As a United States citizen with white skin, I almost inevitably fall into the “haves” of global society. The average American consumes at such a rate that it would take four Earths to sustain us if everyone on the planet lived as we did.* We can take this to mean that Americans’ global footprint is at least (on average) four times larger than it should be. In a post-election world, as I listen to “alt-right” personalities praise the legacy of the Western, Christian, Anglo-Saxon world, it seems clear to me that this praise is tied to a level of consumption.** Our generations face a unique challenge in the history of the world because of this history of conquering and colonizing, as Richard Spencer might put it in an oddly positive way.*** Our planet is warming due, in large part, to the rampant consumerism of the Global North. This consumerism has plundered the earth; it threatens its peoples-- most especially impoverished communities of color who have continually fallen victim to racist and colonialist systems of oppression and whose own lifestyles do not have near the degree of impact as members of “Western Society;” it threatens the wellbeing of our planet and the species which inhabit it, including humans.
Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, predicts that the conditions for societal collapse will collide within the next few decades, resulting in what he expects will be a “future of significantly lower living standards, chronically higher risks, and the undermining of what we now consider some of our key values.”**** He goes on to suggest that the future is ours to determine; whether we resolve this crisis “in pleasant ways of our own choice, or in unpleasant ways not of our choice…”+
As a white American Protestant living in this time, I and other members of institutions of privilege and power must confront our role in developing the morality of a nation whose legacy includes slavery, colonialism, racism, sexism, homophobia, economic inequality, and systemic oppression and discrimination. We must also celebrate the prophetic legacy of our faith. In continuing the work of prophetic witness and justice, we must embark on the task of addressing the intersections of these issues of justice with our treatment of the Earth. We must begin the work of transformative eco justice.
Christianity has a long history of being co-opted by power structures. As early as Constantine, the violence of the cross, directed at Jesus, seemed to sanction further aggression, oddly enough, on his behalf. After a dream that led Constantine to believe that God approved of his military ambitions, he combined the symbol of the cross with his imperial advances and used the cross to conquer land and people. This dangerous coupling of Christianity with conquest would continue for hundreds of years via churches and governments. Most of our modern minds know that the violence of the Roman Empire and the countless other eruptions of violence supported and instigated by Christian religious institutions were tragic abuses of power that resulted in lives lost and ruined. Today Christianity’s entanglements with our systems is less overt.
Max Weber famously connected The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in his book titled such. As he draws from Puritans and early Americans, he elucidates ways in which our religious worldviews shape our interaction with the world. Indeed, for many, the lines between Christianity and capitalism are blurry. While Weber is somewhat reluctant to definitively ascribe capitalism’s success in America to Protestant ideals-- after all, society is complex and multilayered-- his study asks us those of us living in today’s world to flip that table and ask, “How might Christianity resist these systems we have built in order to reach a more just future that protects our planet and slows its warming?”
The American capitalist economy exists in ways which prize individuality over community in ways that I see at odds with Christianity. The for-profit model of capitalism, which measures success via profit and economic growth, cares little for what it deems external. By considering only the desires of the for-profit business and the individual consumer, communities and the environment are subjected to whatever repercussions result from the transaction. In order to maximize profit, companies increasingly outsource labor and supplies in an effort to avoid regulation set in place to protect human, animal, and plant communities (such as labor standards, environmental protections, and taxation designed to support government systems that take care of our communities). This has repercussions for people around the world, especially as our economies become increasingly global. Companies pollute and use irresponsible quantities of resources because it is most economical to do so.
One of the fundamental shifts that must be made is toward a less individualistic faith that does not prioritize personal consumerist desires over the direct and indirect repercussions on the many. American individualism presents a barrier to an ecological worldview. As long as our primary ways of understanding ourselves are as individuals, not members of various communities, we will lack a perspective capable of understanding the gravity of our lives. The core of Christianity can no longer be imagined solely as a personal relationship between oneself and the Divine/God/Jesus. While there are many good things that can come of this individualistic relationship, such a theological directionality lacks scope and leaves ambiguous our relationships with other bodies, perhaps especially nonhuman bodies.
There is a temptation among white, Protestant Americans (although certainly others as well) to buy into the myth of individualism that leads people think of success as a personal achievement and our jobs and lives as siloed. I worry that this perspective disrespects and disregards the many lives that have helped us along the way, but furthermore fails to see the myriad of possible actions and outcomes before us that exist in those interrelationships we sometimes fail to think about. Part of uncovering these connections is undoing the binaristic paradigms that constitute much of western thought.
* “How Many Earths Do We Need?” BBC News. Last modified June 16, 2015, accessed December 10, 2016. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33133712
**As well as a fundamentally dishonest and/or ignorant understanding of history, although that is not the topic of this paper.
***Richard Spencer interview with Al Jazeera. Last modified December 9, 2016, accessed December 15, 2016. https://youtu.be/ni_6sISHnqQ
****Rasmussen quoting Diamond in: Larry L. Rasmussen, Earth-Honoring Faith: Religious Ethics in a New Key (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 326.
+ Ibid. 327
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