Religious Anti-Environmentalism at Its Worst

In the midst of working on my final papers for a course called The Spirituality of Ecology with the proficient Dr. Laurel Kearns, I found more than enough motivation - in fighting the myths offered under the guise of spirituality.

This video suffers from inordinate misinformation and lack of evidential support:



How many "false assertions" (as they would say) can you spot?

I'll start you off.

First major inaccuracy: supporting environmental justice means putting the wellbeing of nature ahead of that of people.



Fact: Ecological degradation disproportionately affects the poor, the indigenous, and minority populations.

Let's be clear.

The "environment" is not just wildlife or the Grand Canyon or Algonquin Park. It is also the plant in Newark, New Jersey, the site of the chemical accident of Agent Orange; it is a landfill; it is Chernobyl; it is the Ironbound District; it is the slaughterhouse; it is Doremus Avenue, the "Chemical Corridor." The environment is our surroundings, whether placid and flowery or a pit of squalor and waste. And people live in both settings.

In the Ironbound District of New Jersey, signs of environmental degradation and the risks it poses to the humans living there are evident. For just a few examples:

-A community pool had to be constructed on lifts to prevent contact with hazardous chemicals in the ground.

-There is approximately one half acre of green space per 1000 people, versus the average 7-8 acres per 1000 people.

-When the community implemented an Astroturf soccer field, it was eventually found to be poisoned with lead. Residents and environmental workers needed to fight hard for lead-testing for the children who had walked and played there, including preschool students whose teachers had often taken them across the field.

And if that isn't enough to swallow, to help people to fathom one individual's impact, "ecological footprint" tests are available; they evaluate, based upon lifestyle, such a question as: "If everyone lived as you do, how many earths would be needed?" Even the most ecologically-minded are shocked to discover that their practices only go so far. When people who already live extraordinarily lightly on the earth are scoring two, three, four planets we know we are in dire trouble.

As for the claim that the environmentalist movement has become its own religion which threatens - I'm sorry, that is, "is deadly to" - the Gospel of Jesus and the good of the church...?



Not so.

There's "an elephant in the way," folks, but it isn't the environmental movement.

First of all, if we're going to argue the idolatry angle, then as Dr. Laurel Kearns has said, consumerism itself is a system of beliefs and values - not the least of which are low prices, budgeting, and possessing gadgets. Let's not forget that.

Second, the Bible is perhaps the most frequently misunderstood and misquoted source. This case is no exception.

According to Dr. Catherine Keller, natural science is a crucial ally to eco-theologians. And some non-religious authors have referred to creation as "divinely inspired," which is more scripturally accurate than many Christians' perspective of dictatorially imposed creation.

The often misinterpreted Genesis story does not claim creatio ex nihilo – creation from nothing, from a formless void – but rather from tohuvabohu – an uninhabitable mishmash, literally a word that cannot be translated except as what seems a sparingly-used rhyming colloquialism. Creation occurs at the edge of chaos. If there is too much chaos, there is disillusion; if there is too much order, nothing can emerge.

Possibly an even more commonly disputed interpretation of Genesis is that it grants humans "dominion" and the right to "subdue" nature to humans' own means, rather than describing a human role of steward and caretaker.

But this simply cannot mean exploitation; rather, it entails power with responsibility and wisdom, that humanity should view creation with love and awe. The Bible prohibits waste, the cause of extinction, and the cause of pain to living creations.

Humans have an emaciated understanding of the world – often using the dualistic terms "we" and "they" in all matters. "We" as a species claim superiority, deeming the rest of nature as inferior forms of life.

Nevertheless, "we" forget that, according to Christian principle, we are judged by the way that we treat the least powerful, and we continue to wreak destruction – actively and passively – on a creation which cannot restore itself.

This is only the tip of the (rapidly melting) iceberg. If this is at all new to you, as it was for me this past year, I hope you'll consider delving more deeply into the subject. Don't take my word for it, and don't take scare tactic videos like the above at face value, either. This issue is far too critical not to do one's own investigation.


Tipping my hat to Scotteriology on this one. Please read his blog post on the subject here.

