Invoking the Spirit amid Dangerous Environmental Change PDF

Invoking the Spirit amid Dangerous Environmental Change 161 most victimized? Why does climate justice need to become a central Christian virtue today?  Scenes of catastrophic environments...

Invoking the Spirit amid Dangerous Environmental Change 161 most victimized? Why does climate justice need to become a central Christian virtue today?  Scenes of catastrophic environments are not strange in the history of Christianity. They are depicted, for example, in the illustrated 1534 Luther Bible, where the destruction through the flood is dramatically contrasted to the Creator’s love for creation. The purpose in these and most other stories of God’s angry reaction to human injustice and sin is pedagogical. According to the second-century church father Origen, creation should be understood as a divine school, a paidagogia, a place for humans who are not yet mature and need to be developed or edu- cated through experience and reflection. Nature’s responses to human beings increasing emissions, extinguishing species and mismanaging the water can be regarded as a message from the Creator to humans. “Creation [itself] preaches,” as Gregory of Nazianz, the fourth-century church father and poet, put it. This does not mean that science is turned into a religion, as some skeptics have accused climate scientists, but the results of climate sci- ence can indeed be interpreted within a spiritual framework. Life systems have the capacity to relate and react in one common Gaia earth system, as a part of God’s good creation. From such a perspective, dangerous environmental change offers insights into the limits for managing the earth, and locates the roots of the crisis in spiritual as well as social and physical failures. That which threatens life also threatens creation, and at its outmost, authentic belief in the Creator. Words and worlds are intimately interconnected; images of the Divine are interconnected with the physical surroundings and cultural environments. The image of God and the image of nature are indissolubly interwoven. The early twentieth-century dispute in Europe between Futurist and Dadaist artists provides a microcosm of the still ongoing controversy about modernity, as reflected today in discourses about the climate. While Futurists were glorifying speed, progress and technical innova- tion and were enchanted by its potential to change urban lifeworlds, the  Cf. Michael S. Northcott, A Moral Climate: The Ethics of Global Warming (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2007), pp. 7, 118; David Atkinson, Renewing the Face of the Earth: A Theologi- cal and Pastoral Response to Climate Change (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2008), pp. 93ff.  Cf. Franz Xaver Portmann, Die göttliche Paidagogia bei Gregor von Nazianz (St. Ottilien: Eos Verlag, 1954); Sigurd Bergmann, “Atmospheres of Synergy: Towards an Eco-Theological Aesth/Ethics of Space,” in Ecotheology 11 (3/2006), pp. 326–56, here p. 338. On God’s skill to transform the bodily created and to promote spiritual education through human bodily being, see Origen, De Principiis, III, 6–9. DTS-Studies-God_Climate_Change-2161 161 05/08/2009 16:33:02 PM  162 God, Creation and Climate Change Dadaists objected to the fascist glorification of strength and progress and the technocratic attitude toward nature. While the one depicted a world of change and construction, the other predicted a world of waste and destruction. One of the driving forces behind civilization was the development of urban space, as it began more than 10,000 years ago. The accelerat- ing process of urbanization is now turning the whole planet into one single “post-metropolis.” Today, the majority of the world’s population live in urban areas. This affects the reshaping of landscapes and regions worldwide. With regard to climate change, city space promotes and ac- celerates fuel-driven, profit-oriented industrialization and motorized mobility, which produce large amounts of emissions. In countries of the North as well as in the South, “hypermobility” has reached a stage that threatens the whole system of social and environmental planning and even the very roots of democracy. The French philosopher, Paul Virilio, characterizes the present state of culture as a standstill caused by increasing acceleration.  In this context, religious attitudes can take two directions. Either they will follow the Futurist glorification and politics of speed and progress, or they will cultivate the Dadaist desire for alternative ways to organize urban life. A central question is how a city can be turned into a habitable place and what religion can contribute. What are the criteria for a place being habitable, and how can this space be designed in light of what we know about emissions and energy saving?  How we perceive our human constructed or “built” environment is at the core. Spiritual values and ecological justice need to be significant factors in urban transformation. Such an approach, which I call “aesth/  Edward W. Soja, Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), p. 35.  