soil-conservation-people-religion-and-land.pdf - South West NRM

outcast and the down-trodden. In a similar way, when the
earth is being exploited,-our response ought to be to mirror
God's concern for HisCrt&ion."
For modern Aust@iam:l suggest that three attitudes can
be identified as being dangerous: (1) the blind optimism of
those who believe that some scientific innovation will
always save us; (2) the gloom-and-doom of those who have
given up hope; and (3) the greed, apathy and refusal to face
reality of those who have given up corlcern and
involvement.
It has been noted by Cook (1 970) that Man's approach to
the land could form a permanent relationship, through one of
three bases:
1 . Ecological (McHarg, 1 969).
2. Humanistic (Wilson, 1970).
3. Theological (White, 1971).
The proponents of a conservation approach to land
resources have appealed to all three of these sentiments
which have essentially the same goals but differ markedly in
their motivating force.
Christian land ethics
What did Christianity tell people about their relations with
the environment? The short answer is, "not very much",
although many religious philosophers challenge this
interpretation.
Es~ecialiv in its Western form. Christianitv is the most
anthropocentric religion the world has seen Lynn White
(1971) has written at length on this matter:
"Man shares, in great measure, God's transcendence of
nature. Christianity, in absolute contrast to ancient
paganism and Asia's religions (except, perhaps,
Zoroastrianism), not only established a dualism of man and
nature but also insisted that it is God's will that man exploit
nature for his proper ends.
At the level of the common people this worked out in an
interesting way. In antiquity every tree, every spring, every
stream, every hill had its own guardian spirit. By destroying
pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit
nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural
objects.
We would seem to be headed towards conclusions
unpalatable to many Christians. Since both science and
technology are blessed words in our contemporary
vocabulary, some may be happy at the notions, first that,
viewed historically, modern science is an extrapolation of
natural theology and, second, that modern technology is at
least partly to be explained as an Occidental, voluntarist
realization of the C&@@n dogma of man's transcendence
of, and rightful rfkste-y- over, nature. But, as we now
recognize, somewf%iESyer
a century ago science and
technology - hithe@qute separate activities - joined to
give mankind powers which, to judge by many of the
ecological effects, are out of control. If so, Christianity
bears a huge burden of guilt. The whole concept of the
sacred grove is alien to Christianity and to the ethos of the
West. For nearly two millenia Christian missionaries have
been chopping down sacred groves, which are idolatrous
because they assume spirit in nature.
What we do about ecology depends on our ideas of the
man-nature relationship. More science and more technology
are not going to get us out of the present ecological crisis
until we find a new religion, or rethink our old one. Possibly
we should ponder the greatest radical in Christian history
since Christ: Saint Francis of Assisi. Francis tried to depose
man from his monarchy over creation and set up a
democracy of all God's creatures. He was apparently our
first declared Christian nature lover. How he survived the
wrath of the hierachy of his day remains a mystery.
Environment is the product of a dynamic technology and
science which were originating in the Western medieval
world against which Saint Francis was rebelling in so original
a way. Their growth cannot be understood historically apart
from distinctive attitudes towards nature which are deeply
grounded in Christian dogma. The fact that most people do
not think of these attitudes as Christian is irrelevant. No
new set of basic values has been accepted in our society to
displace those of Christianity. Hence we shall continue to
have a worsening ecologic crisis until we reject the Christian
axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to
serve man.
The greatest spiritual revolutionary in Western history,
Saint Francis, proposed what he thought was an alternative
Christian view of nature and man's relation to it: he tried to
substitute the idea of the equality of all creatures, including
man, for the idea of man's limitless rule of creation. He
failed. Both our prese
are so tinctured with
nature that no solut~o
expected from them a
so largely religious, the remedy must also be essentially
religious, whether we call it that or not. We must rethink and
refeel our nature and destiny. The profoundly religious, but
heretical, sense of the primitive Franciscans for the spiritual
autonomy of all parts of nature may point a direction." .
Fundamental values - the
key to changed attitudes
"Hegel pointed out more than a century ago that
Richtigkeit, correctness, is not the same thing as Wahrheit,
the truth. It is correct to define the earth by quantitative
studies, but the more interesting and significant truth about
it transcends measurements.
One of the least attractive aspects of technological
civilization is a progressive loss in concern for the beauty of
the earth. This point is of special significance to our society
but in a capitalist system which seems to have no real
values other than monetary values, the less tangible but
more lasting, values are continuously dismunted. The
situation is made worse by economic guidelines which
ignore timeframes of a long or permanent term.
Man is still of the earth, earthy. The earth is literally our
mother, not only because we depend on her for nurture and
shelter but even more because the human species has
been shaped by her in the womb of evolution. Each
person,furthermore, is conditioned by the stimuli he
receives from nature during his own existence" (Dubos,
1973).
The British biologist Julian Huxley reformulated Origen's
thought in modern terms and enlarged it to include his own
concepts of psychosocial evolution:
The human type became a microcosm which,
through its capacity :or self-awareness, was able
to incorporate increasing amounts of the
macrocosm into itself, to organize them in new
and richer ways, and then with their aid to exert
new and more powerful influences on the
macrocosm.
Sir Julian's statement implies two different but
complementary attitudes towards the earth. The fact that
man incorporates part of the universe in his being provides
a scientific basis for the feeling of reverence toward the
earth. But the fact that he can act on the external world
often makes him behave as if he were foreign to the earth
and her master - an attitude which has become almost
universal during the past two centuries.
a