K. Mark Demma
Religion and Ecology
Reflections on Christianity and Ecospirituality
Christianity continues to be for me a difficult subject. It is a festering old wound apon my psyche that I have had to contend with for many years. There was a time in which the wounds were so fresh and so painful that I could not even set foot in a church and seeing a cross had much the same effect on me that seeing a swastika would have apon most Jewish people. Part of the healing process for me has been in learning that Christianity has sides other than the ones that caused so much pain in my earlier years. Much like the process that our Professor told us that she went through with her father, looking for these other sides and seeing it in a different light has helped me to come to some peace in my relationship with both the people that are Christian and the institution itself. One of my problems with Christianity over the years (although it was not the major one) was the attitudes concerning the environment.
The Christianity of my childhood and the dominate "flavor" of Christianity in our society today has what I consider a negative influence on the environment. The major focus is not on this world, but rather the afterlife. A major theme is the awaiting of the "second coming" and going on to a new perfect world and escaping this "sinful" world. With this sort of focus, what happens on the Earth and to the Earth is not very important. I see Christianity as a very much "man made" religion. Unlike my religion, it is not based on the cycles of the seasons and the things that you learn from trying to get in tune with these cycles but rather on the teachings of a single man. In this framework, you do not look at the world yourself and try to experience the mystery for yourself as much as you look at what someone said about their experience with doing this. I think that this is the great flaw with any religion that is based on the teachings of some "Great Man", whether it be Jesus, or Buddha or Muhammad or anyone else. Reading about how these people experienced the great mystery of life rather than trying to experience it for yourself is what, in my opinion, led Christians off the path of what the teachings of Jesus are trying to tell us and on to the destructive path that we now follow. People stopped experiencing the immanence of the Devine and thus started to see the Earth not as our Mother but rather as a usable commodity. Much damage to our Mother Earth has been done by people with this mindset and the body of our mother the Earth has been raped.
Our study of Christianity, however, focused on a different "flavour" of Christianity, specifically that of Creation Centered Spirituality. I think that all religions are attempts to take the Great Mystery and wrap it up in some sort of box that we understand, that the religion is the wrapping around that box. To be sure, Creation Spirituality is much bigger box to wrap God up into than Fall-Redemption Theology! When I first came upon Creation Centered Spirituality years ago, by reading the book that you chose to introduce it to our class, I had the distinct feeling that I had seem this particular wrapping paper before, only now it had a big bow (Jesus) stuck on the side! Although Fox is careful not to really too explicitly use the word "pagan", he very pointedly admits that this is the source of inspiration for this theology. He says that it is an ancient tradition, "the oldest tradition in this land for it is the basic spiritual heritage of Native Americans. It is also the basic spiritual heritage of native peoples everywhere, the Celtic peoples of Ireland, peoples of Africa and Asia, of the Polynesian islands and New Zealand, or the aboriginal of Australia." Translation: paganism. When I first read the book, I found myself often translating what he said into the original pagan ideas that they came from. In fact, I never finished reading the book when I first got it, because I got to a point and realised that there was nothing here that I had not heard before and had droned into me by my own pagan teaching. Four example, the four paths are very clearly the four elements. Via Positiva is Fire, Via Negativa is Earth, via Creativa is Air and Via Transforativa is Water. These are all purely pagan concepts, because the Christian mythology never speaks of thinking of these energies. His ideas of the Trinity also seems to try to bring the Christian Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit back closer to the original Pagan Trinity of Maiden, Mother and Crone when he speaks of the Creator (Mother), Liberator or Devine Child (Maiden) and Spirit of Sophia (Crone). When explaining these Pagan concepts to the reader, he will add some teaching of Jesus or quote from the Bible to support what he is saying, the "bow" that is attached to this particular way to wrap the Devine in to make it palatable to those who feel that these concepts need to be backed by "Biblical authority" or simply those who speak that language.
I still think that the Native and Pagan path is one that is more in tune with caring for and protecting our Mother the Earth, for it is one that will not let you forget to do so if you truly follow that path yourself. But I also realise that this path can be a scary one to venture down by yourself. If some one wants to use the stories of the life of Jesus as a guide down this path, I think that is much better than never having trodden the path at all.