David Williams' Our Angry Eden and the two meanings of taking care of creation

Our Angry Eden: Faith & Hope on a Hotter, Harsher Planet

By David Williams

Broadleaf Books; 2021

The word "care" has several meanings, as author and Presbyterian pastor David Williams notes in his new book, Our Angry Eden. He was inspired to write it, he says, after attending a gathering at his church on "creation care," the idea that we as human beings need to protect the environment because it is God's creation, and that he gifted it to us and commanded us to do so in the first stories of the Bible.

But to take care of creation can have another meaning, too. As Williams writes:

We need to take "care" of God's creation in the way that we take "care" when we find ourselves bobbing precariously on a surfboard with a great white shark moving lazily in the murky shadows beneath. We need to take "care" of it in the way that we take "care" when we teeter on the ledge of a precipice.

We have the power to do enormous damage to the Earth itself but, in the long run, the Earth can and will survive us, and it can certainly survive without us should we succeed in rendering it uninhabitable to human life.

"Do we think creation cares?" Williams asks. "It does not...Creation would continue as if nothing had happened. After a hundred million years, there'd be no trace of us at all."

And as for God, well, God may care about us far more deeply than his creation does, but, Williams writes, "God also allows us to reap the harvest we have sown, no matter what that harvest might be." 

As severe as the words in Williams' introduction may be, his is not a climate book that revels in doomism, but it is stark in its appraisal of how much trouble we're in and, at times, evokes the sort of old-fashioned fear of God that used to be such a staple of Christian sermons, particularly in centuries past. Given the pressures we've put on the Earth, and the damage we've done to it, we probably should be afraid of the future we're creating for ourselves. Certainly afraid enough to change our behavior.

Williams writes like a person who is used to writing strong sermons or homilies, as he's quite adept at telling stories that begin as personal anecdotes and then connect to larger issues and broader themes. He does this throughout the book, which can therefore have the feel of a themed collection of sermons at times.

After his efforts to try and reframe the idea of creation care as not just something worth doing because the environment is fragile, but urgently needed because we are more fragile still, Williams reviews the state of the world, many of the hows and whys that got us into the current climate crisis and, ultimately, suggests ways to face it, particularly ways to do so as Christians.

Although it is not necessary to be a person of faith to read, enjoy and learn from Our Angry Eden, much of the book is specific to the Christian faith, and will prove most relevant to those with a background in Christianity. For example, Williams writes on how caring for climate refugees connects to Biblical edicts to care for strangers. And  how the concept of keeping holy the Sabbath can be extended into a worldview that is beneficial to the Earth. Or how Jesus' proverb of rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's connects to our responsibilities as citizens in our current republic, the United States of America.

There are also passages that deal with arguments more likely to arise within Christian communities than without, as when he tackles the concept of the rapture (which he calls un-Christian) or argues for becoming vegetarian in a way that evokes faith as well as the more familiar arguments for doing so. 

The book ends with something of an action plan labeled "Nine Ways Forward," offering nine positive, concrete steps we can take to take care of creation, meaning to protect our world, while we also take care of creation, meaning trying to guarantee a continued place of safety on our rapidly changing world.  

God is mentioned repeatedly throughout these steps, but it's well worth noting that these aren't necessarily religious ways forward, but ones that anyone, regardless of faith background, can engage in.