Abstract
Many Judeo-Christians have seen environmental concerns as a way of renewing the contemporary relevance of the doctrine of Creation. This article argues that, set against the decline of Christianity in the Western world, modern environmentalism is a rival, not an ally, to Judeo-Christianity. While its basic thought patterns replicate five key religious motifs—the existence of the sacred, sin and repentance, prophetic warning, the wisdom of sacrifice, and expression of faith through symbolic action—these are humanistic alternatives to the same motifs in Judeo-Christianity. The article concludes with a brief analysis of the deficiencies of environmentalism as a religion.
Creationtide
September 1st is the date on which the Orthodox church year begins, and appropriately the day has a special focus on God as Creator of all things. In 1989 the Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I proclaimed September 1st as a day for prayer for the created world, to be observed throughout the Orthodox church. Over subsequent years, the World Council of Churches linked this Day of Creation with October 4th, the Feast of St Francis of Assisi, noted for his concern with animals. The WCC thereby brought into existence a new Christian season—Creationtide—and in 2015 Pope Francis made it an official season in the Roman Catholic Church's calendar. Anglicans, Lutherans, and Methodists followed with the result that the four weeks of Creationtide are widely observed throughout the Christian Church.
This innovation was in large part a response to the increasing attention that was being given to environmental issues, and especially to concerns about global warming and its potential effects. In this way, many supposed, a fundamental aspect of Christian theology—the Doctrine of Creation—acquired new relevance for the contemporary world, because Creationtide both reflected a natural alliance between Christians and environmental campaigners, and uncovered common ground between science and theology, often hitherto thought to be in conflict. This widely endorsed supposition, I shall argue, is superficial. Set against a background of the history of religion in the West, philosophical analysis reveals environmentalism to be a rival “faith” in deep tension with Christianity, and one that Christian theology has reason to resist.
Secularization and the Privatization of Religion
For most of the twentieth century, amongst social scientists and cultural commentators, the secularization of human culture was taken for granted. That is to say, it was widely believed that over the course of two centuries, from the eighteenth-century Enlightenment to the post-war period, increased scientific understanding, steady economic growth and, more recently, technological innovation, had led to a dramatic decline in the practice and influence of religion. Since there was every reason to suppose that this trend would continue, the secularization thesis was taken to imply that the foreseeable future would witness an end to religion as an active component of human societies. “The Future of an Illusion,” to use the title of Freud's book about religion, was expected to be its complete demise.
The secularization thesis was a product of how things seemed to have gone in Western Europe. It was strengthened by the persistence of religion in “underdeveloped” countries, since this is what the thesis would lead us to expect. Projected unto the history of humanity as a whole, however, it confronted two striking difficulties. First, it conflicted rather evidently with experience in the United States of America. There, in sharp contrast to Europe, advanced scientific research, increasing wealth and rapid technological innovation appeared to sit reasonably easily alongside widespread religiosity. Secondly, it also conflicted with developments in China, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe more generally, where “the opiate of the people,” it seemed, had lost its power in advance of the economic and political changes that Marxist theory said this would require.
At the turn of the twenty-first century confidence in the secularization thesis began to wane as yet further contrary phenomena emerged. 1 Relatively wealthy societies and sectors witnessed the re-invigoration of Islam, while conservative Christianity (both Catholic and Protestant) returned as a social and political force, and the international profiles of both Judaism and Hinduism rose. Even among highly secularized Westerners, a greatly increased interest in Eastern-type “spirituality” could be observed. Religion, it seemed, was no longer disappearing, and was even set to make a striking return in the most secularized places.
