being discerning, we also must be caring, bringing them the Good News. My concern is not that there are extremists (there always are), but rather, that we act extremely toward them in showing them by our words and lives that Jesus Christ is Lord of creation. Recently, for example, when I spoke to a Deep Ecology group, I found they had never heard the biblical teachings on caring for creation. Afterward, three of the 15 members began attending discussions on creation stewardship at the local evangelical campus ministry.

I agree with Nash that we must seek and avail ourselves of the means for finding the truth, including “good science.” His illustration of chlorine is a case in point. As free hydrogen is highly reactive but not when part of the water molecule, H2O, so is free chlorine highly reactive but not when part of chloroflourocarbon (CFC) molecules. While we know scientifically that volcanoes annually put immense quantities of chlorine into the atmosphere, we also know that chlorine in this form is highly reactive — as in swimming pools and water treatment plants — quickly forming compounds that make it unreactive. But chlorine that is a part of CFCs such as Freon is not reactive at all, but is innocuous. Unlike free chlorine, which is “wild” and quickly “tamed” by reacting with other things, the chlorine in CFCs is “tame” until it is hit by solar ultraviolet radiation 25-40 kilometers above the earth’s surface, where it becomes “wild” and free — quickly binding with ozone to produce oxygen, and thus destroying the ozone. Remarkably, the chlorine (temporarily bound to oxygen atoms) is then released again as free chlorine, free to repeat the process time and again. The problem, of course, is that the ozone molecules in the stratosphere are one of God’s remarkable provisions for shielding the earth from our sun’s ultraviolet radiation. The ozone layer intercepts life-destroying ultraviolet rays that radiate from the sun, preventing them from reaching the earth.¹

This example of “clear thinking and good science” just brought the Nobel Prize in chemistry to its discoverers, Professors Paul Crutzen, Mario Molina, and F. Sherwood Rowland. “It is the first time the Nobel Prize has recognized research into man-made impacts on the environment. The discoveries led to an international environmental treaty which by the end of this year bans the production of industrial chemicals that reduce the ozone layer,” states the news release of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. I respectfully submit that the scientific understanding of ozone chemistry and the protective ozone layer is trivialized by commentators such as Joseph Bast and his coauthors in their “report card” when they say that ozone depletion is a “disproven theory.”

As we do not consult tabloids or other uninformed sources for clear thinking about moral truth, neither should we consult poorly informed sources on how the world works or on how things are going in creation, no matter how good their intentions may be. We must, as Nash so rightly points out, get to “clear thinking and good science.” And that is pretty easy to come by.²

I believe we also must be careful in making judgments about extremism. For example, in citing a book that “exhibits many traits of environmental extremism,” Nash also opens the question of the “extremism” of Noah. The author he cites writes, “Noah is commanded by God to take into his ark at least two of every living species in order to save them from the flood — a commandment that might appear in modern form as: Thou shalt preserve biodiversity….In spite of the clear message from a careful reading of this and other Scriptures, critics have gained currency….” And then this writer asks the question that should grip every believer, “How can one glorify the Creator while heaping contempt on the creation?” A careful reading of Genesis 6–9 will show that Noah fits pretty well within Robert Hahn’s definition (cited by Nash) of the “kitchen sink theory of environmental policy” — “a policy in which we are supposed to do everything all at once, oblivious to cost or necessity.” Nevertheless, Noah and the ark must be taken seriously.

Finally, I agree with Nash that we must avoid hysteria. While I also understand his citing Joseph Bast “that deforestation and resource depletion are problems largely in third world countries,” I must ask, Is that not also part of God’s creation? and, Are we uninvolved in its destruction? An even bigger question is this: Is Jesus Christ Lord of creation? If our answer is yes, then what happens anywhere in creation must be of interest to believers. And if our neighbor’s house — or the forests of Brazil or Surinam — is on fire, a person should be allowed to “pull the alarm” without being considered extreme or called an “alarmist.” In fact, if we are to take Ezekiel 33 and 34 seriously, it might even be our God-given duty.

Most of all, in dealing with our stewardship responsibility for creation, we must acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord of creation by what we say and sing, and also by what we do. People should know by our work and lives that we follow — in word and deed — the Son, who is beautiful Savior and Lord of creation.³

NOTES

¹See J. G. Anderson, D. W. Toohey, and W. H. Brune, Science 251 (39-45): 1991; and M. J. Molina and F. S. Rowland, Nature 249 (810): 1974.²For example, one can consult textbooks in environmental science, such as Bernard J. Nebel and Richard T. Wright, Environmental Science: The Way the World Works, 4th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1993), and search the Internet for “Conventions on Climate, Ozone, and Biodiversity.”³See C. B. DeWitt, Earth-Wise: A Biblical Response to Environmental Issues (Grand Rapids: CRC Publications, 1994), a small book written for adult Sunday School discussion. A bibliography of Christian stewardship publications is available from Au Sable Institute, 731 State St., Madison, WI 53711, or call (608) 255-0950.