Sex Selection: No More Disappointments

Earlier in the semester in our Religion and the Social Process class, we discussed sexism, in the midst of which I came across this controversial article from The Guardian (UK), April 2010.

Although the procedure is limited to only certain countries, including the U.S., parents have the (expensive) ability to choose the sex of a future child. Interestingly, there is no remarkable sexist split, that one is preferred more frequently to another, as may be expected for any fathomable reason (for instance, because boys traditionally carry on a family name). Boys and girls are 'requested' at similar rates.



Reasons people choose such a procedure are varied: from preventing passing on an illness in the couple's genetics that is sex-specific, to already having had one or more children of one sex and wanting one of a different sex - guaranteed on the next try.




One mother with sons was "tired" of walking down a street and seeing pink dresses in windows and knowing that she didn't have a daughter to wear them. Would her maternal urges have been satiated were her sons to decide that they preferred to wear pink dresses as opposed to the presumably non-pink, non-dressy clothing that they had been given as growing boys?

If the twin girls she had due to this procedure eventually grew "tired" of tea parties and dress-up - perhaps beginnning to imitate their brothers or do other activities not widely considered "feminine," would Mom feel like it had been a wasted effort? Would she be simply content that she got to buy a few pink dresses while the girls were toddlers?

Would she learn to love her daughters as the individual beings they are, regardless of what they wear?

Regardless of the fact that they are female?




I realize it is perhaps unjust for me to raise even hypothetical questions in this accusatory light, and I intend these families no harm. But it hurts me as a daughter to think that my parents might love me because they already had a son, or because I allowed them to have one of each. It hurts to think not only that, if my parents had preferred one sex or the other, I could have disappointed them in my very birth, but also that we live in a world in which people aim to evade disappointment rather than overcome it. It hurts to imagine this as the foundation of any child's life.

Because I was born both a girl and seven years after my brother, neither of which I could control, my parents placed us in the two bedrooms of our old apartment while they slept on a pull-out couch. When I think of that time, I think most about the sacrifices that our parents made just for the sake of our privacy, a right that everyone does not even have, let alone as children. I'm sure it crossed their minds at some point that it would have been convenient in at least that circumstance to have had two children of the same sex and perhaps closer in age, but I also like to think that it did not make them regret having the son and daughter that they had.

I'm sure one of the aforementioned article's points of greatest impact is the stunning advances we're seeing in medicine, and not only the impact on personal health but the effect on autonomy.

But autonomy means you have a choice, and I think there's a far greater one implied than determining the sex of one's child. From my perspective, these are the questions that we face in light of sex-selection:

What are we communicating to children (and to others) about the relationship between parent and child?

What notion of the relationship between parent and child have we come to believe?

Are children accessories? Can we tailor them to our liking? Can we coordinate them with our lifestyles, our decor, our pets?




Are children singularly a parent's life decision?



Or do we acknowledge the impact that every child, every person has on countless people every day?

Do we acknowledge that each one of us is a part of a greater community, and not only an isolated being in a family?

Are children to be constructed to our liking, or do they serve some other purpose beyond satisfying parental instincts?

Of course, I understand the complexity of this entire issue extends far beyond all of this, so let me be clear:

I am not speaking to the classist privilege inherent to sex-selection.

I am not speaking to the selection made to spare a child a potential ailment.

I am not speaking to the debate as to whether this is all an example of humans "playing God."

I am not speaking to the extent that God might be involved in these parental longings and scientific procedures, or whether or not it is indeed God's will that Mr. and Mrs. Jonesing go out of their way to ensure the biological sex of their baby.

Each of these topics could fill a post in its own right.

Yet I find the fact that this article could declare as its subheading (facetiously or not) "No more disappointments" to be a far more potent and detrimental point. This is the stuff of our conscience and our consciousness, folks. This is not just ("just"?) a debate about elite privilege or universal free will. This is immensely internal.

Supporting sex selection (or any fetal-specifier, for that matter) as a means of parental satisfaction has serious implications for distorting the expression and experience of parental love.

It reshapes the image of humanity that we pass along to the generations for whom such science - and more - will be a reality for the entirety of their lives.

Instead of embracing the individuals entering the world, it tells them, "We constructed you. Don't disappoint us."