Those sympathetic to religion took this as evidence that human beings are “incurably religious” and that, in St Augustine's words, their hearts are restless till they rest in God. Alternatively, of course, critics of religion—notably “the New Atheists” (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens)—could view this “revival” as the return of irrational superstition, and were consequently led to renew their attacks on what they took to be a destructive mix of mythology and bad science. The possibility of diametrically opposed interpretations of the same phenomenon revealed that the sociological debate about secularization simply deflected attention (for a time) from a much older disagreement—the conflict between religion and secularism. If secularization is false, and religion is not fading away as predicted, this does nothing to damage the position of the secularist, who can continue to argue that religion, whether it withers or flourishes, rests on unscientific beliefs that feed the superstitious inclinations of human beings, while at the same time offering specious legitimation to division and destruction. Conversely, the truth of secularization, had it been true, could not constitute a refutation of religion, since from a religious point of view it would simply confirm the age-old tendency of human beings to turn their back on the divine and foolishly look to material prosperity and technological ingenuity as the means of salvation. Just as the thesis's falsehood is a stimulus for secularists to re-state their case, so its truth would be a call to religionists to intensify their missionary endeavours.
If the secularization thesis is not straightforwardly false, it was undoubtedly over-ambitious. It cannot accommodate the varying cultural patterns of religion, and implies the impossibility of trends that recent decades have witnessed. Nevertheless, there was some kernel of truth in it, because it is incontestable that the status of the Christian religion in the Western world is greatly altered. Whatever the future may hold, contemporary culture in Europe, North America, and Australasia, to take just the most obvious examples, is neither dominated nor shaped by Judeo-Christianity in the way that it once was. In many respects these societies have indeed become secularized. It is a mistake, however, to take this fact as evidence for the eventual disappearance of religion. In the midst of secularity, religion has not in fact disappeared and clearly continues to find social and cultural expression. The principal change of status lies in its having been privatized.
Advanced Western societies still include significant numbers of practicing Christians. Moreover, there is increasing interest in a wide variety of “theology-lite” spiritual disciplines—yoga, mindfulness, contemplative practices, Ignatian spirituality, and so on. Still, while these are all evidence of contemporary manifestations of “religion” that confront the secularization thesis, they figure differently in the societies in which they occur. Nowadays, religion is rarely, if ever, embodied in the communal or corporate practices of the Western societies in which it is to be found, and when it is—as in processions, coronations, and military commemorations for instance—these are generally regarded as residual traditions. Their maintenance in the present is a tribute to the past. Such ceremonies are valued for the identity they confer through historical associations. They are quite unlike the enthusiastic feasts and heartfelt fasts that marked national triumphs and disasters in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. Similarly, an increase in recreational travel that economic prosperity has made possible, has vastly increased the number of people visiting historic churches, abbeys, and so on. But these impressive numbers, however, are evidence of private tourism, not communal worship or pilgrimage.
The difference between “public” and “privatized” religion is sometimes marked by drawing a distinction between religion properly so called and “spirituality.” As the Latin roots of the word indicate, religion is essentially communal, and socio-political, which is to say, an institutional embodiment of social identity and political authority. Its most evident manifestations are in shared ritual and ceremony, as well as in legal requirements and political policies that reflect widespread endorsement of common beliefs and principles. Spirituality, on the other hand, is essentially personal. It addresses the inclination that many individual human beings have to search for some transcendent meaning or supernatural realm that will bestow a special significance on their lives. The distinction between spirituality and religion takes on new significance as a result of surveys that show that while there is returning interest in something broadly called “spirituality” amongst new generations, this has done very little to slow down, and still less to reverse, the accelerating exodus from organized churches—in Europe, Australasia, Canada, and more recently, the United States. Since the middle of the twentieth century, participation in the religious ceremonies and rituals of the historic faiths, including weddings and funerals, has steadily declined, a trend that the privatization of religion has, if anything, accelerated.
Religion and spirituality can nevertheless coincide. Corporate activity and individual aspiration may come together. They do so when the rituals and ceremonies of established religions “speak” to the spiritual aspirations of individuals. This is compatible with their privatization, however. The absence of public, sacred solemnization of a marriage is no longer a matter of shame or embarrassment for co-habiting couples, but some people may nevertheless choose a “church” wedding in preference to a more secularized style of ceremony. Still, this is no less a strictly personal choice than the selection of food to be served at the reception afterwards. In a highly secularized world, in fact, it may be personal “spiritual” relevance that keeps such traditional rituals alive.
