Cultural Landscapes

Religion and Public Life

Gabriel R. Ricci

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351524551
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

Adualism between man and nature has been a persistent feature of Western thought and spirituality from ancient times to the present. The opposition of mind and body, consciousness and world has tended to obscure the ways in which humans are ecologically part of interconnected systems, some of which are obvious while others operate in hidden but life-sustaining ways. Cultural Landscapes explores the physical ways in which we are intimately linked to the land and the intellectual and aesthetic connections human consciousness has with the landscape. Following the editor's introductory essay, the lead article by Jame Schaeffer, "Quest for the Common Good: A Collaborative Public Theology for a Life-Sustaining Climate, " assesses the lightning rod issue of global warming in the context of a public and ecumenical theology and sets the tone for this normative assessment of our relationship with nature. Likewise, David Kenley's essay, "Three Gorges be Dammed: The Philosophical Roots of Environmentalism in China, " reveals the traditional philosophical and cultural values that can sustain a vital environmentalism in the East. David Brown's historical insights into the use of the American landscape to define historical writing complement Patricia Likos-Ricci's historical treatment of nineteenth-century landscape painting and the first call to preserve wilderness in the United States. Matt Willen, "An Feochszn, " and David Martinez, "What Worlds are Made of: The Lakota Sense of Place, " both demonstrate how space is transformed into place through song and mythic tales. On a metaphysical note, Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopolos' essay "On the Line of the Horizon, Anxiety in de Chirico's Metaphysical Spaces, " provides the reader with psychological and existential insights into the disorienting paintings of de Chirico, and Gabriel Ricci's concluding essay tours the landscape that underpins Heidegger's ontological speculations. The contributions to this volume are posited on the belief that culture, society, and human history are ultimately rooted in the natural world. This integration may explain why humanity has always looked to nature for moral and ethical guidelines. Gabriel R. Ricci is associate professor of humanities and the chair of the Department of History at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. He is the author of Time Consciousness: The Philosophical Uses of History, published by Transaction.

Quest for the Common Good: A Collaborative Public Theology for a Life-Sustaining Climate

Jame Schaefer

Over-consumption of natural goods in industrially developed countries. Accumulation of hazardous and household wastes. Widespread water and air pollution. Acceleration of the rate of species extinction and loss of biodiversity. Degradation and destruction of wetlands, prairies, and other ecological systems. Threats to the integrity of the biosphere. Unjust adverse effects on the most vulnerable humans. Global warming.

Increasing awareness of these and other indicators of environmental abuse have been prompting scholars of the world’s religions to examine their traditions and identify meaningful ways of responding. Recent scientific findings that our planet’s temperature has risen due to emissions of carbonic compounds from industrial processes, electricity generation, and road vehicles have prompted religious communities to pressure decision-makers to restrict the emitting of these compounds. The United States’ refusal to join other nations in reducing emissions by specified dates has prompted increasing interest among religions to collaborate in launching a public effort to address the causes of global warming at all levels of social, economic, and political life. Key to this effort is a clearly articulated public theology that will provide a shared rationale for initiating and sustaining action.

This essay focuses primarily on collaborative efforts by religions to address global warming that threatens a good that is common to all living beings—a life-sustaining planet. I begin by exploring the theological idea of the common good as reflected upon traditionally from the perspective of the human good of all and extended more recently to encompass the common good of the biosphere. Subsequently overviewed are efforts by representative leaders and scholars of world religions to reflect on their various traditions and by religious groups to alert believers to their personal responsibilities and opportunities for bringing shared concerns into the political arena. Moving to global warming as a key issue, I review divergent scientific views pertaining to global warming, the theological perspectives from which religious groups are responding to scientific findings, and the cooperation of some major Christian and Jewish organizations to address this issue under the umbrella of an ecumenical partnership. I conclude by delving more deeply into the religious traditions of the partners and identifying some beliefs that could frame a constructive public theology upon which the partnership can rely to guide its efforts.

