Biblical Foundations | Moral Imperatives | The Human Toll | Racial and Class Disparities | Values | Church and Organizational Policies
Sophisticated technology, a culture of convenience, general affluence and a highly urban or suburban lifestyle have taken most of us far away from the living conditions prevalent in the Bible. So, we tend to forget a very basic biblical starting point -- we can't have a good relationship with God and take our proper place in the world without paying attention to our surroundings.
The Bible sends a strong message that being faithful requires us to maintain a just and righteous relationship with God, with other human beings and with the rest of Creation. These three relationships are interconnected; therefore, when we hurt one, the other relationships are harmed too. From Genesis through the New Testament, we learn that the environmental crises we face today are social and spiritual ones, not simply biological and technical problems. Thus, when we try to model greater environmental responsibility in any gathering, we are trying to repair social, biological, and spiritual brokenness.
Genesis and the Psalms help us understand that the Creation is a gift from God. Everything in Creation is created by God and is good. That is why we, and all other parts of Creation, have intrinsic worth and are sacred. The Psalmists assume that humans have much to learn from nature and that all Creation participates in praise and glorification of God (Psalms 19, 36, 65). The book of Job underscores the inherent value of the nonhuman world. Because all life forms come from God, we all are dependent upon God, and are interdependent with each other. Consider what it would be like to plan an event by first asking the question, "How can the details of this event glorify God and glorify Creation?" How would you make different decisions about the human and natural resources used for the event if you kept in mind that all are precious gifts from God?
Traditionally, many Christians have viewed the natural world as basically for our benefit and use -- certainly not of equal spiritual standing as human beings. Often, people read Genesis as a license to dominate and subjugate nature (e.g., Genesis 1:26-28) or to be stewards of Creation (Genesis 2). However, the biblical message of environmental justice is more complicated and radical than simply requiring us to manage natural resources wisely and utilize technology and laws to maintain a healthy environment. Creation plays a central role in God's covenants and in the Christian understanding of salvation.
If nothing else, the Bible is a series of stories about covenants. When God makes a covenant with Noah, for example, God also makes a commitment to Creation (Genesis 8-9). The Old Testament details covenants containing Sabbath or Jubilee provisions that attempt to restore the right economic and environmental relationships among peoples (landowners, slaves, immigrants, the indebted) and the land (Exodus 20:8-11, 23:10-12, Deuteronomy 15, Leviticus 25, Micah 2:1-3). When the covenant is broken, all parties to it are harmed. In Isaiah, we see the earth mourning and withering from the pollution that is the result of people's transgression of the laws.
The Christian covenant is consistent with the Hebraic. As God's incarnation, Jesus has the vocation to restore right relations with the land (in fact, all of nonhuman Creation) as well as to liberate the poor and suffering. (Mark 16:15, John 3:17, Romans 8:18-21.) So, when we plan a gathering, we need to keep in mind environmental, racial, and economic justice goals because they are interconnected.
Practically, the covenants call us to think about the health, social, environmental, and economic impact of what we buy, use, and throw away at a gathering. Ideally, this means we think in bigger terms than just the welfare of the people attending the event. Instead, we need to think of the well-being of Creation and of all its inhabitants along the way. "What went into producing the products we buy or use for the gathering? What will our impact be on the welfare of the workers in and neighborhoods around any facilities we might use?"
For example, if we plan an event that produces a lot of garbage, where will it go? What will be the impact of its disposal? What is our responsibility if we throw away a lot of plastic and it is burned, thus producing toxic dioxins? The Bible says we cannot bury our head in the sand and not worry about the consequences of what we do. When we try to implement a green guideline, we can have multiple beneficial social, environmental, and economic outcomes. For example, when we reduce the amount of trash we produce at an event, we reduce the financial and ecological pressure on the local community where it will be discarded. We reduce any negative health impacts that waste disposal has on surrounding neighborhoods. We also may be preserving natural resources and reducing workers' and communities' exposure to hazardous chemicals in manufacturing processes.
We often tend to romanticize or downplay Creation in our faith lives. We may think of nature when we refer to God as Creator or Sustainer, but not when we talk about God as Redeemer. Yet, the promise Jesus Christ brings in the New Testament for salvation and redemption is not simply for humankind but for all of Creation. In the New Testament (e.g., Romans 8; 1 Corinthians 15; Revelation 21), salvation includes recreating the entire universe to its intended ecological balance. The balance may mean changes which can be frightening to us. Yet, it is our responsibility to respect and work toward this balance, even when we do not understand God's plan or when changing is not convenient or comfortable for us.
One way this biblical point plays out in planning gatherings concerns choosing a location for the event. Have we chosen a site that is beautiful but totally unrealistic ecologically? For example, is it located in a desert and does it use a tremendous amount of water for fountains, green grass, or lush landscaping? Is the facility located on or near an earthquake fault, in a flood plane, or on a fragile coastline? Does the facility require high energy use (heat or air conditioning) to make the indoor climate comfortable? We can choose locations and facilities designed to have a low impact on their environment rather than high impact or high risk.
