Environment, Ethics, and Religion
Worldviews, including environmental perspectives, are often shaped by ethical and moral guidelines. Much of these are culturally shaped, but it can be easily argued that cultural systems are often direct results of embracing a religion or rebelling against it. Much of early American culture can be explained by the influences created by Puritan colonists, and later more materialistic and consumption based cultural trends by a revolt from these values. Indeed the various ages of Europe; the dark ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and so on can be seen as a cyclical denial and rebirth of religious significance in society. Since it can be argued that culture defines human relation with nature, and culture (to a large extent) is governed by the acceptance or repulsion of religion, no discussion of the environment can be complete without reflection upon the critical role of religion in environmental dealings.
In the binary perspective people frequently take on there are two possibilities, a positive and negative. In terms of schools of thought that dominate the debate on the role of religion in environmental dealings, there existed the “Constructive Role” and the “Obstructive Role” as Robert McKim would describe (272,275). In a nut shell, there are the religious ideals of the Old Testament that deal with domination, culling the earth, and multiplying to be as numerous as the stars or the sand on a beach. They exalt humanity beyond all else, mainly through the belief of a finite time span to the universe as our role as the image of god. They mirror the religious competition exemplified in the early Christian revolt against paganism that deny and attack the intrinsic value to anything in nature beyond humanity. These are the Obstructive, with the Constructive being the less monotheistic (or theistic in general) and encompass the more pantheistic religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and the like. When time is not a line from creation to obliteration, but an infinite cycle of life and death, it is easier to value everything. All life shares in a common struggle, moves towards a common goal, and stems from a common dignity. However, neither of these approaches are useful for environmental debate. Because humanity functions in binaries, ultimately one philosophy must be deemed right and one wrong. Yet through all time and history people engaged in the most destructive of behaviors because one deems their religion as correct and all others as sinful and wicked. Furthermore, this behavior has never solved anything, nor fully convinced one side of their “incorrectness.”
This may then seem like an insurmountable obstacle to true and universal environmental harmony. I personally feel like it is, but then again, nothing in this world is perfect and we would have to be naive to think that we could reach a point of a perfect perspective, and perfect treatment of our world. That being said, I think there are many reasons to be joyful and hopeful of an ever increasing plentiful and prosperous world. For example, Christianity is perhaps the most “dominion” based religion in the most consumption driven nation in the world, America, and yet we continue to strive for better environmental policy. The majority of people think that more needs to be done, vote in such a fashion, and shape their consumption in a more and more environmentally ethical fashion. Religion might shape much of how we view the world, but so too do other people. Very few of us believe every tenet and doctrine of whatever religion we hold and indeed most of us have worldviews that are the melding of other perspectives. St. Francis of Acici had a view that was arguably too pantheistic for Christianity, and was initially met with resistance by his Church, yet today the Franciscans are a massive Christian order. For, if indeed, one believes that all humans are made in the image of god, then surely their perspectives reflect godliness in some fashion or another, and as long as we as a whole become more increasingly aware of that logical extension, then the world will continue to progress, as it has before and continues too now. So which religion is right? Well, why not all of them?