yearofplenty

Good Friday/Earth Day: How the Food Movement is Making the Church Green

In a fluke of this year's calendar, Earth Day and Good Friday both converge today. I wrote an article for CNN Belief Blog arguing that these two events aren't such a bad pairing. The wider context of the article is that the Christian church and the environmental movement in North America have often struggled to cooperate and find common ground. Maybe the experience of sharing this day will be a trial run at a new future of collaboration. Go here for one of my many posts on this disconnect. 

It may not always be self-evident here on the blog, but I am a full-time Presbyterian pastor, and one of the motivations for this blog is to flesh out connections between faith and earth. Go here to see the "faith" thread on this blog. Year of Plenty is an extended exploration of the intersections of the environment and faith, especially the food movement. My experience with locavores, backyard farmers, and community gardeners makes me more hopeful than ever that despite past disconnects, the church may end up being the best friend of advocates for earth care.

Perhaps the greatest reason for a potential new future in this relaitonship is what some are calling the death of environmentalism and the rise of the food movement. 

Bryan Walsh wrote a provocative article in February describing significant shifts in the Go-Green movement. He says:

These are dark days for the environmental movement. A year after being on the cusp of passing landmark legislation to cap greenhouse gases, greens are coming to accept the fact that the chance of national and international action on climate change has become more remote than ever. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is under attack by newly empowered Republicans in Congress who argue that the very idea of environmental protection is unaffordable for our debt-ridden country. Accustomed to remaining optimistic in the face of long odds, the environmental movement all at once faces a challenge just to stay relevant in a hostile political climate....

He even evokes the "death of environmentalism" mantra coined in a controversial essay from a few years ago. This decline of the traditionally framed debates about the environment may provide a helpful opening for the church. One of the reasons environmentalists and church leaders have often been at odds is that the issues fall so easily into the well-worn ruts of our cultural and political divides. I don't like that the Christian faith in America is politicized and held captive by powerful interests, but that is the current reality. As long as the environmental movement is robustly allied with one side or the other of American politics, I fear that it will remain a niche issue in liberal mainline churches, and fail to make real headway in more conservative evangelical circles.

Walsh says this so-called death of environmentalism may turn out to be a re-birth in the form of a thriving food movement.

Even as traditional environmentalism struggles, another movement is rising in its place, aligning consumers, producers, the media and even politicians. It's the food movement, and if it continues to grow it may be able to create just the sort of political and social transformation that environmentalists have failed to achieve in recent years. That would mean not only changing the way Americans eat and the way they farm — away from industrialized, cheap calories and toward more organic, small-scale production, with plenty of fruits and vegetables — but also altering the way we work and relate to one another. To its most ardent adherents, the food movement isn't just about reform — it's about revolution.

This shift away from a politically entrenched environmental movement toward a vibrant food movement opens up a new opporunity for the church to enter the conversation and even take the lead in some cases.

Food is not so easily politicized. Not that the usual characters don't do their best to turn food into a political football, but the food movement is too complex and the interested parties too diverse to easily pigeon hole. 

Here's how I put it in a previous post on politics, church, and food,

Concerns about food short-circuit political divides in some wonderfully mischevious ways. Farmers' Markets may be the most politically diverse gathering in the community, with Glenn Beck conspiracy theorists rubbing shoulders with neo-hippie peace activists. The recent Whole Foods CEO curfluffle highlights some of this diversity and forces the question, "Is it OK for conservatives and liberals, who disagree on so much, to agree on food and work together in that agreement?"

I sure hope so. In today's intense, hyped up political landscape, a good potluck with arugala and country style pork ribs (and of course grandma's jello salad) could do us a lot of good. There's something about gathering around food that makes us more human.

Not only does food allow for more diverse entry points, it plays to the church's strengths - theology, history, and practice. Here's how I put it in Year of Plenty:

The pattern in the Bible of forming community is surprisingly down to earth…The first words out of God’s mouth to Adam and Eve are, “You are free to eat.” Not far behind is the warning, “You must not eat.”

In the wilderness it was the manna, gathered daily in the dew of morning that forged the faith of Israel. Once the people were settled in the land, the warning loomed large from Joshua to serve the Lord alone and remember that God “gave you a land on which you did not toil and cities you did not build; and you live in them and eat from vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant” (Josh. 24:13). Joshua was telling them to nurture a deep connection between the harvest of the vineyard and the God who made them a people and gave them the land.