Paul Virilio, Fluchtgeschwindigkeit: Essay (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1999); Cf. Hartmut Rosa, Beschleunigung: Die Veränderung der Zeitstrukturen in der Moderne (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 2005); Sigurd Bergmann, “The Beauty of Speed or the Discovery of Slowness–Why Do We Need to Rethink Mobility?, in Sigurd Bergmann and Tore Sager (eds), The Ethics of Mobilities: Rethinking Place, Exclusion, Freedom and Environment (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 13–24.  Cf. Tim J. Gorringe, A Theology of the Built Environment: Justice, Empowerment, Redemption (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Pauline von Bonsdorff, “Habitability as a Deep Aesthetic Value,” in Sigurd Bergmann (ed.), Architecture, Aesth/Ethics and Religion (Frankfurt/M., London: IKO-Verlag für interkulturelle Kommunikation, 2005), pp. 114–30. On architecture and urban planning, cf. also Sigurd Bergmann (ed.), Theology of Built Environments: Exploring Religion, Architecture and Design (Piscataway NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2009). DTS-Studies-God_Climate_Change-2162 162 05/08/2009 16:33:03 PM  Invoking the Spirit amid Dangerous Environmental Change 163 ethics,” implies the integration of ethics in our bodily ways of being. Moral ways of acting need to be integrated into our bodily modes of perceiv- ing each other and living in our surroundings. As climate changes, our knowledge and interpretation of climate need to be in harmony with our bodily perceptions of what climate does to us. Following Jakob von Uexkuell’s “circle of function” (Funktion- skreis), the single organism’s lifeworld not only is connected in a two directional way between the Merkwelt (way of viewing the world) and Wirkwelt (universe of action), but climate change appears as a huge challenge to visualize the flows of this circle between our perception and our global and local action. Global space, with all its local places, needs to be revisioned as a cosmos of synergies, where the symphony of what surrounds us moves back into our consciousness. The complex- ity of climate studies and the phenomena of interconnectedness can catalyze such a changing worldview of lived space. Religion as a force of productive imagination (produktive Einbildungskraft) is crucial in this reimaging of our environment. Edward Soja has made a theoretically useful distinction between three types of space: physical, imagined and lived space.10 The concept of “lived religion” corresponds to this concept and offers a means for studying climatically caused religious change in today’s urban spaces.11 Roy R. Rappaport has described religion as a “fabrication of meaning.” He differentiates between a scientific and a religious mode of approach- ing reality, and argues for a synthesis between them.12 For him, the basic tension in human life lies between making meaning with regard to our environment and explaining the laws of this environment.13 Applying this to climate change, there is a tension between rationally monitoring and explaining our changing environment on the one hand, and making meaning in relation to it on the other hand. Both are needed. It is my hypothesis that a theological construction of meaning in the climate change discourse is an important opportunity for such a 10 Edward W. Soja, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places (Malden/Oxford/Carlton: Blackwell, 1996, reprinted 2004). 11 Cf. Sigurd Bergmann, “Lived Religion in Lived Space,” in Heinz Streib, Astrid Dinter and Kerstin Söderblom (eds), Lived Religion: Conceptual, Empirical and Theological Approaches, Essays in Honor of Hans-Günter Heimbrock (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2008), pp. 197–209. 12 Roy R. Rappaport, Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 13 Ibid., chapter 14. DTS-Studies-God_Climate_Change-2163 163 05/08/2009 16:33:03 PM  164 God, Creation and Climate Change synthesis. This does not mean that everything in science that fuels a religious attitude to life is good, or that every scientific analysis should be transformed into a policy generating strategy. On the contrary, human beings are the agents of perception, knowledge, wisdom and meaning making; it is they who change their lifestyles and patterns of production and consumption. In this context, theology must guarantee that human beings are the agents of social transformation, and not to be treated as objects. If the earth, our home, is to remain a habitable place where all can live, spiritual perceptions, perspectives and practices are crucial for developing means of creative adaptation to our changing environ- ment. Climate regimes and faith communities Science and politics are the dominant power constellations—or “climate regimes”—that presently control the public discourse on climate change. Even in the European Union, where “citizens’ governance” claims to be a priority, quasi democratic processes of decision-making “sub-political alliances” (Ulrich Beck) 14 do not follow the principle that power comes from the people. On the European as on the global scale, it is unclear how the church as a communio sanctorum should participate in politi- cal negotiations. Climate change sharpens the challenge to speak with one religious voice and to broaden the discourse. The voices of the poor and other victims of climate change especially need to be represented. One hope- ful sign for the emergence of a common voice of different religions is the manifest from the 2008 Interfaith Climate Summit in Uppsala, even though this is still too general a document.15 Should only scientists develop the analyses and decide on strategies of adaptation and mitigation, which economists and politicians then apply and impose on the populace? What would a good “practical discourse” (Jürgen Habermas) 16 about dangerous environmental change be like? 14 Beck is professor of sociology at the Ludwig-Maximillian University, Munich, and visiting professor at the London School of Economics. 15 “The Uppsala Interfaith Climate Summit Manifesto, “Hope for the Future!,” initiated by the archbishop of the Church of Sweden, can be downloaded from, www.svenskakyrkan.se/de- fault.aspx?di=173305&ptid= 0, accessed June 2009. 16 Habermas is an influential German sociologist and philosopher. DTS-Studies-God_Climate_Change-2164 164 05/08/2009 16:33:03 PM  Invoking the Spirit amid Dangerous Environmental Change 165 At present, faith communities and social movements are all too often reduced to being tools for mobilizing people.17 But why would we expect solutions to these deep problems to come from those same systems that over the past 150 years have produced the developments that have accel- erated global warming, deforestation, the extinction of certain species and the economization and “technification”18 of lifestyles? I do not want to minimize the importance of ongoing activities of scientific, political and business leaders. However, a task of Christian theologians is to “convert” the powerful to confess their guilt or complic- ity and to repent. Without such public confession and expiation, which are credible to the victims, no real forgiveness can take place. Are the churches prepared to call for such a public process, as occurred earlier in church history as well as more recently in South Africa?19 Because the relationship between climate and religion is much deeper than usually assumed, contributions and interventions from faith com- munities are crucial for navigating into our common future. Those who hold power, such as transnational corporations, are much more aware of the importance of symbolic values and performances in the public sphere than are most church leaders. This is not surprising at a time when money has become such a religious artifact, working only by faith in its exchange value. Financial markets become very nervous whenever religious arguments are made that it is “money [which] makes the world go around.” Money also makes the climate go around, which turns us to the painful question of how we can believe that both faith in God and faith in money can be combined. “No one can serve two masters; … You cannot serve God and wealth” (Mt 6:24). How can this inform a pastoral theology for churches in times of climate change? Climate change clearly reveals the historical change of relations between humans and their environments. The last 10,000 years of human survival and civilization have been possible only because of the stabilization of climatic conditions. We wonder whether we have entered the end of this period. The conclusions of the IPCC reports are 17 At http://climatecongress.ku.dk/, accessed June 2009. 18 Cf. Gernot Böhme, Invasive Technisierung: Technikphilosophie und Technikkritik (Zug: Die Graue Edition, 2008). 19 Cf. Ernst M. Conradie, “Schuld eingestehen im Kontext des Klimawandels,” in Salzburger Theologische Zeitschrift 12 (1/2008), pp. 48–74, and Ernst M. Conradie, “Healing in a Soterio- logical Perspective,” in Religion & Theology: A Journal of Contemporary Religious Discourse 13 (2006), pp. 3–22. DTS-Studies-God_Climate_Change-2165 165 05/08/2009 16:33:03 PM  166 God, Creation and Climate Change obvious enough: without mitigation and adaptation to new conditions, civilization, as we know it today, cannot survive. Neither can global- ized business or the present economic world system. This challenges faith communities, as well as other bodies, to resist the temptation of reducing climate change merely to stabilize global capitalism. This is the driving force behind reports that simply deal with climate change in terms of financial implications. In spite of enormous scientific and technical innovations, the manag- ers of modern society have not only lost control but also the ability to see what climate is doing to us at present. They strive to replace uncertainty with new certainties through old empiricist methods. Their vision is of a better, even more sublime “management of the planet,” a vision that seems to be dangerous and, in the long run, works against developing an alternative agency of nature. Such an alternative would need to be grounded in the spiritual awareness of life as a gift, of nature as a complex ecology with intrinsic value, and of an all-embracing space that should be thought of in terms of metaphors such as home, garden and body, rather than as a machine, system or market. Religious traditions have a wide range of metaphors for life, nature and space to contribute to how we perceive and conceive, including in science. Such metaphors and images influence our inner im- ages, perceptions and concepts of reality in fundamental ways. They are invisible driving forces