Abstracts of Contributed Papers
Click on a name or group to see the related abstracts!
Friday Afternoon Contributed Paper Sessions
GROUP A: SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY,
AND ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT
Susan Power Bratton - Ecological Holism
and Theological Dualism as Roots of Environmental Racism: Medieval Lessons
for Modern Religious Scholars
Cynthia S. W. Crysdale - An Ethic of
Risk in an Emergent World
Patrick K. Dooley - Christian theocentric
ecology, human bias and judgments of waste
Heidi Marcum and Susan Power Bratton - Enriching
captive wildlife: Historic Christian models and contemporary ethical issues
James P. Sterba - How Philosophy Can Help
Ecology and Theology in Fashioning a Defensible Environmental Ethic
GROUP B: CHANGING CONCEPTIONS OF NATURE
Bryan Bademan - "Let Us Rise Through
Nature up to Nature's God": Nature and Design in Mid-Nineteenth-Century
American Protestant Thought
Rev. Joseph A. Bracken - Toward a Value-Oriented
Metaphysics of Nature
Ken Parejko - Pliny the Elder's Environmental
Ethic
Dane Scott - The Ecological Community and
the Narrative of Creation
Derek D. Turner - Pluralism About Species
Concepts and the Value of Species
GROUP C: THEOLOGY (STEWARDSHIP)
Calvin B. DeWitt - Refreshed Stewardship
for a Dynamic Biosphere
Willis Jenkins - Biodiversity and Salvation:
Possibilities for an Eco-Thomism
Bruce R. Reichenbach - Boulders and Native
Prairie: A Stewardship Ethic of Interests
Jame Schaefer - Modeling the Human in
an Age of Ecological Degradation
Saturday Afternoon
Contributed Paper Sessions
GROUP A: OLDER
SOURCES OF UNDERSTANDING
Shai Cherry - Singing a New
Song (Ps. 149): Modulations of Creation in Rabbinic Judaism
Heath R. Curtis - Mythical Re-Flection:
C.S. Lewis' Reflection on Genesis 1-3 as Paradigm for a Contemporary Christian
Response to Eco-Societal Challenges
Richard J. Dougherty - Nature and the
Created Order: Christianity and the Knowledge of Origins
Laura A. Smit - The Truth of a Tree: Logos
Christology as a Foundation for a Christian Environmental Ethic
Norman Wirzba - The Character of Creation:
Jewish and Christian Sources for an Environmental Ethic
GROUP B: ENVIRONMENTAL DECISION MAKING
Dean Bavington - Managerial Ecology,
Politics, and Ethics: Exploring the Complexities of Control, Coping and
Consent in Culture-Nature Relations
R.J. Berry - The Nature of Nature and Human
Nature
Normand M. Laurendeau - Controlling Consumption:
A Role for Religion?
Pamela E. Mack - Policy and Values: The
Nixon Administration Almost Bans Clearcutting
Timothy Smith and Daniel Brannan - Evolutionary
Ecology in Aquatic Systems: A Case for the Stewardship of Evolution
Patrick H. Byrne - Ecology, Economy and
Redemption as Dynamic: The Contributions of Jane Jacobs and Bernard Lonergan
John E. Carroll - Catholicism, Ecology
and Sustainability
Annie Merrill Ingram - Environmental Justice:
Redefining the Nature of our Lives
Laura Landen - From Scientism to
Environmentalism: Ecology's role
Michael Tomko - Discrete Metaphors: Wendell
Berry and the Ethical Demands of Local Ecology
SATURDAY AFTERNOON PEDAGOGY SESSION
Amanda Borden and Kenneth Kirby - Biblical
Perspectives on Environmental Service Learning
Carol LaChapelle - The Call of Stories:
The Place for Nature Writing in Environmental Ethics
Stephen Main, David A. McCullough, and Lake Lambert
III - Guiding Students to Identify and Analyze Ethical Dimensions
in Environmental Issues
Elizabeth R. Randol - Pedagogical Flux:
Liberation Theology and Ecofeminist Praxis
Randall Van Dragt and David Warners - The
Confluence of Ecology and Ethics in Conservation on a Christian College
Campus
PAPERS SELECTED FOR ORAL PRESENTATION AT THE CONFERENCE
Friday Afternoon Contributed Paper Sessions
GROUP A: SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND ENVIRONMENTAL
MANAGEMENT
Susan Power Bratton, Baylor University, Chair,
Environmental Studies
[E-mail: Susan_Bratton@Baylor.edu]
Ecological Holism and Theological Dualism as Roots of Environmental Racism: Medieval Lessons for Modern Religious Scholars
The central hypothesis of this paper is that idealization of nature may fuel environmental racism when combined with dualistic interpretation of human religious or spiritual states. In the medieval case, typological Biblical exegesis, which was originally based on historic rather than racial differentiation, encouraged presentation of Christianity as "natural" and Judaism as contra-natural. During the Gothic period, the stained glass of St. Denis Cathedral presented Judaism as occupying the material rather than the transcendent spheres of existence. In numerous stained glass windows, Jews appear as threats to nature by attacking Christ on a green cross, which symbolizes the renewal of all life. The Master of Naumburg carves Jews in distinctive pointed hats killing the Lignum Vitae. As Christian architects and scientists increased their focus on the divine light of creation, prejudicial portrayals depicted Judaism as blind Synagogue, unable to fully appreciate nature. Pagan motifs, such as the Green Man, syncretized with Christian theological dualism, also serve to separate Judaism from living nature. These depictions purposefully conflict with Gothic aesthetic emphasis on proportion, clarity, and integrity and were intended to imply that religious minorities have no legitimate role in Christian European society. Motifs originating during the Gothic period evolved into the anti-Semitic philosophies and graphic "art" of the Third Reich. Modern religious scholarship must be cautious not to describe some religions as natural or nature religion, while neglecting others, particularly Judaism and Islam. Ideals of environmental holism interpreted through any form of dualistic cultural filter are likely to encourage environmental racism.
Cynthia S. W. Crysdale, The Catholic University
of America, Department of Religion and Religious Education, Associate
Professor
[E-mail: crysdale@cua.edu]
An Ethic of Risk in an Emergent World
In her book, A Feminist Ethic of Risk,
Sharon Welch distinguishes between an ethic of control and an ethic of
risk. She criticizes the former and analyzes it in reference to nuclear
policy and militarization in the U.S. in the 1980's. Her specification,
as an alternative, of an ethic of strategic risk-taking, is relevant today
in regard to our understanding of "nature" and the human role
in environmental management. Many models of environmental management presume
an ethic of control - that "man" is outside of nature and can
step in to effect various desirable actions - from controlling forest
fires to eliminating pests in agriculture and, now, genetically modifying
foods. I suggest that this model of "control" is not only poor
ethics, it is simply incorrect. Some aspects of our world operate according
to direct causality and predictable, universal "laws," At the
same time, we live in an emergent world in which many events and developments
occur according to statistical probabilities. In such an emergent world,
human action is part of a matrix of stable and predictable "laws"
that merely set conditions for the probability of new things emerging.
Bernard Lonergan has worked this out in
his discussion of "emergent probability" in Insight: A Study
of Human Understanding. I would like to develop Lonergan's explanation
of classical and statistical science, and the relation between them, in
order to ground an environmental ethic of risk. I believe that Lonergan's
explication of world process as involving emergent probability can provide
a framework for better understanding how human action "intervenes"
in natural processes. Human action merely sets the conditions of possibility
for certain outcomes - it shifts probabilities -- rather than "controlling"
non-human forces. My objective is to explicate an ethic of risk with regard
to the "flux of nature" and give it a solid philosophical grounding.