Liberal Democracy and Religious Neutrality
The privatization of religion has been significantly strengthened by the dominance of liberal democracy as a political ideal. Historically, freedom of religion played a key role in the development and emergence of liberal democracy, and it is now conceived principally in terms of the conceptions of rights and equality by which liberal democracy lays such store. Individuals have a right to practice the religion of their own choosing, with the consequence that the various religions that they choose must receive equal treatment in politics and the law. Consequently, and in sharp contrast to times past, no one religion can be given privileged political or legal status. The federal separation of church and state that figured prominently in the creation of the United States of America has become a more principled, and more widespread, separation of religion and politics.
There are plenty of religious adherents in secular liberal societies, and some of them rise to political prominence. Nevertheless, religious issues scarcely ever figure explicitly in the policies and programs of political parties. Some “moral” issues that do attract political attention and require legal definition—abortion, same-sex marriage, and euthanasia, for instance—are widely thought to have “religious” dimensions, and it is true that often it is religious affiliation that explains which side people take in debates about them. Nevertheless, it is usually politically fatal for these religious dimensions to be made explicit. This is because of an implicit ban on “privileging” one religious position over others in a liberal democracy. If, for instance, same-sex marriage is declared contrary to the will of the God of Jews, Christians or Muslims, liberal neutrality means this cannot be offered as a ground for its illegality. The political proscription of a religious objection such as this is not because it is false (though it may be), but because political legitimacy requires that the law must apply to citizens who do not believe in any such God. The authority of law within a liberal democracy has to rest on grounds that all citizens can reasonably be held to subscribe to. Religious beliefs and principles do not meet this condition, and even the most “spiritual” of citizens cannot be assumed to endorse them.
What then are laws to be based on? Liberal democracy has an answer—the will of the people. This is identified with majority opinion as expressed in fair and free voting, both in elections and in referendums. Such an answer, however, has a crucial weakness. Fair and free voting is compatible with populism. That is to say, political campaigning that trades on fear, ignorance, and prejudice may triumph at the polls. It is possible under a properly democratic system to secure majority endorsement for policies that are divisive and destructive of the body politic. There is no guarantee, in other words, that “the will of the people” will be benign or further good government.
In this respect liberal democracy contrasts sharply with the Christian conception that preceded it, which located the ultimate ground of authority in the will of a transcendent God. Just as the person who has designed a machine is especially authoritative about its repair and maintenance, so God as Creator of the cosmic context in which human affairs take place has the authority that comes from the knowledge and power embodied in creation. Human beings are part of that creation, so God's knowledge and power necessarily exceed anything to which humanity can properly aspire—“My ways are not your ways, and my thoughts are not your thoughts,” God says through the prophet Isaiah (Isa 55:8–9). From such a theological point of view, it would be the utmost foolishness for human beings to go their own way and, relying only on their own understanding, attempt to fashion the human condition in accordance with their own desires. Ignoring the purposes and intentions of the maker of the world in which they have been placed is courting disaster. The point applies not simply to individual agents, but collectively. “The will of the people,” whether expressed through the market place or the polls, can be no less ignorantly mistaken than the opinions of a willful individual. Moreover, it can be corrupted by prejudice or manipulation.
This understanding of communal right and wrong is exemplified time and again in the Hebrew scriptures. Collectively, the people of Israel deviate from the laws of God, out of foolishness, waywardness or willfulness. In 1 Samuel chapter 8, they plead with God to give them a king, and despite grave warnings, persist with their request. Israel's subsequent history is one in which a sequence of rulers leads the community with wisdom and strength—but only for a time. Even the greatest of kings—David and Solomon—eventually succumb to waywardness and egotistic greed, bringing catastrophe to the people whom God has appointed them to lead. Misfortunes inevitably follow—natural disasters, military defeats, and political catastrophes. In response, divinely inspired prophetic voices rise up, calling for penitential change. The remedy they prescribe is repentance—both a wholehearted acknowledgment on the part of the people as well as their rulers, that they have “erred and strayed from God's ways,” 2 and a willingness to make the kinds of sacrifices that will enable them to return to the ways of life that God has commanded as good. If only they do so, they will prosper once more.
