Eco-Realism

I have a friend who has studied environmental issues for decades. He has a brilliant, sharp mind, and he remembers most – all? – of what he reads. He is widely read in the areas of environment, climate change, theology, sociology, etc.

He has been active (in the sense that he has been arrested numerous times during protests) in the “creation care” movement for decades – particularly in the evangelical world. His goal has been to show the evangelical world that we have a real environmental problem and encourage them/us to engage in action at all different levels to mitigate the disaster.

In the past few years he has given that mission up. He does not believe that the secular world is convinced enough about climate change to do anything about it, and he believes that our world systems cannot and do not want to lead us through the crisis. Nor does he believe that the evangelical world really wants to take the climate change message seriously. That refusal he attributes at least partly to the theological systems to which the evangelical world remains attached (I’m sure he would say that there are economic and power forces in play also).

So he has turned to what is called “eco-realism”. Eco-realism is, in his words, the idea that:

“It is, in fact, too late to avoid crushing losses to humanity and the biosphere on a global scale; and that human social systems— economic, political and religious—are largely unsuited to lead us through them.”

We will no longer be able to avoid catastrophe – even if we wanted to and tried to.

And so, he asks:

“If [this is true], we now inhabit a context that is foreign to those in which our inherited theologies were nurtured. How have those theologies functioned amidst the looming threat of ecosystem failure? In a world where religious expectation is often contradicted by lived experience, is it possible to reimagine “gospel” within such a context? What kind of faith can speak to a world marked by decline and suffering?”

As I have conversed further and more deeply with him, and have been exposed to other writers and thought leaders, these questions have become mine also.

How have our theological paradigms led us to the place where we have been willing to exploit the environment (and people) for our own benefit?

What needs to change?

And by “change”, we don’t mean “fix things”, we mean “what is our way forward in the midst of catastrophe”?

It sounds “doom and gloom”.

And in some ways it certainly is.

But if the destruction of our environment and “crushing losses” to humanity are inevitable, it certainly is not “doom and gloom” to search for a way forward when the ways we have known until now have failed us.

To read the paper from which the quote above comes, click here.