When we think of the salvation process, there is a major difference between humans and Creation. Unlike humans, nature participates in redemption not because of its sinfulness, but because of its pain and suffering. How are we connected with this pain and suffering? How is our redemption linked to the healing of humanity and the earth?
James Nash, a theologian specializing in environmental ethics, has developed a helpful framework for applying the Biblical message to everyday life. His two-part article in the February and March 1997 Response magazine, sets the context for planning more environmentally responsible gatherings.
"Six environmental sins -- practices that are destructive to God’s earth -- lie at the heart of the crisis facing our planet. These sins are embedded in our public policy, our economic system, and our collective beliefs and cultures. Our policies and practices -- individual and corporate -- are not ecologically, politically, environmentally or morally sustainable. The first step in returning the earth, which includes each of us, to a right relationship with God, is to identify these sins and confess our complicity in them, then work to manifest ecological virtues in our private and public worlds." (February 1997, p. 34)
Here are the sins Nash identifies with his brief explanations:
1. Multiple Forms of Pollution
"We are desecrating creation by contaminating it with acid rain, toxic chemicals, and nuclear and other hazardous waste. We often ignore or downplay the fact that the biological impact of various chemicals is cumulative and synergistic -- the interplay of chemicals is not well known and may be worse than any individual chemical."
2. Resource Exhaustion
"We are rapidly depleting non-renewable resources such as fossil fuels and minerals, and using other natural resources like soil, water, forest and fish stocks more quickly than their capacity for regeneration. Our free market economy does not adequately take diminishing supply into account. Our manufacturing processes and patterns of consuming non-renewable resources are not sustainable."
3. Ozone Depletion and Global Warming
"Humans’ production of "greenhouse gases," such as carbon dioxide from cars and factories, may be increasing the temperature of the earth's surface and lower atmosphere. Temperatures could rise several degrees Fahrenheit by the middle of the next century, raising seal levels and altering weather patterns and food production. Higher sea levels may threaten the existence of some low-lying nations such as Bangladesh, the Caribbean and Pacific island states.
"Human actions are also jeopardizing the upper-level ozone layer of the earth’s atmosphere resulting in harmful solar radiation. Such radiation can have profound consequences from increased skin cancer in humans to destruction of an essential part of the ocean food chain."
4. Excessive Human Population Growth
"What population levels can the earth sustain? To determine this, we must look beyond birth rates to consumption of resources per person. In these terms, the United States ranks high in over-populated nations. For example, the typical U.S. consumer uses three times as much energy as does a Swiss consumer and 60 times that of a Nigerian."
5. Economic Maldistribution
"Both poverty and affluence breed environmental destruction, and both must be tackled if we are to have ecological integrity and sustainability. We must recognize the interconnections between why some people are poor and others are rich, and between the state of our environment and how our economic system functions."
6. Radical Reduction of Species and Numbers within Species
"Scientists estimate there are 10-100 million species of plants and animals on the earth. Less than 2 million have been classified. Some predictions are that 20-50% of species could be extinguished in the next century as a result of human over-development such as construction of shopping malls, housing developments, roads and dams that replace forests and other natural habitats."
Our "better living through chemicals" and highly materialistic approach to life is having a devastating impact on human health. Whether it is through the contamination of our air, water, soil, or food, or through a combination of factors, we are literally poisoning ourselves and our neighbors. For example, eight out of 10 people in the United States now live near a hazardous-waste site. Nearly 1,300 such sites are on the U.S. government's National Priority List for immediate clean-up because they pose a severe threat to human health. Environmental pollution hurts us in many ways, causing various types of chronic illnesses and cancers, and can harm the physical and mental development of children.
Let us explore just one dimension of the cost of our environmental sins: cancer. Biologist Sandra Steingraber outlines forms of cancer that have been increasing in the United States and are linked with environmental contamination in her book Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1997):
* Melanoma (the deadliest form of skin cancer) -- The incidence rate rose almost 350 percent between 1950 and 1991, while the mortality rate increased 157 percent. (This is linked to sun exposure and to loss of ozone in the stratosphere, which allows more intense ultraviolet light to reach us. Chlorofluorocarbons are among those chemicals responsible for destroying the ozone layer.)
* Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma -- The incidence rate has nearly tripled since 1950, while Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a more curable form, has declined somewhat in the past 20 years. Lymphomas have been linked to exposure to certain chemicals, including Agent Orange and other pesticides.
* Multiple myeloma (cancer of cells inside the bone marrow) -- The incidence rate and the mortality rate have nearly tripled. This is linked to exposure to ionizing radiation and to a variety of chemicals including benzene.
Many other forms of cancer, such as breast, testicular, and bladder, also are being linked to environmental contamination.
