Is Environmentalism Anti-Christian?
Jody Bottum thinks environmentalism is a Christianity without Christ:
An original innocence in a Garden of Eden? Check. The ruination of that paradise by human action? Check. A sinful human nature? A demand to change your life? A looming apocalypse? Check. Check. Check. A redemption?
Well, no, not that: There is no Christ in environmentalism. The heavenly paradise at the green end, like edenic paradise at the green beginning, can have no humans in it. But there’s a reason that environmentalism has clicked with so many. They don’t believe in Christ, but they still feel the Christian narrative of human history, and environmentalism is a moral tale that fits both those facts.
Yes, because there’s just nothing Christian at all about the demand for careful stewardship of non-human nature, is there? Elsewhere, David Schaengold slaps down Erin Manning’s similar claim that environmentalists hope for a human-free future and are quietly in favor of forced abortion and sterilization. And in other news, conservative Christians are secretly plotting to turn America into a theocracy, or hadn’t you heard that already?
P.S. Here is my plea to treat natural landscapes as more than, well, landscapes, and here is Roger Scruton in TAC on what a “righter shade of green” would look like.
Filed under: environment, religion
I have written three books against environmentalism, showing its true aims – Marxist and Fascist. this is obvious in its ‘non-human future’ ideas (itself an absurdity) and its frank genocide.
I have also just completed a criticism of the ‘Green Bible’ which will be published very soon.None of the contributors to the ‘Green Bible’ prove any link whatever between Bible and greens. They attempt to brainwash (the only word that seems apt) by constantly telling readers that the Bible contains green teachings – but I have found none!
All they are doing is spreading the usual green propaganda which is, as I have proved in my other books, Marxism and Fascism reborn. Which is why no genuine Christian can adopt green ideas.
Genuine Christians will always be good stewards, but God has never commanded us to look after the earth or inanimate objects. I found the ideas in the Green Bible frightening in their awful reliance on bad theology, itself based on the bad science of Gore, Blair, Obama and the IPCC.
The only reason many Christians follow the green path is that it is fashionable! It is about time they woke up and had a reality check.There is no science behind environmentalism. CO2 is NOT a pollutant; there is NO global warming, and climate change is within normal parameters. Green philosophy is totalitarian – follow it and you will lose your freedom, money and choice of energy! And kill millions in the process.
P.S.
I should also point out that true environmentalism hates Christianity, and wants to ‘kill it off’… so Christians being green is rather like cows being supporters of slaughter houses!
Greens are pushing hard for paganism – it runs like a poison river through their ideas. Transition Towns are gaining in popularity, and these also push paganism and all kinds of spiritualistic and cult/occult religion, but are silent on Christianity.
Al Gore began this nonsense by claiming that Christianity is responsible for all the green ills in the world! As I said – wake up and take a reality check before the green movement stomps all over you! They will only use you until they have full power. Then you will be dumped like toxic waste.
If you want details of my books contact me at http://www.christiandoctrine.net
Environmentalism is getting to be like evolution – one of those terms with a maximum amount of baggage and a minimum amount of precise definition. After all, no one is against “the environment” although many would like to change it (or their specific environment) in one way or another. Some environmentalist are in fact neo-pagan nature worshippers or worse still, simply anti-human. At the same time, as Pope Benedict never ceases to remind us, we have an obligation as Christians to be good stewards of the environment as we are obliged to care for any gifts God has given us.
Sorry, but equating environmentalism and Marxism is more than a bit like claiming that Christianity is just a dressed-up paganism; the commonalities are real and worthy of exploration, but in each case actually attending to the convictions of real-world (and present-day) environmentalists and Christians clearly belies any attempt at such a reductive analysis.
That’s true – and this was exactly the point I had in mind when I made the crack about social conservatives as closet theocrats. We insist on rejecting an uncharitable and overly simplistic identification in the one case, so why not do the same in the other?
I appreciate Scruton’s scrupulosity:“provided you understand that capital embraces many things that are not translatable into economic terms” in the way capital city is understood as metropolis (mater polis, mother city), that is capital is the stock of circumstance that sustains and nurtures us — proviant surfeits from harvested yields; acquired or inherited ‘techne’ skills and tools; enjoyment of imperturbability in place unimpinged by depradations of man or beast (war or disease).