behind every theory that has emerged in science.20 The notion of evolution, for example, was unconsciously transferred by Darwin into his theory from the liturgical unrolling (evolvere) of the holy books in the synagogue. “In the beginning is the icon” and, as John made clear in the beginning of his Gospel, also the logos.21 Another contribution from religion to climate research is to ques- tion the attempts to reduce and eliminate all uncertainty. Not every certainty is good, and not every uncertainty is dangerous. What kind of uncertainty leads to deep wisdom about life, and what kind of uncer- tainty should we try to reduce? Could the normal scientific intention to reduce any uncertainty in weather prognosis and climate models lead to a dangerous attitude and the practice of simple managing? Or, could it assist in developing sensitive attitudes of awareness and learning 20 Hans Blumenberg, Die Lesbarkeit der Welt (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 3rd edition, 1993), p. 19. 21 Cf. Sigurd Bergmann, In the Beginning is the Icon: A Liberative Theology of Images, Arts and Culture (London: Equinox, 2009), chapter I. DTS-Studies-God_Climate_Change-2166 166 05/08/2009 16:33:03 PM  Invoking the Spirit amid Dangerous Environmental Change 167 about the unpredictable dimensions of nature, in ways similar to those of indigenous hunters? Religions specialize in dealing with uncertainty, and spiritually dif- ferentiated uncertainty is also needed in empirical science. Scientists can learn from the historical failures of theologians in antiquity and medieval times. If, on the one hand, theologians would try to make cer- tain prognoses about God’s being and acting in the world, they violate the mystery of the Triune in ways that may destroy faith. On the other hand, if theologians avoid interpreting God in the modern world, they only mystify the places and situations where the Spirit acts, liberates and gives new life. The balance of certainty and uncertainty is a nec- essary aspect of spirituality in general. Already in the fourth century, theologians such as Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianz framed the so-called limits of rational certainty in terms of “apophaticism.”22 We should be silent about God’s essence, which we cannot know, but speak positively about God’s actions in creation, which we can experience bodily. The same is also true for nature. Nature in general should not be forced into one single frame of scientific theory but its many modes of being should be reflected in concepts that convey sensibility, aware- ness and spiritual respect. In this regard, environmental change leads human beings to reflect anew on their own identity and relationship to nature. How are we located in what the twentieth-century German language poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, called Weltinnenraum (inner-world space)? While the early phase of climate research tried to postulate about certain develop- ments, nowadays it seems much more important to point to the direction where we need to accept, understand and value the intrinsic uncertainty implicit in earth systems. The distance between science, religion and culture thus shrinks. The wisdom of ecological justice The problems emerging from climate change are located in a broader history of human agency with nature. Modernity and its many “bless- ings” have led to an historically unique human disembeddedness from 22 Cf. Sigurd Bergmann, Creation Set Free: The Spirit as Liberator of Nature. Sacra Doctrina: Christian Theology for a Postmodern Age 4 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), pp. 339ff. DTS-Studies-God_Climate_Change-2167 167 05/08/2009 16:33:03 PM  168 God, Creation and Climate Change natural environments. Scientific and technological developments, com- bined with a deregulated global financial market, have thrown us into a state of affairs that requires a kind of cultural revolution. The roots of this global ecological crisis, debated now for over thirty years but observed already in the early nineteenth century, can be described as sociocultural as well as spiritual. Environmental problems penetrate many sectors of society, in many different patterns of production and consumption, or what the German scholar Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker rightly declared to be the millen- nium of the environment after the last millennium of the economy.23 Political scientists point to the emergence of a kind of global “ecologi- cal citizenship.”24 The process of a transition to an environment based global culture is only beginning. A widely accepted consensus is that socially produced problems in the interaction of human beings and nature cannot be solved only through technical or social engineering. Environmental problems are in the first instance problems of human and cultural constructions; technical and material forms of a non-sustain- able eco-management are interwoven with and express human values, attitudes, ultimate concerns and power realities. Established religious traditions and institutions in Europe have critiqued the dependency on fossil fuels for mobility. 