Dan Harper | Sermons

Category: Ecojustice

  • African Earthkeepers

    This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2007 Daniel Harper.

    Readings

    The first reading is titled “The Earthkeeper’s Call.” It comes from the African Initiated Churches in Zimbabwe. It tells in part how the African Initiated Churches teamed up with traditional religious groups to plant trees in Zimbabwe.

    After chimurenga [the Zimbabwean revolution]
    the earth was scorched and barren
    and the Spirit of God urged prophets:
    “Cry, the empty gullies, the dying plains —
    clothe the naked land of the forebears!”
    And hope returned.
    Healing hands, young leaves of trees.

    Heeding the call
    they came:
    black multitudes
    churches of the poor:
    billowing garments…
    red, white, blue, resplendent green
    bearing holy staves, cardboard crowns.
    Cursed descendants of Ham,
    rejects of white mission,
    lift the fallen banner of Spirit
    kingdom’s cornerstone
    where souls of people, tree souls meet.

    Prophets shouted:
    Repent! Confess!
    I bare earth with axe and fire
    rape forests without return
    sledge-rip gullied meadows
    turn earth’s water to trickling mire.
    Confess and baptize… the land!
    Oust the demons of neglect.
    From Jordan emerge
    with bonded hands, new earth community…

    Proclaim new heaven
    new earth in black Jerusalem…
    where weary traveler
    finds cool in shade
    rustle of leaves
    fountains spring
    clear water of life.

    The second reading is from the book “African Earthkeepers: Wholistic Interfaith Mission.” This passage tells about how some African Initiated Churches have used religious means to prevent environmental destruction. You should know that these particular Christian churches call evildoers “wizards,” in keeping with traditional African cultural understandings, and that as translations of Shona words, “wizard” and “wizardry” have nothing to do with Harry Potter or Gandalf.

    “In the earthkeeping churches the nuances regarding wizardry are inevitably more varied and subtle than during the war [for Zimbabwean independence]. In contrast to the execution or torture of war traitors, wanton tree-fellers or poachers of wildlife will, upon prophetic detection, either be temporarily barred from taking the eucharist or, in the event of repeated transgression of the earthkeeper’s code, be excommunicated altogether. The key figures in the Association for African Earthkeeping Churches are only too aware of a common guilt which, in a sense, makes all of us ‘varoyi’ — death destroyers. To this they readily admit, which in itself is a sure sign of accepting collective responsibility for environmental restoration. There is a vast difference, however, between admitting guilt prior to committed participation in conservationist programmes, and deliberate deforestation or related destructive action in the face of a protective environmental code. It is this attitude of selfish environmental exploitation, regardless of the will of the community and the destruction caused to nature, which the prophets condemn as the evil of uroyi [wizardry], to be stamped out at all costs.” [p. 166]

    Sermon

    This is the first in a series of three sermons for Black History Month. Although often Black History Month is a time to celebrate and explore the Black Diaspora, in today’s sermon I’m going to talk about contemporary Africa.

    If you attend worship services here regularly, you will know by now that I have a special interest in ecological theology and spirituality. Nor I am alone in this interest: many other people in this congregation are also committed to ecological theology and spirituality. Speaking for myself, I find myself nodding in agreement with the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released yesterday which says there is “unequivocal series of evidence [showing that] fossil fuel burning and land use change are affecting the climate on our planet.” I feel equally strongly that my religion has to address the realities of that environmental crisis; in fact, if my religion does not address the environmental crisis in real and meaningful ways, why, I’ll go find another religion that does.

    I said our whole world is involved in this environmental crisis. It’s easy to forget that. It’s all too easy to concentrate on our environmental problems right here in North America, and ignore the rest of the world. It’s easy, for example, to conveniently forget that when sea levels start rising due to global warming, the country of Bangladesh is going to be much worse off than New Bedford — thousand, even millions of Bangldeshis could be affected by even a modest increase in sea levels. It’s easy to forget, for another example, that the air in some Chinese cities is so polluted that no birds can live in those cities, and that lung diseases are rampant among the human inhabitants of those cities. It’s easy to forget, for another example, that the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are predicting an increase in the already serious droughts and desertification in sub-Sahara Africa.

    It’s easy for us here in North America to forget that the environmental crisis is world-wide. In my more cynical moments, I sometimes think that predominantly white North America manages to ignore environmental crisis in countries where most of the people do not have white skin. In my less cynical moments, I sometimes wonder how these other places are coping with environmental crisis. Many places in the world are already deeper into the crisis than we are. Maybe we could learn from them.

    A year ago, I happened to stumble across a book titled African Earthkeepers: Wholistic Interfaith Mission, by Marthinus L. Daneel. In this book, Daneel tells the story of an interfaith earthkeeping project that unites Christians and traditional African religious groups in Zimbabwe. The project didn’t happen overnight, and the story of this interfaith earthkeeping effort goes something like this:

    Before the war for majority rule in Zimbabwe, ecological problems were already appearing. Overgrazing was common — putting too much livestock onto the land had the result that the plants the animals preferred to eat couldn’t reseed themselves, leaving bare soil. Soil erosion became common, and big gullies began to appear in the land where the soil washed away. Firewood had become scarce, more and more trees were cut for cooking fires, and forests began to shrink in size. All these trends were exacerbated by the fact that a tiny white minority controlled most of the land, which they farmed for profit, not to supply local food, selling much of their crops abroad.

