Green Witness

Ecology, Ethics, and the Kingdom of God

Yordy

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9781498270366
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Green Witness is a work in theological ethics, addressed primarily to theologians and seminarians, but also to clergy and church study groups. Yordy approaches the topic of Christian environmental work not from the perspective of a global crisis that must be solved, but from the perspective of God's promise of the Kingdom. She argues that Christians can and should work for the wholeness of the biophysical environment whether or not their efforts bear immediate visible fruit, because God always welcomes and makes good use of faithful discipleship. This is good news to religious environmentalists who have grown weary of struggling to make a difference amid ever-louder announcements of environmental destruction. The eschaton is clearly a realm of interspecies peace, abundance, and diversity, and part of the church's mission is to demonstrate these aspects of God's plan for the world, although only God can and will consummate the Kingdom.

Chapter 1

The Churches’ Response to the “Environmental Crisis”

Let us begin with an image, an eschatalogical vision. Imagine driving to an unfamiliar church on Sunday morning, a church you have heard is worth visiting. When you are a few blocks away, you begin to notice a number of people walking and bicycling in the same direction you are headed. They look not like athletes or fitness buffs, but like families on their way somewhere. Turning onto the church’s street, you begin to hear the church bells, and see the bikers and pedestrians increase their pace. Finally you see the sign for the church, but you cannot actually see the building—just trees and bushes and a very small gravel parking lot. A church bus pulls into the lot behind you, and you grin at its “Biodiesel for Jesus” bumper sticker.

The passengers get off the bus, greet you warmly, and lead you along a path from the parking lot to the building. Along the way they explain that the large garden you are crossing grows organic fruit, vegetables, and flowers for local soup kitchens and church altars. Members of the church, as well as the local neighborhood, tend the garden and compost bins. They tried, they tell you laughingly, to produce their own communion wine, but all they managed to make was purple vinegar! So they buy their organic wine and communion wafers from elsewhere. The garden, however, serves as a project in which the whole community can participate, and it makes good use of land that had formerly been a parking lot. As your guide says, “We take literally the phrase ‘taste of the kingdom!’”

Finally you emerge from the rows of corn and sunflowers. The church stands before you, constructed of a combination of local stone, recycled wood siding, and other “green” materials. It looks much like any other church, although the roof is nearly covered with solar panels. Inside, the sanctuary and meeting rooms glow with natural light, and you feel the movement of air from fans and open windows. The sanctuary is arranged in a contemporary style with the altar placed so that the minister or priest faces the people during the service. Behind the altar and cross, a huge glass window looks out onto what appears to be a park or meditation garden—trees, shrubs, birdhouses, and a fountain. It is a rich visual scene and it is very different from churches where no hint of the “natural world” is permitted to enter.

The service itself strongly resembles that of your home church, although it includes prayers for the local river (site of a recent toxic spill) and for endangered animal and plant species. The preacher focuses on hope, and the privilege and responsibility of Christians to bear witness to the eschaton—the fulfillment of God’s promises for creation—as envisioned in Isaiah’s and Jesus’ analogies of the Kingdom. After the service, an older man offers to show you around and tell you about the church’s various ministries. These run the gamut from missionary efforts to racial reconciliation to assisting a congregation in post-Katrina New Orleans, but several focus on ecological or eco-justice concerns. The church buildings are extremely energy efficient, using combinations of geothermal and solar energy. Each household is invited to make an eco-justice covenant, in which it commits to responsible consumption, patronizing fair-trade businesses, and reducing its ecological “footprint.”1 In some ways this church seems idealistic or even naïve about its ministry goals. When you try to ask your guide about this, he laughs. “I suppose we might seem naïve to a visitor, with our grand schemes to reduce carbon output, clean up the river and provide healthy food for homeless folks. But we don’t think we can fix the world. We just like to show the possibilities of what Christ can do—and Christ never worried about practicality, did he? In fact,” he continues, “what we’ve found is that improving the way we live on the land is a process. We take a step that seems big, then we find it wasn’t so hard after all. So we take another step. Pretty soon, the church is engaged in what some might regard as “radical environmentalism.” Yet, most of us don’t think of ourselves as environmentalists, really. We’re just Christians, trying to be faithful as best we can.”