25 The criticism of consumerism as an idolatry has been highlighted in combination with a long-term commitment to the oceanic lifeworld. The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I and other church leaders have published well-informed public declarations. For some time, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has included religious leaders in their work. There is a strong basic desire for an alternative way of living, which produces a creative spiritual force for social transformation. In medi- eval Christianity, monks talked about departing from this world: exire de saeculo. Put in early Christian language, climate change makes it 23 Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, Earth Politics (London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1992), pp. 3ff. 24 Cf. Deane Curtin, “Ecological Citizenship,” in Engin F. Isin and Bryan S. Turner (eds), Hand- book of Citizenship Studies (London: Sage, 2002), pp. 293–304. 25 World Council of Churches, Mobilität: Perspektiven zukunftsfähiger Mobilität (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1998) and World Council of Churches, Mobile–but not Driven: Towards Equitable and Sustainable Mobility and Transport (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2002). Cf. also Jutta Steigerwald, “Walk the Talk: Mobility, Climate Justice and the Churches,” in Bergmann and Sager, op. cit. (note 8). DTS-Studies-God_Climate_Change-2168 168 05/08/2009 16:33:03 PM  Invoking the Spirit amid Dangerous Environmental Change 169 necessary to mine our vision of the Spirit who acts for “the life of the coming world,” as formulated in the Nicene Creed. This also calls for love of the poor as the highest kind of love of God. As Michael Northcott has shown, climatic change deepens the injustice between rich and poor, and without a strong participation of local communities climate politics is doomed to fail. 26 Since the times of the Egyptian goddess Ma’at (“justice”), in the world of religions, the quest for justice has carried a sense of the divine on earth. Eco-management has been contrasted with eco-justice.27 Unjustly distributed risks test the vision of a just world. The participation of faith communities is needed in adapting to climate change, if social life is to be reconstructed with ecological justice for all. In the context of climate change, the challenge is to mobilize spiri- tual energies and to connect them with scientific information and a social arena where experimenting with alternatives can take place. In 1964, the deep ecologist, Arne Næss, coined the term “ecosophy” for this, where ecology as a scientific activity and sophiology as a kind of rational belief system interact without being dissolved into each other.28 Nicholas Maxwell has expressed a similar approach in his criticisms of the philosophy of knowledge, when it does not take into account the self-interests of living beings. Instead, he argues, knowledge should be replaced with wisdom. This is truth seeking that negotiates why we should do or abstain from doing something. 29 When approaching climate change from a theological perspective, the challenge is to explore the desire and spiritual driving forces that are implicit and explicit in environmental commitments, and to widen the present discourse with a wisdom framework for reflecting on why we should act or abstain. A worldview based on economic principles only allows the argument that the cost will be greater if we do not re- spond today. A wisdom based discourse, however, explores reasons for why local and translocal perceptions need to be included, along with 26 Northcott, op.cit. (note 5). 27 Cf. Dieter Hessel (ed.), After Nature’s Revolt: Eco-Justice and Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992). 28 Arne Næss, Ecology, Community, and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy (Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press 1989, pp. 37–40. (Shortened and revised edition of Økologi, samfunn og livsstil:Utkast til en økosofi, Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1974). 29 Nicholas Maxwell, From Knowledge to Wisdom: A Revolution in the Aims and Methods of Science (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984). DTS-Studies-God_Climate_Change-2169 169 05/08/2009 16:33:03 PM  170 God, Creation and Climate Change practical knowledge and skills for surviving with dignity in sustainable environments. Reflecting on values, lifestyles, cultural practices, worldviews, and life interpretations becomes necessary in seeking solutions. Religions have universal and translocal validity. The visible hides that which is invisible and powerful, such as in animism, totemism or indigenous religion. Asian religious traditions have complex structures of divini- ties or energies that shape and rule over cosmic processes. In contrast, monotheist religions in the West regard the one God as the Creator, Sustainer and Liberator of the world. Yet, creation is filled with signs and traces of God. In this sense, nature is revelatory. The earth and its inhabitants are gifts that humans can never manage on their own. “The earth is the Lord’s” (Ex 9:29; Ps 24:1). Similar expressions are found in many religions, such as in the ecological awareness of Buddhism. 