Patrick K. Dooley, St. Bonaventure University,
Board of Trustees Professor of Philosophy
[E-mail: PDOOLEY@SBU.EDU]
Christian theocentric ecology, human bias and judgments of waste
My essay revisits an examination of the
relationship between the metaphysical and the ethical began in my "Duty
or Heroism: The Ambiguity of Environmental Ethics" published in Vol.
30 of Philosophy Today. There I analyzed biocentric vs. homocentric worldviews
in terms of each's ecological ethic: the former's preservationist ethic
is attractive but unworkable, the latter's conservationist ethic is more
realistic but it is susceptible to economic pressures. What I take up
in this essay is a third option, a theocentric world-view with a stewardship
ethic, which like life-centered preservationism ask us to see the whole
world as a single unit and which like human-centered conservationism gives
license us to use the earth's resources.
While some environmental ethicists suggest
that human interests might well be eliminated from decisions regarding
policies and practices that would be best for the earth as whole, the
Christian version of theocentric ecology has a deeply embedded and unmistakable
human bias. Recall, for example, Karl Barth's emphatic statement of this
view, "God did not become a stone or a star or even an angel. He
became a human. Humans, therefore, enjoy a unique status within creation.
He is the 'apple of God's eye.'" Instead of apologizing for Christian
theocentrism's human bias, I show that without a proximate measure of
value we cannot make any normative assessments concerning (in the words
of the précis announcing the upcoming Lilly/Notre Dame conference)
"the moral status of different fluxes of nature and their causes."
That is, without human welfare posited as a criterion for judgment, all
we can gainsay is the sheer fact and rate of flux. On this last point,
I explore several fascinating and challenging suggestions regarding judgments
of loss, waste and abuse contained in a startling but generally unexamined
ecological and ethical resource, John Steinbeck's The Log of the Sea of
Cortez. The last third of my essay analyzes, in some detail, Steinbeck's
contention that in any consideration of the whole earth in time and space,
"there is not, nor can there be, any actual waste, but simply varying
forms of energy. . . . to the whole, there is no waste. The great organism,
Life, takes it all and uses it all. . . nothing is wasted, 'no star is
lost."
Heidi Marcum, Baylor University and Susan Power
Bratton, Baylor University, Chair, Environmental Studies
[e-mail: Heidi Marcum@baylor.edu,
Susan_Bratton@Baylor.edu]
Enriching captive wildlife: Historic Christian models and contemporary ethical issues
Until very recently, captive wild animals were kept in small enclosures and cages that did not contain any resemblance to their natural habitat. Natural habitats are highly diverse, and provide a great variety of stimuli for animals in "the wild." Captive animals living in deprived circumstances often suffer physical and psychological damage, which are manifested in such activities as pacing, acts of aggression, and self-mutilation. Enrichment is an animal husbandry principle that provides stimuli to increase the quality of captive animal care, and improve an animal's psychological and physiological well-being. An enriched animal exhibits behaviors that it would perform in the wild. Typical enrichment activities allow animals to search for food, interact with one another, and play with toys and other objects. Animals can be also be trained to respond to caretaker cues, which engages animals on a cognitive level, and allows positive interaction with humans. The biological (Darwinian) basis for enrichment is founded on the premise that enriched animals survive better and reproduce more easily. However, there is also a Christian basis for enriching captive wild animals. Biblical texts suggest animals have divinely ordained ecological roles and adaptive behaviors. Historic Christian models for animal care incorporated concern for the social, psychological, and even spiritual, needs of animals. Examples from desert and Celtic monasticism include: giving animals tasks to perform, such as carrying prayer books; participating in worship; joining monks and other animals at meals; and receiving spiritual instruction. Christian theology should thus be able to contribute to contemporary dialogs about the ethics of enrichment, and handling of captive wildlife.
James P. Sterba, University of Notre Dame, Professor
of Philosophy and Fellow, National Humanities Center
[E-mail: Sterba.1@nd.edu]
How Philosophy Can Help Ecology and Theology in Fashioning
a Defensible Environmental Ethic
Whether ecology provides us with an ecology
of balance or one of flux, it cannot by itself tell us how we ought to
relate to our natural environment. Ecology, by itself, can only tell and
explain what is. It cannot tell us what we ought to do.
I will argue that it is here that philosophy can be of help. Philosophy
can help by supplying moral oughts that we cannot reasonably reject. When
these moral oughts are then combined with the facts and theories of a
defensible ecology, we will then be able to determine how we ought to
relate to our natural environment.
Similarly, if we try to rely on theology,
particularly Biblical theology, alone to supply the moral oughts to be
used with a defensible ecology, we will not be successful. This is because
the Bible, especially with regard to that key passage in Genesis 1:28
which tells us to have dominion over the earth, has been interpreted in
radically opposing ways to support both domination and stewardship of
nature. Moreover, it is difficult to see how Biblical exigesis alone is
going to settle this issue.
I will argue that here again philosophy
can be of help. Assuming that we hold that faith and reason cannot conflict,
philosophy can help by show that reason favors stewardship over domination.
That being the case, we would then know which Biblical interpretation
to favor when trying to determine how we ought to relate to our natural
environment.
In these ways, I will show that philosophy can help both ecology and theology
in fashioning a defensible environmental ethic.
GROUP B: CHANGING CONCEPTIONS OF NATURE
Bryan Bademan, University of Notre Dame
[E-mail: Rbbademan@aol.com]
"Let Us Rise Through Nature up to Nature's God": Nature and Design in Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Protestant Thought
The design argument - that the intelligent
adaptation of means to an end implies an intelligent agent - has a long
history in American appropriations of science and the natural world. William
Paley's Natural Theology (1802), commonly assigned in American colleges
throughout the nineteenth century, in many ways set the terms of discussion
with his mechanistic view of nature. Paleyan natural theology has been
widely recognized as influential in natural philosophical debates of the
time, yet few have noticed its sway in less erudite discourse - sermons
and lectures for lay audiences.
For this reason I explore the Paleyan rhetoric
of American churchmen. My paper looks at three communities of Protestants
- Princetonian Presbyterians, New England Congregationalists, and Boston-vicinity
Unitarians. While these communities advanced slightly different varieties
of the design argument, depending largely on philosophical commitments,
they all sought to instill nature with sacred significance through the
use of Paleyan adaptationist categories. In doing so, this generation
of ecclesiastical leaders disseminated new ways of thinking about nature
and God, removing doubts about the capriciousness of nature. In short,
design helped these Protestants move away from the static, clockwork conception
of nature articulated by Paley to more organic notions of development.
But design closed them to any suggestion of the limitations of science
to prove religious truth.
Rev. Joseph A. Bracken, S.J., Xavier University,
Professor of Theology
[E-mail: Bracken@xu.edu]
Toward a Value-Oriented Metaphysics of Nature
For Thomas Aquinas, natural law was defined with reference to divine law, the common good of creation as envisioned by God its Creator. With the breakup of the medieval synthesis at the beginning of the modern era, doubts arose about the possibility of a rational consensus with respect to the common good of creation. Thus natural law came to be defined largely in terms of individual human rights apart from any universal good of creation (as in the philosophies of Hobbes, Locke, Kant, etc.). Hence, there is need today for a relational ontology in which individual rights are duly guaranteed but at the same time subordinated to a universal good of creation in which all creatures in different ways share. Within the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, "the final real things of which the world is made up" are "actual occasions" or momentary self-constituting subjects of experience. Hence if value be interpreted in terms of both quality and intensity of experience at different levels of existence and activity, then value is not a matter of subjective preference on the part of human beings but objectively verifiable within the world of nature. Furthermore, if also in accord with Whitehead's scheme actual occasions or momentary subjects of experience are dynamically interrelated and thus mutually interdependent for their individual existence and activity, then one has in principle a metaphysical scheme for making the sometimes difficult value judgments about which species and individuals should survive and flourish in an ecologically sensitive world. For, while Whitehead's scheme clearly needs further work (cf., e.g., Douglas Sturm, Solidarity and Suffering: Toward a Politics of Relationality [Albany, N.Y.; SUNY Press, 1998]), it is evidently more empirical than classical Thomism in which the divine purpose for creation is so difficult to discern and more objective in terms of value-discernment than modern liberalism in its preoccupation with the rights of individuals.