    Zimbabwe achieved independence from white minority rule in the mid-1980’s. Many of those who fought for black majority rule hoped that a redistribution of land would lead to greater equity through better ecological balance. This was not to be so, for the war for independence, and its aftermath, devastated the countryside. Widespread destruction of forests left the land vulnerable to erosion. People were evicted from where they had lived, and wound up squatting on common lands. On top of that, a severe drought lasted through most of the 1980’s up to 1992.

    In his book, Marthinus Daneel says that it was bad enough to see the poorly-conceived settlement plans lead to further environmental destruction. But it was something else to see “callous profiteers” grab up forest lands and clear-cut the trees to sell as firewood for a quick profit, leaving the land exposed to soil erosion. And it was something else to see squatters pushed into the drainage area of Lake Kyle, where they quickly cut down large sections of the forest, leaving the bare soil to drain into the lake.

    “Worst of all was the invasion of Mount Mugabe,” Daneel writes. Exploitative profiteers managed to grab land on the sacred mountain, cutting down the wild fruit trees that grew there, selling them for firewood. Not only was it ridiculous to destroy a food source just to make a quick profit; the people of the area, both Christians and those who practiced traditional religion, thought of the trees as sacred. “These greedy exploiters desecrated the holy grove,” writes Daneel. “Soon the mountain was dying.” [p.9]

    Daneel and others watched the land being destroyed, and slowly a resolve grew in them to somehow stop the destruction. Daneel, who is Christian, tells about a key moment for him, when he was talking with one of the leaders of the traditional religion. Both of them felt the environmental crisis had a spiritual side to it. In Daneel’s Christian churches, there was a growing feeling that the church’s must become keepers of God’s creation. For their part, the traditional religious groups were upset by the destruction of the sacred groves, and they felt that unless something was done to fix the situation they could expect retribution from the spirit world. A key moment came when the two groups decided that they must work together — that these two religions, long at odds with one another, must put aside their differences and address the problem of environmental disaster together. It’s as if Unitarian Universalists teamed up with fundamentalist Christians become earthkeepers together.

    Out of the collaboration of these two groups emerged the project of planting trees. Not only was planting trees a religious act, it was also pragmatic: planting trees meant stabilizing river banks; it meant planting fruit trees that can become food sources; it meant preventing soil erosion from overgrazed lands; it meant fighting back against desertification. Remember, too, that they couldn’t just raise money and drive over to the local nursery to buy saplings; there were no commercial nurseries; if they wanted trees they would have to create nurseries and grow the trees from seeds.

    The traditionalists formed a group called AZTREC, the Association of Zimbabwean Traditional Ecologists, and the Christians formed a group called Association for African Earthkeeping Churches, or AAEC. Together, they declared the “war of the trees,” and set a goal of growing a million trees from seed every year, and then planting those trees where most needed. By the year 2000, the year Daneel wrote his book, they had almost reached that goal, surviving several serious droughts and overcoming serious financial and logistical challenges.

    Remember that this was an interfaith religious movement. To me, perhaps the most interesting aspect of the religious movement is that both the Christians and the traditionalists declared that destroying trees was evil and not acceptable from a religious point of view. This is what we heard in the second reading this morning. The Christian churches would publicly expose persons who engaged in tree-cutting or environmental destruction, ask them to repent, and if the evildoers would not repent, they would be excluded from the eucharist, the central religious rite of the church; and if their actions continued after that, they would be excommunicated. On the traditionalist side, their leaders declared that destruction of trees would lead to the most dire consequences for individuals, and for the community. Traditional spirit mediums told the people that if environmental destruction continued, the spirits would continue to withhold the rains, and the severe drought would continue. Christian prophets denounced individual evildoers and profiteers. In short, both Christians and traditionalists declared that environmental destruction was evil, that environmental destruction was against religious principles, and that individuals who participated willfully in environmental destruction would be penalized by their religious communities.

    I said at the beginning that perhaps we could learn from this African movement. Now the history of North American involvement in Africa has been generally paternalistic, especially here in the United States. When we think of Africans at all, which is not very often, we have a tendency to think: Those Africans, they are so poor and ill-educated, I’ll send a check to help out one of those poor starving African children I see in the advertisements. When our government sends aid money, the money usually comes with restrictions and advice, with an underlying assumption that Africans don’t know enough to handle their money, and that their governments are all corrupt anyway (as if we have no governmental corruption here in the United States, as if the lobbyists don’t have undue influence here in out own country). We tend to look at Africa paternalistically, and we think that we can offer help to them, but how on earth could such a poor continent help us out.

    Well, I think the African idea of turning environmental destruction into a religious matter is an idea we could learn from. I think the African idea of interfaith cooperation to stop environmental destruction is an idea we could learn from. I even think the idea of declaring environmental destruction to be evil is an idea we could learn from. So I say we should listen to and learn from these Africans who plant trees.

