"Look out the window," I tell my students each fall in my Women's Spirituality class. "See that beautiful tree? If you believed that God was immanent in the world, if the world was God's body, would it give you pause about chopping it down? Would you think twice about tearing at the grass when you are bored, if you believed that somehow with that tiny act, you were tearing at the fabric of the divine?”
This idea grabs my students. It makes them wonder if when they wander back to their residence halls or the cafeteria after class, that they might be walking through a world filled with God. That maybe even their world, the natural world is God.
We address these questions during our discussion about the many types of justice that concern contemporary feminist theologians—not the least of which is concern for the environment.
But feminist theologians are far from alone in the effort to draw a whole host of environmental issues, including global warming, into a conversation about the moral imperatives that come with being a Christian and taking care of God’s creation.
Led by scholars like Sallie McFague (who wrote the aptly titled, Super, Natural Christians: How We Should Love Nature), Douglas Burton-Christie (who has given countless talks and written many articles on the subject), and John Haught (author of God After Darwin), an entire subset of Christian theology—Ecotheology and Ecospirituality—has developed, pushing the notion that God is not simply transcendent but most importantly of all, immanent, and that to see the divine as wholly apart from creation hinders our ethical impulse to care for the world.
Eco-Christian thinkers are devoted to taking a stand not just on saving the earth for the earth’s sake, or even our sake, but saving the earth for God’s sake.
If you understood God as immanent—incarnate in the world—would it change how you live, use, and destroy the earth’s resources?
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