Children may be the canaries in the mine, so to speak, in terms of warning us of our troubles. In a November/December 1997 article for Sierra magazine, Dianne Dumanoski wrote: "The incidence of childhood asthma jumped 73% between 1982 and 1984. It’s now the leading chronic disease in children, affecting roughly 5 million kids in the U.S....Not only are more kids getting asthma, but more are dying of it....Cancer now kills 1,500 children a year in the United States, making it second only to accidents as a cause of childhood death. Although more children are now surviving cancer because of better treatment,... 8,000 kids under the age of 14 [are] diagnosed every year."
Social injustices compound the health risks for low-income communities and those that have a high proportion of residents who are people of color. Racism and class play a big role in who we hire to do the "dirty work" and where we put the results -- both where we locate industrial processes and where we dispose of our waste:
* A "1983 Government Accounting Office study found a strong relationship between the location of off-site hazardous waste landfills and the race and socio-economic status of the surrounding communities." (Robert Bullard, Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice & Communities of Color. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1994, p. 6.)
* The National Law Journal published a report of the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s clean-up track-record and found: "There is a racial divide in the way the U.S. government cleans up toxic waste sites and punishes polluters. White communities see faster action, better results and stiffer penalties than communities where blacks, Hispanics and other minorities live. This unequal protection often occurs whether the community is wealthy or poor." (Bullard, p. 9.)
* There is a wide disparity in mortality rates for whites and for people of color in diseases linked to environmental pollution. While the mortality differences may also be connected to the quality of health care one receives, the quality of care often does not explain why people contracted the health problem in the first place. Listed below are mortality rates in the deadliest counties in the United States for each group:
| People of color | Whites | |
| ]Birth defects | 6,940 | 3,977 |
| Child cancers | 1,327 | 54 |
| Breast cancer (in women) |
761 | 126 |
(Benjamin Goldman, The Truth About Where You Live: An Atlas for Action on Toxins and Mortality. New York: Random House, 1991.)
* The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has determined that the risk of being poisoned at work is significantly greater for people of color. For example, the Institute found that "mortality from acutely hazardous exposures among minority men is 50 percent higher than among white men. On the farm, most pesticide exposures occur among Latino and African American migrant workers." (Goldman, p. 283-284.)
So far, we know only pieces of the overall human cost of our actions. According to the most conservative estimates, 10,940 people in the United States die each year from environmentally caused cancers. This is more than the number of women who die each year from hereditary breast cancer, more than the number of children and teens who are killed by firearms, and many more than the number who die from secondhand tobacco smoke.
According to Steingraber, "None of these 10,940 Americans will die quick, painless deaths. They will be amputated, irradiated, and dosed with chemotherapy. They will expire privately in hospitals and hospices and be buried quietly. Photographs of their bodies will not appear in newspapers. We will not know who most of them are. Their anonymity, however, does not moderate this violence. These deaths are a form of homicide." (Steingraber, p. 269. Emphasis added.)
To address the spiritual, ecological, and social brokenness we have created, Nash suggests that we need to incorporate seven new values into our personal and collective lives:
1. Sustainability
"Sustainability means living within the bounds of the generative, absorptive and carrying capacity of the Earth -- indefinitely. If we can’t keep a practice going indefinitely, it is unsustainable. For example, when we use non-renewable fuels such as petroleum, we are permanently depleting the stock available to future generations."
2. Adaptability, Flexibility
"Being adaptable and flexible means accommodating to the forces and constraints of nature. Natural occurrences like earthquakes and droughts are inevitable, sow e must plan to fit within the limits of our ecosystem. We must avoid unnecessary risks like building on an earthquake fault lines. And we must allow the earth room to recover from such disasters."
3. Relationality
"Everything in our environment is connected to and has consequences for everything else. We must address our thoughts and practices that cause fragmentation and isolation....[We need to avoid choosing solutions to social or environmental problems that aggravate or create other problems.
"Understanding the relationships between elements in our environment also means becoming aware of the cumulative impact of our actions, such as the aggregation of chemicals in our bodies."
4. Frugality
"Thrift, moderation, conservation, sufficiency, and efficiency are dimensions of frugality that help us live lightly on our planet. Morally disciplined production and consumption benefit all parts of our environment. This is not a call for austerity, but for an end to over-consumption by the affluent and under-consumption by the poor."
5. Equity
"We must work for justice in distribution of the world's resources. All humans should have the goods essential for living with dignity and for their full participation in society. Such equity merges social and environmental ethics, and is necessary for sustainability."
6. Solidarity
"Solidarity is the moral response to the reality of inter-dependence of all parts of our environment. Solidarity must be global, ecological and economic. For some problems, the smallest social unit which can function effectively today is the international community. For example, global cooperation is needed to address global warming or the fallout from Chernobyl."
7. Bioresponsibility
"We must respect biodiversity by extending our understanding of solidarity to non-human parts of our environment. Other creatures have a right to a fair share of the world's resources. We must save other creatures for their own sake, not just for human purposes. We show bioresponsibility when we support the existence of wild lands for wildlife."