Coming Home to Earth

Brocker

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781498221740
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

As a young Norwegian Lutheran teenager in rural Wisconsin, Brocker lay awake one night worrying whether he believed in Jesus enough to get to heaven. This getting-to-heaven anxiety reflected an excessive focus on individual salvation and a loss of concern for the well-being of the Earth community. A faith journey that leaves Earth behind is misguided. Ever since those early teen years Brocker has been on a journey to come home to Earth.Coming Home to Earth makes the case that there is no salvation apart from Earth and that Earth care is at the core of our identity and mission as followers of Jesus. The ecological consequences of a loss of concern for the well-being of Earth have been devastating. Brocker is especially concerned to determine what will motivate followers of Jesus to make radical changes in our way of life so that we can participate in the healing of wounded Earth and all of its inhabitants, both human and nonhuman. We are far more likely to make needed sacrifices for our fellow creatures if we share God's delight in and affection for them, and cherish Earth as our home.

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Introduction

Getting to Heaven Anxiety

As a young teenager in rural Wisconsin I lay awake one night worrying whether I believed in Jesus enough to get to heaven. It was unusual for me not to fall asleep right away. During the day I tended to be preoccupied with school and sports. But at least on this one night, concern for my personal salvation kept me awake longer than usual.

My Norwegian Lutheran forbears were not strong proponents of rapture theology. I do not remember hearing talk about being “left behind.” Nonetheless, we tended to be afflicted with “getting to heaven anxiety,” a milder version of “left behind” thinking, reflecting an excessive focus on individual salvation and a loss of concern for the well-being of Earth. We had prematurely written off our Earth home.

My forbears have not been alone in being afflicted with this milder “left behind” thinking. Wendell Berry observes that for many in the church “the life of the spirit is reduced to a dull preoccupation with getting to Heaven.”1 This dull preoccupation can lead to contempt for the body, and contempt for the body manifests itself “in contempt for other bodies—the bodies of slaves, laborers, women, animals, plants, the earth itself. Relationships with all other creatures become competitive and exploitive rather than collaborative and convivial. The world is seen and dealt with, not as an ecological community, but as a stock exchange, the ethics of which are based on the tragically misnamed ‘law of the jungle.’”2 In “A Theology for Earth” Joseph Sittler stresses that “the earth is not merely a negative illustration of the desirability of heaven.”3 Sittler refers to God as an “undeviating materialist.” Why would God not be a materialist? After all, God created material.4

Too often Christians have talked as if Earth is a place we are passing through on our way to a better place.5 It is common to hear at funerals and memorial services that at least the one who has died is now in a better place. People who are passing through Earth are less likely to be motivated to care for it. Given the serious ecological challenges we face, Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and founder of the Green Belt Movement, expresses her hope “that every preacher, imam, rabbi, guru, sensei, and priest would balance making sure we gain some surety over what happens after we die with an equal insistence on the preservation of the earth and our particular accountability for the survival of the planet’s ecosystems.” Maathai insists that we are not just “passing through.”6

My primary intention in Coming Home to Earth is not to cast stones at my Norwegian Lutheran heritage or my Christian tradition for its loss of love for Earth. I deeply appreciate the focus on faith in Jesus that my forbears bequeathed to me. But a faith that leaves Earth behind is misguided. I intend to show that faith in Jesus can open us up to a more holistic concept of salvation and to a deeper concern for the well-being of Earth. People of faith have an ecological responsibility to bequeath a healthy planet to our children and grandchildren. As Rachel Carson so eloquently states in the foreword to Under the Sea Wind, “to stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and the flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of years, to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.”7 What a blessing to pass such eternal knowledge on to our children and grandchildren!

The Seeds of Love for Earth

Reflecting on my early teen years, I realize that since that time I have been on a journey to come home to Earth. The truth is that the tradition that afflicted me with getting-to-heaven anxiety and an excessive focus on individual salvation is the same tradition in which the seeds of appreciation and concern for creation were first sown in me. My dad was one of the leaders in the Norwegian Lutheran tradition who helped begin sowing the seeds of love for Earth in me. He was ordained in the American Lutheran Church in 1962, the same year Rachel Carson published Silent Spring. He became the director of Luther Park Bible Camp in Chetek, Wisconsin, in 1965. Early in his ministry he became a proponent of what he calls creation theology, and he incorporated stewardship of creation themes and practices into summer Bible camp programs.8 As a boy, I loved to hang around camp, and camp counselors were some of my first heroes. I especially enjoyed camping with the big kids (high school youth) at Outpost, a 320-acre farm near Birchwood, Wisconsin, that had been donated to Luther Park. Surely I was influenced by my father’s emphasis on stewardship of creation, and I developed an affection for spending time outdoors.9 Nonetheless, despite this influence, when it came to matters of salvation, I remained subject to the prevailing mindset in my faith tradition with its focus on believing in Jesus to get to heaven.