    First of all, let’s be a lot more explicit about turning environmental destruction into a religious matter. If we did that, we might come up with some interesting results. Then anything we do to stop environmental destruction could be seen as an act of prayer or meditation, a spiritual practice, which in turn could mean that whatever we do to stop environmental destruction is not a thankless chore but rather it is an act of spiritual beauty. If stopping environmental destruction becomes a religious matter, for some of us it will become easier to channel the whole force and power of mind, heart, and soul into that effort. If healing the earth becomes a religious matter, we might just find that we heal our own souls by healing the earth. Therefore, I say: let’s make earth healing, earthkeeping, a central part of our shared religion.

    Second of all, let’s figure out a way to make earth healing and earthkeeping an interfaith activity. I believe interfaith cooperation should be especially important for Unitarian Universalists. We already have lots of expertise in this area — we have Christians, humanists, Jews, pagans, and Buddhists in our congregations as it is, we already know how to do interfaith dialogue at a very intimate level. We can translate religious terms on the fly. When a fundamentalist Christian says “creation care,” we can translate into secular humanist terms: “ecological sustainability” — into pagan terms: “honoring the Goddess” — and so on. In fact, I think we might borrow the two African terms, “earth healing” and “earthkeeping,” and perhaps use them to substitute for more theologically loaded terms. We Unitarian Universalists should be out there making contacts with other religious groups, and building interfaith cooperation for earth healing and earthkeeping.

    Third, it’s time for us to declare that environmental destruction is evil. It is perhaps the greatest evil of our time. It is a religious evil. I know we hear too many comparisons to the evil of the Nazis and the Holocaust, but in this case I believe that comparison is apt; right now, environmental destruction is causing genocide as entire species are deliberately pushed towards extinction. It may cause further genocide as poor countries and communities of color are forced to bear the heaviest burden of environmental destruction.

    We Unitarian Universalists tend to be reluctant to declare that something is evil. The term “evil” has been misused and misappropriated, especially in religious circles, and we don’t want to continue that misuse. We are even more reluctant to declare that a person is evil. We say that we believe in the inherent worth and dignity of all persons. And from our Universalist heritage, we retain that old sense that God will save all souls, that there will be universal salvation, no matter what.

    Yet I don’t think we can avoid calling the current environmental destruction “evil.” Huge numbers of people are going to die if we don’t do something about global climate change; and the people who will suffer most will be the peoples who have been historically marginalized: communities of color, the poor, those without political power. We have already seen this tendency at work in New Orleans, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. What happened to the poor neighborhoods in New Orleans was evil, insofar as the disaster continues to have worse consequence3s than it should have had. And we can’t avoid calling the current environmental destruction evil because we know that there is a small number people, of profiteers, who benefit from environmental destruction. The big oil companies have been actively working against public policy initiatives to reduce oil consumption so that we may reduce the production of greenhouse gasses — insofar as they have done so, the oil companies and their executives are doing evil.

    Those are just three things we could learn from this African movement for earthkeeping. If we had more time this morning, I would love to explore at least two other things we could learn from them. I would love to talk about how earthkeeping and earth healing could be further integrated into our worship services — for example, those African Initiated Christian churches plant trees as a part of a worship service. And I would love to talk more about the significance of planting trees, how tree planting becomes both a pragmatic act, and an act of religious earth healing.

    So it is that I believe we can learn something of critical importance from an African interfaith environmental group. I hope that you see, as I do, how we can learn from the mother continent of Africa. We can learn that earthkeeping and earth healing should be a religious task, not just a political task. We can learn that such a huge task requires us to work in close cooperation with other religious groups. And I believe we can learn practical, pragmatic ways of accomplishing earthkeeping.

    So may our religious tradition learn from African religious traditions; so may we learn to become earthkeepers, and earth healers.

  • God in Nature

    This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2006 Daniel Harper.

    Readings

    The first reading this morning is a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson, titled “Blight.”

    Give me truths,
    For I am weary of the surfaces,
    And die of inanition. If I knew
    Only the herbs and simples of the wood,
    Rue, cinquefoil, gill, vervain, and pimpernel,
    Blue-vetch, and trillium, hawkweed, sassafras,
    Milkweeds, and murky brakes, quaint pipes and sundew,
    And rare and virtuous roots, which in these woods
    Draw untold juices from the common earth,
    Untold, unknown, and I could surely spell
    Their fragrance, and their chemistry apply
    By sweet affinities to human flesh,
    Driving the foe and stablishing the friend,–
    O that were much, and I could be a part
    Of the round day, related to the sun,
    And planted world, and full executor
    Of their imperfect functions.
    But these young scholars who invade our hills,
    Bold as the engineer who fells the wood,
    And travelling often in the cut he makes,
    Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not,
    And all their botany is Latin names.
    The old men studied magic in the flower,
    And human fortunes in astronomy,
    And an omnipotence in chemistry,
    Preferring things to names, for these were men,
    Were unitarians of the united world,
    And wheresoever their clear eyebeams fell,
    They caught the footsteps of the SAME. Our eyes
    Are armed, but we are strangers to the stars,
    And strangers to the mystic beast and bird,
    And strangers to the plant and to the mine;
    The injured elements say, Not in us;
    And night and day, ocean and continent,
    Fire, plant, and mineral say, Not in us,
    And haughtily return us stare for stare.
    For we invade them impiously for gain,
    We devastate them unreligiously,
    And coldly ask their pottage, not their love,
    Therefore they shove us from them, yield to us
    Only what to our griping toil is due;
    But the sweet affluence of love and song,
    The rich results of the divine consents
    Of man and earth, of world beloved and lover,
    The nectar and ambrosia are withheld;
    And in the midst of spoils and slaves, we thieves
    And pirates of the universe, shut out
    Daily to a more thin and outward rind,
    Turn pale and starve….

