Christianity and Ecology

“THE science, the art, the ju-risprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world,” wrote T. H. Huxley, “have grown out of those of Greece and Rome—not by favor of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, aft, and any serious occupation with the things of this world, were alike despicable.” As an historical observation this comment by the famous apologist for Darwin is, at best, a caricature, and yet it is undeniably a fair representation of the consensus of the liberal intelligentsia since the time of the Enlightenment. One thinks of Voltaire and Gibbon, of Bentham and Mill, and in our own century of Russell and Dewey (not to mention a number of prominent “Christian” theologians). For more than two centuries, the Christian faith has been bitterly and contemptuously depicted as the enemy of science and, worse still, of “progress.” Although the sources of the attack have varied and it has taken different forms, the nature of the accusations has always been virtually the same: Christianity, its opponents have maintained, is superstitious and reactionary; it is a restraint upon the development of human capacities and the fulfilment of human desires. Thus Sigmund Freud predicted that “by withdrawing his expectations from the other world and concentrating all his liberated energies on this earthly life he [man] will probably attain to a state of things in which life will be tolerable for all and no one will be oppressed by culture any more.”

In recent years, however, the alternative of secular liberalism—a “religion” compounded of egalitarian democracy and scientific technology—has lost some of its luster. The good ship Progress seems to have foundered on the shoals of environmental pollution and the cultural decay born of massive industrialization and urbanization. The scarred countenance of a blighted earth, the dull stare of urban and suburban sprawl, utterly lacking the atmosphere of a community—the world has looked upon these things and found them very ugly indeed. A reasonable response to this state of affairs would be to review critically the assumptions underlying the cult of progress, and perhaps even to repent of the derision heaped upon Christianity and revealed religion in general for its naive insistence on the importance of the “other world.”

RY

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R. V. Young Jr.

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“THE science, the art, the ju-risprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world,” wrote T. H. Huxley, “have grown out of those of Greece and Rome—not by favor of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, aft, and any serious occupation with the things of this world, were alike despicable.” As an historical observation this comment by the famous apologist for Darwin is, at best, a caricature, and yet it is undeniably a fair representation of the consensus of the liberal intelligentsia since the time of the Enlightenment. One thinks of Voltaire and Gibbon, of Bentham and Mill, and in our own century of Russell and Dewey (not to mention a number of prominent “Christian” theologians). For more than two centuries, the Christian faith has been bitterly and contemptuously depicted as the enemy of science and, worse still, of “progress.” Although the sources of the attack have varied and it has taken different forms, the nature of the accusations has always been virtually the same: Christianity, its opponents have maintained, is superstitious and reactionary; it is a restraint upon the development of human capacities and the fulfilment of human desires. Thus Sigmund Freud predicted that “by withdrawing his expectations from the other world and concentrating all his liberated energies on this earthly life he [man] will probably attain to a state of things in which life will be tolerable for all and no one will be oppressed by culture any more.”

In recent years, however, the alternative of secular liberalism—a “religion” compounded of egalitarian democracy and scientific technology—has lost some of its luster. The good ship Progress seems to have foundered on the shoals of environmental pollution and the cultural decay born of massive industrialization and urbanization. The scarred countenance of a blighted earth, the dull stare of urban and suburban sprawl, utterly lacking the atmosphere of a community—the world has looked upon these things and found them very ugly indeed. A reasonable response to this state of affairs would be to review critically the assumptions underlying the cult of progress, and perhaps even to repent of the derision heaped upon Christianity and revealed religion in general for its naive insistence on the importance of the “other world.”