By Sandra L. Richter
InterVarsity Press; February 2020
One might expect that the most ardent believers in God would also be the most committed and dedicated environmentalists. After all, if you truly believed that all of existence—the universe, the Earth and every living thing on it—were the work of a benevolent creator, wouldn't you also devote yourself to the care of that creation, prioritizing its protection alongside the other priorities of your faith?
And yet we know that is not the case. In fact, here in the United States at least, it often seems that the opposite is true, that the way we have been gradually sorting ourselves throughout the last few decades has made it seem that, in general, the most religious among us (or, at least, the most performatively religious among us) are Republican and conservative, while the most environmentally conscious among us are Democratic and liberal*, and never the twain shall meet.
There are plenty of reasons for this, I suppose (I've been working my way through Ezra Klein's Why We're Polarized, and while it doesn't address this specific topic, it does explain how and why we divide ourselves into political teams, and how the beliefs of one team quickly become seen as anathema to the other). But "Because religious people are hypocrites" isn't the answer, although certainly many of them are (and not, I should say, because they are religious people, but because they are people, period).
One of the reasons that Sandra L. Richter, a teacher, scholar and author of 2008's The Epic of Eden, identifies for that disconnect is a matter of theology, the too-widespread belief that God's creation is "bound only for destruction." If the world is going to end any day now, something Christians have believed since Jesus was still walking the Earth, then why fret overmuch about how inhospitable to human life the climate will be in a few more decades, or if a species or two or three thousand go extinct? During the creation story of Genesis, God gave humanity dominion over the Earth, right? Therefore, it's ours to do with as we please.
Not only is that an extremely dangerous way to run a planet—or anything else, for that matter—but scripture pretty explicitly warns against it**, and the dominion philosophy itself is a matter of interpretation, one that believers have probably leaned into over the centuries because it's the most convenient interpretation.
Richter's book looks to passages of scripture to reveal different messages in sharp contrast to the dominion philosophy, and things that seem like far more modern concerns than what an Iron Age civilization might have codified into their spiritual laws, like sustainable agriculture and the care for domestic and wild animals. None of her interpretations are exactly a stretch, either. If it comes as a shock that the Bible lays out the proper way to practice animal agriculture, well, that's probably because Christians tend to ignore large swathes of their own Bible, particularly the Old Testament, generally only turning to books like Leviticus or Deuteronomy to cherry-pick passages they can use to justify discriminating against the LGBTQ community.
Richter starts at the beginning—of the Bible, and of the world. Though we traditionally gravitate to the terms "be fruitful and multiply" and "dominion" in the two creation stories, Richter offers the alternatives from Genesis 2:15: "Then Yahweh Elohim took the human and put him into the garden of Eden to tend it and to guard it."*** Though it is mostly simply a matter of connotation, it's amazing what the shift from having dominion over something to tending, guarding or shepherding it can have.
In the following chapters—each of which, I should note, is fairly short and extremely readable, regardless of your familiarity with the Bible—Richter takes a passage from scripture, expands upon it to explain what it meant and how it would have been applied in Biblical times, and then brings up a modern "case study" in which it applies.
So, for example, after the opening chapter on the creation narrative and humanity's place in the world and in God's plan, she discusses the covenant between God and Israel as a landlord/renter agreement (that is, we might live on Earth and have a special place on it in God's plan, but it's his, not ours); that God ordered that both the land and beasts of burden be given periods of rest (during the seventh year and the seventh day, respectively); that God prescribed sustainable methods for gathering wild birds and bird eggs and forbade the "environmental terrorism" of burning the crops and cutting down the fruit trees of enemy nations; the importance of caring for the widows and orphans of society; and, finally, what the covenant means today, after the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and how we should live our lives.
Some of this will seem trivial from afar—such as, say, reading a review of the book on a blog—but Richter's arguments are certainly compelling. These Old Testament laws are eminently practical as well as encouraging a degree of empathy for other people and other creatures. That is, if you exhaust the land, you won't be able to grow anything out of it. If you work your livestock to death, then you won't have them to help you plow or grind grain. If you take every bird and all the eggs from every next you find, you will soon be out of birds and eggs. If you destroy the food source of an enemy nation, then neither your nor they will have access to that food.
It's certainly strange to think of something that seems so specific and dated as Deuteronomy 25:4, "do not muzzle an ox while he is threshing", could or should have ramifications today, but if God wanted his people to allow one of their working animals to enjoy mouthfuls of food while producing it, even if that meant nutrition that was ultimately being taken from them and their families, how would God be okay with pigs packed into tiny cages, chickens with their beaks soldered off and the full catalog of nightmares that goes into the production of most meat? (Richter devotes about eight pages to these).
What is most striking about all of these ancient examples is their context. Richter thoroughly describes the day-to-day life of ancient Israeli society, and repeatedly drives home the fact that most people were somewhere in the area of "just getting by"; they were always a tragedy (or even run of bad luck) away from starvation, and, even at best, could expect lean months every year. So God wasn't asking these people to simply inconvenience themselves the slightest bit, like so many of the sacrifices that our society could be making in the 21st century to improve life on Earth, but he was asking actively hungry people to sacrifice necessary food in order to care for the land, care for the animals and care for one another.
It's not until the last chapters that Richter really gets to the New Testament, at which point the gospels, the epistles and the Book of Revelation are consulted, mostly regarding God's plan for the Earth in the future, and her argument that returning to the original arrangement of Eden, the redemption of that original plan for creation is, in fact, the end goal. That is, God's creation isn't necessarily destined for destruction, and all that really matters are the souls of the faithful, but that humanity, Heaven and Earth are all to be redeemed (You've probably heard the phrase "a new Heaven and a new Earth" before).
Now, I should perhaps clarify that I approached the reading of the book as a believer, and someone with a lifetime of Catholic education and the attendant familiarity with the terminology and the source material (Well, "lifetime" meaning kindergarten through earning my bachelor's degree, the end of my formal education). I'm not entirely sure how this will read to an atheist or agnostic then, but belief doesn't seem to be necessary to read and enjoy it—while Richter is herself a believer, her book works as history and an environmental treatise as much as it does an articulation for Christian-driven environmentalism.
It is well-written and easy to read though, so I don't think a non-believer reading because of their prior interest in the environment would necessarily be repelled by it or find it overly confusing, but the intended audience is clearly a Christian one. After the end of the book, there's a "Resources For the Responsive Christian" appendix, listing 17 ways to "take action" on "environmental stewardship,' most of which can be practiced by anyone (In fact, if you're already concerned about the environment, I imagine you already practice many of these things).
To oversimplify, a truly Christian response to the environmental crisis seems to start with a simple matter of reframing, of thinking of ourselves not as the lords over creation, but as its shepherds, and as thinking of ourselves not as the owners of the world, but as renters living on God's world.
But it's Richter's book, so I should give her the last word:
The introduction of this book asked the question: Can a Christian be an environmentalist? My answer is, how could a son of Adam or a daughter of Eve, redeemed and transformed by the second Adam to live eternally in the resurrected Eden, be anything else?If you're a Christian and aren't convinced of that, I would highly recommend the book that comes between Richter's question and her final words.
*Here's how Richter puts it:
Why has the church, historically the moral compass of our society, gotten so lost on this topic?
On reason is politics. Not kingdom politics, but American and international politics. I think that most would concur that the traditional political allies of the church are not the traditional political allies of environmental concern. If you are pro-life, it is assumed that you cannot also be pro-environment. If you are a patriot, you supposedly cannot also be a conservationist. Or to be more forthright: in the United States, if you are an environmentalists, it is assumed that you are a Democrat--and Democrats, supposedly, are not pro-life. If you are a Republican , it is assumed that you cannot also be pro-environment. In other words, somehow environmental advocacy has been pigeonholed into a particular political profile and has become guilty by association. But of course, Christians are first the citizens of heaven, and therefore our alliances and our value system are not defined by American politics.
**Regarding predictions of the end of the world, I always think of Mark 13:32: "But of that day or hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." The context is clearly that of "it could be any day now, so be ready," but Jesus quite literally says no one knows. Given that he said that millennia ago, I think the safest philosophy is that it could be any day now, or it could be another couple millennia. So the best bet is to not render the world uninhabitable and continue down any paths that will kill us all off before that.
***The only Bible in my apartment is The New American Bible with a 1987 copyright I was requited to purchase for an introduction to the Bible class in college in 1997 or so. Its version of the line is "The Lord God then took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden, to cultivate and care for it." Regarding the verbs of what Adam/the man/humanity is meant to do in the garden, Richter looks to the original Hebrew words, and explains them in her notes.
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