Lectionary Selections and Ecological Concerns: A Contribution to Dialogue

Inspired by the spirit and documents of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), Dr. Leonard Swidler, theologian and historian, became a leading voice in ecumenical, interfaith, and interreligious dialogues worldwide. Whether as sponsor, host, or participant in conferences, meetings, or symposia, Swidler has been a leading theorist for dialogue among religious and ideological communities. His “Dialogue Decalogue” has become the ideal for dialogical encounters.¹ His “4-H’s of Interreligious Dialogues: Head, Hand, Heart, and Holy” identifies areas for fruitful dialogical exchange.² To meet the need for the publication of serious discourse in these emerging fields in 1964 with his late beloved wife Arlene, he established this Journal of Ecumenical Studies. His graduate courses and the Dialogue Institute for International, Intercultural, and Interreligious exchange motivated many students from Temple University’s Department of Religion to engage in and foster dialogue.

I am among these students. Although Swidler’s extensive writings do not focus on ecology, in “Toward a Universal Declaration of a Global Ethic”³ he called for multinational/religious/ideological dialogues to establish an ethic that is “anthropo-cosmo-centric.” This call recognized that future dialogues must address challenges to the natural world.⁴ I am convinced that ecological concerns are today’s most essential dialogue. While Swidler has rightly insisted that the goal of dialogue is to learn more than to communicate one’s own perspectives, dialogue assumes one has a perspective to offer.

I live and teach in Alaska, the canary to a worldwide ecological crisis. Here, the villages of Kivalena, Shishmaref, Shaktoolik, Unalakleet, Koyukuk, and Newtok are already seriously threatened, if not yet irreparably destroyed, by climate change. Those truly familiar with the situation accept that in thirty to fifty years, 193 more Alaskan Native Villages will either have to move or disband, their present locations having become uninhabitable. Alaska is not only the locus of the Exxon Valdez oil-spill disaster in 1989 that ravaged the waters and marine life of Prince William Sound, but it is also home to an oil-based economy populated by a significant majority of voices who deny the scientific evidence of ecological concerns. While scientific and technological knowledge as well as industrialization have greatly enhanced human comforts, these come at “the price of unexpected consequences that have proved increasingly disastrous for the rest of creation as well as ourselves.”⁵ Environmental concerns (air and soil pollution, resource depletion, loss of biodiversity, overpopulation, climate change, etc.) are the most pressing threat to humanity and to all other living beings. While disputes over natural resources have preoccupied human history, if we fail to arrest ecological degradation, there will be no resources at all.

Ecological concerns entered Christian discourse in response to an important article published in 1967 by Lynn White, claiming that Christian anthropocentricity was culpable for the growing ecological problems.⁶ In response, biblical scholars identified biblical texts for earth-affirming insights. These efforts to respond to secular critics who minimized every religion also led scholars and practitioners of other religious to identify ways in which they or their traditions appreciate and affirm nature.⁷ It is thus that ecology became a topic for ecumenical, interfaith, and interreligious dialogues. Today, many recognize that all religious communities that determine how people understand nature and establish moral imperatives and values “have the potential to mobilize the sensibilities of people toward the goals of Earth Stewardship, here defined as shaping the trajectories of social-ecological change to enhance ecosystem resilience and human well-being.”⁸ Statements identifying related concerns and protocols that have been issued by religious bodies throughout the world are posted on the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale.⁹ Pope Francis is currently working on a much anticipated encyclical on the environment, which will be an important addition to these statements.

Initially, Christian studies tended to focus on accounts in the Old Testament¹⁰ that foster a positive appreciation of creation (especially Gen. 1:1–2:3, 2:4b–3:24; Job 38–41...