Environmental Crisis – a Spiritual Crisis?

Environmental Crisis a Spiritual Crisis?

Religion may be defined as a system of belief and ethical orientation which are premised on an understanding of human beings as other or more than their purely physical identities. Religion and its rituals acts of prayer, meditation and celebration awake or reinforce a personal and communal sense of our connection to Ultimate Truth.

In various and complex ways religion has been both an agent of environmental domination and paradoxically repositories of ecological wisdom.

Historically Monotheistic religions (i.e. those that believe in a Creator God) have emphasised humanity over nature. And yet at the same time religion has also represented the voice of nature to humanity celebrating and consecrating our ties to the non-human world.

There is little doubt that texts in the first book of the Bible (Genesis) which emphasise mans "mastery over the earth" can be seen as a source for the havoc that has been wreaked by Western Societies upon the planet. Other texts praise the Creation and mans stewardship of nature. Overall, one must argue however that the Judeo- Christian tradition of the West have regarded nature animals, plants or the land as something humanity owns given by the Creator and therefore of little or no inherent moral standing.

However the environmental agenda of religions is continually set and reset by their adherents. Also ancient traditions could not have foreseen the scope of modern technological power. No past empire was able to to threaten the earth's climate.

There has been an extensive range of religious responses to environmental problems.

One approach has been a move by theologians to reinterpret old traditions finding and stressing texts that help us face the current crisis. In the Old Testament for example there is a passage that tells us not to live in a city without trees and in the Christian tradition Saint Francis is shown as a Deep Ecologist. Nature becomes the Body of God. More creative thinkers have sought to synthesize elements from different traditions. Taoist images of humanity's integration into a natural setting and ideas from native peoples who lived in harmony with nature are often introduced. Finally spiritual thinkers are creating new ideas, practices and organisations.

But why do we need religion? Why cant governments and people save the planet and leave religion as a private matter of personal faith?

The answer to this is that to many people religious belief is of primary importance regarding our place in the universe and our obligations to other people and animals. Also we have historical examples from the US civil rights movement to the non violent campaign for independence led by Gandhi in India. There are many instances of creative and successful merging of religion and social action. Also one might say that purely secular politics have been rendered doubtful by the economic failures and totalitarian political excesses of communism. Despite the beliefs of the secularists the reality is that spiritual perspectives can be a source of social direction as well as personal inspiration. From Christian creation theology and Buddhist teaching about compassion for animals, from Native American images of the sacred "hoop" of life to indigenous people's political resistance to the environmental desecration of their sacred lands- religious practices are bound up in humanity's on going struggles to live in harmony with an increasingly threatened planet.

One could argue that our response to the environmental crisis is in the broadest sense, "spiritual" as it involves our deepest concerns about what is of truly lasting importance. One might even say that what humanity has been doing to the planet has been an enormous sacrilege, of which we are all, to some extent guilty.

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