Reminds me of Benedict XVI’s favored hermeneutic: ecology, the term he uses for our sense of “natural” or “green” issues actually predates (1870s) the more popular politically-correct one (1970s), (and thus possesses a greater “continuity”, in jest):
ECOLOGY 1873, coined by Ger. zoologist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) as Okologie, from Gk. oikos “house, dwelling place, habitation” (see villa) + -logia “study of.” Ecosystem is from 1935. Ecosphere (1953) is the region around a star where conditions allow life-bearing planets to exist.
ENVIRONMENT 1603, “state of being environed” (see environs); sense of “nature, conditions in which a person or thing lives” first recorded 1827 (used by Carlyle to render Ger. Umgebung); specialized ecology sense first recorded 1956. Environmentalism was coined 1923 as a psychological term (in the nature vs. nurture debate); the ecological sense is 1972 (environmentalist in this sense is attested from 1970).
An “eco” movement that forgets the original metropolis we all called home (the city-womb of our metro-mother = our first “environs”) is certainly an irrational construct, an unnatural naturalism, no? The logic of ecology rests on the appropriateness of the means to attain the end (what does life-conserving husbandry of the land amount to when abortio-contraceptive domesticity is the means?). The “environmental” idea is of no realistic value, its meaningless without a coherent expression in deed.
John,
Insofar as Bottum is using ‘environmentalists’ to refer to everybody who thinks the environment is worthy of protection, your comments are right on the mark. Insofar as he is referring to those who espouse a particular ideology he has in mind which he calls ‘environmentalism’, I think there’s something to what he’s saying.
My guess is that this is a case of misunderstanding arising from our lack of shared vocabulary and the increasing blurriness of what words mean.
EDIT: Okay, read the comments, and now I get what you were doing with the ‘theocrats’ line. Fair enough.
The problem is this: environmentalism is not debated as true or false. Keeping a scientific theory politicized can be equated to keeping the argument of truth and falsehood out. To the public, the only side of environmentalism is some appeal to some emotion.
Show the raw data that supports the theory. Have the best sides debate it; one pro the other con. Dr. Napier says carbon dioxide is not a pollutant and does not cause global warming. This can be debated. Dr. Hawking’s and other scientist’s “Doomsday Clock” is not an argument; it is the worst type of sophistical propaganda, and makes environmentalism look as kooky as Tim LaHaye’s “Left Behind” series.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6270871.stm
What is true? What is false? Those are the only questions that matter.
Mr. Schwenkler, don’t respond to this comment talking to me about “scientific consensus” again. The man who hold the chair of Isaac Newton believes in a Doomsday Clock.
Well since environmentalism is a disposition or school of thought rather than a factual claim, it’s not subject to such a debate – but of course any of the truth claims made by environmentalists clearly are.
And that’s what scientists do, isn’t it? I don’t have the expertise necessary to engage with the detailed empirical and theoretical issues, and I suspect that you don’t have it either. By my lights the best way to proceed from here is to keep tabs on how the debate among experts is proceeding, and if it appears to have reached a consensus then to trust that it is at least approximately accurate.
P.S. The question of whether carbon is properly described as a “pollutant” or not is beside the point; it has clearly been established, though, that atmospheric can act as a greenhouse gas.
Show me true public debates among experts of opposing positions on this issue.
Go check the relevant scientific journals, where as AGW skeptics will be happy to tell you anti-consensus papers are indeed published from time to time. If “true public debate” means “equal numbers of people on each side”, then admittedly you’re not going to find what you’re looking for, but it’s simply beyond me why such a demand would be appropriate.
I suppose it’s futile to ask you specifically what scientific journals you’re referring to (and of course I’m sure you’ve read them). Since I’ve had no luck finding journals that debate the topic objectively, and since you’re obviously not in a hurry to point in any particular direction, let us content ourselves on a little piece from 20/20:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZcp_wcDXec
Might I ask where you’ve looked? (And perhaps also what your standard for objectivity is, and how you can tell when a group of specialists are failing to meet it?)