The political history of Europe and America is founded on this theological conception of politics, yet the contrast with the liberal democratic values that now prevail seems immense. There is little real prospect that contemporary culture could return to thinking about political authority in anything like this way, not least because of the relegation of religion to the private sphere. The will of God may still be revealed to individuals, and revered by them, but it can only have a bearing on the way those individuals conduct their own lives; it cannot authorize them to direct the lives of others.
Yet the problem of populism remains. What is to guard against the socially corrosive effects of individualism? If nothing more significant than consumer choice prevails, the “will of the people” is simply shared preference, which, through the power of the state, licenses the thing that nineteenth-century critics of democracy most feared—a tyranny of the majority. And since preference does not need to be grounded in either knowledge or wisdom, the ever present danger is unwitting destruction. It seems that liberal democracy, for all its merits, is lacking something that religion previously supplied—a transcendent source of value that can stand in judgment on “the will of the people,” unify the community and preserve social cohesion by correcting divergence from wisdom, truth, and justice.
Environmentalism as a New Religion
It is plausible to argue that recent decades have witnessed a new creed that has rushed in to fill this vacuum, namely “environmentalism.” The speed with which the “green” causes that fall under this label have secured near universal assent, together with the courses of action it is thought to warrant, is impressive. Environmentalism is not without its critics, of course, but its eminence is shown in the fact that at local, national and international levels, it has both initiated and shaped debates that politicians cannot afford to ignore. More broadly, environmentalist-inspired themes have rapidly made their way into television and radio programs, newspaper columns, art exhibitions, school and college curricula, as well as innumerable blogs and websites.
For present purposes, however, what is relevant about the cultural omnipresence of environmentalism is how, without any explicit reference to God or the divine, it has come to perform many of the functions of a public religion. While this is not the way it is generally understood, of course, it is relatively easy to see the appositeness of this description once it is pointed out how environmentalism manifestly employs some of the key motifs of Judeo-Christian theology. Five concepts are especially notable—the sacred, the sinful, the apocalyptic, the sacrificial, and the symbolic.
The Sacredness of Nature
For environmentalists (and others) “Nature” is an evaluative concept. That is to say, Nature, properly understood, determines what is good and bad, and what actions are right and wrong. This way of understanding our relation to the world is most evident when, for instance, a diet, or a food, or more generally a whole lifestyle, is commended as “natural.” Conversely, it is equally evident when any of these is condemned as “unnatural” or “artificial.” So conceived, a process that is described as “natural” does not merely refer to what is observed to happen in vegetation, animal behavior, human life, climate, and so on; it determines our expectations about what ought to happen. Cancerous growths, for instance, though they happen with regularity and to this extent may be said to be “natural,” are nevertheless “unnatural” in virtue of being harmful deviations from how organisms ought to function.
This evaluative way of thinking about nature and the natural is not the only conceptual possibility. Indeed, an alternative conception in which nature is viewed as a purely mechanical process has played an important part in the development of science and technology. Conceiving of nature as a system with no purposes of its own opens it up to intellectual mastery and practical manipulation conducted purely in accordance with human interests. The use of drugs provides a simple illustration. A better knowledge of chemistry enabled the invention of aspirin, which was then used to counteract the pain that nature, left to its own devices, imposes upon people.
It is often subscription to these two contrasting ways of thinking about nature—the mechanical and the normative– that underlies disagreements between proponents and opponents of genetic modification. Proponents argue that GM is “right” because it brings benefits to human beings. Opponents do not deny that there are (or could be) material benefits from GM. Their view is that it is nevertheless “wrong,” because it conflicts with properly natural processes, and thus opens up the possibility of unknown and unmanageable consequences. Usually, of course, opponents of GM claim that “the natural” is better for human welfare, but their more fundamental contention is that nature presents us with limits that ought to be respected. Human beings, from this point of view, are themselves products of nature, and ought to acknowledge their place in the natural order. This is the claim implicit in the ancient idea of “Mother Nature”—the source from which we derive both generation and sustenance—so it is no surprise that the concept has undergone something of a revival in recent times.
If nature presents us with limits, these cannot be understood to be physical or biological because people, plainly, can act in “unnatural” ways. The effect of their doing so is a large part of the environmentalist's point, after all. Consequently, these limits are more properly described as moral or ethical. Even these terms, however, are not quite sufficient for the version of environmentalism sometimes referred to as “deep ecology.” Moral considerations come into play whenever we think that individuals and organizations, as they think about how to act, must look beyond their own interests and take into account the interests of others. If this moral perspective is conceived in terms of harms and benefits, it necessarily involves trade-offs. There are no absolutes, only “better” and “worse.” There is an alternative view of moral limits that does invoke the idea of moral absolutes, usually in terms of rights, but this way of thinking is philosophically problematic and, in the absence of divine prohibition, does not easily ground the absolute.
Divine prohibition—what God has forbidden—takes us to a different level of discourse. The relevant distinction is no longer that between the moral and the immoral, but between the sacred and the profane. Sacrilege—violation of the sacred—is the transgression of cosmic boundaries that transcend human wishes. It is not hard to supply examples— abusing dead bodies, mocking venerated people and events, destroying holy places, vandalizing beautiful objects. These are all actions that have long been held sacrilegious. But the objection to them cannot be spelled out in terms of harms or rights. Corpses cannot suffer and have no rights. Rather, respecting the dead is an absolute requirement upon all human beings because it is sacrilege to do otherwise.
Concern for the natural world may be grounded in a claim about the harm that human actions are causing. To ground it in this way, however, necessarily allows for trade-offs—the preservation of species and landscapes against the need for economic development for the relief of poverty, for instance. To resist these trade-offs in the name of environmental protection attributes a measure of sacredness to nature. Just as an analysis of benefit over cost is irrelevant to the corruption of children or the abuse of the dead, so calculating the economic benefits of destroying animal habitats, delicate ecosystems, and beautiful landscapes is irrelevant to the environmentalist for whom no price can be put on the diversity, magnificence, and beauty of the natural world. In this sense the value of nature is absolute; it is the kind of value that is attributed to sacred things.
Sin and Repentance
People who run child prostitution rings and produce child pornography are guilty of great wrongdoing. The fact that they themselves know this to be the case is revealed by the secrecy with which they surround their activities, and their anxiety that what they do should not come into the moral light of day. A much deeper degree of depravity shows itself, however, when the perpetrators of these evils attempt to defend them, in terms, say, of the income they bring to poor families, and the pleasure that “clients” obtain from the satisfaction of sexual desires that the “conventional” world forbids. This is where it makes most sense to invoke the concept of sin. Everyone and anyone may do wrong; sin properly so called is when wrongdoers are blind to the wrongfulness of what they do, and are willing, when the occasion arises, to defend it. This blindness need not be willful. People can be insensitive to their own wrongdoing because the culture in which they have been raised has accustomed them to act in ways whose horrible character they simply never reflect upon. Such, it seems plausible to think, is true of slave-holding societies, societies where corruption is rife, and societies in which no attention is paid to animal suffering. This, indeed, is how Christian theology has generally thought of humanity's sinfulness. It is not just that we do wrong; we are, rather, “tied and bound by the chain of our sins,” as the Book of Common Prayer expresses it.
What is the remedy? The recommendation of a new “code of conduct” seems wholly inadequate, precisely because those to whom it is commended have failed to see what is wrong with the old one. Thus, the remedy to sin is not modified action, but a change of heart. Such is the central motif of Pauline Christianity. Paul holds that the Pharisees (of whom he has been one, of course) live according to a code of conduct that is profoundly erroneous. They are not simply mistaken in their actions, but in the whole way of life to which they are wedded, including the beliefs upon which the justification of that way of life rests. Of course, a change of heart will lead to a change of lifestyle, but the key element is coming to see things in a new way, recognizing entrapment in hidebound and impoverished lives. There is the promise of liberation here. “The truth,” Jesus famously declares, “will set you free” (John 8:31–32).
A similar motif is to be found in environmentalism. Conversion to a “deep green” conception of humanity's place in nature is not a matter of adopting a different, more sustainable pattern of consumption. “Sustainability” has become a buzz word. Yet insofar as it relates to economic sustainability, it continues to employ the idea that nature is in essence a resource for human beings, albeit one that needs to be husbanded carefully if it is to meet human needs over the long term. Environmentalism invokes a different idea—that human beings do not stand over and above the natural world, using it in their own interest. Rather, they are part of it, and must operate within its limits, whether they like it or not. Environmentalism, in other words, requires a change of heart and mind; we must come to see our relationship to nature differently. And once we come to see things in this light, we are freed from the rat race of consumerism.
Apocalypse
What if we do not acknowledge the error of our ways? In the book of Genesis, God loses patience with human beings because they have despoiled the world created for them. God determines on a flood that will literally wash the Earth clean of sinful human beings. One righteous person—Noah—is permitted to survive, with sufficient human and animal resources to re-populate the Earth. This apocalyptic vision, in a variety of forms, is repeated again and again in the Bible. Unchecked, human waywardness will result in catastrophe. A long line of prophets and preachers issue warnings and calls for repentance. Often, they do so ineffectually, with the result that disaster ensues; Babylon destroys Jerusalem, for instance, and enemies carry the Jews into exile. These disasters fall short of complete catastrophe, but they nonetheless constitute powerful foretastes of the ultimate apocalypse that may enfold. God will not be mocked forever.
So too, environmentalists warn of catastrophe, and make their case in part by citing lesser natural disasters which point in that direction. Of course, the big difference is that the basis on which they issue their warnings is neither biblical teaching nor spiritual insight, but “science.” To many minds, this makes a huge difference. In the modern world “science” has an authority that theology now wholly lacks, even in the minds of many contemporary theologians, it might be added. The widespread assumption that modern “science” is epistemologically superior to scriptural revelation can be questioned. For present purposes, however, it is enough to note that the “science” to which environmentalists appeal is not set within the provisional and uncertain character of purely scientific hypotheses. As represented in the media, climate scientists do not merely hypothesize. They express “fears” and issue “warnings,” thus playing the same role as biblical prophets who relied on the spiritual insight and theological teaching of the scriptures.
While the prophets were thought to be possessed of special knowledge and insight, they were not regarded as mere purveyors of information. So too, environmentalism goes beyond “science” to the extent that it locates the significance of measurements and computer models that modern science has made possible in the warnings that it warrants. Over many centuries the scriptures have been read in ways that warrant a warning—”the end of the world is nigh.” So too, environmentalism holds, the scientific consensus embodied in, for instance, the reports of the International Panel on Climate Change, warrants the warning that the end of humanity's highly technological, urbanized, consumer-led world is predictable. As with the biblical prophets, this apocalyptic warning need not be a message of doom. There is hope, and the impending catastrophe can be averted if things change. What needs to change? Here again we encounter a recognizably religious motif—sacrifice.
Sacrifice
In modern usage, the word sacrifice generally carries only half the connotation that its more ancient meaning had. When people in ancient times offered burnt sacrifices to God, they gave up something of special value—the first fruits, the fatted calf, the finest wheat. They did not do so in order to benefit God. How could the God who made heaven and earth need anything, or benefit from human generosity? The thought was absurd. God is worthy of sacrifice, and has to be acknowledged in this way, for fear that divine wrath should fall on those who, while happily accepting the many blessings they had been given (including the gift of life), fail to pay proper homage to the bountiful Giver. When people today sacrifice something, they give it up, but they do not do so in order to appease or placate anyone. I may sacrifice my time or vacation to a good cause, but if I do, it is to benefit others, not to appease or placate them.
In extraordinary times, the ordinary round of sacrifices is no longer sufficient. For the ancient Israelites, when catastrophe loomed, greater and more demanding sacrifices were required, sometimes extending to the sacrifice of human life itself. The idea continues to resonate only in military contexts, when servicemen and women are described as making “the supreme sacrifice” in times of war and conflict. If the Israelites made special sacrifices, their God would be appeased, and the apocalyptic consequences of divine wrath averted.
Similarly, averting the environmental apocalypse predicted by climate “science” requires sacrifice. Many of the things that we have come to value greatly such as cheap energy, inexpensive foreign travel, private cars, and unlimited consumption, will have to be given up. Moreover, these sacrifices must be made by the community as a whole. It is not enough that some high spending individuals reduce their consumption, content themselves with smaller houses, or take less exotic vacations. It is not even enough for people at large to avoid waste or be more careful with the disposal of rubbish. What is needed is a wholesale change of attitude and lifestyle, which is to say, a change of heart on the part of the community.
It is here that we can identify the character of environmentalism as a public religion. Individuals can come to feel a spiritual affinity for the natural world comparable to the sense that other people claim to have of the supernatural. This spiritual experience may lead them to become vegans or vegetarians, make donations to the cause of animal welfare, or devote themselves to wildlife organizations. Environmentalists generally welcome all this, but they hold that such behavior on the part of individuals is not sufficient, any more than the faithful observance of a few Jews (including the prophets themselves) could avert impending disaster when Israel turned its back upon Yahweh and ran enthusiastically after other gods.
So, just as the king had to dress in sackcloth and ashes as a sign of repentance on behalf of the whole community, and just as the priests had to perform ritual acts of sacrifice for the people as a whole, so environmentalism requires both political enactment and public expression. Political enactment takes the form of campaigns, policies, and laws regulating the conduct of affairs by governmental, commercial, and educational institutions and organizations, with a view to averting the climatic and natural apocalypse of which the scientific prophets warn. Public expression takes the form of those movies, television reports and documentaries, books, exhibitions, theater productions, school and college courses, activities for children, and so on, that make various aspects of environmentalism their theme.
Here we find public religion, in just this sense. A vision of human life is actively promoted in the public realm, not as a result of a dominant political ideology intended to serve the interests of the ruling class, but as something whose validity is widely endorsed. The vision informs free and creative activity, not just within the lives of individuals, but within the public culture. It is striking that in many “multi-cultural” societies, where public and political endorsement of longstanding religions is no longer acceptable and even in places forbidden by law, the promotion of environmentalism is not only permissible in state-sponsored media, but actively supported with public funds. Of course, its advocates will contend that all this is warranted by the crisis that threatens to engulf humanity. This may be true, but it is exactly what the prophets of old would also have contended. The difference between then and now seems to lie in which apocalypse is to be believed in, and why.
Symbolic Action
Where does this leave the individual? If the actions of personally motivated individuals are not in themselves sufficient to bring about the kind of change in mode of life that deep ecology requires, what part then does personal motivation play? Why not leave everything to law and public policy? Suppose that what matters is that everyone recycles plastic waste, and that this will happen only if the law requires it. Then, by merely obeying the law, perhaps because of the penalties that disobedience might incur, I have played the only part I can play in bringing about the good of the whole. Why does it matter how I am motivated? Why do I need a penitent change of heart? And relatedly, what is the role of this religion's public expression, in the accompanying culture of films, exhibitions, documentaries, and the like?
The answer is that public religion provides the individual with the opportunity to perform symbolic actions. Long-established religions are replete with symbolic actions, but nowadays the symbolism of these actions tends to be construed in a way that confines their symbolic meaning to a circumscribed set of identifiable “believers”—“practicing” Catholics, “orthodox” Jews, and so on. However, even in the modern Western world it is possible to identify symbolic actions that have a clear public meaning. A familiar example is standing while the national anthem is played or sung. This has political significance, yet it would be absurd to suppose that standing rather than sitting makes a causal contribution to the power, authority, or the stability of the state. Rather, it signals an acknowledgment of these, and expresses the individual's adherence and loyalty. That is why refusing to stand also has symbolic significance. Its being symbolic means that it falls into a wholly different category from, say, organized rebellion, which does aim to have causal consequences for the power and authority of the state. The same point is illustrated by the practice of flying or burning the national flag.
So it is with any practical action that environmentalism advocates and encourages. Consider the dictum “reduce, reuse, recycle.” This prescribes not merely a course of action, but a repeated pattern of conduct. The rationale for this conduct may be represented as, and is widely supposed to be, consequentialist. That is to say, the reason to “reduce, reuse, recycle” is generally thought to lie in securing beneficial outcomes. In reality, however, actions that fall under this dictum rely for their efficacy on connections that are highly contingent. To be effective, deposited items have to be collected, transported, sorted, and processed efficiently. Moreover, the energy consumption and use of natural resources that this requires has to be less than it would otherwise have been. What guarantee is there of this? And that is just the start of the chain. Even if the sequence from recycle bin to reuse goes according to plan, the step to significantly reduced carbon emissions, and from that to reduction in global temperature, is still more uncertain.
Let us suppose that we are fully persuaded by the environmentalists. The fact remains that just how, when, and whether putting plastic bottles or aluminum cans in a recycling receptacle rather than in the trash is causally connected to preventing global warming, protecting endangered species, or preventing soil erosion, is indeterminable, often unknowable, and certainly unknown by the vast majority of people who engage in these actions. Yet, when environmentalism takes on the character of a public religion, these actions, whatever their actual consequences, signal subscription or rejection of that religion, and win approval and disapproval accordingly. The person who willfully and ostentatiously tosses aluminum cans into the trash, wears leopard-skin clothing, or uses an elephant's foot as an ashtray, can expect to attract social opprobrium, even when there is no evidence that any of this had an adverse effect on the environment. It is not what it does that condemns such an action; it is what it says.
Environmentalism, Christianity, and “True Religion”
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries many Christian thinkers were interested in discerning the nature of “true religion.” 3 They wanted to shift the emphasis away from the intense focus on doctrinal truth that had, as they saw it, caused religious wars, and applied the term “true” to religion in the same way that it is used in the expressions “true love,” “true friendship,” and “true patriotism.” The enemy of true religion in this sense is a kind of interior corruption that rests on and exploits false representations as, for example, when lust for another person presents itself as love, and protestations of friendship for the rich and famous actually disguise an eye for material advantage. The deepest corruption of these things occurs when there is self-deception—the lustful believe themselves to be in love because they see no difference between love and carnal desire; egoists mistake their own interest in wealthy people as friendship because material advantage is their only motivation. So too, some Christian thinkers have thought, bigotry and the lust for power can masquerade as genuine piety, and intolerance interprets itself as concern for the spiritual well-being of others. The opposite of true religion, on this way of thinking, is idolatry—the worship of false gods such as wealth and power—or Mammon and Mars in their ancient personifications. The difficulty is that idolaters often fool themselves as fully as they fool others.
If, as I have argued, environmentalism is a religion, then the question arises as to whether it could be a true religion in this sense. Does it really direct us to acknowledge and venerate a source of our being that is the true source of righteousness? Or is its pretension in this regard a mask that hides a faith whose ultimate rationale is the advancement of human needs and desires? This possibility is disguised by a commendable preference for the needs of a future over the present generation, and an admirable desire for an aesthetically satisfying environment over a prosperous economy. Neither, of course, signals the transcendence of human preference, only a different set of preferences.
This observation relates to a wider topic—the “religion of humanity” which post-Christian thinkers such as John Stuart Mill sketched out. 4 Mill thought the apparatus of religion—public ceremonial, moral injunction, and artistic expression—could be directed without significant loss to the happiness of human beings. From a Christian perspective such religion is the ultimate form of idolatry—namely, worship of ourselves. This estimation, however, must be no less damning for the environmentalist, whose aspiration is that human beings should come to think of themselves as simply one part of something larger. Yet the imperative to avoid the predicted climatic apocalypse rests on the future of humanity being our ultimate concern. And there is, moreover, a further error from a properly Christian perspective—that we are able to save ourselves. Two reflections arise instantly against such a thought. First, it seems to confound the sin of idolatry with the sin of hubris and brings to mind God's question to Job (in the New Living Translation) “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know so much” (Job 38:4). Secondly, given humanity's track record in the political transformation of the world, humanity's resolve to save itself has little credibility as a message of hope.