30 Muslims have established the dynamic Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Sciences (IFEES),31 and have offered eco-theological interpretations of the Koran and other traditional sources. A traditional response to threatening changes in the natural environ- ment is that God (or the spirits) are reacting to sinful human practices. For example, Gregory of Nazianz interpreted droughts causing starvation as a reaction of the trinitarian God who “preaches through creation.”32 Augustine imaged nature as a liber naturae in addition to the Bible (liber scriptura). For him and the entire medieval tradition until the Renais- sance, nature and the Bible represented two different but equal books in which one could decipher the law and the love of the Creator toward his creatures. For the medieval physician Paracelsus (1493–1541), natural science was an hermeneutics of the Creator’s signs in creation. Medieval science developed as an interpretation of this invisible, uncreated God in nature and its laws. While antiquity used rational explanation as a tool for wisdom, during the Middle Ages, theoretical and practical strate- gies began to be developed to control the environment, a process that was furthered during the Enlightenment. While “enlightened vitalism”33 30 Venerable Jinwol, Seon Experience for Ecological Awakening, forthcoming, in Sigurd Bergmann and Kim, Yong-Bock (eds), Religion, Ecology and Gender: East-West Perspectives, Studies in Religion and the Environment 1 (Muenster/Berlin/Zurich/Vienna/London: LIT, 2009). 31 At www.ifees.org.uk/, accessed June 2009. 32 Gregory of Nazianz, Or. 38.13, 16.5, 6.14. Cf. Bergmann, op. cit. (note 22), p. 109. 33 Peter Hanns Reill, Vitalizing Nature in the Enlightenment (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 2005). DTS-Studies-God_Climate_Change-2170 170 05/08/2009 16:33:04 PM  Invoking the Spirit amid Dangerous Environmental Change 171 sought to understand vital forces in a sensitive way, modern epistemol- ogy has set creation free from all kinds of ideological limitations other than the ultimate concern for accumulating profit. “It is hardly too much to say that scientific and technological research have made possible all our current problems.”34 Consequently, modern science and technology can be interpreted as instruments for salvation in a religious key, even if they claim to have secular neutrality. Climate research, as located in environmental sci- ence, breaks radically with such a code of science due to an alternative understanding of what is normative. While science seeks insights for the sake of human interests, climate and environmental science seeks insights for the best of the earth itself, including its inhabitants. The latest approach to climate geopolitics expresses this in the equal right to emissions necessary for every global citizen to survive. 35 However, what is the best for all and how it can be achieved is a question that should include the participation of all affected. Global institutions need to offer space for such dialogue. Otherwise, consen- sus about the good life for all cannot be achieved. Might a consensus among religious institutions and communities about climate change as a call to spiritual change help further this? Could it contribute to deeper formation of meaning than the economic management of climate and nature? Does the economic “uncertainty” of environmental processes present a threat or a challenge? Remembering the above historical connections could contribute to a new ethics of respect. Religions mirror this deep connection of climate environments and faith. The story of Genesis presupposes the existence of a garden in the land of the two streams, which was among the first regions stabilized by the new climate conditions. The story of the great flood reflects the memories, which at the time were still present after experiences of unpredictable climate changes. The prophet Jeremiah offers one of the oldest narratives of a dramatic crisis of culture and nature, which at the time was also mirrored in the drama of climate (cf. Jer 18:14–17). 34 Nicholas Maxwell, Are Philosophers Responsible for Global Warming? Email letter to the mailing list, [email protected], 13 October 2007. 35 Equal rights to emissions for every global citizen have been proposed by the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, in September 2007. Such a proposal would, however, need to acknowledge the dif- ference between luxury and ordinary life emissions. The principle of equal rights is also applied in Inge Johansen’s report for the Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences (NTVA), Ethics of Climate Change: Exploring the Principle of Equal Emission Rights (Trondheim, 2007). DTS-Studies-God_Climate_Change-2171 171 05/08/2009 16:33:04 PM  172 God, Creation and Climate Change In the world of religions, dramatic environmental changes have usu- ally been interpreted as signs from the Creator, who does not plague creatures arbitrarily, but sets signs into the sky in order to make them aware of their failures, sins and crimes against God’s laws in nature. Dramatic environmental change therefore has been interpreted as a means for people to find their way back to an ecologically right path. This foundational code has been present in many religions and cultures throughout time. Hence, environmental ethics are not a modern inven- tion but live from roots of older religious traditions. Remembering the suffering and liberation of creation Ethical decisions are not simply made by theoretical moral arguments according to universal principles. An important source of strength in the context of dangerous environmental change can be found in the process of remembrance, especially of the suffering. As evident already in this book, climate change is not just a coming threat but has already caused a large number of victims. Again, the poor carry the greatest sufferings. The memories of suffering are embedded in local percep- tions and practices. The theologian Johann Baptist Metz, reflects on the significance of the remembrance of the suffering. 