Ken Parejko, University of Wisconsin-Stout, Menomonie,
WI, Biology Department of Biology, Professor
[E-mail: parejkok@uwstout.edu]
Pliny the Elder's Environmental Ethic
During a lifetime coincident with the
birth of Christianity, Gaius Plinius Secondus (Pliny the Elder) traveled,
read and wrote extensively, was admiral of a fleet and close advisor to
the emperor Vespasian. His encyclopedic Natural History has been credited
with keeping natural history alive for more than a millennium (Guider,
1924) and was called by the naturalist Cuvier (1854) "one of the
most precious monuments that has come down to us from ancient times."
Roman culture, technophilic as ours, ran
rough-shod over natural ecosystems (Hughes, 1994). In his Natural History
Pliny demonstrates an ecological and environmental mind-set well outside
the normative ethos of his time. Pliny asserts that understanding nature
means understanding god, and while we may make use of the natural world,
human society can only remain healthy when in proper balance (ratio) with
the divine. Through ignorance, greed, and an addiction to luxuria we disturb
this ratio, leading to the over-harvesting and extinction of species,
insensitivity to other creatures' sufferings, and the exhaustion of natural
resources.
Pliny's knowledge of nature is prodigious,
his concern for the natural world touching. Because we can never escape
nature, we will always impact it. Only with humility and gratitude in
the face of nature's abundance, and by reaching a clear understanding
of the natural world and our impacts on it, can we rediscover that ratio.
Pliny's perspectives on the moral implications of our interactions with
the natural world illustrate in microcosm the long-standing ambiguities
of that relationship in the Western tradition.
Dane Scott, Western Carolina University, Department
of Philosophy and Religion, Assistant Professor
[E-mail: nscott@wcu.edu]
The Ecological Community and the Narrative of Creation
The ideal of an ecological community uniting
humans to the earth has been a powerful ideal in environmental ethics.
In this paper I will briefly look at one of the more popular stories that
provides philosophical underpinnings for this ideal. This is the story
told by Baird Callicott, through his interpretation of Leopold's Land
Ethic. Broadly, in this story the ecological community is built from descriptive
facts discovered by the biological sciences and is motivated by an innate
ecological, moral sense that is cultivated, intensified and focused by
ecological education.
In the critical portion of this essay, I
point to problems with this "naturalistic" account. My criticisms
focus on the obscure or ambiguous identity of key elements in the story
(e.g., an ecological, moral sense). Also, I ask if the community metaphor
can be legitimately applied to ecosystems and if the conception of moral
agency used in this story is adequate. The goal is not to prove that the
story is false, parts are no doubt true, but rather to point out its inadequacies.
In the constructive portion, an alternative
story is told that also provides philosophical underpinnings for the hoped
for ecological community, in the relevant sense where people exhibit solidarity
with the earth and work to promote ecological flourishing. This alternative
story relies on a rival account of moral agency, one found in the narrative
ethics of Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntrye. But I also reclaim neglected
insights from Josiah Royce's The Problem of Christianity and Philosophy
of Loyalty. Finally, recent work by Holmes Rolston on science and religion
is an important resource. To conclude, in this telling of the ecological
community, a rich cultural narrative that is informed by both religion
and science is required, one that has specific implications for, broadly
speaking, the Christian interpretation of Creation.
Derek D. Turner, Connecticut College, Assistant
Professor of Philosophy
[E-mail: dtur@locust.conncoll.edu]
Pluralism About Species Concepts and the Value of Species
Philip Kitcher has defended a view of species
that he calls pluralistic realism. This view contains several elements:
(1) Species are sets of organisms; (2) There are several ways of determining
whether two individual organisms belong to the same species, and which
is the right way depends on the biologists' interests and/or theoretical
goals; (3) Pluralism is compatible with realism about species, and even
helps answer some objections to realism. Kitcher's pluralism is quite
plausible. For example, the biological species concept (according to which
two organisms are conspecific if and only if they belong to a reproductively
isolated group) is unhelpful in some biological contexts, such as paleontology.
Paleontologists are more likely to benefit from the phylogenetic species
concept, according to which a species is a group of organisms forming
a segment on the tree of life. Ecologists, on the other hand, might think
of a species as a group of organisms that occupy the same ecological niche.
A healthy pluralism would respect the needs of scientists in different
areas of biology.
What consequences does Kitcher's pluralistic
realism have for the question about the value of species? This view seems
to run into problems when we examine cases (such as the interbreeding
of the red wolf [canis rufus] with the coyote) in which the application
of different species concepts is liable to yield different conclusions
about whether an endangered population is a species at all. I argue that
despite appearances, Kitcher's view can accommodate these cases. His pluralistic
realism, moreover, is at least compatible with the view that biological
species have intrinsic value. Indeed, if species are intrinsically valuable
(which of course is controversial), then pluralistic realism would imply
that there are more intrinsically valuable things in nature than we previously
thought.
GROUP C: THEOLOGY (STEWARDSHIP)
Calvin B. DeWitt, University of Wisconsin, Professor,
Environmental Studies
[E-mail: cbdewitt@facstaff.wisc.edu]
Refreshed Stewardship for a Dynamic Biosphere
The discipline of ecology, once conceiving
a world of balanced and natural stability, and affected and impacted by
human society standing outside of nature, is now conceiving a biosphere
of dynamic systems of fluxes and flows that shape and are shaped by actions
of people who live within it. No longer do ecologists perceive Earth's
systems on a trajectory toward predictable climaxes and goals, but instead
systems whose structures and processes "shimmer" within an ever
changing dynamic fabric of fluxes and flows. Great contemporary events,
e.g., the current anthropogenic extinction event, and global climate change,
reside in this context.
Contemporary ecology therefore elicits important
questions on what constitutes appropriate human action in the world. A
principal question is, Does stewardship, as defined and practiced in ancient
Judeo-Christian teaching and in classical traditions of antiquity, have
a contribution to make here? Moreover, since stewardship praxis has re-appeared
only in the last three decades of the 20th Century, and is now being adopted
as a means for living rightly on Earth, can it reasonably be expected
to contribute?
The ancients understood the cosmos to be
ordered and that human beings affirm this in ordered lives and land. These
people learned what was consistent with the establishment and maintenance
of order, and wanting to act within the unity and harmony of the universe,
behaved accordingly. Their learning reached dramatic proportions in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in response to environmental degradation
that began to appear on a regional and continental scale. However, as
Clarence Glacken notes, large scale emergence of environmental degradation
also posed a serous threat to the concept of stewardship. Moreover, instrumental
and mechanical views of the world shook the foundations of stewardship,
as did the emergence of a new economy designed to work outside of creation's
economy. Defining both creation and people as resources, this economy
set aside creation as a respected model of cosmic order. Moreover, creation
was joined with its derivative, creationism, a concept that had nothing
to do with responding ethically to the way the world is but instead relating
to Earth's foundations and origin. Creation, strongly associated with
creationism, joined a world that invented the words environing and environment.
The first of these, coined by Chaucer, led to the second that provided
a prerequisite for separating people from "the environment."
