Have Churches Forgotten?

EARTHKEEPING NEWS
A NEWSLETTER OF THE NORTH AMERICAN COALITION FOR CHRISTIANITY AND ECOLOGY

Volume Five, Number Three
January/February 1996

HAVE CHURCHES FORGOTTEN WHAT THEY ARE FOR?

The values needed to save the planet, according to the New Economics Foundation and to Worldwatch, are not new values, but very ancient ones; in fact, Christian values. So what have the churches been doing all these years with these values? What prevents them from applying them in practice to our current desperate predicament?

Several reasons can be identified. But by far the most potent is that described by the great Christian historian, Richard Tawney,¹ and more recently by the German theologian, Jurgen Moltmann. I mean the abdication by the Christian Churches,² some 250 years ago, of authority and competence in matters of politics and economics. As a result, established Christianity has become so fused with our society that it has nearly lost the capacity to offer society any genuine message of hope. It is so averse to being in conflict with society that it cannot bring itself to "take sides."

It is this factor that we need to come to grips with if the Church is to do more than supply some decorative liturgical comments on these life and death issues. And it is here above all that we need the help of theology — not green theology — but a theology that tries to answer the question, "What is the Church for?"

The Church of England from time to time asserts "a rule of life" which it believes to be incumbent upon its members. It has recently laid down that priests should not indulge in homosexual acts. But why does the Church say nothing about people who indulge in acts which damage God's creation and impoverish our brethren in the Third World? Such acts are, by good authority, quite as wicked and quite as corrupting to others as sins of the flesh. Why does the Church not lay down for its members a rule of life which supports ecological sustainability?

The answer is, of course, that sexual acts are generally within the realm of private conduct, while acts of economic and ecological injustice are matters of politics and economics; and these, the Church has come to think, are outside its competence and authority, and must therefore be abdicated, as Tawney says, to "the powers of this world."

If the Church did reclaim and assert its authority in such political matters, then indeed it would be " taking sides," and would find itself in Moltmann's phrase "in deadly conflict with the godless powers of its time," but at present the Church shrinks from doing any such thing and has thus become, in effect, the consumer society at prayer.

If the above analysis is correct, what is its practical force? First we need to concentrate not on green theology, but on the theology of the Church and its relationship to politics and justice. Secondly, we should abandon the tendency to look for something "specifically christian" to do to protect the planet partly because such an attempt is bad theology, but also because it encourages us to ignore the fact that in this area of concern the Holy Spirit is at present heeded much more outside the Church than within it. This means that we need to join forces with all those, whatever their religious beliefs, who are genuinely working for a just and sustainable society.

2. Note: By Church, or Churches, is meant here the visible institutional organizations, not the Church in the strict theological sense as the Body of Christ.