¶

This is a fantasy church, a product of one person’s hope, theology, and imagination. The following chapters will argue that holding such an eschatological vision of church—so long as it is guided by scripture and theological tradition—is a critical aspect of Christian discipleship. Christians cannot testify to something we cannot imagine, even if we know that our eschatological imagination can only offer a dim, cloudy impression of God’s eschaton. However, many real churches in America (and elsewhere) share a similar vision, and they are enacting bits and pieces of their ideal, as the following examples demonstrate.2

First United Methodist Church in Porterville, California, owns a half-acre, irrigated organic garden. Plots are available to rent for a small fee to cover water usage. “The mission of First United Methodist Church Community Garden is to enhance the quality of urban life and strengthen cross-cultural community bonds by creating and sustaining an organic garden that will promote sharing healthy food, environmental stewardship and recreation.”3

Similarly, the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago has developed an organic community garden on property in the Cabrini-Green community, an area long noted for poverty, crime, and urban social problems. As mixed-income housing is replacing the public housing buildings, the neighborhood is undergoing dramatic change and upheaval. Fourth Church is dedicated to supporting local residents and strengthening ties between its members and those of Cabrini. In cooperation with Growing Power, a leader in urban agriculture, and Greencorps, a Chicago city project, the church has established an organic garden for all community members to use. The garden includes both individual and community food plots, a butterfly garden, and native plant garden. Church members and neighborhood volunteers work community plots, and the food is given away to individuals who request it and to a Fourth Church meals ministry.4 Community members participate by gardening, visiting, engaging in children’s programs, cookouts, and other social events. Giving and receiving food from the garden is only a small part of the interaction between Fourth Church members and the larger community.

Fourth Church emphasizes to the gardeners that,

while we take pride in the delicious vegetables and beautiful flowers we can grow on top of these former basketball and tennis courts, our real focus is in growing relationships between the members of Fourth Church, the residents of Cabrini-Green, and the residents of the neighboring condos and apartments. Your willingness to extend an open hand and open heart to each other is the ground from which community can blossom.

These efforts are bearing fruit; participation has gradually increased among both children and adults. Anne Harris, Program Manager, reports,

people have shared with us on their visits how much it means to them that we are doing this—they appreciate the beauty of the place, that we are taking good care of the children, that we share our bounty—and we’ve heard a number of comments that we are blessed, in that we have not had any damage or serious vandalism done to the site, despite its location and the problems on the other side of the fence.5

Through the garden and associated programming, Fourth Pres-byterian Church and Growing Power model a rich integration of earth ministry, eco-justice ministry, and social ministries.

With regard to energy conservation, many churches have replaced their incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent ones, and they have strengthened their building’s insulation. Madison Christian Community in Wisconsin, a partnership between Advent Lutheran (ELCA) and Community of Hope (UCC), took several steps farther. In 1992 MCC installed photovoltaic cells on the roof of the church building. “In installing the unit, the Madison Christian Community hopes to reduce energy consumption and emission into the atmosphere, and be a visible example to the general public of their commitment to stewardship of the environment.”6 The community tracks power production and usage by computer, so it can monitor high energy-use activities. Madison Christian Community is not focused solely on energy, however. Since 1983, the two churches have restored a small prairie on the grounds. “As part of our mission to care for our earth, this prairie preserves a part of the natural diversity that thrived before European settlers came to this part of southern Wisconsin. It provides cover for small mammals, insects, and birds that are losing their habitat as the west side of Madison develops.”7 Restoring and caring for the prairie requires significant effort. Native seeds were collected from along railroad tracks and steep hillsides, and the prairie is burned every spring to eliminate invasive species and mimic the natural fire-germination pattern of growth. Finally, the MCC has set up a lender program for household items that receive only occasional use: rototiller, a...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Chapter 1: The Churches’ Response to the “Environmental Crisis”
• Chapter 2: God’s Eschatological Creation
• Chapter 3: Ethics and Eschatology
• Chapter 4: The Church’s Eco-Discipleship
• Chapter 5: Conclusion
• Bibliography