And Adam Smith abstracted creation's enormous complexity and overwhelming
biodiversity and its dynamic fluxes and flows, converting all of this
into a mere three categories: land, labor, and capital. Creation was sequestered,
creation's economy was supplanted. and creation was converted to resources
squeezed into three abstractions. Stewardship was reduced to giving money
in church. The practice of creation-stewardship largely evaporated, both
in word and deed.
In recent decades, the stewardship concept
is re-emerging, perhaps out of necessity for addressing our biospheric
problems. But its emergence find a scene different from the one it left.
Now confronted with contemporary ecology the concept of Creation's order
is changed. And the question arises, Is the stewardship concept sufficiently
robust to serve us and the biosphere well in our contemporary world? And,
Does the Judeo-Christian context of stewardship open the means for broadening
stewardship to embrace the contemporary ecological conception of the biosphere?
In this lecture, I address this question
integratively from three perspectives: first as a wetlands ecologist who
studies the dynamics of fluxes and flows of a wetland ecosystem, second
as a citizen and town officer who works within a human community that
inhabits this wetland's contextual landscape, and third as a student of
the Judeo-Christian scriptures who is re-examining Judeo-Christian source
material on stewardship. In doing this integrative and interdisciplinary
work, I am seeking to contribute to a refreshed and contemporary understanding
of stewardship that incorporates knowledge and experience from study of
uncertain ground of wetland system fluxes and flows, from the study and
leadership of a human community within a dynamic society and landscape,
and from an ecological investigation of the Judeo-Christian scriptures
for their insights and teachings on stewardship in the context of a dynamic
creation.
Among the conclusions from this work are:
(1) a robust conception and understanding of stewardship, rooted in the
stewardship traditions of Judeo-Christian teaching and antiquity hold
great promise for living rightly within a dynamic world of fluxes and
flows; (2) a dynamic understanding of stewardship that emerges from the
integration of these three perspectives requires that human beings must
continually or periodically review and re-evaluate human action in the
world to correct actions that adversely affected the dynamics of the biosphere;
(3) dynamic stewardship praxis, interconnected adaptively within a dynamic
biosphere, has high potential for responding appropriately to sustain
the dynamic biosphere and to correct human behaviors; (4) stewardship
can be understood and practiced across cultures and addressed and explained
in secular, as well as religious, context; and (5) stewardship of this
robust kind is always developed interactively among people and the fluxes
and flows that sustain creation in a diversity of situations, over long
periods of time, and within a dynamic and ever-changing biosphere.
Willis Jenkins, University of Virginia, Department
of Religious Studies
[E-mail: wjj2c@virginia.edu]
Biodiversity and Salvation: Possibilities for an Eco-Thomism
The writings of Thomas Aquinas are at first glance troublesome for those who would recuperate the (reportedly problematic) Christian tradition for environmentalism: the material/bodily/earthy is subordinate to the spiritual/rational/heavenly, and is so within an anthropocentric cosmic hierarchy - the twin hallmarks of a logic of domination that is said to underwrite a growing ecological crisis. I suggest, however, that precisely this anthropocentrism and subordination may prove surprisingly verdant, indeed even importantly helpful to environmentalist difficulties in grounding intrinsic value or adequately describing the roots of ecological distress. For Thomas, humans find their perfection in knowing God, and we can know God from the world which God created. Therefore, in order to see God not only must we observe creation, we must see it as God sees it. In order for humans to become truly human, they must then receive creatures (all createds) as divine gifts - both to themselves and to humans. (Extinction and commodification are, in their effect for us, modes of deicide.) The proper vocation of humanity to prayer, praise, and knowledge needs then the preservation of many kinds of creatures, and requires an attentive, loving regard for them. So anthropocentrism warrants preserves of biodiversity and a divinely-valued nature. This further implies that it is in our own interest that the sort of dominion we are to have over the earthly creation is one that brings forth its perfection. The model of Thomistic stewardship then is Christ, Dominus, who lords over humanity as servant among them, in order to preserve humans and lead them to their proper perfection, which he does as the proper act of Sonship. For Thomas, the ecological disturbances we are facing are not then the result of too much human action, but in fact are the sinful consequences of not enough truly human action.
Back to Top
Bruce R. Reichenbach, Augsburg College, Professor of Philosophy
[E-mail: reichen@augsburg.edu]
Boulders and Native Prairie: A Stewardship Ethic of Interests
From the three divine injunctions found in Genesis 1 and 2: to fill, rule over, and care for, I develop a stewardship ethic that can be applied to environmental issues. With regard to filling, I contend that, in contrast to a management ethic that treats the environment strictly as an instrument for human benefit, a stewardship environmental ethic holds that things in the environment possess moral standing in that they have interests: they can be benefitted or harmed. From a stewardship perspective, we attribute moral standing to things not merely because we give such standing to them, merely because they have certain inherent properties such as sentience, or because they have inherent goodness, but because God values them. God's valuing, however, is not rooted in divine arbitrariness, but in the teleological character of biological nature. In regard to caring for, I argue for an ethic not of preservation ("nondestruction, noninterference, and generally nonmeddling") but of conservation that involves a thoughtful balance between the preservation of nature and its resources and the careful, appropriate use of the environment's resources for human benefit. I apply this analysis to the recent discussion regarding the acquisition of glacial boulders from native prairie grasslands.
Read Complete Text of this Paper!
Jame Schaefer, Marquette University, Assistant
Professor of Religion and Science, Department of Theology, and Director,
Interdisciplinary Program in Environmental Ethics.
[E-mail: schaeferj@mu.edu]
Modeling the Human in an Age of Ecological Degradation
In our age of widespread environmental
degradation, a meaningful model of the human being is needed to prompt
responsible thinking about and acting within ecological systems. Many
viable models exist in the Christian tradition, but few have been explored
to replace the more familiar but inadequate imago Dei of Genesis 1, Teilhard's
homo faber, the U.S. Catholic Bishops' "co-creator," and Hefner's
"created co-creator." I propose to critique these four models,
to provide an overview of several others in patristic and medieval theological
discourse that are promising when reformulated to reflect our current
understanding of the world, and to examine homo Dei cooperator which I've
retrieved from Thomas Aquinas' teachings, informed by contemporary science,
and worked creatively to provide a practical code of ethics for human
functioning in ecosystems.
At the close of my presentation, I will
share how this and other models are used at the undergraduate level at
Marquette University to advance Christian reflection on the ecological
crisis. Brochures on Marquette's new Interdisciplinary Minor in Environmental
Ethics will be made available.
Saturday Afternoon Contributed Paper Sessions
GROUP A: OLDER SOURCES OF UNDERSTANDING
Shai Cherry, Vanderbilt University, Mellon Assistant
Professor of Jewish Thought
[E-mail: shai.cherry@vanderbilt.edu]
Singing a New Song (Ps. 149): Modulations of Creation in Rabbinic Judaism
The first chapter of the Hebrew Scriptures
gives its readers a certain set of impressions about nature: like Plato's
demiurge in the Timaeus, God brought order to a chaotic swirl of substances,
i.e., creation is not ex nihilo; creation happened long ago, in the primordial
days, and is no longer an operative category; and creation happened in
the temporal sequence that Genesis describes. Even within the Hebrew Scriptures
these impressions do not remain unchallenged. But, by the time of the
closing of the rabbinic period, c. 800 c.e., there is an entirely different
set of assumptions about the nature of creation and the natural world.
Creatio ex nihilo is now on the table for discussion-and it becomes normative
in the medieval period; creation is understood to be a continuous act
of God rather than a historical description; and creation is posited to
have been instantaneous, rather than sequential, in which all that will
ever exist was created by the Almighty in the initial act of creation.
My paper will chart these shifts from Biblical
to Rabbinic thought and show how they are connected to the religious polemics
of Rabbinic Judaism as it struggled with the contemporary, and competing,
ideologies of Hellenistic philosophy, Zoroastrianism and Christianity.