The Common Good

Traditionally, reflections on the common good have focused on the human community with particular concern for poor and disadvantaged people who are unable to achieve goods they need to sustain their lives. David Hollenbach’s overview of that perspective in Christian ethical discourse is particularly instructive,¹ while a plethora of scholars have explored the notion of the common good historically to the present from various concerns in essays² and monographs.³ Defined and promoted vigorously by the Catholic tradition,⁴ the concept of the common good stresses the need to have workable social systems, institutions, and environments on which humans depend to benefit all people, not only those who enjoy the wealth and power through which to secure their well-being. Some examples of particular common goods or parts thereof include a just political and legal system, a thriving educational system open to all, a flourishing economic system in which people can find employment and provide for their needs, an accessible and affordable public health care system, an effective system of public safety and security, peace among the nations of the world, and a healthy natural environment. The common good approach to ethics assumes a society of individuals whose own good is inextricably linked to the good of the community and whose members are bound by a pursuit of common values and goals. This approach also assumes that the cooperation of many is often required to pursue a common good. A good counts as common only to the extent that it is accessible to all people.

Religious and secular calls for a commitment to the common good tempers concern for the rights of individuals, and most fundamental social problems seem to grow out of a widespread pursuit of individual interests to the exclusion of concern for others. Recent appeals to the common good have surfaced in discussions of the social responsibilities of businesses, genetic manipulation, lack of investment in education, problems of crime and poverty, media reporting, access to political power, and environmental degradation.

William C. French extends traditional thinking about the common good to encompass more than humans. Insisting that there are many resources upon which to draw for developing a biospheric common good, he points specifically to three: the Noachic covenant in the Book of Genesis; the Stoic conception of the universal community; and, Thomas Aquinas’s teachings on creation.⁵ French perceptively finds permeating Aquinas’s creation theology a “cosmological-ecological principle” wherein each diverse constituent exists for the sake of the whole universe. This dominant organizing principle provides a promising response to our current ecological morass, French argues, by requiring humans, individually and collectively, to consider the good of all beings when functioning in political, economic, and social life.⁶

More can be said about Aquinas’s teachings on the common good, as French encourages. Appropriating the Aristotelian understanding of the world when reflecting on the Christian faith, Aquinas taught that God created many diverse creatures to interact with one another in ways that assure their good and the good of the whole universe.⁷ Each constituent has an essential role to play in the whole, he contended, and all creatures are required for the proper functioning of the whole—contingent and non-contingent, corporeal and incorporeal, corruptible and incorruptible.⁸ He maintained that there is a natural inclination of each part toward the common good of the whole that God instilled in each creature,⁹ with each creature inclined toward the common good in ways that are conducive to their type of existence.¹⁰ For Aquinas, following Aristotle, the unique character of human existence is our ability to think rationally and make informed decisions.

While all entities that constitute the universe are inclined toward the common good of the whole, Aquinas taught, the more perfect a thing is in its power and the higher it is on the scale of goodness, the more it has an appetite for the broader common good and the more it seeks to become involved in doing good for beings far removed from itself.¹¹ Imperfect beings tend only to the good that is appropriate to the individual, while the more perfect a thing is, the more widely it diffuses its goodness.¹² From this perspective, if humans are more endowed with rational capacities that other beings do not have, humans should become involved in discerning and acting on behalf of the good for others and their shared common good.

Aquinas maintained that all constituents benefit from being moved toward the common good of the whole. For example, the ordering of all parts to the good of the whole is what a leader of an army does when intending the common good of soldiers.¹³ All parts benefit from the ordering of parts to one another that enables them to function appropriately to bring about the good of the whole. Furthermore, the order that binds things together makes whatever belongs to any one part belong somehow to all.¹⁴

For Aquinas, all creatures are intended by God to cooperate for the good of the whole. In the operations of unintelligible beings, there is almost always harmony and usefulness among them because they are directed toward their ends, their purposes for existing, by God.¹⁵ God also intends harmony and cooperation to prevail among all diverse beings that constitute the universe.¹⁶ As Legrand observed from Aquinas’ teachings, no part of creation or type of creature is excluded from God’s intentions that all cooperate, combine, or harmonize within the order of the universe to achieve their common good.¹⁷