To a people disoriented by exile in Babylon, Jeremiah said, “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce” (Jer. 29:5). In other words, they were to attend to necessary things and do necessary things for one another. In doing so, they would find their way to God.

This pattern continued with Jesus as he sent the disciples out among the people to proclaim the kingdom of God. He told them to enter the homes of the cities to which they were sent. “Stay there,” he said, “eating and drinking whatever they give you, for workers deserve their wages. Do not move around from house to house. When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is set before you” (Luke 10:7-8). The disciples had this grand vision of the kingdom of God to proclaim and live into, but the proclamation was always in the context of shared meals, working side by side with others, doing necessary things.

I think if you look closely, the shift in the American church is already evident. Churches are taking the lead in their communities starting community gardens, promoting Plant-A-Row for the Hungry, hosting farmers' markets, and teaching classes on food and health. Churches and Christians of all political stripes are becoming environmentalists, but be careful - some of them may not like the label. They'd prefer faithful foodie or sustainable backyard farmer or guerilla gardener, but those are just different ways of describing environmentalists. And this earthy move in church circles bodes well for the big debates about land, CO2, and going green.

As Walsh points out in his Time article, this emphasis on food leads us into the heart of issues dear to the traditional environmental movement.

As the food movement matures and grows, it could end up being the best vehicle available for achieving environmental goals. The industrialized way we farm today damages our land, our water and our climate. Reforming agriculture and promoting sustainability won't just help us get better and healthier food; it will also fight greenhouse-gas emissions and water pollution....

Environmentalists once thought that the only way to create lasting change in the U.S. and the rest of the world was by controlling our carbon emissions. Not quite. As Brian Halweil, a leading thinker on sustainable food, put it in Saturday's TED conference, "If the environmental movement is dead, then I say, 'Long live the food movement.'" Environmental and social changes are coming — and they will be served up on our dinner plates.

Not only will they be served up on dinner plates, but the church will say a prayer before the meal.

Books on God and Green - "Green Like God" by Jonathan Merritt

Jonathan Merritt's book, Green Like God, is next up on my list of 28 books on Christian approaches to the environment, food, and simple living. (Looks like I'm going to need more than 28 days but I'll get there.) Merritt is a Southern Baptist, the son of a former SBC president, and a graduate of Liberty University. I'm learning from all of these books that the author's Christian context is crucial to understanding the their approach to the environment, and it turns out this is more true for Merritt's book than others. It offers a very helpful window into Southern Baptist culture and theology as it relates to the environmental movement. 

Merritt shares the story of how, out of a mainstream Southern Baptist background where environmentalism was anathema, he came to less mainstream conclusions about the Biblical mandate to care for creation. His green conversion moment came in a seminary course where a professor said,

There are two forms of divine revelation: the special revelation in Scripture that is able to lead us to salvation and the general revelation we receive through nature. Both are from God. So when we destroy creation, which is God's revelation, it's similar to tearing a page out of the Bible."

In SBC theology, the authority of Scripture is above all else so Merritt's approach in the book is to start with this foundation by exploring what the Bible says about the environment and then apply the insight "directly to the environmental situations in which we find ourselves."

My favorite parts of the book are where Merritt challenges some of the assumptions that lay behind resistance to environmentalism among leaders in the SBC. In a telling passage he quotes from B. H. Carroll, cofounder of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who wrote in one of his commentaries:

In God's love neither man nor nation can hold title to neither land nor sea and let them remain undeveloped.... The ignorant savage cannot hold large territories of fertile land merely for hunting ground. When the developer comes he must retire.... mere priority of occupancy on a given territory cannot be a barrier to the progress of civilization. Wealth has no right to buy a county, or state, or continent and turn it into a deer park. The earth is man's.

Merritt points out that, despite what Carroll asserts, according to the BIble, "The earth is the Lord's and everything in it, and all who live in it." (Psalm 24:1) Merritt says, "It was difficult for me to believe that Carroll, a wonderful Bible scholar, would espouse this erroneous theology, common among Christians of his day, that nature is our enemy who must be conquered and enslaved." I'm intrigued by the disconnect that he points to here. How is it that Christians can have their noses firmly planted in the Bible and miss out on the important area of caring for the Creation?

Merritt's book is most helpful to the conversation around Christians and the environment in the way it makes the case that Christians who claim the Bible as the ultimate authority, must therefore take a stance of caring for creation. Merritt's approach to is to seek after a proper interpretation of Scripture as a corrective and I think this is very helpful and needed. 