Heath R. Curtis, Concordia Seminary, Graduate student
in the Master of Divinity Program and Washington University at St. Louis,
MA Program, Classics Department
[E-mail: heathrc@hotmail.com]
Mythical Re-Flection: C.S. Lewis' Reflection on Genesis 1-3 as Paradigm for a Contemporary Christian Response to Eco-Societal Challenges
The challenges directed toward the Christian
tradition by contemporary ecology and society are multi-faceted, but not
in every case do they represent new phenomena. The history of God's people
is replete with reflection on the overarching question of how to relate
earthlings (human and otherwise) to Earth to the One who gave both. That
question has been raised with varying amounts of intensity and from various
perspectives, yet the tradition has always found an abundant fount from
which to draw rich waters of reflection: the origin mythos (?ú???)
of Genesis 1-3. People as diverse in time and outlook as the prophet Jeremiah
(4:23-28), the reformer Luther (Lectures on Genesis), the poet Milton
(Paradise Lost), and the contemporary theologian Larry Rasmussen (Earth
Community, Earth Ethics) have all drawn on Genesis 1-3 to begin to respond
to the ecological question and the challenges it raises.
After surveying the reflective work of these
thinkers on Genesis 1-3 and its meaning for today, I will propose one
more Christian author as a paradigm for contemporary eco-theological reflection
on Genesis 1-3: C.S. Lewis. In his Narnia Chronicles series and especially
in the second volume of the Space Trilogy (Perelandra) Lewis utilizes
the image-story of the Genesis origin mythos to speak volumes about God,
evil, and humanity-as-super-natural creature. Lewis' singular contribution
is his realization that to make Genesis 1-3 speak to us today we must
speak its language: not modern theologicalese but the universal image-language
of mythos. However, Lewis does not merely add more stories for the tradition
to "decode." In is 1963 essay "The Seeing Eye" he
demonstrates how his mythical re-flection can be used to address an ecological
topic. This method of mythical re-flection followed by primary discourse
on ecological questions provides a valuable paradigm for the Christian
response to contemporary eco-societal challenges.
Richard J. Dougherty, University of Dallas, Associate
Professor of Politics and Director, Center for Christianity and the Common
Good
[E-mail: doughr@udallas.edu]
Nature and the Created Order: Christianity and the
Knowledge of Origins
This presentation will address the question of the Christian understanding of the knowledge of nature, as articulated most especially in the work of St. Augustine, but with attention to other authors in the tradition, and to authors with differing views. Perhaps more than any other early Church Father (and more than most writers generally), Augustine was concerned with the question of the origins of the world and of our knowledge of those origins. It is true that much of his concern was motivated by an attempt to explain the entrance of evil into the world, but his reflections on Genesis (about which he wrote at least a half-dozen commentaries) reveal to us a great deal about his understanding of nature, and man's relationship to nature. This essay will attempt to spell out that understanding, and thus, through his lens, examine the question of what we can know about nature, and, on the basis of that knowledge, how we are called upon to act within the parameters of that knowledge. This will include less by way of theological speculation, and rather more by way of the philosophical significance of his argument. We will also, though, examine the argument's connection with other authors' work on the question of our knowledge of nature, particularly Aquinas, and include a section addressing the somewhat differing view found in authors such as Spinoza. The conclusion will draw out at some length the implications of this knowledge for our contemporary reflections about and analysis of nature and the environment.
Laura A. Smit, Calvin College, Department of Religion
and Theology, Associate Professor
[E-mail: lsmit@calvin.edu]
The Truth of a Tree: Logos Christology as a Foundation for a Christian Environmental Ethic
Pre-modern Christian theology took seriously
the gospel of John's claim that Jesus is the Logos, the eternal Word of
the Father, understanding Christ as the one who holds the universe together
and whose work in creation is to give each creature its individual form
and design. More recent approaches to Christology have emphasized the
humanity of Christ rather than emphasizing his role in creation; however,
traditional Logos Christology remains a powerful way to understand the
on-going work of Christ in the natural world. The 13th-century Franciscan
Bonaventure was an advocate for such Logos Christology, and in that context
he presented nature as an arena within which we make contact with God.
In that arena, the human knower fulfills a priestly role. Bonaventure
suggests that we can know the physical world truly only when we know it
in Christ and that when we know it in this way we perform a priestly act
by offering the natural world back to God in our knowing of it.
To know in this way is not to have dominion
in any destructive sense. It is rather to open oneself to the truth of
things, to their place in God's design, and to come to understand the
world as it relates to God rather than as it relates to us. This is a
humble and hospitable approach to interacting with nature, which continues
to be viable today.
Norman Wirzba, Georgetown College, Associate Professor
of Philosophy
[E-mail: Norman_Wirzba@georgetowncollege.edu]
The Character of Creation: Jewish and Christian Sources for an Environmental Ethic
Jewish and Christian teachings of creation
have been untapped by environmentalists because of the tendency to understand
creation primarily as a teaching about the origins of the world. This
is a mistake because, as recent exegetical work has shown, the term creation
functions in scripture more as a spiritual/moral designation than as a
scientific one. To speak of creation, in other words, is to speak about
a moral/spiritual topography, an ethos, that delineates the place of humanity
and world before God. Far from being something like the value-barren matter
of nature popularized in the modern period, creation is a spiritually
charged reality that has its origin, life, and end in the divine intention.
In my paper presentation I will briefly
develop two of several possible accounts of creation in scripture: creation
as a Sabbath reality, and creation as wild and sublime. The first account
joins the priestly narrative in Genesis 1-2, and reads it through rabbinic
interpretation and the Sabbath code of Leviticus 25 to show that the overall
aim of created life is that it experience the tranquility and peace that
marked the first creation, and that it participate in the delight and
joy that characterized God's own reception of the creation. The second
account looks to the experience of Job, particularly his education into
an appreciation for the wild character of creation, and shows how arrogant
and short-sighted anthropocentric approaches to ethics are. Both accounts,
I will show, offer resources for a compelling and religiously informed
environmental ethic that integrates very well recent ecological insights
into the nature of the world.
GROUP B: ENVIRONMENTAL DECISION MAKING
Dean Bavington, Wilfrid Laurier University, Geography
and Environmental Studies Department, Ph.D. Candidate
[E-mail: dean_bavington@yahoo.com]
Managerial Ecology, Politics, and Ethics: Exploring the Complexities of Control, Coping and Consent in Culture-Nature Relations
Managerial ecology, democratic politics and environmental ethics are embedded within a complex set of historical relationships. The institutions and processes of resource and environmental management have traditionally been the means by which a select few (managers) have side stepped democratic politics and environmental ethics in favour of top-down anthropocentric administration. By assuming an unlimited human capacity to eliminate indeterminism and achieve certainty through technology and science, resource management (as conceptualized and practiced) has proven itself to be extremely undemocratic and unsustainable with respect to human and more-than-human communities. Recent developments within the science of ecology have challenged managerial approaches to nature by shifting attention away from the "balance of nature" paradigm that permitted certainty, command, and control toward a "flux of nature" paradigm focussed on coping with uncertainty and complexity in dynamic and interconnected ecosocial systems. This shift within managerial ecology from "control" to "coping" strategies highlights the importance of political and moral ecology-that is the need to make good ecological decisions in the presence of conflict and in the absence of universal Truth. When knowledge is certain and control is feasible (as was assumed under the balance of nature paradigm), there is little perceived need for democratic politics or moral contemplation, and administration often takes central stage. However, when irreducible uncertainty, partial knowledge, novel moral considerations, and the need for democratic consent are recognized (as is the case with the science of ecology based on the flux of nature paradigm) the foundations upon which top-down management (and stewardship) has historically been legitimized are disturbed and opened up to political and moral questioning. Furthermore, when it is recognized that environmental managers are part of the systems they attempt to manage, the distinction between managers and the managed dissolves. Given this context, my paper will address the challenges which the "flux of nature" paradigm poses for managerial ecology. By describing the ambivalent responses to this challenge within the field of resource and environmental management, my paper will question the legitimacy of managerial and stewardship approaches to natural and cultural worlds, while clearing a path for recognizing and re-imagining alternatives.
