The Power of Conscience, an Advance in Consciousness

What is holding us back in our actions and attitudes toward environmental protection, the climate emergency, and ecojustice? Why are many Christians stuck in conventional attitudes and theologies that don’t connect with the climate crisis? Why is climate denial still so widespread? 

Such questions demand attention. The future of life itself is at stake. Will the next climate disaster—flood, fire, drought—finally be the one that awakens us to the scale of action needed? Is our materialist lifestyle so precious to us that “the American way of life is not up for negotiation,” as George H. W. Bush said in 1992 to delegates from more than 100 nations at the first U.N. Earth Summit conference in Rio?

Twenty years later, in 2012, as climate extremes multiplied, the head of the United Nations Environment Programme, Achim Steiner, challenged the assembled U.N. delegates: “If these trends continue governments will preside over unprecedented levels of damage and degradation. Earth systems are being pushed towards their biophysical limits.” 

What will be the condition of the world our children inherit? What will we feed them if we destroy the ecosystems on which agriculture depends? In short, we can’t nurture healthy people on a sick planet.

This is already happening. It is particularly worrisome as we move toward the precipice of overshoot on all measurable tipping elements, overburdening nature’s capacity to regenerate itself. These are identified by the Potsdam Institute on Climate Impact Research, the largest climate research center in the world, in the institute’s regular reports on Planetary Boundaries. 

Where to Now?

A stark question arises for Christians and other believers: Is the survival of our denominations and churches more important than the survival of the Earth Community itself? Sheer self-preservation appears to be a preoccupation of many congregations in the United States as they lose membership or retreat into insular disputes. What of their moral leadership on environmental issues and climate change?

Some churches discourage any mention of climate change in sermons or liturgies, in order to avoid “politics.” But climate isn’t simply a political issue. It is an issue of survival—of food, water, health, and the lives of children. What will be the condition of the world our children inherit? What will we feed them if we destroy the ecosystems on which agriculture depends? In short, we can’t nurture healthy people on a sick planet. This is beyond politics. This is a life issue.

Here is how the noted environmentalist David Orr formulates the challenge:

For all of our successes, and they are many, and for all of our considerable efforts, and they are admirable, humankind is losing the effort to save a decently habitable planet. The immediate causes include rapid climate destabilization, ocean acidification, and the loss of biodiversity, all driven by the expanding human footprint. With determination and effort, some damage is repairable in a timescale that matters, but much of it is irreversible. As much as one wishes it were otherwise, it is not.[1]

Conviction Against the Odds

Even so, many of us still hold to the aspiration that Christian and other religious communities can make a difference. How? By the power of moral conviction against all odds. I’ve seen for myself in the last four decades the difference it can make. 

With 2.4 billion Christians in the world, a quarter of the world’s population, their influence is potentially decisive, as it was in the abolitionist movement to end slavery in the 19^th century. We are in a similar moment of truth, the necessity of liberating the Earth and ourselves from our enslavement to extractive industrial processes and incessant burning of fossil fuels. We already have the encouraging evidence of the growth of ecotheology—in the writings of theologians (see the notable series of 27 books on ecology-and-justice themes published by Orbis Books), the increasing number of conferences, and statements from Christian denominations, including a major encyclical letter on the environment, Laudato Si’, from Pope Francis. It is clear that his successor, Pope Leo, is continuing leadership in this effort, committing the papal residence Castel Gandolfo to hosting programs on ecojustice. Thus a widespread religious movement for ecojustice has been sparked by these writings, supporters, and activists. 

Patience and Tenacity

But we know this liberating process will be decades in the making, and victories will inevitably be followed by defeats. As history shows, Gandhi drew on his Hindu commitment to nonviolence, and his example spread—to Martin Luther King Jr., the Dalai Lama, and others. It took many years for Gandhi and his nonviolent movement to liberate India from British rule, and it is taking generations to undo the effects of slavery in the U.S. But once unleashed, a moral force has an unstoppable trajectory for change making. 

The tenacity of religious leaders in the civil rights movement like Dr. King was a great inspiration to so many of us. During my college years in Washington, D.C., in the late 1960s, I went to many demonstrations. I worked on the first Poor People’s Campaign that King and others organized in D.C. in 1968. I was at their headquarters in inner city D.C. on April 4, 1968, when I heard shouts surrounding the building. I rushed outside to see people weeping with anger and disbelief as the news spread of King’s assassination. With rioting and fires breaking out around me, I began walking toward the Capitol building. There I witnessed armored tanks and troops moving to barricade the Capitol. I was dumbfounded. Across the country our cities exploded with rage at King’s death.

So Many Upheavals

Despite this unspeakable loss of a remarkable leader who was dedicated to the moral arc of change, the Poor People’s Campaign went forward and took place with encampments on the National Mall later that summer. This movement has been revived by the powerful leadership of the Rev. William Barber here at Yale.

What for me was crucial was to witness this moral conviction of so many of the civil rights leaders, namely John Lewis, Ralph Abernathy, and Jesse Jackson, as well as King. The civil rights movement was certainly about legislation, voting rights, and integration. But behind this was a powerful, palpable moral appeal for justice. This force ignited and sustained the tireless dedication of supporters for equity in jobs, education, and political participation that is still ongoing. And other religious leaders joined the movement, like Rabbi Abraham Heschel, marching with King in Selma in 1965.