But this corrective only goes so far in addressing the questions of why there has been resistance. Where Merritt focuses on proper interpretation of the Bible as the key issue, I find myself drawn to the complexities of the situation. The problem is not isolated to an improper interpretation of the Bible, but rather a complicated interaction of cultural, philosophical, and historical issues that have led to a disconnect between the modern expressions of the Christian faith and the environment. If the Church is going to make the transition from ambivalence to passionate advocacy, we're going to need a broad awareness of all of these issues, biblical intepretation included.

I enjoyed Green Like God and admire the work that Merritt is doing as an advocate for a biblical approach to creation care. His book is a pioneering contribution.

Books on Faith and Green - Book 3 "Farming As a Spiritual Discipline" by Ragan Sutterfield

Ragan Sutterfield's collection of essays, Farming as a Spiritual Discipline, is a call for churches to start gardens and grow food. He introduces the essays by saying:

My hope is that Christians will come to see one of their tasks as staking out claims for God's Kingdom by redeeming land from the margins and using that land to create gardens that offer not only good food but also community development and hope.

True to his comments in the book about the need for patient preparation of soil, he aims with this small book, to prepare the topsoil of the church with amendments of biblical reflection, kingdom theology, and agrarian sensibilities.

He starts out with the assumption that before engaging the practice of farming we must first grapple with our understanding of creation, which is ultimately a question about how we see ourselves in the order of creation. He says:

Farming is essentially the practice of cultivating creation, and how we see farming depends entirely on how we see creation.

Sutterfield grounds his understanding of the human place in creation in a perichoretic, or social understanding of the trinity, with God inviting us into the "eternal exchange of love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit," and into the task of widening that divine embrace of love. The author lifts up sustainable farming as a generative practice that anchors us in the humus of created order, and ultimately in the triune embrace of the creator God. 

He makes a keen observation about our typical response to the wreckage of rapid industrialization and the burgeoning green movement. He says:

So far, the answer seem to be mostly, keep doing what you are doing, only do it "greener."

Again here, he points to farming as a path to not just tweaking what we're already doing, but shaping an alternative path. He says:

Humility and frugality are both practices born of accepting our creaturely limits. Farming, perhaps better than any other practice, brings us up against the realities of the creaturely life and forces us to live within the limits of our power, knowledge and resources.

The two main essays are followed by a sermon given to Englewood Christian Church in Indianapolis, Indiana. Sutterfield argues that the church should "seek a foothold for Eden," as a way of looking ahead to the ultimate fulfillment of what God is doing in the world. He says that the best place to start is with places on the margins, on abandoned patches of earth that need resurrecting.

It's getting quite interesting reading all these 28 books in a condensed period of time. I'm learning that perspectives on environmentalism and faith are shaped significantly by the places where people are standing in the world. Scott Saban sees the movement from the missions field among the poor, Tri Robinson sees it from his role as an evangelical pastor and leader in the church, Jonathan Merritt, author of Green Like God, sees through the lens of being a Southern Baptist, and Ragan Sutterfield's perspectives are shaped primarily through his experience as a farmer. All four advocate for the church to embrace the care of creation.

Sutterfield offers a small critique of some of these other approaches. It wasn't a direct critique that he targets at others, but one that I can see in the middle of all of this reading. He says that there are two heresies founded on the idea that we, as humans, are not part of the created order. One of these heresies has been roundly rejected in all of my reading so far, which is a rejection of an extreme environmentalism that sees human impact on the earth in a wholly negative light, as if the creation would be better off without people. That's a bit of a straw man, but I understand what he is saying. The other heresy, he says, envisions "creation entirely in terms of human use and value...," which includes those that warn of global warming because of it's negative impact on humans. 

Tri Robinson lists as one of his foundational assumptions, that the earth exists for human use. Saban's main observation is that caring for the environment is a way to care for people, especially poor people. I have often spoken of care of creation in the context of loving our neighbors as ourselves. Sutterfield's point is that there is something in the story of caring for creation which runs deeper than human use and valuation. I think he's arguing against a modern, reductionist view of the earth, but I'd like to hear more about what he means by this. 

Farming as a Spiritual Discipline is a small book that packs a big punch. It's more like a fresh layer of compost than a flashy quick-release packet of NPK fertilizer. Sort of unassuming at first glance, it is packed full of health and a great contribution to the debates about faith and environment. Personally, it has re-sparked my imagination around my work with the Pumpkin Patch Community Garden and Millwood Farmers' Market and helped me see how those fit into God's unfolding kingdom.