Expanding Our Theological View of the Created Order
by Franklin E. Vilas

When I first became interested in attending the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the "Earth Summit") in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, I sought for support from the national Episcopal Church, USA to go as their representative to this crucial event. It was to be the largest meeting of the leaders of nations ever to be held to that point. Sir Paul Reeves, Anglican Observer at the UN, was planning to attend.

I struck out with ECUSA, which was even in 1991 obsessed with the internal problems caused by the issue of sexuality. I found, however, a champion in Bishop John S. Spong of the Diocese of Newark, and was sent by him to represent the Diocese at that crucial event in the history of the human response to the ecological crisis. There, I teamed up with Ethan Flad (now on the staff of The Witness) and Bishop Reeves to convene all of the Anglicans we could locate at a hotel in Rio. We met for an hour — so that at least we could claim that the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church of the United States had been represented at this Earth Summit of 1992!

…my heart caught up with my head. I had the conviction that only together can the world's religious people create the change of soul necessary for the human race to take the next leap forward in evolution — a society governed by justice, peace and concern for the integrity of the planet.

Much has happened since that time. The interfaith community has been deeply involved in all of the conferences held by the United Nations in the wake of Rio. In the United States, the National Religious Partnership for the Environment (NRPE) has been formed to bring ecological awareness to Protestant, Roman Catholic, Jewish and evangelical congregations. At the UN, the Interfaith Partnership on the Environment (IPE) has acted as an advisory committee to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and has produced the publication Earth and Faith, which has been distributed worldwide in preparation for the upcoming "Rio + 10" World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, South Africa.

In a statement contained in Earth and Faith, Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director of the UNEP, writes, "When God said: "Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it" …did God intend that we would multiply at the rate of nearly 80 million additional people a year… that every day we would push an estimated 150 species into extinction? Was it God's plan that under human dominion, the global climate would be altered… that we would put chemicals into the air, water, and soil… that we would allow over a billion people to live in conditions of extreme poverty, and allow 35,000 children to die each day of entirely preventable causes?"

With these words, the leading environmental activist on the planet challenges the world's religious faiths — and most clearly the Abrahamic faiths, including Christianity. We are challenged to take the lead in changing our past commitment to a consumer culture, one which is rapidly depleting the world's resources and putting at risk not only the future of our children, but of all life on Earth.

The WSSD conference in Johannesburg, calling the nations of the world into account for their performance in the decade since the Earth Summit in Rio, finds the present administration of the United States not only refusing to join the rest in planning for the future by seriously addressing the issues of environmental stewardship and eco-justice. In fact, at this crucial moment, the U.S. government is engaged in an active effort to undo the progress made in our country over decades of growing awareness of an environmental crisis that originates in unrestrained economic growth.

At a time when the United States should build on the positive steps of the past and lead the nations of the world forward into a responsible future, we are instead returning to an irresponsible and backward stance towards the limited resources of the Earth.

Recognizing the growth of a consumerist drive in all the nations of the Earth, UNEP has turned to the religious community to offer the ethical and spiritual leadership so lacking in the political leaders of the industrial West. It is fortunate that in the years since the Rio Earth Summit, consciousness has grown in the religious community of the spiritual dimensions of the ecological crisis. But it has yet to penetrate our religious institutions, financially dependent as they have been on the business and political systems that drive consumerism and unrestrained economic growth.

What is called for is an expanded theological and ethical view of the created order, that extends concepts of justice to embrace not only the human race but the web of life itself. Such a view is proposed by some theologians and ethicists in a groundbreaking book, Christianity and Ecology (Harvard University Press, 2000), edited by Dieter T. Hessel and Rosemary Radford Ruether. It summarizes the proceedings of one of a series of conferences on world religions and ecology held at Harvard in the late 1990's — in part a response to the challenge of the Rio Earth Summit.

In the conclusion to this volume, Ruether suggests that two traditions which contain potential for such an approach may be found in the covenantal and sacramental dimensions of biblical theology. She describes the evolution, first, of the covenantal tradition in Judaism — suggesting that in early Jewish law the ethical demand of responsible stewardship was reflected in the concepts of sabbath and jubilee. She traces the political evolution of the covenant tradition through the protestant reformation as it underlies the development of modern constitutional government.

Ruether goes on to suggest that our times call for a logical extension of that tradition to recognize the ecological responsibility of the human race. She writes "What is needed is a new inter-connection of the ethics of the individual and the ethic of the community, and the extension of that (covenantal) ethic beyond the human individual and group to the biosphere in which all living things cohere on the planet." (p.610)

Then, noting the dualism that has denied the tradition's original belief in the sacramental nature of matter, Ruether calls for a recovery of an incarnational understanding of the created order. We are, she suggests, a "cosmic community," and the linking of Jesus as the Christ with that community permeates the Gospel of John and the writings of Paul. She concludes, "Re-claiming the dynamic interaction of the covenantal and sacramental traditions is central to a renewed understanding of Christian redemptive hope as encompassing eco-justice." (p.612)

The current environmental crisis calls upon all of the great world faiths to rediscover the roots of their traditions in the source of life itself — the dynamics that govern an evolving universe and the beauty and complexity of beings of the Planet Earth. Judaism and Christianity, with their covenantal and sacramental traditions, can offer much to the dialogue which is needed to change the course of destruction that has been chosen by the human race.

The burden lies especially on the religions of the West — and, I would suggest, on Christianity in the United States of America — to challenge our leaders on the issues to be raised by UNEP at Johannesburg. Unrestrained economic growth and unsustainable development need to be seen as the cardinal sins of this century.

This time around, the Anglican Communion will be well represented at the major World Summit on Sustainable Development. Led by the Rev. Canon Jeff Golliher, Canon for Environment Justice & Community Development at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City and assistant to the Anglican Observer at the UN, members of our denomination will meet in Johannesburg for the week preceding the Summit. They will join with thousands of other members of the NGO community to voice their support for a new and dynamic commitment to environmental stewardship and eco-justice.

It is time for the dioceses and parishes of the Episcopal Church to look beyond the petty internal squabbles that have limited our vision and deafened us to the voice of God calling to us through the cry of the Earth, its biosphere and its species. The Christ of Creation meets us again in the twenty-first century, urging us to vision and action in the service of a justice based on compassion for human beings as part of the web of life, and for the planet Earth itself.

The Rev. Franklin E. Vilas, D.Min. is a retired Episcopal priest living in Lakewood, New Jersey. He was a founder of the Episcopal Environmental Network and of the New Jersey interfaith group Partners for Environmental Quality, Inc. Skip serves on an UNEP interfaith advisory committee, and may be reached by email at RevFVilas@aol.com