I recall being on the Hudson Clearwater sloop, an educational experience led by environmental activist and folk musician Pete Seeger. Beginning in the 1960s and continuing until his death in 2014, Seeger was a leading voice in raising awareness of the fragility of the land, water, and air. He engaged people through both his music and environmental educational initiatives. With his vision, Seeger created an experience of sailing on the Clearwater as educators taught both sailors and guests about the ecology and environmental degradation of the river.
Thus my elementary school memories in the 1970s include a field trip on the Clearwater, learning about the pollution coming primarily from upstream factories. I would discover later that the pollution included PCBs, chemicals that were destroying fish, particularly the shad that had been running in the Hudson for centuries. But from that short field trip, I retained a searing memory of a polluted river that was essentially dead. Over the years that “educational sail” would come back to me as a stark reminder of the ability humans retain to nearly destroy the environment.
When I began a career as an environmental planner and educator, it became clear to me that local environmental issues could often be addressed by engagement with various community stakeholders. For me, that area of focus was the New York City watershed, which included the areas of upstate New York not far from where I grew up.
More than twenty-five years after my Clearwater sloop field trip, I would take my two elementary school–aged children to our local beach on the Hudson River, a waterway earnestly restored to life through the efforts of new laws and local advocacy. We often attended the annual Hudson River Clearwater Festival which marked the resiliency of the waters, the return of healthy fish, and the committed engagement of the communities around the river.
During my years as an environmental professional, I liked to talk about “doing the right thing” for the environment, as my husband and I raised our children in the Hudson River Valley, the backdrop of a thriving, resurrected habitat. Yet some part of me felt a certain lack of conviction that “doing the right thing” was enough of a motivation to continue working toward environmental protection. All too often environmental activists became burned out in their passion, and ecological issues were seen by many as a fringe concern in the face of so many other pressing local and regional issues.
When I entered seminary in 2007, I believed that my career as an environmentalist was over. As I turned my eyes toward priestly ordination in the Episcopal Church and arrived at Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, I began to realize that my sense of calling was not only to ordained ministry, but to a broader ministry of care for creation, or eco-ministry. At Berkeley, as in many other seminaries, programs are offered to educate lay and clergy leaders in the theology, environmental ethics, and biblical interpretation of care of creation. Somehow, with God’s guidance, I wound up in a seminary that, along with the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology based in the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, helped me make the connection between my lifelong love of God and my care for the earth.
Taking classes and talking to seminarians and professors who were also deeply committed to this, I was inspired to finally consider that taking care of the environment was not a matter of “doing the right thing,” but rather a matter of loving and caring for all that God loves. Through the grace of God, my career as an environmentalist and my calling to ordained ministry became one.
This little book is your invitation into a similar journey of exploration. Perhaps you are a committed environmentalist who sees your faith life separately like I did. Perhaps you are a concerned environmental activist who is burned out on feeling a sense of responsibility for the work and are seeking God’s presence in the ministry. Perhaps you are in despair and face a sense of hopelessness over the relentless news of climate change because of its current and future impacts on the earth. Perhaps you sense the wonder and joy of God in creation and long to celebrate today, while protecting it for future generations. Or maybe you experience all these things.
Wherever you are on your spiritual journey, I hope this book offers you a sense of possibility and boundless hope for all of God’s creation.
Since ancient times, people understood that human connection to the land, creatures, plants, water, and sky was central to their relationship with God. Scripture taught that God was the Creator and that the abundance of God’s creation was to be celebrated, preserved, and protected for mutual flourishing. In the past few centuries, the idea of mutuality has been lost as humans have placed themselves in the center of creation by controlling, managing, and destroying natural resources for their own good.
Here we will explore the connection between all creation and God in the Hebrew Scripture and New Testament. Through this very brief review of some key biblical passages, we can better appreciate that harmony with and care of creation is not a new theological trend, but rather a core understanding of our faith tradition.
God as Creator
Most civilizations have a creation story. These stories help give a sense of a divine presence in the activity of creation, explaining the reason for human existence and the natural world. While countless books and academic papers have explored the biblical understanding of creation and humankind, space does not permit a deep review of this issue. However, as an introduction, a closer read of Genesis is important from an eco-theology perspective.
The story of creation in the Book of Genesis is a reminder that God created out of nothingness. Over the course of the six days of God’s time, creation exploded into being with sky, water, air, land, and all sorts of animals including creepy-crawly things and birds in the sky. This imagery recognizes a powerful sense of how God’s presence stood at the center of creation.
Recall that humans were made in the image of God on the sixth day of creation, directed to subdue the earth, and given dominion over all creation. For most ancient peoples , the idea of humans subduing and having dominion over nature was never seen as a possibility. The reality was, for most of human existence, that people were at the total mercy of nature. Droughts or floods could mean total devastation for communities totally reliant on small or family agriculture. Humans in biblical time strived to live in harmony with the natural world and recognized that in many ways they were at the leniency of nature and God’s mercy. To kill animals for survival was understood; however, the ability to subdue and completely destroy creation or the land itself was never an ancient understanding.
From an eco-theology reading, biblical scholars suggest that dominion can be seen as if a benevolent royal oversees a kingdom. To ensure that the entire kingdom or community flourishes, each part of creation should also flourish, rather than be destroyed or abused.
Equally important is that on each day that God created, God saw that everything was good. All creatures were equally blessed in God’s plan. Humankind was invited to be stewards and caretakers of all the bounty of God’s creation, not the center of it, which time and technology has changed.
The second creation story begins in Genesis 2–4a: After God created the heavens and the earth, God created man out of dust from the ground. Humankind has its very origin from the land, as the work of creation continued with the Creator as the gardener in Genesis 2:8–9:
And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
We read that God intends man “to till . . . and keep” the land (Genesis 2:15). Humans are meant to cultivate
