A democracy of fellow creatures

Abstract

How might we retell the story of our civilization in the face of its ecological self-destructiveness? How in this climate-challenged century might we carry forward the hope of Christian ecotheology and ecofeminism for efficacious planetary alliances across multiple religious and secular publics? Provoked by an ancient image of Gaia and her doomed children, this essay considers theological and scientific sources for a political theology of the earth.¹

Acknowledgement

My thanks to Professor Jone Salomonsen and other organizers and participants in the Aasta Hanstein events of 2014.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Much of the content of this essay is further developed in chapter 9 of Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglement (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014).

2. Gerle, Farlig förenkling.

3. Jameson, The Political Unconscious.

4. Kahl, Galatians Re-Imagined, 3. As Kahl reads the Greco-Roman imaginary, those Galatians that in the third and second century had posed a constraint to the expansion of the Greco-Roman empire in the area of present day Turkey themselves in turn descend from the European Gauls, the “Gallic” peoples of the Alpine region. And the Gauls and the Galatians were all of Celtic descent. These Celts had migrated south in Europe, seeking land, and attempting unsuccessfully to come to an agreement with the Italian population. They famously sacked Rome in 397 BC, but afterward were defeated by the Romans, and then, fleeing eastward through Macedonia, were routed by the Greeks at Delphi. These were among the most frightening foundational crises of Greco-Roman civilization.

5. >Kahl, Galatians Re-Imagined, 3. As Kahl reads the Greco-Roman imaginary, those Galatians that in the third and second century had posed a constraint to the expansion of the Greco-Roman empire in the area of present day Turkey themselves in turn descend from the European Gauls, the “Gallic” peoples of the Alpine region. And the Gauls and the Galatians were all of Celtic descent. These Celts had migrated south in Europe, seeking land, and attempting unsuccessfully to come to an agreement with the Italian population. They famously sacked Rome in 397 BC, but afterward were defeated by the Romans, and then, fleeing eastward through Macedonia, were routed by the Greeks at Delphi. These were among the most frightening foundational crises of Greco-Roman civilization, 74.

6. >Kahl, Galatians Re-Imagined, 3. As Kahl reads the Greco-Roman imaginary, those Galatians that in the third and second century had posed a constraint to the expansion of the Greco-Roman empire in the area of present day Turkey themselves in turn descend from the European Gauls, the “Gallic” peoples of the Alpine region. And the Gauls and the Galatians were all of Celtic descent. These Celts had migrated south in Europe, seeking land, and attempting unsuccessfully to come to an agreement with the Italian population. They famously sacked Rome in 397 BC, but afterward were defeated by the Romans, and then, fleeing eastward through Macedonia, were routed by the Greeks at Delphi. These were among the most frightening foundational crises of Greco-Roman civilization, 3.

7. Kahl, “Orientalism of Justification Theology.”

8. Kahl, Galatians Re-Imagined, 272.

9. Kahl, Galatians Re-Imagined, 272.

10. Kahl. “Combat, competition, and mindless consumption of the other—the human and the other of the Earth—in Paul's system are the ‘works of the law’ and the signature of the ‘flesh’ (sarx) in enslavement to sin, crying out for the liberating transformation of the spirit.” Galatians Re-Imagined, 273. Cf. her brief meditation on “Gaia and the Cosmic Ecology of New Creation,” Galatians Re-Imagined, 272–273.

11. Lovelock, Vanishing Face of Gaia, 1.

12. Lovelock, Vanishing Face of Gaia, 2.

13. Clayton, Religion and Science, 94.

14. Lovelock, Vanashing Face of Gaia, 31.

15. Lovelock, Vanashing Face of Gaia, 19.

16. Each of the last three decades has been warmer than any decade since 1850. In the northern hemisphere, the last three decades have been warmer than it has been in the last 14 centuries. CO2 levels are 40% higher than when the Industrial Revolution began back in the 18th century. Methane levels are 150% higher. Not only are we spewing tons and tons of carbon into the air via cars, coal-generated power plants, and airplanes, but we are also wiping out rainforests, which would normally be removing the CO2 from the atmosphere. To add fat to the fire, we are replacing the rainforests with cattle farms stocked with cows farting methane (an even more potent greenhouse gas than CO2) into the air. Earth's average temperature will rise between 2 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit.

17. Lovelock, Vanashing Face of Gaia, 29.

18. Cobb, Is It Too Late?.

19. McKibben, Eaarth, 27.

20. Parenti, Tropic of Chaos.

21. Parenti, Tropic of Chaos, 10.

22. Parenti, Tropic of Chaos, 11.

23. Northcott, A Political Theology.

24. Moltmann, “Weltreligionen in ökologischer Perspektive,” 26 (author's translation).

25. Moltmann, “Weltreligionen in ökologischer Perspektive,” 26 (author's translation), 26.

26. Moltmann, “Weltreligionen in ökologischer Perspektive,” 26 (author's translation), 27.

27. Moltmann, “Weltreligionen in ökologischer Perspektive,” 26 (author's translation), 27.

28. Shiva, Earth Democracy.

29. Shiva, “Everything I Need.”

30. Grau, Salvation, Society, and Subversion, 287. She calls for “polydox Christianities” minding the aporias of the daunting multiplicity of their situation—and their gift.

31. As postcolonial theory has taught us, however, there is no “pure native” waiting to speak. If the subaltern speaks, she is no longer the subaltern. (G. Spivak ).But decolonization goes on, it speaks in polyglossia, a hybrid complexity of voices, voices on the verge of inaudibility or-- by the same apophatic token-- of a new audibility. Cf. Moore and Rivera, Planetary Loves.

32. Metz proposed a political theology in response to and repudiation of Schmitt's version, with its Nazi associations; Moltmann joined him in this alternative. Cf. John Cobb's account of this history in Process Theology.

33. Ruether, God and Gaia.

34. Gudmarsdottir, “The Green Cross.”

35. Latour, “Facing Gaia.”

36. Parr, The Wrath of Capital, 3.

37. Keller, “The Entangled Cosmos.” and Cloud of the Impossible, especially my chapter “Spooky Entanglements: The Physics of Nonseparability;” Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway.