A Liberative Environmental Movement in the White Church?

By: Josh Richardson

Human systems that have been built upon domination, exploitation, and subjugation will eventually break and fail, and God can be found in their breaking. Throughout the Bible, from the creation stories in the Hebrew Scriptures to the New Testament letters written about how a new church should organize itself as subjects under the violent rule of a colonizing empire, that monumental truth about the relationship between humans, non-human creation, and God is woven into the fabric of every single story, song, and parable. In Exodus, alongside an enslaved people who have been forced to create the literal building blocks of an oppressive empire from mud and straw, God acts by supporting the forceful severing of the hierarchies created by Pharaoh, allowing the escape of the Israelites. During God’s rebuttal to Job’s complaints about the injustice of the world in the story of Job, God points to Behemoth and Leviathan as creatures beyond human control, challenging Job’s anthropocentric understanding of the universe where humans are in control of the cosmos and have the right and ability to dominate anything that they see fit. The Apostle Paul, writing to the church in Rome, denounced the ethnic, and economic hierarchies that were violently enforced by the agents of Caesar and promoted a church structure that subverted the hierarchies of Roman society with a radically egalitarian vision of how society should be structured. And Jesus, in the Christ Event of crucifixion/resurrection, overcame the final domination of death over life, providing a vision of the future to come where even the subjugation of death is removed by God. 

Yet, despite every warning and story within the scriptures that Christians hold sacred, many white churches continue to promote a society and worldview that reinforces a dominant oppression that characterizes white culture (the term white is being used to denote the lineage of culture and thought derived from medieval Europe which expanded into North America through colonization). White churches, for the most part, have not struggled with the legacy of genocidal colonial expansion in North America and the role missionaries played in the erasure of indigenous cultures after indigenous peoples were physically subjugated by the colonizing Europeans. White churches have not grappled with their promotion of slavery, the use of theology and scripture to support white-nationalist organizations in maintaining white hegemony through terrorist actions like lynchings, bombings, and mass shootings, or how the white church’s historical understandings of punishment have molded the criminal justice system leading to the opportunistic economic exploitation of marginalized communities through mass incarceration practices. And white churches have not even begun to understand how their promotion of humanity’s dominance over non-human creation is driving global ecosystems into collapse through the extinction of species and the literal changing of the chemical makeup of the air we breathe, leading to incredible suffering in the present and almost unfathomable suffering in the future for almost all living creatures on Earth.

In 1967, Lynn White Jr. published an article in Science titled “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis” arguing that the mindset of industrialization and subsequent domination over nature exhibited in white “civilization” (White, the author, uses the term Western instead of white but that term is fraught with colonialist overtones and has been used to support white supremacy) can be traced to the anthropocentric worldview espoused by the medieval European church. While White presupposes that white society is uniquely technologically advanced and that white Christianity is the most anthropocentric expression of religion (both assumptions are difficult to prove, discount numerous other human societies, and continue a colonialist mindset of white European exceptionalism), the author’s assertion (made over 50 years ago) that white Christianity’s anthropocentrism and domination are driving ecological collapse needs to be taken seriously, especially when thinking about climate change and biodiversity loss. 

Deep within the soul of the environmental movement at white churches is a mindset of domination and subjugation that is perpetuating the very harms to marginalized groups and non-human creation that the same movement is seeking to resolve. Community gardens are neatly constructed and designed to provide a source of local food and to highlight the potential of a world where community can become self-sustaining again. But their planting is often done without the consideration to how the fertilizer inputs, pesticides, and landform changes will impact the local ecosystems inside and outside of the gardens. Flowers grown in landscaping arrangements are curated for their aesthetic value to humans, reducing the wholeness, complexity, and depth of another living creature into an inanimate object whose only purpose is to be consumed by human gazes. Trees are planted as signs of commitment to a better world with no consideration for the health or natural habitat of the tree. Solar panels and green technologies are promoted and lauded for their value in reducing carbon dioxide emissions with little or no conversation around the destroyed ecosystems, scarred landforms, or forced human slavery created in the mining and refining of rare earth metals. In each case, a mindset of human and white supremacist domination clouds the decisions around how white churches should rightly interact with the world they claim to love.

To be clear, community gardens, tree planting ceremonies, appreciating the beauty of nature, and shifts to greener energy are not intrinsically evil (although there need to be more serious conversations around the effects of rare earth metal mining and the neoliberal colonialist impositions of environmental degradation in mining practices). In fact, each of these things can be positive forces or steps toward a more just and equitable future for all of creation. But these steps forward need to be conversations among all the affected parties, not just a select group of privileged humans who have the means to dominate everything else. Just as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. noted, “violence begets violence”, harking back to Matthew 26:52. Or, in this case, domination begets domination. Even actions that may be valuable, if done with a mindset and worldview of domination, will only lead to more domination. And that domination is driving the delicate balance of interconnected life on this planet into a series of cascading collapses observed when ecosystems fail under the weight of imbalance.

 For the white church, liberation from the mindset of dominance that is destroying the Earth is not something that can be paternalistically mandated by a denomination in a doctrinal statement of faith or theological treatise. It cannot be achieved by a church committee on environmental justice or through protests and marches. There is no way to legislate or regulate this form of liberation. And no amount of lamentation or hand wringing will bring about the necessary changes to prevent environmental collapse.  On an individual and community level, we need to completely repent from a lifestyle and mode of living that is steeped in the assumption of human supremacy. We need to abandon a white Christianity which conflates stewardship with subjugation and places human desires above everything else. Anything less will not solve our current climate and biodiversity crises and will ultimately lead to catastrophe.

Climate change and biodiversity loss will eventually break human domination over non-human creation, either through snowballing interconnected environmental systems failures that leave human systems broken and shattered or through the radical reconfiguring of global ecosystems where humans accept their role as members of a profoundly interconnected biosphere instead of its master. There is no third option because there is no way to sustainably continue humanity’s current trajectory into the future. Will the white church join with God in pushing for a more equitable world where humans are not dominating each other and all of creation? Or, will it be like Pharaoh and be forced to relinquish control only after a series of environmental disasters and the incredible suffering of human and non-human creation? I pray that we can repent, but I do not know. Either way, God’s work will eventually be done.

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Josh Richardson

is an environmental geologist, writer, and ecological thinker. Josh holds a Master of Science in Geological Sciences from Ohio University and a Master of Arts in Public Ministry from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. Josh is currently building an organization focused on helping religious organizations prepare emotionally, spiritually, and physically for climate driven agricultural shortfalls, climate change, and the upcoming climate refugee crisis in their communities. When not worrying about humanity’s understanding of the natural world, Josh enjoys writing, recording, and producing music, as well as playing board games with friends in a safe and socially distanced manner.