For the Love of Oregon

In October 1970, shortly after my night of getting-to-heaven anxiety, my family moved to Portland, Oregon. My dad had been called to serve half-time as Director of Lutheran Outdoor Ministries of Oregon and half-time as Pastor of Mt. Carmel Lutheran Church in Southwest Portland. Camp Colton, the main Bible camp, was about forty miles away, so I did not hang around camp as much as I had in Wisconsin. But living in a family engaged in outdoor ministry continued to influence my relationship to Earth and all its creatures.

When we moved, I had just begun eighth grade. I do not remember ecology being a major emphasis at my new school, Capitol Hill in Southwest Portland, or at Jackson High School in subsequent years; but it was not ignored either. I will never forget my eighth-grade fruit fly experiment. Each of us was provided with a female and male fruit fly in a glass jar. The first thing we did in class each day was examine our glass jar and report any changes. It was exciting to arrive one morning and see that the fruit fly population had multiplied. Initially it was easy to count how many new fruit flies had been born. But as time went on, it became impossible to count them all. I recall one day being amazed by the number of fruit flies—the jar was teeming with them. When I arrived the next day, they were all dead. They had died in their own waste. It was an early lesson for me in the consequences of ecological degradation. Our science teacher had taught us a simple lesson in what can happen when we ignore life’s limits.

The most decisive influence in raising my ecological awareness during my teenage years in Oregon was Republican Governor Tom McCall. He was in the middle of his tenure as governor—he served from 1967 to 1975—when we moved to Oregon. McCall was known around the country and even the world for his leadership on environmental issues. In the fall of 1973, as a junior in high school, I attended the annual Oregon Youth Legislature event at the state capitol in Salem. It was a tradition for the governor to visit a session of the Youth Legislature. When Governor McCall and our Youth Governor walked into the House chamber, I could feel the electricity in the room. It is hard to imagine a governor having such an impact on a group of high school students today. In Fire at Eden’s Gate Brent Walth refers to Governor McCall’s efforts to protect the environment as the “Oregon Story.” Governor McCall and the Oregon Story inspired in many young Oregonians, including me, a lifelong concern for environmental issues.

In Governor McCall’s inaugural address in January 1967 he stressed the importance of the environment to the well-being of the state: “Health, economic strength, recreation—in fact, the entire outlook and image of the state—are tied inseparably to environment. Water, air, land and scenic pollution threaten these and other values in Oregon—a state pictured in Oregon’s first inaugural address in [1859] as ‘one of the most attractive portions of the North American continent’ . . . The overriding challenge—the umbrella issue—of the campaign and the decade is quality—quality of life in Oregon.”10

As governor, McCall went right to work cleaning up the Willamette River. Cleanup had already begun, but McCall was determined to accelerate the process. As a news reporter at KGW-TV in Portland, McCall had produced a documentary in 1962 entitled Pollution in Paradise that exposed the polluted condition of the Willamette River. The Willamette never caught fire as the Cuyahoga River in Ohio did on June 22, 1969, but the environmental degradation of such a prominent river as the Willamette was an embarrassment for McCall and Oregon. In March 1967, two months into office, he appeared before the State Senate Air and Water Quality Committee and called on the legislature to work with him in drawing a line against pollution. McCall insisted that Oregon must enforce “an 11th commandment: Thou shall not pollute.”11 After the chair of the Oregon State Sanitary Authority died in April, McCall took the unprecedented step of appointing himself as chair. In effect, he became the leader of the Willamette River cleanup.

McCall’s next major environmental initiative focused on preserving and securing public access to the beach on the Oregon coast. Like many Oregonians, I enjoy retreating to the Oregon coast, one of my favorite places to visit. A walk along the beach with the mighty waves of the Pacific Ocean rolling in has a way of putting life in perspective. It is a calming and humbling experience, reminding me of who I am in relationship to the Creator and the universe. Oregonians take for granted public access to the coastal beaches. But public access to Oregon’s beaches was not permanently secured by law until the passage of the Beach Bill in 1967. Almost from the beginning of statehood, Oregon had a tradition of publicly owned beaches along the coast. In 1913 Governor Oswald West led the charge to put that tradition into law by drafting “a simple short bill declaring the seashore from the Washington line to the California line a public highway.”12 This bill was a stroke of genius. The public and the legislature supported it. In 1947 legislators changed the designation of the Oregon beach from “highway” to “recreation area.” But a loophole remained in West’s original bill—public ownership applied only to the wet sands. In 1966 William Hay, an owner of the Sur...

Table of contents

• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Love Lost for Earth
• Chapter 3: Grieving with Earth
• Chapter 4: The Things That Make for Peace
• Chapter 5: Conversion to Earth
• Chapter 6: Taking Up Our Ecological Cross
• Chapter 7: Coming Home to Earth
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix: Workshop-Evolution-Creation
• Bibliography