36 Remembering the suffering is necessary in order to find and apply processes of actual liberation from powers of teleological and technological thinking. The need to integrate the re- membrance of the suffering is crucial for the process of urban planning, 37 and also in relation to climatic change. Remembrance of the suffering caused by climate change can contribute to environmental planning and to a creation of meaning in lived space and lived religion. For Christians, the foundation of such an hermeneutics of suffering is our remembrance of Christ’s sufferings. The Holy Spirit makes this remembrance possible. In this, the tradition of the oppressed is key. This tradition is found “only among those who are poor and despairing right 36 Johann Baptist Metz, “Erinnerung des Leidens als Kritik eines teleologisch-technologischen Zukunftsbegriffs,” in Evangelische Theologie 32 (1972), pp. 338–52. 37 Sigurd Bergmann, “Making Oneself at Home in Environments of Urban Amnesia: Religion and Theology in City Space,” in International Journal of Public Theology 2 (2008), pp. 70–97. DTS-Studies-God_Climate_Change-2172 172 05/08/2009 16:33:04 PM  Invoking the Spirit amid Dangerous Environmental Change 173 now and only at the places where they suffer–only near to them.”38 It is precisely their situation that provides them with a powerful impetus to believe, to hope, to experience and to reflect on God’s liberation. The challenge is to respond to dangerous environmental changes in ways that respect or benefit the memory of those who have been thus excluded. This remembrance of the suffering also affects the understanding of Christian eschatology. It encourages us to understand more deeply the Spirit’s work in space and time. Eschatology often mistakenly separates the past from the future. The Holy Spirit, however, creates not only the life of the world to come, but also nurtures the present through remembrance. In this sense, the Spirit is the agent of tradition and the subject of remembering and handing over. The memory of local Christian experiences, artifacts and practices represents a dynamic synthesis of continuity and change. The Holy Spirit keeps theological interpretations of life open for the future as well as keeping the process of remembrance, the writing of history and historical imagination open for the past. While such an insight has been central in Asian and African religions, in which ancestors have essential significance for the present, the dignity of the power of the past has been expelled by the modern West’s power- ful “myth of progress” and its shift to regard history as a human product. Because the Spirit works to appropriate both the past and the future, both need to be treated not as predictable or reducible but as spiritually open to God’s work. The past as well as the future continuously offer thresholds for the Creator to pass over into creation. Pneumatology, therefore, interprets how the advent experience of waiting for God to come, and the historical experience of remembering the God who has come, both come together to create an open attitude toward life as a gift flowing from the past as well as into the future. To do this, the Spirit needs to be understood as a movement. The Spirit, who goes between, moves through the borders of space and time. Such a perspective leads faith communities to ask, Where does the Spirit’s life of the coming world emerge? How does the Holy Spirit “take place” in climate change? How do communities of believers inter- act with a liberating God in lived space? How do they transform built environments into habitable space, flourishing with justice both for humans and for others? 38 Ottmar John, “Die Tradition der Unterdrückten als Leitthema einer theologischen Hermeneutik,” in Concilium 24 (6/1988), pp. 519–26, here p. 524. DTS-Studies-God_Climate_Change-2173 173 05/08/2009 16:33:04 PM  174 God, Creation and Climate Change The reason why religion is necessary to complement science, politics and technology is simple. In dialogue with Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, the philosopher Georg Picht asked, How can science be true if its applications destroy its own object, nature? Until today, the question remains unanswered. One could continue to ask, How could technology be true if its application in a world of artifacts, the “second nature” (Walter Benjamin), 39 leads the first nature into collapse? And how, finally, can economic theory be true if its applications, mainly with neoliberal models, lead to an increasing impoverishment of nature and world populations? The answers can only be worked out in alliances of scientists and believers who are committed to an exile out of “this world” and empire. Fortunately, small processes of exire de saeculo in this sense are already taking place today in politics, the arts, even the World Bank and science and other spheres today. Therefore, the urgency of building alliances is increasing, and faith communities, because of their translocal and transcultural reach, have a unique capacity to further this process. 