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

Stott's clearcut distinction between easy optimism, dark
pessimism and Biblical realism should be considered in the
context of the springs of human action by the Church on
social issues Like land degradation. Hawever, his comment
that "the gloomy view of human depravity leads some in the
Church to consider social action a waste of time", warrants
evaluation. For if this view is widely held, then corrective
environmental action is most unlikely to come from the
Church. Personally I side with Ruether ( 1978) when she says,
"When humanity mends its relation to God, the result must be
expressed not in contemplative flight from the earth, but
rather in the rectifying of the convenant of creation." Thus
while the attempt to make Christianity the "ecological
scapegoat1' may not be well founded, it must be conceded that
though the Bible discourages affluence, Western man and his
Church accept a lifestyle which is both greedy and wasteful
in ecological terms.
Stottls overview has been chosen because it demonstrates that
the choice of optimism or pessimism confronts the scientist
(despite his so-called objectivity) as much as it confronts
the rest of us. Stott 's contention that, since God wns the
earth, we have only leasehold, not freehold, tenure, is a
point crucial to our approach to the land. The writer
(Roberts, 1985) has dealt with this at length elsewhere.
Stott maintains that in one sense we are "one with the rest
of nature", but at the same time we are "distinct from
nature". He emphasises that our dominion over nature gives
us a position midway between God and nature in the grand
hierarchy. Hawever, his support for von Rad's claim that
- -
"man is placed upon earth in God's image as God's sovereign
emblem", is taking the dominion role a bit far. Stott easily
translates all our technological achievements into
"fulfilments of God's primeval command" - dominion.
The chal 1 enge
Most believers will find Stott more acceptable, than say
White, because Stott makes comfortable statements which lead
to what appears to be a happy marriage between technology and
Christianity. But is it? His interpretation of all our
t ethnological advances as "merely co-operat ing with the laws
of fruitfulness which God has already established",
disregards the acts of arrogant exploitation, where man is
like a spoilt child, as if he is the last generation to
inhabit the earth, producing exactly the opposite effect to
the fruitfulness to which Stott refers.
Stott stops short of emphasizing the obvious expectation - of
"God's caretakers1' is to take care. While he quotes
Schumacher (of "Small is Beautiful" fame), Stott seems to
miss the central credo which is being propounded by this
economist-turned-ecologist . The vital truth lies in the
quotation: "He must conform his actions to certain natural
laws if he is to maintain his dominance over his
environment".