    The second reading this morning is by Bernard Loomer, Bernard, from his essay “The Size of God” [in The Size of God: The Theology of Bernard Loomer in Context, ed. by William Dean and Larry Axel. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press]:

    “In our traditions the term ‘God’ is the symbol of ultimate values and meanings in all of their dimensions. It connotes an absolute claim on our loyalty. It points the direction of a greatness of fulfillment. It signifies a richness of resources for the living of life at its depths. It suggests the enshrinement of our common and ecological life. It proclaims an adequate object of worship. It symbolizes a transcendent and inexhaustible meaning that forever eludes our grasp. The world is God because it is the source and preserver of meaning; because the creative advance of the world in its adventure is the supreme cause to be served; because even in our desecration of our space and time within it, the world is holy ground; and because it contains and yet enshrouds the ultimate mystery inherent within existence itself” (Loomer 1987, 42)

    SERMON — “God in Nature”

    In case you’re wondering, I’m not going to preach about Christmas this week. It’s only NOvember, and still too early to preach about Christmas. Instead, this sermon is the third in a series of sermons on Unitarian Universalist views on God.

    I’ve been thinking about the current hullabaloo raised by Richard Dawkins’s latest book, The God Delusion. Dawkins, as you probably know, is an evolutionary biologist; he is also an atheist who delights in pointing out the ridiculousness of believing in God; and as a result he has been getting lots of coverage in the popular press. I have to admit, I don’t even plan to read his book. Tending towards cynicism as I do, it’s hard for me to take Dawkins seriously, because it’s clear that the more he fulminates against established religion, the more books he will sell. In today’s world, iconoclasm can be very profitable.

    Come to think of it, maybe I should read Dawkins’s book, and learn how to write my own bestselling book in which I trash-talk religion from a minister’s point of view.

    On the other hand, while the media has been giving Dawkins lots of coverage, but they have not been covering how theological scholars are responding to Dawkins’s book; popular culture doesn’t want to hear experts on religion talk about religion. The theologians are politely saying that Dawkins’s book simply displays his ignorance of theology: that the God Dawkins describes is not a God that any theologian would take seriously either. They are also saying Dawkins should know better: in order to write seriously about a subject you should read up on the subject first, and Dawkins clearly knows nothing about theology.

    On the other other hand, the theologians are probably jealous that their books don’t sell as well as Dawkins’s. Which may be because too many of the theologians write about a traditional, abstract God that I can’t believe in. So where does that leave someone like me? I don’t believe in the cartoon-caricature of God that Dawkins vilifies; who does? Nor am I interested in the traditional God of the theologians, a lifeless God which I sometimes find even less believable than Dawkins’s cartoonish God.

    I suspect there are quite a few you out there who find themselves in this same position. The cartoon-God of the God-bashers, while entertaining, is also faintly embarrassing because it’s too easy to bash a cartoonish God. The traditional concepts of God hold little interest for us any more. The academic God of the theologians seems simply irrelevant. Yet here we are, sitting in a church; we’re still religious. Whether or not we believe in God, we still take religion seriously.

    So this morning I’d like to talk about one concept of God that I find I can take seriously; and that’s the idea that God is inextricably intertwined with Nature, with the natural world. Not that you or I or anyone should unquestioningly accept this concept of God-in-Nature;– but I do think it’s worthy of our serious attention, for at least three reasons: first, because many people find personal religious inspiration in Nature; second, because it seems easy to reconcile such a God with the insights of science; and third, because it seems that such a God could help us understand the current ecological crisis, and help us understand why we should do something about that crisis.

    Let’s start with that first reason:– It’s worth considering God as Nature because many of us find personal religious inspiration in Nature. By “religious” inspiration, I mean an experience of awe and wonder, or an experience a sense of the sublime; a personal sense of religion often grows out of such experiences. Not that these experiences lead necessarily towards one narrow religious viewpoint. You can experience a religious awe and wonder at the coming of springtime and the rebirth of the natural world; but that doesn’t mean that you will necessarily fit that experience of awe and wonder into the traditional Western Christian celebration of Easter and the risen Christ; no more does it mean that you will fit that experience into the celebration of the ancient Celtic pagan holiday of Beltane. Or you can experience a religious sense of the sublime when you are in the eye of a hurricane, when you see and hear the storm raging all around you but overhead there is that small, quiet patch of blue sky; but that sense of the insignificant self being overwhelmed by the sublime power and grandeur of the universe does not lead to any specific religious theological belief system.

