Who Speaks For Owls,
Trees and Human Needs?
The Church
and Environmental Advocacy
by Michael Isensee
A group of individuals sits around a conference room table. Posters typifying oak forest vegetation and marine estuaries line the wall. The discussion is centered on the revitalization and restoration of one of the most abused and often overlooked parts of God's creation - urban streams. One person asks a question.
"How are we going to connect an Urban Watershed Restoration Act to the bigger picture of environmental justice for our nation's urban areas? We have to address abandoned buildings, contaminated sites, lead poisoning, and the targeting of these areas for waste facilities and polluting industries."
This voice is not someone working for an environmental organization ...or a civil rights group. This is the voice of a member from a Washington, DC faith community who is addressing environmental issues on behalf of the church.
Despite a low profile, churches have been raising concerns about environmental degradation for nearly 25 years. The American Lutheran Church (ALC) first adopted a social statement titled The Environmental Crisis in 1970. Twenty-three years later, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) has just adopted its own statement which calls Lutherans to care for creation with a vision of hope and justice for all that God has made. Caring for creation involves the totality of how one lives, and calls us to make individual changes which reduce our impact on the earth, the earth which God created and has declared to be "very good" (Genesis 1:31, NRSV).
But caring for creation is also a call for communities at the local, regional, national and global levels to focus collectively on the ways humans impact creation. The impact of humans on the earth has created a world where one child in five lives in poverty in the United States; the loss of family farms continues at an alarming rate; 4.4 pounds of garbage, often resources that have not been used wisely, pass through the average US citizen's hands each day; 55 percent of African American children who live in poverty are also lead poisoned; extinction of species is occurring with ever-increasing frequency around the world.
All these issues are vitally connected with caring for God's creation. Creation is not just the earth, the water,s the air and the non-human species that live around us. Creation also includes humans, the adam created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-29, NRSV). Environmental groups have been criticized in recent years for ignoring the human aspect of the environment, and rightly so. In order for humanity to address adequately the crisis in creation today, we must assure protection for all that God has created. Realizing this does not make the task of envisioning a future simple or easy. The issues are complex and the goals must be long-term, but time to act is short.
The ELCA statement on the environment, Caring for Creation, Vision, Hope and Justice sets forth principles of justice on which relationships between people and with all of creation should be based. In order to incorporate justice through these four principles - participation, solidarity, sufficiency and sustainability - the church needs prophets who will speak to both the church and society. Like prophets in the past, today's prophets must be willing to risk ostracism and ridicule for living out new models of right relationship which keep and sustain both God's people and God's creation.
Prophets exist in churches today and are taking risks, living in new ways (which often reflect ancient and even biblical wisdom), and others are joining them. These "prophets" are leading synods and congregations as they strive to embrace new ways of stewardship - through energy audits, community-supported gardens and farms, recycling and composting programs, and international (and domestic) development programs which are based on principles of sustainability.
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Every day, 3,5000 acres of rural USA is bulldozed to make way for new highways and buildings. -- American Demographics |
However, many people in the church, even many of these prophets, have not yet become involved in the task of advocacy. Proverbs calls us to "...speak out for those who cannot speak, for the rights of all the destitute. Speak out, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy" (Proverbs 31:8-9, NRSV). It is widely recognized that the homeless, the hungry and the sick may not be able to speak for themselves. But what about the trees? The owls? The water? All that is sick and dying because of our polluting ways? Who will speak for them? Who will speak for the needs of many when too often decision-makers only hear from a select few?
The ELCA's social statement on the environment calls us all to speak and act - or advocate - on behalf of creation. The church encourages full participation in decision-making through voting and communicating with elected representatives in government. People who care about a local stream, a parcel of prairie or the health effects of an incinerator in their neighborhood, bring to lawmakers a perspective they rarely experience themselves or hear about in the halls where decisions about our future are made.
