“Deus, Dominus,
Dominance”
Lynn White Jr.
published in 1967, in the magazine “Science”, an article entitled “The
Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis”. This article proved to be a game
changer and effectively opened the field of religious ecology that is blooming
today. In this essay I am going to explore this article and the implications of
White’s thesis. I will then explain how this constituted a break in the
scholarship in what concerns religious studies. And last I will explore what
could be possible steps for the future in what concerns this courtship of
religious sciences and ecology and how it may evolve, giving the study of
ecology of religion today a central role both in academia as well as in the
political policy arena.
In
1967 the Vietnam War was ragging, the Cold War and nuclear warfare preparations
were at their peak, in the United States reactions with race riots and the
Flower Children were springing. It was a time when, in a conflict between the
lumber industry and citizens who wanted to protect redwood forests, Ronald
Reagan as governor of California took the position that large redwood forests
were not necessary; at one meeting he said, "If you've seen one redwood
tree, you've seen them all." It was a time when the abuse and destruction
of nature was coming into focus and it was during that time that White
published an opinion that in order to address the impeding ecological crisis
humans first need to examine their relationship and attitudes towards nature.
“No creature other than man has ever managed to foul its nest in such short
order.” White claimed that Christianity was the most anthropocentric religion
the world has seen. “Christianity in absolute contrast to ancient paganism and
Asia’s religions, not only established a dualism of man and nature but also
insisted that it was God’s will to exploit nature for his proper ends.” And
while “in antiquity every tree, every spring, every hill had its own genius
loci, its own guardian spirit” Christianity replaced animism with the cult of
Saints. These beliefs upset the balance and made it possible to exploit nature,
to dominate in the name of Dominus. “Man’s relationship to the soil was
profoundly changed. Formerly man had been part of nature; now he was the
exploiter of nature.” Moreover the technological revolution that had given
dominance of the Western World over the rest of the people was portrayed by
White as an offspring of the Judeo-Christian belief[1] that God gave dominion of the Earth to man.
“By the end of the 15th century the technological superiority of
Europe was such that its small, mutually hostile nations could spill out over
the rest of the world, conquering, looting, colonizing.” White’s thesis was
effectively that “Christianity bears a huge burden of guilt for America’s
degraded environment.” “the triune of capitalism, science and technology had
become gods unto themselves, the masters of society rather than the servant of
humanity”
White’s paper
had implications far outreaching his expectations. Traditional scholarship up
to this point with its colonialist heritage had been ignoring the issue of the
environment. The fact that “Science Journal” had published a paper linking
science to religion was a breakthrough in itself. Religious scientists and
theologians alike took an active interest in the topic of the relationship of
religion and science. Shelvey (2001) asserts that “the assumption that linked
Christian principles to anti-environmentalism was illustrated well by the way
in which Christian responded to the ideological conflict over the Earth and
humanity’s place on it.” “Immediately after White’s paper a burgeoning of
Christian scholarship” emerged and Christian theologians made it a point to
show a green image of the Church.
“Since the 1850 Christians had been largely unconcerned with the environment
and had utilized a misinformed theology developed in medieval times to exploit
and degrade God’s good creation” In parallel in the 1960s First Nations claimed
their union with nature, and Native American spiritual ecology, aided by the
limitations that they imposed upon themselves for the sake of nature, became
“familiar symbols for young environmentalists movements. “Bear People”, “Fish
Nations”, “Mother Eart” became the first environmentalist groups to promote
ideas of utopian original societies, to show the alternative to the Christian
norm. Buddhist, Taoism, Confucianism followed in the footsteps to promote their
ideals of a peaceful symbiosis with nature.
The last
significant new development that originated with White’s paper is that, as the essay concluded, our
attitudes toward nature are rooted in our religious beliefs. White expressed
his conviction, "What people do about their ecology depends on what they
think about themselves in relation to things around them. Human ecology is
deeply conditioned by beliefs about our nature and destiny -- that is, by
religion.” More importantly he gave a staggering new direction by stating: “I
personally doubt that disastrous ecologic backlash can be avoided simply by
applying to our problem more science and more technology…. More science and
more technology are not going to get us out of the present ecologic crisis
until we find a new religion, or rethink our old one.” Specifically he suggests
for the Western Christian Church to consider the staggering example of one of
its favorite Saints, Saint Francis of Assisi, and the Franciscan order ideals.
Pope Francis, who took the name of the Saint to honor Him, today is a prime
candidate to show the world the revamping of the Catholic Church’s relationship
to nature and in fact he does just that. White notes that the Eastern Orthodox
Christian Church had always held a view of appreciation of nature and its
beauty.
Other defenders, many Christians including
former Vice President Al Gore are exploring ways to defend the environment and
heal the relationship with the Church. Al Gore, who states “my own faith is
rooted in the unshakable belief in God as creator and sustainer, a deeply
personal interpretation of and relationship with Christ”, in his book Earth in the Balance shows that the true
message of Genesis is the Union with nature. Human stewardship of creation is a
central theme in the Genesis stories of creation "God saw everything that
had been made and indeed, it was very good." (Gen 1:31). Al Gore adds ““The
transformation of the way we relate to the earth will of course involve new
technologies, but the key changes will involve new ways of thinking
about the relationship itself” Prominent politicians are
rethinking the relationship of “Earth”, “Science and Technology” and of
“Religion” and in that sense the hope is that the exploration of this new field
of religious ecology would spring a new era for how we perceive our
relationship to our planet.
In conclusion the article that White wrote in
1967 brought to the forefront of scientific and religious studies fields alike
the possibility for a new and rich symbiosis. It was a clear innovation in the
scholarship and it provided the starting point for new fields of inquiry. The
new and exciting field of ecotheology and ecological religious science are
bringing together religious environmental ethics, Eastern Belief Systems, Pagan
Nature Worship, and others, and they are giving rise to new frontiers in
religious evolutionary biology, ecological anthropology, and ecological
sociology. Today we are re-examining the nature of God, God’s relationship to
the World and humanity’s place in the Earth complex and fragile ecosystem.
References
Gore,
Al (1992) Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit Rodale Press
Shelvey,
Bruce (2001). Christian Thought in the Age of Ecology: Historical Roots of a
Religious Crisis. Historical Papers.
White,
Lynn Jr., “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis” Science 155: (10
March 1967): 1203-120
[1]I would like to add here that
White differentiates the gentler artistic approach that the Eastern Orthodox
Church of Byzantium took so it was not Christianity per se nor the message of
Jesus that was the root of this proposed arrogance, it was the interpretation
of the message by the Western catholic and later protestant churches. Of course
that made Byzantium vulnerable to the Western expansion as was seen with the
Crusades, that is the topic for another paper.
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