Religion & Eco-Theology: Humanity and Environment

Humankind should be concerned about the despoliation and degradation of human habitation and environment because each year, according to the World Bank 2013 report, three million people die prematurely from waterborne diseases: About 200,000 children under five die from diarrhea alone, and around 1.6 million people die from exposure to cooking stove smoke inside their homes (most victims are children and women from poor rural families who lack access to safe water, sanitation and modern household fuels):

A million people die from malaria, mostly in Sub-Saharan African countries. A million people die from urban air pollution. Respiratory infections, diarrhea and malaria account for more than 20% of deaths in developing countries, according to the World Health Organization’s Burden of Disease report. Pollution has greater consequences as it leads to destruction of fisheries; Crops are damaged; higher production costs rise for industries that must filter dirty air or water to maintain product quality; extreme weather events (tornados, floods, hurricanes) are occurring more frequently and affecting more people than ever before. In all these, poor and indigenous communities, people are the most vulnerable to environmental hazards just as people move to cities from rural areas, environmental problems will increase and the challenge of managing our environment with human values becomes more intense.

According to the 2012 report of the Africa Society, environmental problems constitute one of the key challenges on the African continent in the 21st century. Focus is gradually shifting from politics, wars, and poverty to environmental issues. This is mainly the result of the development of new technologies, which has generated an increase in solid mineral mining, oil exploration, an increase in the number of plants and factories, and the overall upsurge in the application of manufacturing tools.

The quality and richness of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine environments have been polluted and subsequently declined. It is therefore safe to say that new developments in industry and manufacturing are the root causes of environmental degradation over the past three decades. Rapid population growth, urbanization, energy consumption, overgrazing, over-cultivation of lands has exacerbated this, and industrial advancements engendered by globalization.

Environmental problems in Africa are therefore partly anthropogenic or human-induced, the result of the effect of selfish and corporate chemical and human wastes on all forms of ecological and human life. Natural causes as disruptive of environmental purity and harmony as anthropogenic. They consist of earthquakes (the Great Rift Valley is geologically active and particularly susceptible to this phenomenon), hot springs and active volcanoes are also found to the extreme east of the Rift Valley, erosion, deforestation, desertification, drought, and water shortages resulting from the dry season. The socioeconomic impact of environmental deterioration on Africa continues to pose a major problem to development, stability, and daily lifestyles. Africa has contributed to greenhouse gas emissions, responsible for global warming and the continent is the most vulnerable to the negative consequences.

 Other dire consequences of this particular environmental degradation include the depletion of farming lands, reduction of natural habitat for the survival of aquatic and land animals, Depletion in biological diversity (the variety of all life on earth, the complex relationships among living things, and the relationships between living things and their environment). Aquatic life pollution adversely affects the livelihood of fishing communities and destroys fish and other water creatures. Other negative impact includes water pollution caused by oil transmission through shipping ports, poor water resources management, gas flaring, oil pipeline vandalization by oil communities, Absence of effective national and regional basin development plans, and underestimation of the groundwater potential to supplement irrigation and drinking water supplies. On the other, land pollution, adversely affects the livelihood of farming communities. In summary, Environmental challenges are caused by many factors.

Eco-Theology:

Eco-theology is a form of constructive theology that focuses on the interrelationships of religion and nature, particularly in the light of environmental concerns. Eco-theology generally starts from the premise that a relationship exists between human religious/spiritual worldviews and the degradation of nature. It explores the interaction between ecological values, such as sustainability, and the human domination of nature.

The movement has produced numerous religious-environmental projects around the world. The burgeoning awareness of environmental crisis has led to widespread religious reflection on the human relationship with the earth. Such reflection has strong precedents in most religious traditions in the realms of ethics and cosmology and can be seen as a subset or corollary to the theology of nature. Christian eco-theology draws on the writings of such authors as Jesuit priest and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, process theologian Alfred North Whitehead, and is well represented in Protestantism by John Cobb, Jr. and Jurgen Moltmann and ecofeminist theologians Rosemary Radford Ruether, Catherine Keller, and Sallie McFague.

Creation theology is another important expression of eco-theology developed and popularized by Matthew Fox, the former Catholic priest. Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Buber, both Jewish theologians, have also left their mark on Christian eco-theology and provided significant inspiration for Jewish eco-theology. Hindu eco-theology includes writers such as Vandana Shiva. Seyyid Hossein Nasr, a liberal Muslim theologian, was one of the earlier voices calling for a re-evaluation of the Western relationship to nature.

Environmental Philosophy and Eco-theology Precedents in Religious Thought: Christianity has often been viewed as the source of negative values towards the environment, but there are many voices within the Christian tradition whose vision embraces the well-being of the earth and all creatures. While St. Francis of Assisi is one of the more obvious influences on Christian eco-theology, there are many theologians and teachers whose work has profound implications for Christian thinkers.

Many of these are less well known in the West because their primary influence has been on the Orthodox Church rather than the Roman Catholic Church. The significance of indigenous traditions for the development of eco-theology can also not be understated. Background: The relationship of theology to the modern ecological crisis became an intense issue of debate in Western academia in 1967, following the publication of the article, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis, ” by Lynn White, Jr., Professor of History at the University of California at Los Angeles.

In this work, White puts forward a theory that the Christian model of human dominion over nature has led to environmental devastation. In 1973, theologian Jack Rogers published an article in which he surveyed the published studies of approximately twelve theologians, which had appeared since White’s article. They reflect the search for “an appropriate theological model” which adequately assesses the biblical data regarding any relationship of God, humans, and nature. The philosophy of nature is interesting because nonhuman life is considered an important topic of discussion.

Two of the most exciting classical nature writers are Henry David Thoreau and John Muir. Fifty years apart and from opposite coastal lines and ranges, these two writers attempt to capture in words the electrifying intensity of the commercial commodification of Wild Nature with plenty of angst and even some naked bodily celebration, if not without some Puritan guilt. With the sudden realization that wild places were rapidly disappearing from the planet, a great concern for saving the wild occurred in the 1970s, but the traditions and theories highlighting the need to save wild things and wild places can be seen clearly in nature writers and nature philosophers in the 18th and 19th centuries. Ethical relationships with animals reach back much further, to the pre-Socratic thinkers. My aim is to examine the philosopher’s views of the environment vis á vis eco-theology. Eco-theology is a form of constructive theology that focuses on the inter-relationship of religions, especially Christianity, and nature, particularly in the light of human concerns.

Such relationship has strong precedence in most religious traditions in the realms of ethics and cosmology and can be seen as a subset of the philosophy of religion. It is important to keep in mind that eco-theology explores not only the relationship between religion and nature in terms of degradation of nature, but it also explores in terms of eco system management. In other words, it seeks not only to identify prominent issues within the relationship but also to outline potential solutions. This is very important because eco-theology argues that science and education are not enough to inspire change necessary in our current environmental crisis.

References

Rogers, J. (1973). “Ecological Theology: The Search for an Appropriate Theological Model.” Reprinted from Septuagesino Anno: Theologiche Opstellen Aangebsden Aan Prof. Dr. G. C. Berkower. The Netherlands: J.H. Kok.

White, L. Jr. (1971). “The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis.” Reprinted in A.E. Lugo & S.C. Snedaker (Eds.) Readings on Ecological Systems: Their Function and Relation to Man. New York: MSS Educational Publishing.

“Why Care for Earth’s Environment?” (in the series “The Bible’s Viewpoint”) is a two-page article in the December 2007 issue of Awake! Magazine. This represents the Bible’s viewpoint according to the viewpoint of Jehovah’s Witnesses.