40 Could we revise ecclesiology in this sense and reimagine the church as an agglomeration of local places and a global space for creative experi- ments in the arts of survival in environmentally changing contexts? Where will the life-giving Spirit “take place” in a changing environment? 39 Literary critic and philosopher (1892–1940). 40 On the challenge of climate change to a revised self-understanding of the churches see Ernst Conradie, The Church and Climate Change (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2008). DTS-Studies-God_Climate_Change-2174 174 05/08/2009 16:33:04 PM  175 Appendix LWF Resolution on Climate Change At its meeting in June 2008 in Arusha, Tanzania, the LWF Council voted: “To call upon member churches to engage in and deepen their theologi- cal and ethical reflection on the human contribution to climate change (drawing on the resources being developed through the DTS program “Responding Theologically to Climate Change”), recognizing human beings as ‘co-creatures’ with moral agency rather than claiming the prerogatives of creators, and seeking to learn from Indigenous practices and traditional wisdom for living sustainably as part of Creation. “To impress upon member churches the critical urgency and unprec- edented magnitude of the challenge of climate change and the threat that it poses to humanity and all living beings on Earth. “To urge member churches to move beyond lamentation to urgent and effective action, especially in relation to reducing the emissions gener- ated by their institutional activities and operations (including travel) and promoting more sustainable lifestyles and behaviors among their members. “To request the General Secretary and LWF member churches to un- dertake targeted advocacy actions (together with the WCC and other ecumenical and civil society partners) in appropriate forums – including forthcoming sessions of the UN Climate Change Conference – in order to promote strong political commitments to achieving a 40% reduction compared to 1990 levels of CO2 emissions by 2020. “To encourage advocacy by the General Secretary and LWF member churches for rapid transition from coal and other fossil fuels for power generation to non-nuclear renewable energy sources, and for the ap- plication of a “carbon tax”. “To call upon the General Secretary, LWF member churches and LWF field programs to consolidate and enhance their efforts to address the DTS-Studies-God_Climate_Change-2175 175 05/08/2009 16:33:04 PM  176 God, Creation and Climate Change impacts of climate change on development and poverty in the most vul- nerable communities, and to promote effective national and international responses to climate change adaptation and mitigation. “To ask the General Secretary to implement a CO2 emissions compensa- tion system for LWF air travel, using appropriate LWF projects, at the latest by the beginning of 2009, and invite all member churches to use this CO2 emission compensation system for their air travel. “To request the General Secretary to take other actions necessary to re- duce the carbon footprint of the LWF secretariat, including considering the following actions with regard to Assembly preparation: reducing the number of printed documents and offering the option of digital or paper documents; providing all digital documents on a memory stick; and preparing Assembly delegates and participants for a more digitalized Assembly by organizing as part of the pre-Assembly meetings, training workshops on on-line communication. “To request the General Secretary to produce and disseminate to member churches a briefing paper on climate change and possible responses by the churches.” DTS-Studies-God_Climate_Change-2176 176 05/08/2009 16:33:04 PM DTS-Studies-201002-text.indd 10 02/03/2011 15:55:18 PM  God, Studies 02/2009 Studies 02/09 Climate change threatens the future of the planet and raises deeply spiritual and ethical questions. In this book, biblical scholars, theologians and ethicists creatively develop perspectives, from Creation and Christian and other traditions, that can inspire and empower us to make the significant changes in worldviews, practices and policies needed at this kairotic time. Contributors include: Sigurd Bergmann (Norway), Karen L. Bloomquist (editor, USA), Colette Bouka Coula (Cameroon), Norman Climate Change God, Creation and Climate Change Habel (Australia), Anupama Hial (India), Tore Johnsen (Norway), James B. Martin-Schramm (USA), Cynthia Moe-Lobeda (USA), Elaine Gleci Neuenfeldt (Brazil), Barbara Rossing (USA), Christoph Spiritual and Ethical Perspectives Stueckelberger (Switzerland), and George Zachariah (India). LUTHERAN UNIVERSITY PRESS The Lutheran World Federation – A Communion of Churches DTS-Studies-God_Climate_Change-c1 1 05/08/2009 10:07:41 AM