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Environmentalism as Stewardship
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# : |
12667 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1987 |
1,517 Words |
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Kristin Franklin and Diane Sherwood
Kristin Franklin and Diane Sherwood are free-lance writers
living in Washington, D.C. |
"Ecology is an issue which can only be solved if it becomes a religious one," says Marshall Massey, a Quaker and an expert on the ecological dangers facing our planet. "The economic forces aligned against the ecological measures we need and the life-style change that's demanded won't happen unless masses of people have a change of heart." The triple threat of the depletion of resources, the thinning of the ozone shield, and the massive elimination of species, particularly in the world's rain forests, needs to be countered with every possible motivation - economic and spiritual.
Historically, some monumental problems were solved only after they become religious issues. Although the United States went to war over slavery, European countries voluntarily discontinued the practice of slavery, once it became a religious issue. In this century, Mahatma Gandhi turned the liberation of India from British colonial rule into a religious issue and aroused India's masses into overwhelming support. Martin Luther King, Jr. articulated the religious dimension of civil rights in the United States and gained broad-based support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. King's "dream" was rooted in a Judeo-Christian conception of justice, and the religious community, its conscience touched, gave King the support he needed.
In a manner that is much quieter than the U.S. civil rights activities of the 1960s, a trend is developing among religious organizations to care for the earth. Wall Street megatrend analyst Dan Blum forecasts that by the 1990s, the growing concern of the churches for the earth's ecology will become a national force.
Calvin DeWitt, professor of ecology at the University of Wisconsin and director of the AuSable Trails Institute, says that today's tension between praising God the Creator while defiling creation has forced a reassessment of religious responsibility and an examination of scriptural references to the environment. This examination is fostering a new awareness that is fueling a national movement. "For the first time in hundreds of years," says DeWitt, "churches are no longer apologetic, taking a 'Yes but' stance. They are finding their voice of prophecy and calling all people to a whole-earth stewardship of loving, caring, and keeping. Nowadays, kids on the University of Wisconsin campus are talking about the sermons they heard in chapel on Sunday because they are becoming so relevant."
Church involvement in the environmental movement differs from involvement in civil rights, poverty, and peace issues, where churches may
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