No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Greening of the Church
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
Extract
Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.
Two years ago the West German Green Party described itself like this: ‘We are for an economic system orientated towards the vital requirements of people and of future generations, towards the preservation of nature and the judicious handling of natural resources.’ This awareness of the environmental dimension to economic problems led to its getting 8.5% of the West German popular vote in 1987.
We may ask ourselves where Christians have been while this awareness has been unfolding. Is Christian anthropology inadequate to care for the earth? Or have the followers of Jesus somehow lost the delicate balance between taking from the earth what is necessary and caring for this planet?
The problem seems to be with the balance. A key biblical text is Genesis 1:28, which the R.S.V. translates ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it’. Other translations have ‘conquer it’, ‘have dominion over it’ and ‘dominate it’. Yet the idea Genesis is conveying is that man is God’s viceroy commissioned to care for God’s garden, which is ‘very good’. C.H. Moule observes,
He is meant to have dominion over it and to use it... but only for God’s sake, only Adam in paradise, cultivating it for the Lord. As soon as he begins to use it selfishly, and reaches out to take fruit which is forbidden by the Lord, instantly the ecological balance is upset and nature begins to groan.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © 1987 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Spretnak, Charlene and Capra, Fritjof, Green Politics, The Global Promise, London, 1985, p. 82Google Scholar.
2 Moule, C.H., Man and Nature in the New Testament, Philadelphia, 1964, p. 14Google Scholar. Cf. Schumacher, E.F., Small is Beautiful, London, 1974, p. 11Google Scholar.
3 Lyonnet, Stanislas, Redemption of the Universe, Collegeville, 1965, p. 432Google Scholar.
4 Ibid., p. 425. Cf. Butler, Christopher, An Approach to Christianity, London, 1981, pp. 243–244Google Scholar.
5 Johnson, Luke T., Sharing Possessions, London, 1981, pp. 11–21Google Scholar.
6 Clement of Alexandria, Who is the Rich Man That Shall Be Saved XIII.Google Scholar
7 Jerome, Liber Contra Vigilantium, 17.
8 St. Benedict, The Rule of St Benedict, McCann, Justin, trans., London, 1970, p. 40Google Scholar et passim.
9 Knowles, David, The Monastic Order in England, Cambridge, 1940, pp. 6–7, 19–20Google Scholar.
10 Francis of Assisi, The Canticles of the Sun, Omnibus Source, Chicago, 1980, pp. 130–131Google Scholar.
11 Summa Theologiae, I, 47, 1.
12 Anderson, William, The Rise of the Gothic, London, 1986Google Scholar.
13 In Fox, Matthew, Cry of the Environment, Santa Fe, 1984, p. 90.Google Scholar
14 Hildegarde of Bingen, Meditations with Hildegarde ofBingen, Santa Fe, 1982, p.65Google Scholar.
15 Loyola, Ignatius, The Spiritual Exercises, Westminster, 1949, pp. 75–76Google Scholar.
16 Griffiths, Bede, ‘Your Church is Too Western’, The Tablet, 7 February, 1987, p. 138.Google Scholar (Letter)
17 Macquarrie, John, The Faith of the People of God, London, 1972, p. 112Google Scholar.
18 Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, in The Papal Encyclicals, Anne Freemantle, ed., N.Y., 1963, pp. 184–5.
19 Pastoral Letters of the American Hierarchy, 1792–1970, Nolan, Hugh J., ed., Huntingdon, 1971, p. 475Google Scholar.
20 As long ago as 1971 I observed in this journal that the churches should confront together the looming environmental crisis. Cf. E.P. Echlin, ‘The Uniate Model and Anglican Ministry’, New Blackfriars, September 1971, p. 396.
21 de Chardin, Teilhard, The Phenomenon of Man, London, 1958, p. 243Google Scholar.
22 McDonagh, Sean, To Care for the Earth, London, 1986, pp. 77–89Google Scholar.
23 Paul, Pope John II, Laborem Exercens, London, (CTS), 1981, p. 7Google Scholar.
24 The Tablet, 6 December, 1986, p. 1309.
25 Paul, Pope John II, ‘Development and Solidarity: Two Keys to Peace’, 8, The Tablet, 3 January, 1987, p. 22Google Scholar.
26 The Tablet, 6 December, 1986.
27 Cardinal Hume, Christmas Message 1986, The Tablet, 22/27 December, 1986, p. 1396.
28 ‘Ethics of Ecology’, The Tablet, 16 May 1987, p. 528.
29 United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future, Oxford and New York, 1987Google Scholar.
You have
Access