The 2008 Lambeth Conference in England enters its final week, and it is still unclear whether the worldwide Anglican Communion will hold together. I blogged my thoughts ten days ago. Many sites are covering the conference; check out Episcopal Life, the Guardian, Integrity USA’s, or Kendall Harmon’s.
Fights over women bishops and same-sex marriage are getting most of the coverage, but I’m relieved that the Archbishop of Canterbury himself is still willing to focus on other, perhaps even more vital issues. In Saturday’s Guardian, Rowan Williams offers a terrific reflection: A New Spiritual Politics of Limits. The archbishop writes:
We live in a world of finite space and finite resource. Endless trajectories of growth are not realistic; and our own rising “oceans” of food and fuel prices are a stark reminder that scarcity is not someone else’s problem in today’s and tomorrow’s world.
Somehow, conventional political discourse has not dealt with this very successfully. Time was when part of the wisdom of conservative politics was about limits, realism, adjusting to certain givens in the social and material environment, and moderating expectations. Unfortunately, this proved all too often to be a way of recommending the disadvantaged to accept their fate; and progressive politics was thus frequently allied to a passionate belief in endless possibilities of self-improvement and more sophisticated control of the environment. You have only to think of the utopian aspirations of the French Revolution or of the Soviet Union in the 1920s.
And when a drained and abused environment takes its revenge, we seem often very confused. Rather bizarrely, the environmental family of issues is seen in some quarters as a sort of liberal conspiracy, another turn of the screw for liberal guilt, and therefore to be treated with the same robust scorn as all other fashionable and self-indulgent moralising. But at the same time, a progressive politics still finds it very hard to let go of its legacy. If emancipation and the advance of human capacity don’t simply mean economic growth without limit, what do they mean?
Excellent question, and I appreciate the dig at so-called “conservatives” who are, in practice and in theory, anything but when it comes to their attitude towards conservation for the good of our planet and all the life upon it.
The Archbishop wrote in response to something raised by the Bishop of Polynesia: rising ocean levels are, within a short time, going to make much of his island-chain diocese uninhabitable. In that light, some of the quarreling over pelvic morality seems, well, self-indulgent at best and shamelessly irresponsible at worst. The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church USA raised this same issue in her Easter Sermon this year. Katharine Jefferts Schori wrote:
We are beginning to be aware of the ways in which our lack of concern for the rest of creation results in death and destruction for our neighbors. We cannot love our neighbors unless we care for the creation that supports all our earthly lives. We are not respecting the dignity of our fellow creatures if our sewage or garbage fouls their living space. When atmospheric warming, due in part to the methane output of the millions of cows we raise each year to produce hamburger, begins to slowly drown the island homes of our neighbors in the South Pacific, are we truly sharing good news?
And all God’s creatures said, Amen!
Christians are fond of saying things like “God will provide.” And yes, as a believer, I trust that God will provide. But we make a huge theological error when we confuse divine provision with carte blanche to exploit the earth and its creatures. Scripture grants humans dominion over the earth — but to exercise dominion is to be, literally, like the Lord. When God gave Adam and Eve stewardship over all of creation, it was in order that they might love and cherish it with the same intensity and care that He showed and shows for His creatures. And when we fail to exercise “just dominion”, we fail to honor the God who commended this earth and all of its creatures to our care.
Archbishop Williams concludes:
Contrary to what some would say, religious belief is in significant measure a way of acknowledging limits that are shared by all human beings – the limits involved in bodily dependence on a friendly environment, and in the fact of death. Faith proposes that finding your way within these limits (including awareness of death) is how we lead lives that have some claim to rationality and – to use the religious word – grace.
That’s a message desperately needed.
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