    I get a good deal of my own religious inspiration from Nature. When I’m in the White Mountains, hiking above treeline into the alpine ecosystem, being in the midst of the low shrubby trees and tiny delicate flowers, that is a religious experience for me. Or the other day when I was out on Pope’s Island, I flushed a Cooper’s Hawk out of some shrubs near the city marina, and the surprise of its sudden appearance, and the sight of it flying off low over the waters of the harbor, was a religious experience. I don’t know how to explain that feeling of connection to another living being except as a religious connection; I’m not going to eat a Cooper’s Hawk, nor will it eat me; seeing a patch of lichen above treeline is not going to give me some evolutionary advantage that will help me pass along my genes to the next generation. These powerful experiences of nature don’t move me to believe in the traditional God, but my personal experiences of the natural world make me think that it might make sense to describe Nature as God.

    And this is related to the fact that it is possible, even easy, to reconcile such a God, God-in-Nature, with the insights of science.

    Science can provoke awe and wonder and sense of sublime; at least, I suspect it can do so for nearly everyone in this room. Haven’t you ever been thrilled by one of those science programs on television? Admittedly, some of them are terminally boring, but I do get excited by the programs about astronomy. How can you not get excited when you hear about the Big Bang that (so it is theorized) was the beginning of our whole universe? How can you not react in awe and wonder when you learn about the vast distances in our universe? What’s even more thrilling is when you get to experience science first-hand. Last winter, one of the local astronomy clubs brought their telescopes out for AHA! Night one month, and I got a chance to look through their telescopes at Uranus and Mars — that was far more memorable than a television program, and it was certainly an experience of awe and wonder for me.

    On a more personal level, as an avid bird watcher I’m thrilled by bird biology. When you see two different kinds of sandpipers feeding side by side at the edge of the ocean, almost identical to one another except for the length of their bills, and you know that they evolved from a common ancestor, evolving different bill lengths so one could dig a little deeper in the sand and mud and exploit a slightly different ecological niche, I find that thrilling. Those two birds are living, breathing examples of how evolution works, which I find awe-inspiring and wonderful. Now I had better stop talking about birds before your eyes glaze over in boredom. The science of ornithology happens to fill me with awe and wonder; even if you find birds mind-numbingly boring, I trust that you will be able to think of other examples of science that fills you with awe and wonder.

    Richard Dawkins notwithstanding, many religious people have no problem reconciling God with science. Liberal Christians find it easy to reconcile a fairly traditional Christian God with science, as long as you don’t take the Bible literally. Pagans, Jews, and many other religious faiths say that science is completely compatible with belief in Goddess or God. But I would like to tell you about “religious naturalism,” a religious position which I probably adhere to.

    Jerry Stone, a philosopher of religion who is affiliated with Meadville Lombard Theological School, came up with the term “religious naturalism.” I went to hear Jerry give a talk about religious naturalism last June at General Assembly, our big annual denominational meeting. Jerry says that ‘naturalism’ means “a set of beliefs and attitudes that focus on this world,” whereas ‘supernaturalism’ would imply that there is something beyond the natural world. So according to Jerry Stone, “religious naturalism is a philosophy or theology that there are religious aspects of this world which can be appreciated within a naturalist framework.” Which means that religious naturalism is easily compatible with science.

    And religious naturalism allows belief in God. (Jerry Stone also says that there are also religious naturalists who see no need for any concept of God at all; but that’s a topic for a different sermon.) Some religious naturalists would say that God is the whole universe, the totality of everything; as we heard Bernard Loomer say in the first reading this morning. Other religious naturalists would say that God is a part of the total universe; for example, a theologian named Henry Nelson Wieman said that the creative process in the universe is God. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau fall into one of these two camps: they found God in natural processes and in the connections between living beings, and it may be that they find God in everything.

    To find God in the interconnections between living beings: it seems to me that such a God could help us understand why we should do something about the current ecological crisis. This is the big problem I have with people like Richard Dawkins: he gives me no compelling reason why I should try to stop species extinctions, or try to clean up New Bedford harbor, or do anything at all about the ecological crisis.

    Our ecological crisis fascinates me. It horrifies me, too, but I’m fascinated by the fact that we have the science and the technological know-how to end the ecological crisis — and yet we aren’t ending the crisis. I’m fascinated by the fact that we have the financial resources to pay for solving global warming, to take one example, to pay for it with relatively little disruption to the economy — and yet we aren’t ending global warming, or any part of the ecological crisis. I’m fascinated from a religious point of view, because I think our society refuses to deal with the current ecological crisis because of certain prevailing religious beliefs. Let me outline what some of those religious beliefs might be.

    First, and most obviously, there are substantial numbers of right-wing Christians who don’t worry about the current ecological crisis because they fully expect the end of the world to come, and all the true believers will be “raptured” up to heaven. If you think you’re going to get “raptured” up to heaven, I’ll bet you don’t think you have to deal with global warming, species extinctions, or the PCBs in New Bedford harbor. Second, there are substantial numbers of people of many different religious persuasions who are willing to passively sit back and trust to God, or to Goddess, or whomever. If you think it was meant to be this way, ecological disasters and all, if you say “I’m sure God will provide”; I’d have to say there isn’t much incentive for you to take responsibility yourself to clean up the world.

