Religion and the Earth Crisis: An Indigenous American Perspective

Ward McAfee

The manic march of western civilization has created the earth crisis. Its "progress" continues but with a mounting realization that runaway growth is unsustainable. Nothing similar has ever occurred before. In this unparalleled situation, everything must undergo reexamination. Science, economics, politics and religion-nothing can be exempt.

By most accounts, Christianity is the world's leading religion. Christianity is a global faith tradition, potentially unifying all of humankind. It teaches that God is Love, but thus far it has failed to direct this love toward non-human existence. Now, many Christians want to come into a proper relationship with the threatened life rhythms of their planetary home. Unfortunately, many find that past teachings are inadequate to the task and provide far more encouragement to an ephemeral afterlife than to life itself. Perhaps Christianity can be restructured to become more effective in nurturing a reverence toward all of creation, but both its history and traditional theologies provide little encouragement.

Notions about God are part of the problem. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all characterized by a strong monotheism. Indeed, in the discourse between these faith traditions, each seeks a primacy that its monotheism is more pure than that of its rivals. Abstract arguments abound, involving the divine/human partnership in the crafting of the Jewish Law, the supposed true meaning of the Christian Trinity, and the exalted status of the Qur'an as the revealed Word of God in the Arabic language. In whatever form it might take, a question remains: Is One Abstract God part of the solution to the earth crisis, or is it part of the problem?

Indigenous American religious commentators take a far more relaxed position on these kinds of endless speculative disputes about "God." While seeing all of the Cosmos integrated in a complex of natural interrelationships, Indigenous American Christian theologians do not typically exalt any abstract notion of an all-powerful God that dominates this ecology. They ask the rest of us to consider whether western civilization's dysfunctional extreme individualism and bad tendencies to reduce reality to incomprehensible abstractions might be several negative consequences of an unwarranted monotheistic emphasis.

Indigenous Americans appropriately respect the inherent mystery of their revered spiritual order. But they see it as wholly inappropriate to waste much effort on defining the essential nature of any overarching spiritual force, such as the "Great Spirit." While occasionally referring to that which we term "God," their real emphasis is upon the many diverse forces and energies that characterize existence. That all of these forces are in interaction with each other and are bound with the whole in some inexplicable sense is obvious. That there is One God of domineering proportions is neither obvious nor even apparent and therefore is not emphasized.

Early in their encounters with Europeans, Indigenous Americans were branded as "animists" because their attitudes did not conform to the rigid monotheism of the missionaries who sought to force their beliefs into theological constructs that bear no direct relationship to the real world. In opposition to the traditional teachings of Christianity, Indigenous Americans do not think of themselves as privileged stewards of the whole. Rather they are reverential of a mysterious spiritual power unifying all of the various parts of the whole and immediately aware of their obligations to it.

Native Americans have different names for what westerners call "God," but they are agreed about God's essential nature, which is not that of a dominator or personal Lord that demands submission. Rather, God is the Sacred Energy, or Mystery or Power. The interior perspective of Indigenous Americans does not presume to define this power with any precision, but it is quite definite in its assurance that the appropriate way to view our human relationship to "God" is that of intimate sharing within this Sacred Energy. Their perspective is far more egalitarian (within a spiritual context of reverential wonder and respect) than is the typical western monotheistic perspective of hierarchical domination and control, a mentality that has led directly to the earth crisis.

Indigenous Christian theologians advise us that Christianity must not only reconsider our linguistic (and mental) habits of thinking about Jesus Christ as "Lord" but also of our historic pretensions of Christian exclusivity. If religion is characterized by a rigid exclusivity, they emphasize, it becomes self-righteous, nationalistic, idolatrous, hateful, rage-filled and ultimately destructive of both Self and Community. Does not our history not amply demonstrate this?

Twenty-five hundred years ago, Buddhism grew out of Hinduism when widespread warfare and much bloodshed on the Indian subcontinent required a new mentality. Later, Christianity grew out of Judaism when old Hebraic covenants had ossified and the Roman world was seemingly lost in meaningless wars of conquest and exploitation. And Islam arose when greed alone governed Arabic tribal groups that hungered for authentic community and purpose. We have faith that humankind will come again to harmonize with the life rhythms of the Earth, restoring a balance that is under attack in our own time. Our future will require this restoration. A reformation of religion beckons as part of the solution to the earth crisis.

In this reformation, religion must become less human-centered. An awe-inspiring understanding of human life as merely part (not all) of the ongoing dynamic of earthly creation needs to be nourished. A cold, abstract and unknowable God of linear time dedicated to the salvation of humankind currently facilitates modern civilization's crucifixion of the species at a breakneck pace. Parenthetically, those who believe that we are now experiencing the "end of days" are incapable of being part of the solution to the earth crisis.

The Christian Bible advises that one can observe false prophecy by its fruits. Matthew 7:19 advised, "Every tree that does not bear good fruit should be cut down and cast into the fire." By this standard, Christianity (which continues to contribute to the earth crisis) is in need of some serious pruning indeed. According to the Gospels, specifically John 16: 12-13, Jesus advised his followers that there was much that they were then not capable of understanding and to expect better renditions of his message that would come later. Engaged in the earth crisis and hearing the perspective of Indigenous Americans, we are now called to undertake a new Reformation. George Tinker, a leading Indigenous American Christian theologian, encourages hope when he writes that his people "are actually audacious enough to think that...their ways of revering creation" can transform Christianity and thereby contribute to ameliorating the earth crisis.

Their message is already winning converts.

Ward McAfee, an emeritus history professor from California State University, San Bernardino, is the author of a number of books on U.S. history. He is also the husband of a United Methodist minister and lives with her in Pilgrim Place, a Christian retirement community. Religions other than Christianity have long fascinated him. One of his books, entitled A HISTORY OF THE WORLD'S GREAT RELIGIONS (1982).

* George E. Tinker, Spirit and Resistance: Political Theology and American Indian Liberation (Fortress Press: Minneapolis, 2004), p. 85.