P.S. Here and here are a couple of journals focused on climate change that are put out by preeminent academic publishers.
I did not ask you for “a couple of journals focused on climate change.” Go to scitopia.org and find 3,000 scientific journals. Anybody can find scientific journals.
I asked you to point to *specific* public debates on this issue that have a legitimate pro and a legitimate con.
Anyone doing research that meets the standards of peer review can have it published in a journal; if there isn’t enough establishment-recognized AGW skepticism out there for your liking (though as I noted, skeptics will be happy to tell you that there is some), then I’m inclined to think that it’s likely a function of facts rather than closed-mindedness. In any case I’m done with this particular tangent – it’s clear that you’re not going to budge, and that’s your privilege. But there’s no reason to clutter up the comments with it.
The trouble with environmentalism is that it’s now synonymous with global warming, which bothers me because of its mass hysteria. I’m an environmentalist in the sense that I support better integration of human habitats with natural ones and very much support mass transit goals, but I just can’t bring myself to get on the climate change wagon.
I don’t believe you can point to debates because you know as well as I do that it is not debated. Let me emphasize my skepticism, and clear up your persistent self-contradictory phrase “anti-global warming skeptic”. A skeptic has no position. I have no position. I want clearer evidence.
If clear evidence comes out that man is responsible for harmful climate change, I’m on board with you Mr. Schwenkler.
I eagerly await your next article, and as hard as I am on you, I do find your articles (that are not about this issue) very incisive.
This post is reading uncharitably. It’s perfectly true that there are Christians who are environmentalists (and for Christian reasons), but it still can be the case (and arguably is) that many (or most) committed environmentalists are engaged in a substitute religious activity.
Perhaps “many”; “most” is quite unlikely by my lights. Neither, though, would give Bottum license to make blanket claim about environmentalism simpliciter, which is what I was protesting against. If he’d restricted his scope appropriately I wouldn’t have objected.
Well – not exactly the comment thread I expected.
Interesting post, John. I think that, in fact, most Americans (most people everywhere) are to some degree environmentalists. Some of the biggest conservationists I know are hunters – red-blooded and red-state conservatives, too. They appreciate conservation because it, you know, preserves all those places they can hunt and hike and camp and so forth.
And plenty of lefty environmentalists actually really do care about the ecosystems on this planet, too. There are of course some who use the naivete of their compatriots to push socialism or whatever other agenda they may have. That’s just the nature of movements, though. I say better to find common cause whenever possible.
Christians & “Hate” Bills
If “hate bill”-obsessed Congress [and Obama] can’t protect Christians from “gays” as much as it wants to protect “gays” from Christians, will Congress be surprised if it can’t protect itself from most everyone? If “hate bills” are forced on captive Americans, they’ll still find ways to sneakily continue to “plant” Biblical messages everywhere. By doing so they’ll hasten God’s judgment on their oppressors as revealed in Proverbs 19:1. (See related web items including “David Letterman’s Hate, Etc.,” “Separation of Raunch and State,” “Michael the Narc-Angel,” “Obama Avoids Bible Verses,” and “Tribulation Index becomes Rapture Index.”) Since Congress can’t seem to legislate “morality,” it’s making up for it by legislating “immorality”!
Bottum is a bit too eager to “Check” that bit about paradise lost through human action. I suspect that most environmentalists truly believe that nature is a self-regulating harmonious system as in paradise or Gaia. Important new research however, supports the view that the very nature of life within a finite system is self destructive and in order to continue must be guided by sentient management. For a better understanding of this than I can give, read THE MEDEA HYPOTHESIS by Peter Ward published by Princeton University Press. In a nutshell, Ward points to the role life on earth played in most of the great extinction events over geologic time. He proves (at least to me) that life left unchecked will always undermine the chemical basis for its own existence.
My point in bring this up is that the original biblical concept of stewardship rather than submission to nature may be both scientifically valid and theologically correct.
Upturned Earth » Is Environmentalism Anti-Christian?…
[Source: Upturned Earth] quoted: The trouble with environmentalism is that it’s now synonymous with global warming, which bothers me because of its mass hysteria. I’m an environmentalist in the sense that I support better integration of hum…