    Thirdly, and least obviously, there are lots of people who believe that human beings are the most important life form, not only more important than any other plant or animal but also more important than the ecosystem considered as a whole. If you think you, as a human being, are so special then why would you cut back on your fuel consumption just because global warming is going to melt the polar ice caps thus killing off all the polar bears? This third group includes plenty of people who would not think of themselves as religious, but I count them as religious since they hold onto this belief with religious zeal in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Yet if the theory of evolution teaches us anything, it teaches us that human beings are not special and not unique; we’re just another organism that happened to develop through the chance processes of evolution.

    We human beings do have a deep need to feel special. At the moment, too many of us satisfy our need to feel special at the expense of all other life forms. If we are willing to affirm God as being intertwined with Nature in some way, that means that we, too, are a part of God. It doesn’t get any more special than that: there is that of God in each of us; or maybe it’s that there’s that of each of us in God; in either case, we too are divine, we too are Godly. If you prefer, you can substitute “Goddess” for “God” here, and everything will still be equally true.

    Yet if we say that God or Goddess is intertwined with Nature, we have every incentive to do no harm to Nature, for doing harm to Nature is not only doing harm to God or Goddess, it is also doing harm to ourselves; since we too are divine. It is morally and ethically wrong to cause harm to Nature.

    In the first reading this morning, Ralph Waldo Emerson tells us that we have become strangers to animals and plants, strangers to ocean and continent, strangers even to the night and to the day. Why is this so?: “For we invade them impiously for gain,/We devastate them unreligiously…”. Emerson tell us that it is morally and ethically wrong to cause harm to Nature. He also tells us that in causing such harm, we only harm ourselves: “The nectar and ambrosia” of the Gods “are withheld” from us; “And in the midst of spoils and slaves, we thieves/ And pirates of the universe, shut out/ Daily to a more thin and outward rind,/ Turn pale and starve.” Causing harm to ourselves is itself morally and ethically wrong, to say nothing of being stupid.

    “Give me truths,” says Emerson, not delusions. The truth is that it wouldn’t do us any harm to start treating Nature as divine. I’m not trying to convince you that you should accept this idea of God; I’m not even sure that I accept this notion of God; I need to think about this some more. But the idea of God as Nature is worth taking seriously.

    Affirm that Nature is divine, and maybe humans will stop unleashing blight on the natural world. Affirm the divinity of Nature, and maybe we will figure out how to extend our morals and ethics beyond human beings to all of Nature. Such affirmations do not strike me as delusional, but as good practical common sense.

  • Ecofeminism

    This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2006 Daniel Harper.

    Readings

    The first reading is from the Christian scriptures, from the book called Matthew, chapter 6, verses 24-30.

    “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

    “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you — you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’… But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

    The second reading is from Starhawk’s book Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex, and Politics. I take this second reading to be deeply related to the first reading.

    “The image of the Goddess strikes at the roots of estrangement. True value is not found in some heaven, some abstract otherworld, but in female bodies and their offspring, female and male; in nature, and in the world. Nature is seen as having its own inherent order, of which human beings are a part. Human nature, needs, drives, and desires are not dangerous impulses in need of repression and control, but are themselves expressions of the order inherent in being. The evidence of our sense and our experience is evidence of the divine — the moving energy that unites all being.”

    So end this morning’s readings.

    SERMON — “Ecofeminism”

    One of the things that I like best about Jesus of Nazareth — that is, the Jesus whose words we can find in the Bible as opposed to the Jesus that the established church has constructed — is that Jesus constantly challenges us to think more clearly and to feel more deeply. So Jesus preaches to his followers:

    “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” Today, we might add that the birds of the air use no fossil fuels in order to feed themselves, and the only waste products they emit are biodegradable and nontoxic. Jesus goes on: “And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.” And Jesus’s words take on additional meaning in the 21st century when you think about the energy it takes to manufacture clothes, and ship clothes from the distant countries in which they are now mostly manufactured. Jesus goes on: “If God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you — you of little faith?”

    If you have been coming to church over the past three weeks, you know that I have been preaching a series of sermons on feminist theology, and today’s sermon is the last, and I might say the culminating, sermon in that series. If you were here two weeks ago, you heard how feminist theology became our most important theological stance in the 1980s, and you heard about how feminist theology underlies the so-called “seven principles,” which have become the most widely-used affirmation of faith among us, and therefore I said that feminist theology has become central to who we are now. But I also pointed out how the feminist theology of the 1980’s has problems and limitations, and I described how a younger generation of women, especially working class women and women of color, have pointed out some of those problems and limitations. And that old 1980’s feminism really doesn’t have much to say about the ecological crisis that we are in the midst of now. Today I’d like to speak with you about ecofeminism, and I’ve saved ecofeminism for last because I believe ecofeminism addresses these problems and limitations, and I believe ecofeminism should be a central theology for us Unitarian Universalists.

    Which brings us to the second reading this morning. Starhawk, a Neo-pagan and the author of that second reading, is one of the best-known ecofeminist theologians alive today. In that second reading she writes, “True value is not found in some heaven, some abstract otherworld, but in female bodies and their offspring, female and male; in nature, and in the world. Nature is seen as having its own inherent order, of which human beings are a part.” In other words, Starhawk is saying that we don’t have to wait until after we die to enter into some disembodied heavenly state. We’re there here and now. We can find true value in our own bodies. We can find true value in the world and in nature. Actually, there is no real separation between our bodies (our selves) and nature, because we are a part of the inherent order of the world.

