Faith In A Changing Climate. Chapter 1, Part 1.
We have completed the manuscript of the book Faith In A Changing Climate. We will release sections of the book in a series of posts at this site. The first part of Chapter 1 is provided below.
The following statement summarizes the goals of this book and the associated blow posts.
Enable people of faith to provide technically sound, spiritually-based leadership in a finite world.
The title of the book is ‘Faith in a Changing Climate’. The word ‘climate’ in this context refers not just to changes in weather patterns, but also to the fact that we are running into physical limitations in many other areas, particularly resource availability and biodiversity.
Most people, including many people of faith, believe in a world of constant material progress. That belief is being sorely tested ― new ways of thinking are called for.
We cannot have infinite material progress on a finite planet.
The themes that led to the development of the above statement include the following.
Climate change is a predicament, not a problem. Problems have solutions, predicaments do not. When faced with a predicament we can respond and adapt, but we cannot make it go away. Responses to the climate crisis such as the use of solar panels or the adoption of electric vehicles may slow down the rate of change, but they are not actual solutions. We cannot have our environmental cake and eat it. The good old days of ‘happy motoring’ are coming to an end.
In spite of all the conferences held, reports published and sermons preached, the climate is changing quickly and for the worse. We are experiencing ever more heat waves, floods, droughts and freak storms. Events such as these will become increasingly frequent and severe.
Climate change is linked with many other complex topics, including resource depletion, population increase (and decrease), biosphere destruction and an economic system that is based on infinite growth on a finite planet. Therefore, we need to be careful about taking actions that respond to the climate crisis in isolation ― some of those actions may turn out to be counter-productive. The Law of Unintended Consequences is always with us.
There has been very little effective leadership. This is because any politician or business leader who calls for sacrifice soon becomes an ex-politician or business leader.
Paul of Tarsus said that, “We see through a glass darkly”. None of us know what the future holds. But we do know that, if we continue on our current trajectory, the future is bleak.
The situation provides an opportunity for people of faith, and for the church overall, to provide badly needed leadership, and also to add a spiritual and moral component to the response; the church has done so in the past, and it and it can do it again. This being the case, the question becomes, ‘What form does that leadership take?’ There are many answers to that question. The only response that we can be sure of is that we will need to leave the ‘Church of Perpetual Material Progress’.
The situation provides an opportunity for people of faith, and for the church overall, to provide badly needed leadership, and also to add a spiritual and moral component to the response; the church has done so in the past, and it and it can do it again. This being the case, the question becomes, ‘What form does that leadership take?’ There are many answers to that question. The only response that we can be sure of is that we will need to leave the ‘Church of Perpetual Material Progress’.
The first step in developing a response is to work out a theology for the difficult and strange times in which we live. I have to tread lightly here — I am a chemical engineer, not a theologian. Therefore, anything I say to do with theology can only be in the form of suggestions for professional theologians and ordained clergy. However, being an engineer, I stress the importance of having a theology that fits within the bounds of the laws of physics, ecology and thermodynamics. Church leaders are not immune from wishful thinking and ‘greenwashing’.
Given this background, I have developed three guidelines that I hope church leaders will find useful in the coming years. They are,
Guideline 1 Understand physical realities,
Guideline 2 Accept and adapt, and
Guideline 3 Live within Gaia.
In his book Sacred Earth Sacred Soul John Philip Newell says,
Today we hear many voices denouncing the abuse of the environment. These are important voices, and it is imperative that we listen to them and their dire predictions of the catastrophes we are bringing on ourselves and future generations by continuing to wrong the earth. But these voices are always most powerful when the prophetically combine their condemnations of wrong with a call to love, a passionate anger at what is being done to the environment coupled inseparably with a passionate love for the earth. We need to live and speak both.
If we substitute the words ‘climate change’ for ‘environment’, those words apply to the message of this book.
There is no shortage of books, web sites, blog posts and social media posts that angrily denounce those who should be responding to the climate crisis. Far fewer of these publications offer a realistic path forward. And there are even fewer that offer realistic hope. (The word realistic crops up a lot in this book.)
What we attempt to do in this book is provide people of faith with suggestions as to how they can provide positive leadership and some degree of hope at a time when the consequences of our energy-profligate lifestyle are bearing down on us with increasing urgency.
Noah and His Ark
And the dove came back to him in the evening, and behold, in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth.
We start each chapter in this book with the name of a religious or secular leader who provided insights that help explain its contents. In this first chapter we start with the legend of Noah, whose story is told in Chapters 6 through 9 of the Book of Genesis. The fact that he and his family not only survived what we would now call a climate crisis, but was able to save many other species as well, gives us some hope for our current situation.
There are various flood stories in ancient literature, so what we read in Genesis is likely based on an actual event. For example, using texts that predate the Hebrew Bible by hundreds of years, Irving Finkel describes how a very large coracle was designed and possibly built by the Babylonians. It was constructed of rope, bitumen and wooden ribs (Finkel, The Ark Before Noah: A Great Adventure, 2016).
In the Biblical story God had created the world, and had given special authority and privileges to humans. But, after just ten generations, God regretted what he had done.
The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The LORD regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the LORD said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.”
‘Ten generations’ sounds ominous ― this is roughly 300 years. Yet, as we see in Chapter 4, we ourselves are coming to the end of a 300-year fossil fuel party. In the Noah story, God decided to destroy the wicked humans and all the other creatures of the natural world. That seems to be what is happening now, except that we seem to be the agents of destruction.
But then the Lord gave the people of that time another chance.
The Lord then said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation . . . Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.”
Following the flood, we are told that,
. . . The Lord said in this heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.”
This prophesy is one that we are doing our best to overturn. Climate change will not lead to the destruction of ‘every living creature’. But it will definitely lead to the extinction of many species ― indeed, it already has.
God also said to Noah and his sons,
Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth, and on every bird in the air, and on everything that creeps on the ground, and on all the fish of the sea: into your hand they are delivered.
By following this commandment so enthusiastically we have created today’s crises. It remains to be seen if a dove will come to us with freshly plucked olive leaf.
To summarize, the story of Noah has two lessons for us now. The first lesson is a positive one ― Noah and his family are warned by God that a great flood is on the way. Therefore, Noah builds a great ark to house his people, and also many other species of animals. That situation speaks to us in our time. We have been warned by non-divine authorities, such as the IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) that a great climate change is on the way. We have an opportunity and a responsibility to save ourselves and the natural world. Few of us have responded.
The second lesson is less positive. God gave Noah domination over other species, which has put us where we are now. We need to unlearn that lesson.