R.J. Berry, University College London, London UK,
Department of Biology
[E-mail: rjberry@ucl.ac.uk]
The Nature of Nature and Human Nature
Observation of nature shows apparent stability
with relatively minor fluctuations. Not surprisingly, native peoples (including
the bible writers) saw the world as a secure frame; nature was both the
established order and the power which created that order. The Older Testament
is explicit that this power is an almighty and caring God. Living in accord
with this revealed pattern was a proper and "spiritual" aim
for God's creatures. Traditional [religious] interpretations still assume
this conclusion. However, closer study reveals also widespread (virtual
universal) stress and adjustment; and the longer we observe, the greater
are the changes we find. Natural systems are tortuously dynamic, and in
due course ecology merges into evolution. Advancing knowledge of nature
("ecology") has destroyed the plausibility of an invariant natural
world, and with it the naivety of spirituality as the outcome of conforming
to an absolute 'natural' standard.
For Jews and Christians, the only truly
unchanging element is the God revealed in the scriptures, and hence also
his imago in us, which is the trait distinguishing us from all other animals.
Our human envelope changes with time and varies from place to place, but
our fundamental nature as human beings remains the same.
Ecological (and environmental) ethics are
rooted in fully valuing nature (=creation). For believers nature is God's
work, and for Christians it is also that which is redeemed and upheld
by Christ (Col 1:20, Heb 1:3, etc). A robust ethic which neglects the
full essence of any of these factors will be inadequate; likewise, true
spirituality is life lived in obedience to the God who has revealed himself
(in both his Book of Works and his Book of Words), not of nature.
Normand M. Laurendeau, Purdue University, Ralph
and Bettye Bailey Professor, School of Mechanical Engineering
[E-mail: laurende@ecn.purdue.edu]
Controlling Consumption: A Role for Religion?
Economic globalization suggests that sustainability
will be threatened more by consumption than by population. While technology
should prove helpful, our major environmental threat appears to be the
continuing demand for products and services. Hence, in the long run, sustainability
requires human actions to prevent harm rather than technical solutions
that merely reduce harm to the environment. In general, Christianity has
dealt only weakly with the ethics of sustainability, and especially with
the consumption of global resources by affluent nations. In this paper,
I analyze the potential for a new Christian focus on the satisfaction,
satiation, and sublimation of material needs and desires. Important queries
considered by the analysis include the following: (1) Does technology
create metaphysical desire? (2) Is consumption thus inherently addictive?
(2) Can religion help control this addiction?
Employing responsibility theory, I argue
that a convivial future requires that we give prime attention to the demands
of environmental sustainability. On this basis, Christianity ought to
place greater emphasis on issues such as conservation, resource reduction,
and renewable energy. Unfortunately, responsibility theory is inherently
responsive rather than proactive, and thus probably more appropriate for
avoiding a worse rather than creating a better future. My suggestion is
that an eschatological approach to sustainability may offer new hope for
the control of rampant materialism. In particular, Christianity must take
seriously the need for an eventual re-integration between technology and
religion. This re-integration should focus on a kenotic respect for physical
limits, especially in an uncertain world characterized by a rising rich-poor
gap. Christian responsibility thus means that we can best imitate Christ
by moderating profligate life-styles. From this perspective, the Church's
prime responsibility in an environmental age is to model much better than
it currently does the re-conversion of modern material growth to post-modern
spiritual growth.
Pamela E. Mack, Clemson University, Associate Professor
of History
[E-mail: pammack@clemson.edu]
Policy and Values: The Nixon Administration Almost Bans Clearcutting
What is the actual role of values in environmental
policy decisions? Memos now available in the National Archives show the
cynical politics involved in the Nixon administration's development and
then withdrawal of a Presidential Decision to ban clearcutting on Federal
Land. Staffers argued initially that political credit could be gained
for what the Forest Service was doing anyway, but then withdrew the proposal
when the timber industry protested. On the other side, an examination
of the arguments of environmentalists against clearcutting suggest that
their reactions were often based on visual impressions more than on the
health of ecosystems. Clearcutting is partially equivalent to natural
fire regimes, and a forest where trees die primarily of old age is not
in a natural state. To a certain extent environmentalists assumed that
because clearcutting looked bad to them it must be much more environmentally
harmful than other systems of forest management that were more pleasing
aesthetically but no more "natural".
This paper will examine positions on both
sides of the clearcutting debate in the early 1970s and analyze the values
behind their decisions and rhetoric. I intend to illuminate the difficulty
of incorporating values into policymaking. The immediacy of policy tends
to favor calculations of advantage and disadvantage rather than application
of values. As environmental values have historically trended away from
an emphasis on benefits and costs to human beings, they have only become
harder to incorporate into political decisionmaking. An examination of
the political games and ethical agendas involved in an environmental decision
can help us think about how better to connect environmental ethics and
environmental policy.
Timothy Smith, John Muir Institute of the Environment,
University of California, Davis, Aquatic Ecologist
[E-mail: timsmith@ucdavis.edu]
Daniel Brannan, Abilene Christian University, Professor of Biology
[E-mail: brannan@biology.acu.edu]
Evolutionary Ecology in Aquatic Systems: A Case for the Stewardship of Evolution
The Edenic perspective depicts contemporary
ecosystems as corrupted from an original state without death and recycling
(decay). Human relationship to the creation is defined as predominantly
adversarial or agrarian. From an evolutionary view, Edenic environments
never existed. Ecosystem function, as understood scientifically, results
from a long process of selection for genes advantageous to the survival
and reproduction of individuals in a given environment. In this view,
key elements of the structure, diversity and services of ecosystems depend
on evolution. Because of the Edenic view of the creation story, much of
Christian environmental stewardship has avoided implications of an evolutionary
worldview that may aid the conservation of ecosystem services.
The disciplines of fisheries ecology and
aquatic ecology provide a long history of human activities, many of which
were intended to preserve and enhance natural resources. We review here
the evolutionary rationale and consequences of various fisheries management
interventions. These examples show that failure to consider evolutionary
processes may result in unintended outcomes such as losses of biodiversity,
community resilience, community persistence and ecosystem services. Stewardship
of natural resources should entail the stewardship of evolution as a source
of novelty, resilience and persistence. Natural resource managers compromise
their stewardship when they avoid evolutionary ecology because it conflicts
with the Edenic perspective.
Discomfort with evolution in some religious
cultures may present an impediment to the development of environmental
ethics. Efforts to discredit evolutionary science may displace vital elements
of the environmental discourse within the Judeo-Christian tradition. Such
positions are unnecessary in light of a co-suffering Savior who sustains
and knows "that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains
of childbirth right up to the present time (Rom 8:22)." We cannot
embrace our role as responsible stewards of the Creation and simultaneously
reject the mechanisms whereby it operates.