    That’s a pretty radical thing for Starhawk to say. Western Christianity and Western culture have been telling us for centuries that our souls or minds are more important than bodies. Western culture tells us that there’s a separation between our minds and our bodies, and that our bodies are less important than our minds; and Western Christianity tells us not to worry about suffering here and now, because one day we’ll get to go to heaven. But Starhawk says that true value is found in our bodies, in nature, in the world; we’re already a part of it; true value is here and now.

    And like many ecofeminists, Starhawk tells a story of how we got to the point where we are now. This ecofeminist story is based on archaeological and anthropological research, and it goes something like this:

    Before humans invented agriculture, the archaeological record shows that we got along pretty well. Back then, human beings were reasonably healthy, and the hunting-gathering life didn’t take up much of our time so we had plenty of leisure. Maybe we did some gardening, too, but we weren’t engaged in intensive agriculture. Then some bright human invented agriculture. Once agriculture became the way we got our food, the archaeological record shows that overall health declined. Archaeologists find a greater incidence of illness and disease, and they find that agriculturalists were on average four inches shorter than hunter-gatherers. In addition, the invention of agriculture seems correlated with several other inventions: slavery, economic exploitation of the majority of humanity, devastating wars, and (dare I say it?) the emergence of monotheism, that is, the belief in one single male god.

    That’s the scientific story. Some Christians and some Neo-pagans tell this story a little differently. They tell a story about an ancient time when humankind lived in balance with the rest of the world. Some of these Christians tell the story of the Garden of Eden, a time a place where the first humans didn’t have to work by the sweat of their brows, and didn’t have to wear clothes, and generally had a lovely time. In this Christian story, those first humans violated God’s law by eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, that is by knowing too much. Because they knew too much, those first humans got kicked out of the paradise that was the Garden of Eden; and this is known as the Fall.

    Some Neo-pagans tell a different, but related, story about an ancient time in human history when women were in charge of human society. At that time, we human beings lived in harmony with the earth and in harmony with our own bodies. In this Neo-pagan story, someone invented domination, whereby one human being (usually a man) dominates another human being. This led to slavery, exploitation of the earth, and a lower standard of living for everyone except a few wealthy men; and this kind of domination is known as patriarchy.

    The Christians tell us that we can’t go back to the Garden of Eden; Neo-pagans like Starhawk tell us that we really can’t go back to living the way they did in the old matriarchal societies; the archaeologists tell us that we can’t go back to living as hunter-gatherers. So what went wrong? And how do we find a way out of this mess?

    Not that I believe that there can even be a final answer to these questions, or to any serious question about the fate of earth and humanity. Year after year, century after century, individuals have claimed to have the one true final answer to life, the universe, and everything; and year after year, century after century, human beings have fixed one problem only to have a new problem emerge somewhere else. That is the way of growth and evolution and change. To use an ecological metaphor, there is no single climax state of the forest in which the forest ecosystem settles down into some perfect unchanging heavenly state. Random fluctuations of weather, chance mutations in certain species, interactions with nearby ecosystems, all lead to change. Change is the only constant, accompanied by growth and evolution.

    Yet if change is the only constant, then we should be able to change things for the better, rather than letting them get worse. And ecofeminism offers some profound religious insight into our current mess, and offers hope that we might be able to grow, and to change things for the better. In that spirit of hope, let us ask what ecofeminism can offer us.

    Ecofeminism tells us that domination has helped get us into the current mess. So if we look at the Western Christian tradition, we find this idea that God allegedly told humankind that human beings have dominion over all other living things; and then God said that men have dominion over women; and next thing you know you have variations on the theme of domination like slavery and oppression of ethnic minorities. Even if one form of domination doesn’t follow another form of domination chronologically, all these kinds of domination are linked together: human domination of other living things is linked to patriarchy or the male domination of women, which is linked to slavery or the domination of some human beings by other human beings, often along racial or ethnic lines.

    Needless to say, domination and exploitation go together. If a woman’s place is in the kitchen where they don’t get paid or compensated for their work, whoever is dominating them is also exploiting them. And when human beings dominate the total ecosystem to meet our short-term needs without paying attention to the survival of other species, that sounds like exploitation to me.

    As Unitarian Universalists, we claim that we affirm the inherent worth and dignity of all persons. I take that to mean that we will not affirm the domination of some human beings by other human beings. So, for example, if we affirm that women have inherent worth and dignity, then we will not put up with men dominating women. If we affirm that people of color have inherent worth and dignity, then we will not put up with white people dominating people of color. To say that we affirm the inherent worth and dignity of all persons means that we won’t put up with domination. We won’t put up with one person dominating another, yet we are willing to go further than that and say that we won’t put up with human beings dominating other living beings.

    So, too, do we affirm respect for the interdependent web of life of which we are a part. We are not comfortable with domination, no matter what form it might take. Any religion rooted in dignity and respect for other beings is a religion that cannot tolerate domination and exploitation. So it is that I say we Unitarian Universalists are ecofeminists — or, at least, we are in the process of becoming ecofeminists, for I’m not sure we’re quite there yet.

