Isn’t it heartening to hear evangelical leaders, who represent some of the core constituents of the White House, speaking prophetically regarding environmental issues? They have spurred hope that significant policy changes could help turn the tide on environmental exploitation.
Presbyterians of deep memory know that these developments have been a long time in coming.
Back in the ’50s and ’60s a few individuals in our faith community began speaking out on ecology. Spouting obscure scientific data and poetic Scripture verses being interpreted literally, those voices sounded to many like an inconvenient disruption of our true mission.
“Don’t they know that God gave us authority over all the earth in the Dominion Covenant, you know, ‘Be fruitful, multiply, replenish the earth, and subdue it’?”
“Don’t they know that the Protestant Reformation led to the Industrial Revolution and all the prosperity it generated, praise be to God?”
Folks like Holmes Rolston III were undeterred. A graduate of Davidson College, Union Theological Seminary (Va.) and the University of Edinburgh, he served as pastor of Walnut Grove Church in Bristol, Va. from 1958-67. His undergraduate studies in physics and mathematics tugged at him, so he took a masters degree in the philosophy of science in 1968 and joined the faculty of Colorado State University.
He began floating the idea of a “theology of ecology,” which was nowhere to be found in Barth’s Dogmatics! Professional journals rejected his writings until, finally, in 1975, Ethics published his essay, “Is There an Ecological Ethic?” In 1979 he co-founded a journal, Environmental Ethics, birthing a whole new field of study. Thirty-five years after beginning this venture he received the 2003 Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries About Spiritual Realities.
At the start his ideas were deemed too eccentric and outside the Tradition to be taken seriously by the larger body of believers.
Welcome to the world of Reformata, Semper Reformanda.
We Presbyterians spout often that great motto, which is best translated, “Reformed, always to be reformed.” But we forget the tension that it has created for us. On the one hand we are Reformed: rooted, grounded, and established in the teachings of the 16th century Reformation. On the other hand, we are Being Reformed: We know that we always need to be better informed by new understanding.
This motto seems to have been launched by Jesus’ upper room discourse, when he promised to send to the Apostles the Comforter/Advocate. This “Spirit of truth” (John 14:17) will tether you to the truths already revealed, i.e., “remind you of all that I have said to you” (14:25) and “will testify on my behalf” (15:26), as Jesus said. That same Spirit will lead you into learning new things, i.e., “will teach you everything” (14:25), “guide you into all the truth” and “will declare to you the things that are to come” (16:12).
The tension of living between the known and the unknown, between the anchor and sail, does confuse us. Our public relations department would love us to be either reformed–speaking no uncertain sound! — or reforming–the great inventors of all things new! Ah, Presbyterian life would flow smoothly if only we would choose between those two options.
But those two commitments do generate the right answer at times. In particular, our resident ecological pastor/reformer, Holmes Rolston III, has become known as the father of environmental theology. His idea rubbed off on the rest of us when in 1990 our General Assembly adopted the policy paper, “Restoring Creation for Ecology and Justice.” That was followed by policies titled, “Hazardous Waste, Race and the Environment” (1995) and “Toward a Just and Sustainable Human Development” (1996).
Sad to say, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Environmental Justice Office, which was created in 1988, sits empty today due to budget cutbacks. Hopefully the newly restructured Office of Mission will find a way to continue to lead us all into understanding that the “Dominion Covenant” is better termed “The Stewardship of Creation” covenant.
— JHH
