Evening Thoughts

I was recently asked to review a book for the Elizabethtown College Alumni Peace Fellowship. Below is the text from that review, published in the winter newsletter.

Evening Thoughts:

Reflecting on Earth as Sacred Community

By

Thomas Berry

Reviewed by

Jonathan A. O’Donnell

Class of 2000

Over the last few centuries, the relationship between human beings and the Earth has been radically transformed. In Thomas Berry’s collection of essays, Evening Thoughts: Reflecting on Earth as Sacred Community, he examines this dynamic relationship. In particular, Berry focuses on the complex link between environmentalism and religious practice and belief. For the better part of a century, Berry has been a leader in environmental thought, publishing a number of books on the subject and serving as director of the Riverdale Center for Religious Research and founder of the History of Religions Program at Fordham University. This collection of essays was thoughtfully edited by Mary Evelyn Tucker, co-coordinator of the Forum on Religion and Ecology (www.religionandecology.org).

Berry describes our present day ecological crisis as a “crisis of spiritual vision.” Briefly, he points to a divide that persists between humans and the rest of the non-human world, a divide that western religion has helped to cultivate and maintain for centuries. This divide exists because we, as humans, have historically viewed the natural world as a collection of resources for us to consume, develop, and ultimately, exhaust. Berry describes an emphasis of western religion on “redemptive processes not of this world.” He writes, “Our sacred community is seen primarily as one concerned with human-divine relationship, with little attraction toward a shared community existence within the larger world of the living.” Later he writes, “The concept…of a blessed future leaves all present modes of existence unworthy by comparison.” At one point he defends such statements by citing a Yale University study that reported “the more extensively people participate in religious activities, the less likely they are to be concerned with the natural world.”

Science and religion have historically been at odds with one another. Berry notes that while science provides a mechanistic understanding of the underlying processes governing our planet, it “prevents the Earth from being seen as a revelatory experience with mysteries.” Berry argues that the scientific and spiritual components of our culture need to complement each other. Through human creativity, Berry explains, we have been able to transcend the laws of nature, of biology, and of evolution:

With technological invention humans are able to surpass natural limits. We can undermine the natural limits of the human population on the planet. We can preserve life. We can delay death. We can extinguish other life-forms. We can subvert the biosystems of the planet in a way that nature, in its nonscientific technological phase, cannot remedy.

Berry poses the question, “How can humans enter the future with some responsible use of their creative freedoms?” Indeed, an important and profound question.

The answer, according to Berry, is to transform the way we understand the origin of the universe and the role that we, as humans, play in it. The creation story in the Book of Genesis is one of a fall from paradise followed by redemption through God’s grace. “The redemption story,” Berry writes, “saves individuals out of the world rather than inspires integration into the world.” He suggests that a new creation story be told, based on the modern scientific account of the origin and development of the universe. This story would track the emergence of early life forms through the evolution of mammals and primates and ultimately, human beings. Berry contends that we should “establish rituals for celebrating these transformation moments.” Through the new creation story, we can understand that “the universe is the primary revelation of the divine, the primary scripture, the primary locus of divine-human communion.”

Berry does not confine his essays exclusively to philosophical arguments, but includes pragmatic analyses of environmental and religious issues in essays such as Catching the Power of Wind and The Petrochemical Age. In Global Warming, Berry tackles the issue of human-induced climate change as a result of increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. He writes that “the emerging climate-change crisis arises from the simple question of whether economic profit or integral functioning of the planet will be the normative value in guiding the human community into the future.” Not only is the loss of ecosystem function critical in terms of biodiversity and carbon emissions, but also in terms of religious practice and spirituality. Similar ideas were echoed by former vice-president Al Gore after winning the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2007: “The climate crisis is not a political issue; it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity.” Berry, perhaps, best captures the essence of the effects of climate change when he writes, “Loss of splendor and diversity of the natural world is loss of the primary source of religious awakening.”