    Because once you start thinking like an ecofeminist, it really changes the way you think about religion. Your whole religious landscape shifts. You become suspicious of the way the old religious texts have been interpreted, so that when you hear about how God told humankind to have dominion over other living beings, you get suspicious and you wonder if there might not be another interpretation of that old Bible verse. You become suspicious of your whole Western religious tradition, so that when you hear about a God who is always referred to as “he” and “him,” you begin to wonder why we don’t also refer to God as a Goddess whom we refer to as “she” and “her.” You become suspicious of people who tell you that it is “natural” for men to have power over women, just as you become suspicious of people who tell you that it is “natural” for people with white skin to have more power than people with darker skin — and when they tell you that the Bible says that men should have dominion over women, you become suspicious of the way those people are interpreting the Bible.

    And that can lead us to challenge the old religious interpretations. So Starhawk challenges us to give up those old notions of heaven as some abstract, otherworldly place. She challenges us to find true value in women’s bodies here and now, and to find true value in male and female bodies that come from women’s bodies. She tells us that we don’t need to be estranged from our bodies, or from each other, for we human beings are inherently part of the inherent order of nature. She tells us to trust the evidence of our senses, and find evidence of the divine in the moving energy that unites all living beings, unites all things. We challenge the old religious interpretations, and we find freedom: the freedom that comes when we don’t allow our thoughts to be dominated by some abstract authority, the freedom that comes when we shake off the bonds of slavery or servitude imposed on us by someone else. We challenge the old religious interpretations, and we find deep interconnectedness: we are interconnected with each other, male and female, all races and ethnicities, and dominating someone else only harms us; we are interconnected with all nature, and we can’t dominate nature without dominating and enslaving ourselves as well.

    This brings us back to those enigmatic words of Jesus, which end with Jesus saying, “But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Traditional religious authorities have interpreted this to mean that we should strive to get into heaven, some time after we die, and then, like the lilies of the field we too will be clothed like King Solomon in all his glory. When Jesus talks about the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, generations of church-goers interpreted these words as referring to heaven, to some perfect state of being that will come to us (if we behave ourselves) after we die. Wait for death, enter into that disembodied state known as heaven, and you too can become like the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. When you’re in a disembodied heaven, it’s easy for the heavenly father to feed you and clothe you if you’re disembodied. In other words, suck it up now, be meek and mild and don’t be bothered when others dominate you, and after you die you’ll get your reward.

    But what if generations of church-goers and the old traditional religious authorities are completely wrong? What if Jesus is actually telling us to resist domination and to live with dignity, in harmony with each other, respecting the earth and all living beings? What if he is telling us that we can have heaven here on earth, if we choose to do so?

    That’s what you get to do if you’re an ecofeminist. You get to discard those old traditional religious interpretations, and try to get at what Jesus was actually saying. Strip away to creeds and dogmas of the centuries, and perhaps what Jesus really said was to strive for the kingdom of heaven, so you can live in harmony with the world — in the same way that the birds of the air, and the lilies of the field, live in interdependent harmony with the world. That possibility exists here and now. Nor is this some pie-in-the-sky utopian vision, for the lilies manage to do it here and now.

    Not that I’m going to claim that Jesus of Nazareth was an ecofeminist theologian, because he wasn’t. Nor am I going to say that any contemporary ecofeminist, including Starhawk, has the final answer to our problems, because they don’t and she doesn’t. We don’t need a final answer, we just need a direction in which we can travel. I think ecofeminism offers us a direction that all of us — women and men, people of color and white people, Christians and Pagans and humanists — a direction in which we can travel together to get out of this mess.

    It’s not like I’m just making this up. Many of you have told me that you know domination is everywhere: men dominating women, white people dominating dark-skinned people, super-rich dominating everyone else, humankind dominating other living beings. You have told me that domination no longer works, that it’s just creating mass extinction of species, ongoing violence against women, racism, and miserable lives — and many of you have told me pieces of how to put an end to it.

    So I’m just piecing this together for you. We know what to do. We know this is a religious matter, and we know that our church, good old First Unitarian in New Bedford, is one of the religious institutions that can address this matter. So what if we’re a small church. So what if there’s only forty of us here this morning. So what if we’re a little disorganized, and some of us are tired, and all of us are busy. What we need is an ecofeminist movement happening. When there’s a hundred of us in here on a Sunday morning, we can start building coalitions with like-minded groups. We’ll get lots of kids in here so we can get them to understand this at a young age. Then when there’s four hundred of us, the local politicians will have to start paying attention. And when there’s a thousand of us, we can….

    Now, I just know what someone is going to say to me at coffee hour — “Well, Dan, I just don’t know, I don’t think we’ll ever have a thousand Unitarian Universalists, not in New Bedford.” Well, my friends, the evangelicals are building a megachurch in the northern end of our city and they plan to build a membership of two thousand or more people, in order to save a few disembodied souls….

    …Surely we Unitarian Universalists can come up with a thousand people who will work towards a world of dignity and respect for all living beings, and earth made fair, and all her peoples one.

    No excuses, now.