A RESPONSE TO CALVIN B. DEWITT

by Ronald Nash

DeWitt greatly exaggerates alleged evangelical lack of interest in the environment. He spends much of his article condemning Christians for not caring about the environment, when in fact it is DeWitt’s brand of radical environmentalism they shun. Many Christians believe that we should act prudently to stop pollution and other forms of environmental harm, but avoid environmental extremism that does little but fill the coffers of extremist environmental groups and expand the size and power of a coercive government.¹

DeWitt tells us we ought to care about God’s creation, when the important issue is how our concern for the creation should be manifested. On this issue, DeWitt’s article has nothing to say. What does seem clear is that “concern for the environment” is not legitimate in DeWitt’s thinking unless it manifests itself in his kinds of actions. As I explain in my book about the religious left,² ideology, arrogance, or misinformation about the other side blinds many cultural liberals in the evangelical camp. This leads them to think that any person who disagrees with them does so because of some moral or intellectual failing. DeWitt appears to question the Christian profession of one evangelical who differed with his view of the environment. It is possible, I suppose, that DeWitt may attempt to brand me as an environmental ne’er-do-well. However, my moderate, centrist position on the continuum of environmental views cannot be reduced to any of the five positions he critiques in his article.

DeWitt thinks the ecotheology of those Christians whose environmental views he disdains really flows from their economic and political views, and not the Scriptures. Yet does DeWitt really think that his own economic and political views have had no influence on his ecotheology? Does he really believe he draws his views exclusively from Scripture with absolutely no input from secular sources that just happen to be on the far left of both the political and environmental spectrum? His article’s use of Scripture suggests otherwise.

An indication of how DeWitt’s environmental extremism acts as a filter for his understanding of Scripture appears in his handling of John 3:16, which DeWitt quotes as support for his claim that God loves the physical universe. The Greek term kosmos, translated as “world” in the text, does not mean the physical universe. It refers to the personal world of humankind for whom Christ died. DeWitt’s claim that John 3:16 teaches that God pours “out divine love to all creation” suggests that he thinks Jesus died for flies, tadpoles, shrimp, rocks, rivers, and trees — an obvious indication that either his judgment or his handling of Scripture merits careful scrutiny. When an author attempts to use John 3:16 as a proof-text for radical environmentalism, ideology has clearly taken control of his hermeneutic. Another sign of questionable theology appears when DeWitt writes, “To the Creator of matter, matter matters.” DeWitt certainly appears to suggest here that God values inanimate matter in such a way as to place it on the same level with human beings.

DeWitt reportedly was a member of a group urging congressional support for a problematic endangered species act. He justified his political activism on the grounds that the Genesis account of Noah’s ark mandates such legislation. DeWitt’s position conveniently ignores the fact that all animals other than those saved in the ark were destroyed in the flood sent by God. Genesis 6–8 would hardly seem to be a relevant proof-text for politicians debating a highly questionable piece of legislation dealing with endangered species. To make things worse for his case, 2 Peter 3 teaches that the Flood foreshadows the Day of the Lord in which God will destroy the earth by fire. Neither the destruction of animal life during the Flood in Noah’s day nor the promised destruction of the world in the future seems compatible with DeWitt’s eccentric reading of John 3:16.

Nothing in my comments should be construed as lack of interest toward the earth or its nonhuman population. I simply think it’s interesting to see the odd ways in which religious left extremists twist Scripture to suit the political and environmental presuppositions that form their ecotheology.

Since the primary agent of environmental activism is big government, it is interesting to ask why so many environmentalists ignore the abominable environmental record of socialist states — the epitome of big and coercive government. Furthermore, I cannot help but wonder why DeWitt’s article is silent about the significant improvements in the environment in the United States in the past two decades. At least in the United States, the environment today is cleaner than at any time in the past 50 years. (For information about the many scientists who question extremist claims about global warming, acid rain, ozone depletion, and other alleged crises of the present, see chapter 4 of the book Eco-Sanity.³)

Harold O. J. Brown recently noted how the ecology movement has become “increasingly captive to essentially non-Christian and intellectually indefensible ideas.”⁴ He warns of “an ominous link between radical feminist religion and ecology,” and he notes how “essentially pagan and idolatrous ideas are being insinuated into Western consciousness under the cloak of concern for the environment, personalized as ‘Mother Earth’ and increasingly worshipped as the goddess Gaia.”⁵ Interestingly, the extremist views found in Vice President Gore’s Earth in the Balance include praise for advocates of the Gaia principle.

While Brown believes that Christian concern for ecology is appropriate, he regrets that insufficient “serious biblical thought is being given to the problem. As a consequence, legitimate concern for the environment and the future of humanity on an earth with limited resources is being infiltrated with and captivated by some of the most eccentric and quasi-pagan varieties of radical feminism. Many church circles — especially but not only the World Council of Churches — have already gone far towards abandoning biblical monotheism in favor of a syncretistic, pantheistic preoccupation with the recently invented goddess Gaia.”⁶

And where does Calvin DeWitt stand on all this? I have searched his article in vain for any warnings about this pantheistic worship of nature. Indeed, his discussion of proponents of New Age pantheism obscures the issue by failing to see the difference between New Age persons, whom we should love and witness to, and the New Age ideology, which has no place in a biblically informed ecotheology.

NOTES

¹See James Gills and Ronald Nash, Government Is Too Big (Tarpon Springs, FL: St. Luke’s Institute, 1996).²Ronald Nash, Why the Left Is Not Right: The Religious Left: Who They Are and What They Believe (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996).³Joseph L. Bast, et al, Eco-Sanity (Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1994).⁴Harold O. J. Brown, “Living by Gaia’s Laws?” The Religion and Society Report, September 1996, 5.⁵Ibid.⁶Ibid.