In Washington, DC and in 17 states, the ELCA has offices which follow legislation that affects issues the church has formally addressed in social statements, memorial and other messages. People in these offices work to ensure that governmental policies are just and help to serve all who do not have an adequate voice in our governmental systems. By attending meetings and hearings on legislation, reading background materials and interpreting legislation, the people in these offices assess whether to advocate for or against (or remain silent on) specific legislative proposals .They then meet with governmental officials to discuss these positions. They also communicate these positions to the larger church, working to involve others in the public policy advocacy of the ELCA.
Currently the environmental issues the ELCA lifts as special concerns are fourfold. First is the re-authorization of the Clean Water Act, the 1972 law that has a goal to eliminate the discharge of pollution to our nation's waters and make and keep all waters fishable and swimmable. Second is lead abatement, the elimination of lead-based paint in housing that is decaying and poisoning nearly 15 percent of all preschool-age children. Third is addressing issues of solid and hazardous waste through such vehicles as the re-authorization of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. This is a special concern of the faith community, as churches have been very active in raising the issue of environmental racism, or the disproportionate impact of environmental degradation on people of color. This disparate impact is especially true in areas of waste facilities and contaminated sites. The fourth area of concerns is the cleanup of contaminated sites through the re-authorization of the Superfund legislation.
Finally, while the specific issues above are priorities of the Washington, DC Lutheran Office for Governmental Affairs (LOGA), other issues, including endangered species and energy use, are also addressed by LOGA and the various state offices. These offices can be contacted for information about advocacy and for the ELCA's specific legislation, as well as to request inclusion on their mailing list.
Addressing environmental issues from a faith perspective gives a unique outlook on these concerns. We, as Christians, know we are in, but not of, the world. We recognize a Creator who made the entirety of the world and bestowed upon it processes and cycles that reflect unfathomable knowledge and wisdom. Environmentalists often talk of the environment as a web, where all things are connected. John Muir, the famous naturalist, stated, "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else" [John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra (Boston, 1911), 211].
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"Concerning changing our lifestyle to create a sustainable environment: there's a certain inertia in human behavior. I know I don't change my behavior. easily. I have to be hit with something again and again before I do it. People who smoke, for example, are very intelligent people, and they understand why they should stop smoking. But, because they are addicted, it's very difficult. Well, I think Americans are quite addicted to a consumptive lifestyle and it's difficult to think of a less consumptive way of life. "But it is possible to consume far less than we now do and be far happier than we are now. That's one of the exciting possibilities about creating a sustainable environment." --
Lester Brown |
The Bible reflects this ecological knowledge. To the people of Corinth, Paul writes that "the body does not consist of one member but many... the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable..." (1 Corinthians 12:14-26, NRSV). This wisdom not only applies to communities and cultures, but to the entire ordering of creation. Ecclesiastes states: "For the fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so does the other. They all have the same breath, and humans have no advantage of the animals..." (Ecclesiastes 3:19-29, NRSV).
Our unique perspective reminds us that we cannot simply protect a species but must protect the ecosystem. We cannot simply place our wastes where we do not want to see them, for we would then bury them in someone else's backyard. We cannot continue to let politics be used as an excuse not to feed the hungry or house the homeless, when we are the ones who vote for the politicians. Instead, we must reflect biblical wisdom and serve as prophets in the halls of lawmakers, asking for the support of legislation that will protect ecosystems, reduce the production of wastes, and provide shelter that is healthy and life-supporting for all. Our letters, phone calls, visits, discussions, testimony and education are acts of prophecy in this time of too little vision.
Ask those who represent you to have a vision that includes a healthy, safe and lasting environment for all of creation. And continue to pray for a time when it will be "on earth as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:10, NRSV).
Michael Isensee is the Technical Coordinator and Staff Director for Citizens for a Healthy Bay, located in Tacoma, Washington. He was previously a staff intern for Environmental Concerns at the Lutheran Office for Governmental Affairs (ELCA).