Patrick H. Byrne, Boston College, Department of
Philosophy, Professor
[E-mail: byrne@bc.edu]
Ecology, Economy and Redemption as Dynamic:
The Contributions of Jane Jacobs and Bernard Lonergan
In this paper I intend to explore the
thought of two thinkers who have devoted much of their intellectual careers
to thinking out the dynamic relationships natural-human dynamic environment,
Jane Jacobs and Bernard Lonergan, S.J. Jacobs and Lonergan worked in very
different lines of research - urban economics and systematic theology,
respectively. Despite predictable differences in their thought, there
are also remarkable commonalities in their analyses. Both thinkers have
argued that the same dynamic principles that govern the functioning of
natural ecologies are also to be found when human social and economic
systems function well, but are absent when human systems go wrong. Both
have argued that the violation of principles that pertain to natural ecologies
is destructive not only of the natural environment, but of communal and
economic well-being as well
Jane Jacobs came to prominence with the
1961publication of her classic, The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
She has since gone on to extend her analysis to the unique characteristics
of urban economics in several books and articles. In her most recent book
The Nature of Economies (2000), Jacobs draws the results of her previous
work urban economic patterns into a synthesis with recent insights into
biological systems. She argues that exactly the same principles (or "processes"
as she prefers to call them) that sustain a vital, evolving natural ecologies
also underpin robust and dynamic economies.
Where Jacobs's work gives a richly detailed
account of the processes shared alike by natural and human systems, Catholic
theologian Bernard Lonergan developed a parallel, integral account of
natural processes, human social and economic organization, and the "economy
of salvation." In his classic work, Insight, Lonergan argues that
the dynamics of human innovations and self-correction correspond in striking
ways to the emergence, growth, development and decline in the natural
order. Unlike natural ecologies, however, the possibilities of genuine
social and economic development are cut distorted, Lonergan argues, by
the forces of "bias." In his role of theologian, Lonergan goes
on to explore how divine grace and "the economy of salvation"
both arise within and heal the distorted dynamics of natural and human
ecologies
In this paper I hope to make available the
basic ideas of their analyses, and to point to lessons that may be drawn
in framing policy issues. A first task is to familiarize conference participants
with the basic ideas of these two thinkers.
Read Complete Text of this Paper!
John E. Carroll, University of New Hampshire, Department
of Natural
Resources, Professor of Environmental Conservation
[E-mail: carroll@cisunix@unh.edu]
Catholicism, Ecology and Sustainability
Christian spirituality, Catholic social teaching, the laws of ecology and the principles of sustainability are all congruent with one another. Recognizing this congruence, numerous orders of Catholic women religious are demonstrating praxis into spiritually-based models of sustainability, supported by centuries-old tradition and practice of Christian (Benedictine, Cistercian, other forms of) monasticism. Both provide a strong model of spiritually grounded sustainability for the secular society.
Annie Merrill Ingram, Davidson College, Department
of English
[E-mail: aningram@davidson.edu]
Environmental Justice: Redefining the Nature of our Lives
Although the phenomenon of environmental
racism in the United States can be said to have originated with the arrival
of European settlers in Native American lands, more recently, key events
in the 1980s sparked the first use of the terms "environmental racism"
and "environmental justice." In 1982, the term environmental
racism was used during demonstrations against a PCB landfill slotted for
Warren County, North Carolina, a predominantly African American area.
In 1987, a study by the United Church of Christ examined the location
of hazardous waste dumps and found an "insidious form of racism."
One aim of the resulting environmental justice movement is to make the
general public aware of such examples, where environmental hazards are
often significantly greater for racial and ethnic minorities, as well
as impoverished communities, than for nonminority or more financially
stable populations.
Another aim of environmental justice is
a fundamental redefinition of "nature" and "environment."
When we define nature as separate from ourselves, we become susceptible
to abdicating responsibility for all our environments, whether wilderness
or inner-city. As historian and environmental justice critic Giovanna
di Chiro has stated, "environment" is "the place you work,
the place you live, the place you play." The central importance of
places of employment, residence, and recreation in human culture further
renegotiates the term "environment" within environmental justice
by asserting that human culture is inextricable from physical environment.
As such, threats to culture are threats to the environment, and environmental
activism saves not only landscapes but the entire ecosystem, including
humans' livelihoods and cultural memory.
In its multiculturalism, inclusivity, challenge
to orthodoxy, and fundamental repositionings, environmental justice has
the power also to redefine the nature of our lives: not just the "natural"
world we treasure and celebrate, but also the processes by which we create
value and meaning in our lives. This paper will explore the ways in which
we can expand and redefine our eco-ethics by examining specific environmental
justice cases. In these examples, success is achieved through community
consciousness raising, collective efforts, reinterpreting or reasserting
what counts as valuable, and celebrating the cultures and physical contexts
that have previously gone unnoticed or unappreciated.
Laura Landen, Providence College, Department of
Philosopy.
[E-mail: LLanden@providence.edu]
From Scientism to Environmentalism: Ecology's role
Different speakers in this conference
use the terms "environmentalism" and "scientism;"
yet, based on the abstracts available, neither term is clearly defined.
This paper examines "scientism" and "environmentalism,"
seeking a common ground for discourse, and briefly suggests some ways
that Christianity might facilitate discussion about environmental concerns.
What is objectionable to theologians about one strain of science is the
emphasis on mechanism of the 18th and 19th centuries. As applied to biological
organisms, mechanism seems to imply a kind of determinism incompatible
with choice. I distinguish two meanings of determinism. One is a misrepresentation
of what scientists mean by the term; the other is thoroughly compatible
with recent developments in ecology and other sciences, and is not a genuine
threat to theology.
Among environmentalists one finds those
who engage in sabotage of heavy logging equipment or disrupt the actions
of hunters. One also finds groups such as the National Wildlife Federation,
originally comprised of hunters and fishermen, which lobbies and advocates
for species and habitat protection. The intersection of ecologists and
environmentalists is a relatively small set due to both context and audience.
Ecologists are concerned with long-range processes involving the interrelationships
of living organisms. Environmentalists, on the other hand, try to change
public policy. Here, the time-span of interest may be as short as the
duration of a political campaign. Legislators frequently counter expressions
of environmental concern with questions about impacts on the economy,
rather than ecological insight. This political reality is what environmentalists
of whatever stripe confront on a regular basis.
Christianity, I suggest, ought to deliver
a clear, consistent message that economics are not the only relevant values.
In turn, Christianity must convey to the community of believers that the
Earth-indeed, the cosmos-is a source of divine revelation equally to be
studied and revered with the sacred scriptures
Michael Tomko, University of Notre Dame
[E-mail: mtomko@nd.edu]
Discrete Metaphors: Wendell Berry and the Ethical Demands of Local Ecology
My paper will explore the limitations of overarching environmental metaphors such as "web of nature" and the "flux of nature" and present the alternative ethical demands of local ecology as envisioned in the tradition of English religious poetry. In examining the way nature has been imagined in literature and applying that analysis to contemporary debates, I follow recent important ecological criticism such as Lawrence Buell's Writing for an Endangered World (2001) and Jonathan Bate's The Song of the Earth (2000). The need for such a synthesis of ethics, ecology, and literature is demonstrated by this conference's emphasis on the power of metaphors to shape not only our conception of but also our response to nature. I wish to extend that synthesis to Christian theology by drawing on the work of poet and essayist Wendell Berry. In his recent book, The Miracle of Life: An Essay Against Modern Superstition (2000), Berry resists such phrases as "ecosystems," "environments," and "organisms" on the ground that they inevitably instrumentalize as well as commodify nature. "It is impossible to prefigure the salvation of the world," Berry writes, "in the same language by which the world has been dismembered and defaced." Instead, Berry offers local ecology (individual trees, farms, forests) as anti-metaphors that cannot be generalized or sold. Because it is discrete and local, nature is thus more fragile and in need of protection. Once a particular valley has been destroyed, it can never be truly regained. I will examine literary precedents for this localized ecology in such religious and environmental works as William Langland's Vision of Piers Plowman. I will also show how this emphasis on natural particularity and locality was obscured by Tennyson's In Memoriam, the highly influential Victorian poem of mourning and natural theology. Tennyson's poetic spirituality leaves the local and bifurcates nature and spirit, not unlike the NOMA (non-overlapping magisteria) of science and religion articulated by Stephen Jay Gould in Rocks of Ages(1999). I will argue that Berry's prose and poetry opens an alternative to Gould's and Tennyson's conception that tends to reduce all our thoughts about nature to mere metaphor. Berry's anti-metaphor of localized ecology, on the other hand, presents a compelling, and at its root incarnational, approach to nature that is responsive not only to global concerns but also to revitalizing the world around us.