During that same period I worked against the tragedy of the Vietnam War, attending many demonstrations in downtown D.C. At one such protest at the Pentagon I was overcome by tear gas along with others. But we persisted, and the protest movement was soon joined by many religious peace activists, such as the Catholic Worker movement inspired by Dorothy Day. In the summer of ’68 I saw the disruption of the Democratic Convention in Chicago and the indiscriminate beating of hundreds of students and protestors. Could politics really change things? I kept trying. I worked on Eugene McCarthy’s campaign 1968 for peace in Vietnam and then George McGovern’s campaign 1972 against Richard Nixon. When Nixon was re-elected, I resolved to visit Asia and seek regeneration after so many upheavals. 

Going to Asia

I went to Japan from 1973-1974 to teach at a woman’s university in Okayama. There I began studying Zen Buddhism to regain my balance after the ordeals of the ’60s. When President Nixon resigned in August 1974, I knew I could come home again. And so I did, traveling though East and South Asia for months en route back to the U.S.

In my travels I realized that the Asian religions had something important to contribute to our understanding of cultural attitudes that value nature. There I recovered my sense that the deep insight and moral force of religions could make a difference in respecting and protecting the environment. My conviction was that these religious worldviews and ethics could contribute to sustained change for our shared planetary future. 

Meeting Thomas Berry 

During this period in Japan I read the essays of cultural historian and Catholic priest Thomas Berry (1914-2009) and absorbed his remarkable perspective on the contributions of both Asian and western religious traditions toward a more flourishing future. I wrote to him about his book on Buddhism, and the miracle of my life is that he wrote back. When I returned home in 1975, I went to meet him at his Riverdale Center for Religious Research along the Hudson River. I remember everything about that day, especially the sunlight shining over the New Jersey Palisades across the river. 

He became my teacher, and I never looked back. With his understanding of the comprehensive evolutionary insights of the Jesuit paleontologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, I could resituate my own Christian commitments as part of a larger story of the universe. Teilhard hoped to inspire the human energy needed for the great work of the flourishing of our Earth Community.

Berry’s articulation of our impending environmental crisis was prescient in the 1980s. He brought an ecological awareness to all who gathered for the monthly talks we organized for 15 years at the Riverdale Center. A new integration of religion and ecology was seeded along the Hudson with Berry’s energy and insights. 

It was at Fordham University that I met John Grim: we were students of Thomas Berry in the history of religions program that he had established. Berry married us, and we worked closely with him for more than 30 years, editing and publishing his essays. Without the breadth of Berry’s teachings in the world’s religions, including indigenous traditions, we would not have been able to imagine the religion and ecology project that John and I and others would later organize.

We were especially motivated by the prospect that as China and India modernized, the environmental consequences would intensify. We felt that China and India could draw on their own rich religious traditions for environmental ethics to balance the dilemma of economic growth and environmental protection.

With this in mind, and with Berry’s help, we organized the Harvard series on World Religions and Ecology. This consisted of 10 conferences (1996-1998) and 10 books (1997-2004), with the participation of nearly 1,000 people. These dedicated theologians, historians of religions, and environmentalists, along with new generations of visionaries and practitioners, is solidifying a new field of study that is now found in more than 30 graduate programs, stirring new ethical responses to climate change and environmental degradation. It was at the culminating conference at the United Nations in 1998 that we founded the Forum on Religion and Ecology and brought this to Yale in 2006. Indispensable to all of this was foundation support for more than 30 years initiated by Martin Kaplan.

Facing a Historic Human Crisis

Despite many setbacks en route, this movement is only intensifying, because the next generation is committed to this confluence of ecology and ethics. This is evident in the 30 alumnae interviews we have assembled involving Yale graduates in religion and ecology who share their inspiring stories about the work they are doing. There is much still to be done, and that is the special challenge of the study of religion and ecology at Yale Divinity School and Yale School of the Environment. With dedicated leadership these programs will flourish. And with the new Living Village at YDS, there will be further impetus to expand both the academic field and the social movement behind religion-and-ecology commitments. 

Other examples of this moral passion abound among interreligious groups whether national and international. In the U.S., Interfaith Power and Light groups are in 40 states and 22,000 congregations. In Connecticut there is also the Interreligious Eco-Justice Network. Internationally, EcoPeace Middle East is working to create the ground for lasting peace, especially around water issues. The Interreligious Rainforest Initiative, involving the UN Environment Programme and the Norwegian government, highlights the voices of Indigenous peoples as guardians of the rainforests. 

There are many religious groups (Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim) around the world currently involved in forest protection and tree planting, river restoration and biodiversity conservation, divestment from fossil fuels and increasing alternative energy. These groups will continue to grow as the problems become ever more urgent.

The year he invited us to Yale, Gus Speth, the dean at the Yale School of the Environment at the time, said at a conference: “I used to think the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy. To deal with those issues we need a spiritual and cultural transformation—and we lawyers and scientists do not know how to do that.”[2]

In short, we have the science, policy, law, ecological economics, and technology to make the changes to ensure a flourishing future, but we still don’t have the full moral imperative. That is where Christianity and all the world’s religions can make a difference in facing our urgent environmental challenges—the greatest that humans have ever faced. Let’s continue to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice, as King urged us to do.

Mary Evelyn Tucker directs the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology with her husband, John Grim. The Forum is an international project that sponsors conferences, publications, and a website, exploring religious worldviews, texts, and ethics to broaden understanding of environmental concerns. See also their multimedia project Journey of the Universe with evolutionary philosopher Brian Thomas Swimme, drawing on the work of historian of religions Thomas Berry. Their newest website and project is Living Earth Community.