The collaboration of all constituents of the universe to achieve their common good is the greatest created good, according to Aquinas. He described the ordered activity of beings that bring about their unity as marvelous,¹⁸ and he used an array of other superlatives to laud the interactions of creatures that bring about their common good as intended by God. For Aquinas, the interaction of creatures is nothing less than the greatest good, the highest perfection of the created world, and its most beautiful attribute.¹⁹ As Wright described Aquinas’s understanding about the universe, it is “God’s masterpiece” and its excellence is found in the ordered harmony of its parts.²⁰

In light of the evidence of adverse effects on the natural environment enumerated at the beginning of this article, especially scientific evidence that Earth’s temperature has risen, humans have not been thinking rationally, making informed decisions, and functioning cooperatively with other constituents of Earth. Awareness of this ongoing degradation of the natural environment and predictions of increasing threats to the ecological systems within which humans function have prompted leaders of the world religions to appeal to their respective followers to change attitudes and actions that are precipitating the global warming threat to a life-sustaining planet. Scholars of the world religions have been perusing their sources for helpful ways in which believers can think and act more responsibly to mitigate human-caused changes in Earth’s climate. And, groups of believers who follow the various traditions have been organizing to advocate ameliorative and preventive actions at all levels of social, political, and economic life. To these efforts we now turn.

Religious Advocacy and Scholarly Efforts for a Common Good

Leaders of the world’s religions individually, collectively, and in collaboration with scientists have issued numerous statements calling their faith-filled followers to awareness of local to global threats to the natural environment and to action. An early initiative by leaders of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam was prompted by the World Wildlife Fund on the twenty-fifth anniversary of its founding who invited them to stipulate how their respective faiths guide them in caring for the environment. Representatives of the five religions met in Assisi, Italy in September 1987 and issued declarations to their followers. Three more faiths—Baha’i, Jainism, and Sikhism—subsequently issued their declarations.²¹ When thirty-two outstanding scientists wrote “An Open Letter to the Religious Community” in January 1990 encouraging “a spirit of common cause and joint action to help preserve the Earth,” two hundred and seventy-one well-known spiritual leaders–patriarchs, lamas, chief rabbis, cardinals, mullahs, archbishops, and professors of theology—from eighty-three countries signed their names to the scientists’ document in solidarity with their mutual concern about the natural environment.²²

Among later efforts initiated by religious leaders without any prompting by environmentalists was the first statement issued in 1990 by a pope of the Roman Catholic Church that was dedicated exclusively to addressing the ecological crisis as a common moral responsibility.²³ In 1997, the spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians, Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, denounced environmental abuse as a “sin against God, humanity, and nature,” and followed up his declaration with a number of actions for which he has been dubbed the “Green Patriarch.”²⁴ He and Pope John Paul II of the Roman Catholic Church co-signed the Venice Declaration on the Environment in 2002 in which they invited reflection on six ethical goals and seeking solutions to environmental problems in the interests of future generations.²⁵ Many statements have been issued by the National Council of Churches of Christ, including the most recent in February 2005,²⁶ and by bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in response to the Pope’s 1990 World Day of Peace Message.²⁷ Jewish leaders have responded to the environmental crisis through various efforts sponsored by the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life.²⁸ The Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Sciences has articulated the Islamic position on environmental matters while engaging in research, teaching, and conducting experiments on land use, organic farming, and the development of alternative technologies.²⁹ Many denominations of Christian churches have established Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation ministries to pursue the interconnection of these issues theologically and practically,³⁰ while other religious groups have organized study and advocacy programs.³¹

Collaborative efforts have marshaled energy and resources to address environmental concerns including global warming. An effort initiated by four major religious organizations in the United States—the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, the Evangelical Environmental Network, the National Council of Churches of Christ, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops—lead to the formation of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment in 1993 whose shared mission is “to care for God’s creation throughout religious life, once and for all.”³² Other collaborations include the Parliament of World Religions which was held in Chicago in 1993, attended by some eight thousand people from all over the globe, and issued a Global Et...