SATURDAY AFTERNOON PEDAGOGY SESSION
Amanda Borden and Kenneth Kirby, Samford University,
Department of Communication
[E:mail: awborden@samford.edu,
rkkirby@samford.edu]
Biblical Perspectives on Environmental Service Learning
Communication theorists have long recognized the contributions of Martin Heidegger for his work in hermeneutic phenomenology. Heidegger views humans as experiencing reality through the use of language in everyday life. Grounded in hermeneutic theory, the present study investigates Christian interpretations of Biblical commands about humanity's relationship to nature, specifically testing how such interpretations affect university student attitudes and behaviors. Samford University is affiliated with the Alabama Baptist Convention and has an explicitly Christian mission. The University's core communication sequence of courses in writing and speaking is taught using service learning within a Problem Based Learning context. Students in selected sections of this course performed service for environmental organizations for each of two semesters in 2000 and 2001 (in progress). The environmental service learning sections in 2000 were taught without any specific Biblical focus; in 2001 students were asked to consider various scripture-based attitudes toward the environment as they fulfill course writing and speaking assignments. Pre- and post-course surveys were administered to determine extent of attitude change. In addition, survey responses from 2000 and 2001 will be compared to assess effects of the Biblical focus used in the latter course. Following hermeneutic theory, layering a Christian interpretation onto the environmental service experience should result in more positive attitudes toward environmental activism than service experience in a more secular context.
Carol LaChapelle, M.A., Independent Scholar, Chicago,
Illinois
[E-mail: madmoon55@hotmail.com]
The Call of Stories: The Place for Nature Writing in Environmental Ethics
Over the past 20 years, American nature
writing has broken free of English Departments and found an audience among
general readers of literary nonfiction. Writers such as Annie Dillard,
Barry Lopez, and Terry Tempest Williams have gained purchase on the bookshelves
and in the hearts of readers who love both the natural world and fine
writing. Those drawn to nature writing appreciate the complexity of the
form: practitioners must be good storytellers, avid naturalists, well-versed
in the sciences and humanities, and they must help us find pattern and
meaning in their-and our-experiences in nature.
Where nature writing has been conspicuously
absent, however, is in environmental ethics and theology programs. While
environmental history and philosophy, even ecofeminism and Native American
teachings are included, the literature of nature-those stories that fire
our imagination and inform our values toward nature-has yet to find a
place. It is an odd omission: stories, after all, are as old as language
itself; they are the vehicle, some say the main one, through which human
beings learn about and make sense of their world.
The focus of this presentation will be on introducing environmental literature
in general, on those nature writers who bring a spiritual dimension to
their work in particular, and on how nature writing can-and must-be joined
to any serious discussion of our ethical relationship to the nonhuman
world.
Stephen Main, Wartburg College, Biology Department,
Professor
[E-mail: main@wartburg.edu]
David A. McCullough, Wartburg College, Biology Department, Professor
[E-mail: mccullough@wartburg.edu]
Lake Lambert III, Wartburg College, Regents Chair in Ethics
[E-mail: lambert@wartburg.edu]
Guiding Students to Identify and Analyze Ethical Dimensions in Environmental Issues
Development of student understanding about
environmental issues inevitably results in the identification of ethical
conflicts. The history of our current environmental awakening provides
a rich source of material illustrating this point. Scientists frequently
wear the same ethical blinders as the broader culture. Past cultures typically
failed to grasp the cumulative and future impact of their actions. Realizing
this history leads us to wonder what we do not know about our society's
impact on future environments. The increased rate of scientific understanding
of ecological principles is producing paradigm shifts that environmental
decision-makers may not appreciate. Combinations of these factors also
produce misjudgments in environmental policy. Such attempts to guide our
civilization may themselves create ethical dilemmas. A method for analysis
of ethical conflicts will provide students another perspective to make
meaning from this study.
Four Wartburg College courses guide different segments of the Wartburg
College student body to include ethics with ecological and economic analyses
of environmental issues. Students are introduced to ethical analysis using
a workshop format within each course. Topics covered include distinguishing
between ethics and morality and describing several systems used for making
ethical decisions. Skill is developed by practicing ethical analysis on
a variety of issues throughout the remainder of each course. Text-based,
instruction-centered, and student-centered pedagogies are also presented
for discussion.
Identifying and analyzing these ethical
dimensions of environmental issues provides a useful tool enabling students
to self-actualize their future ability to recognize potential environmental
problems and also to evaluate proposed solutions.
Elizabeth R. Randol, Ph.D., University of Scranton,
Director, Jane Kopas Women's Center and Faculty, Department of Philosophy
[E-mail: randole2@UofS.edu]
Pedagogical Flux: Liberation Theology and Ecofeminist Praxis
If one thinks of both the human and non-human
world as an environment engaged in a process of flux, a position that
requires relinquishing the belief of the world as static, we have learned
something new. However, in order to arrive at such a conclusion one must
not only be exposed to new information but must also have been taught
to think differently, to think critically. Taking this assumption as a
starting point, the paper will explore the kinds of pedagogies employed
to reach an understanding of the world as a world in flux. This means
that pedagogy, too, must become a dynamic practice or praxis. Indeed,
it is a pedagogy of flux.
This paper will present the kinds of transformational
pedagogies developed by liberation theologists, feminists, and environmentalists;
the latter two will be explored through an examination of ecofeminist
pedagogy. Although these three groups understand their actions and theories
somewhat differently, I argue that there is in all three a fundamental
pedagogical connection. It is a connection based on disrupting static
hierarchical structures and logic in favor of encouraging spontaneous
and dynamic practices that flow from those who are most marginalized,
among them are the poor, women, and the natural world. I argue that in
order to bring new conceptions of the world and its inhabitants to the
table, we must simultaneously develop new and cooperative pedagogies,
unearthing the similar strategies created by those of us whose immediate
concerns may be different yet who strive for a more holistic vision of
the world.
Randall Van Dragt and David Warners, Calvin College,
Biology Department
[E-mail: vdra@calvin.edu / dwarners@calvin.edu]
The Confluence of Ecology and Ethics in Conservation on a Christian College Campus
As humans increasingly dominate the structure,
function and development of Earth's ecosystems, mounting ecological degradation
is being met throughout the world with strong intuitive urges for conservation.
Ecology has provided many tools for the knowledgeable practice of conservation
(to include preservation and restoration), but ecology alone provides
little ethical basis or imperative to guide specific conservation strategies.
Biblical and theological explorations in some evangelical circles over
the last two decades have led to the formulation of a set of principles
which can guide the application of ecological theory. An overarching principle
is that humans are expected to image the Creator as caretakers of the
Earth and the life it supports (Earth-keeping principle). Additional principles
are thought to reflect the broad intentions of the Creator for the creation
and include the intention: 1) that the creation be productive of new individuals
and species (fruitfulness principle), 2) that the creation support a wealth
of different organisms and ecosystems (diversity principle), and 3) that
the creation, including humans, function within limits that preserve fruitfulness
and diversity (sustainability principle). This presentation will consider
how these foundational principles have guided the application of ecological
theory in recent planning, development and management activities on the
Calvin College campus.
