Wow – it’s my sixth blog post since I started!
This week, we’re going to be looking at something close to my heart – Christian environmentalism.
As Christians, we believe that God created everything, including us as the crowning glory of creation. We also believe that humans were placed in charge of and responsible for the rest of creation.
“God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.””
Genesis 1:28, New International Version
On the surface level, the English translation of the primary verse used to justify an anthropocentric worldview appears to promote human subjugation of the Earth. Unfortunately, as historian Lyn White Jr. writes in his paper The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis, the anthropocentric – man-centred – interpretation of the creation story by Western Christianity established humankind’s dominance over and ‘separateness’ from anything else, leading to an indifference towards the exploitation of nature, and quite possibly, part of the reason for our ecological crisis since the boom of the Industrial Revolution.
However, there is an alternative view in Christianity that challenges this. Christian environmentalism, termed creation care, promotes a view that humans were not given ownership over the Earth, but rather stewardship, and should be actively working to protect and care for God’s creation.
This view isn’t new – in fact, many early Christians did care for the environment, such as William Wilberforce, a founding member of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) and St Francis, who is today the Catholic saint of ecology.
It warms my heart to know that this movement is once again on the rise! In the US, the Evangelical Environmental Network has been active in defending environmental legislation and advocating for climate action since the 1990s, and the World Council of Churches (WCC), of which most major denominations in Singapore are a part of, announced in 2014 that it would divest from fossil fuels. Around the world, the Lausanne Creation Care Network empowers Christians and churches to take climate action. In the summer of 2016, Pope Francis published a 176-page encyclical arguing for urgent climate action and continues to call for people and governments to act on our climate crisis.
“Climate change is a problem which can no longer be left to our future generations. I would like all men and women of goodwill in this great nation to support the efforts of the international community to protect the vulnerable in our world.”
Back at home, the movement has been largely ground-up and small-scale, with change happening at the level of individual churches. There are organisations such as the Singapore Centre for Global Missions, which helps combat desertification in Inner Mongolia, that also do great work. Additionally, theological colleges in Singapore also have modules on creation care.
However, the National Council of Churches in Singapore has remained silent about our environmental crisis, and there has not been a coordinated effort to change church policies to be greener or educate congregations on our climate crisis.
As a Christian, I find this terribly disappointing – the Church has the people, the money, the soft power – and yet there has not even been a statement calling upon adherents to care more for the environment, even as our climate crisis affects many of the marginalised peoples that we seek to care for?
Hopefully, ground-up efforts will soon evolve into systemic change for both greater environmental awareness and greater environmental action.
See you next week!
-Dennis
It seems to me that there is not much focus on environmental issues in the local Christian community. However, I am not a Christian and therefore do not know much of what is going on in the Church. I would like to know if there are any initiatives done at churches to support environmental sustainability as the church seems like an easy place to start these initiatives. If not, what are some of the challenges that are dissuading people from stepping forward?
Hi Minyu! Sorry for the late reply. There are some initiatives done in certain churches: recently, I learnt of Katong Presbyterian Church where they have a community garden to promote an appreciation for nature in church members, as well as a zero-disposable policy when it comes to refreshments served. Even more impressive is how they managed to keep their recent renovation quite eco-friendly through purchasing second-hand furniture and repurposing old pews into new bookshelves and furniture for their church!
This is not common, however. Unfortunately, there is a lot of red tape to go through in many churches – especially larger ones – as church governance is strict to make sure that they avoid controversy, and that what is done in the name of the church does not go against Christian values. Additionally, church members only go to church once a week, and therefore having to meet up with others is also a slower process than say, the workplace.