First Congregational Church of Falmouth, Massachusetts. Sermon for Environmental Sunday, November 14, Religion, Science and the Environment

Transcription

1 First Congregational Church of Falmouth, Massachusetts. Sermon for Environmental Sunday, November 14, 2010 Religion, Science and the Environment By John W. Farrington I am thankful to Reverend Showalter, the Board of Deacons, and my fellow members of the Green Church Committee Tom Stone and Day Mount for the opportunity to share a few thoughts today as we celebrate Environmental Sunday. I am grateful to you as members of the congregation for welcoming me among you and for the next several minutes of your time. My sermon, Religion, Science and the Environment, is divided into three parts: (1) Historical Context, (2) The Past Twenty Years, and (3) Concluding Remarks.. 1) Historical context When I was a candidate for a doctoral degree in chemical oceanography, the first Earth Day occurred in This was a response to more than two decades of industrial and raw sewage discharges to local rivers, lakes and coastal oceans egregious pollution often made visible by colored foam floating on rivers and lakes, or worse by a river catching fire! Pesticides such as DDT being used well beyond their recommended application amounts with the thought that if one pound worked as advertised then 10 or 100lbs would really work wonders. Nuclear weapons-testing in the atmosphere had resulted in radioactive chemical fallout being transported rapidly around the globe. Many of my generation of scientists have worked diligently to understand the intricacies of environmental issues and the underlying science, to document environmental degradation, and to provide early warnings of severe problems ahead. As scientists, we have found that scientific evidence and scientific consensus is often insufficient to mobilize people and their governments to action. For example, even in 1970, there were concerns about carbon dioxide concentrations increasing in the atmosphere. You might be surprised to learn that such concerns had been voiced by scientists in earlier years. In 1861, John Tyndall first measured the infrared absorbing capacity of carbon dioxide and suggested that glacial episodes in the past might have been caused by lower carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. Thirty-five years later in 1896, Svant Arrhenius suggested that humans might be increasing the temperature of the Earth by evaporating our coal mines into the air. Farrington Sermon November 14, 2010 Page 1

2 Some progress was made in the years following the first Earth Day to address environmental issues and progress is still being made here and there today. However, despite the awakening of many people concerning the impact of human activities on the environment and despite the subsequent follow on activities, the attention span of the general population, opinion leaders and most government leaders was short relative to the decades of sustained, significant activity needed to reverse environmental degradation. Reverend James Park Morton, Dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York and Director of the Interfaith Center of New York, wrote a thoughtful paper in 1997 on Religion and Sustainability, published in National Academy of Sciences Report on Nature and Human Society: The Quest for a Sustainable World. Morton notes that by the mid-1980s there was emerging concern among scientists and environment oriented individuals about growing apathy in government, private and public sectors about scientific facts pertaining to the global reach of environmental degradation/human engineering of the planet. Morton also notes that there was a question about how to instill a sense of urgency and immediacy of the global environmental issues. The thought arose: Was religion the answer to inspire a sense of urgency? Morton was approached by a small international group of people termed by many as wise men of their time - Ambassador Angier Biddle Duke, Claus Nobel, and Akio Matsumura - to consider what could be done. Morton asked Carl Sagan, noted American astrophysicist and science communicator, to join the group. The result of their activities was a Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary leaders working along with leading scientists convened in the spring of 1988 at Christ Church College, Oxford University in the United Kingdom. Surprisingly to some, there was a significant delegation from the Soviet Union including archbishops, rabbis, imams, cosmonauts, the president of the Supreme Soviet and Evgeny Vilikov, the head of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Discussions were intense and productive. As a result, Carl Sagan and Evgeny Velikov convinced Mikhail Gorbachev of the urgency of matters and the need for an even larger follow on meeting in Moscow in 1990 to continue the momentum. The Moscow Global Forum took place in January 1990 for five days. Meanwhile, in the United States there was a reawakening of environmental degradation and growing concerns about changing climate. In January, 1989 Time Magazine ran a story with the cover picture of the Earth entitled Planet of the Year; Endangered Earth. However, not all in the United States agreed. Not too much later in the year Forbes magazine had a cover title The Global Warming Panic; A Classic Case of Overreaction. This divergence of views continues to this day. Farrington Sermon November 14, 2010 Page 2

3 It was clear then that continued and increased efforts to get the message out about growing dangers to humanity as a result of unsustainable practices were needed. It was equally clear that many people in developed countries, including the United States, were not about to change their life styles as a result of facts presented by scientists, even with overwhelming scientific consensus. I believe that this remains true today for a majority of our citizens. People needed, and continue to need, inspiration in order to make significant changes in their lives! Many people get their inspiration for how they conduct their lives from their religion or from belief structures. The effort to use the intersection of science and religion to inspire people for sustainable living was continued and elevated in intensity. 2) The Past Twenty Years. An appeal by several United States scientific leaders to a cross section of religious leaders in the United States led to the November, 1989 American Joint Appeal of Science and Religion sent to all religious leaders in the United States. The Joint Appeal became an organization in the United States. An American Conference was convened in New York in June of The group formed the National Religious Partnership for the Environment. On the international scene, various meetings were being convened of scientists, religious leaders, government officials, and private sector individuals and groups to inspire people and their governments to take significant action to reverse the trends of increasing environmental degradation. Perhaps one of the more influential of these meeting was convened in 1995 under the aegis of the Eastern Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch His All Holiness Bartholomew I and the International President of the Worldwide Fund for Nature, His Royal Highness Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh. The participants were about 200 scientists, religious leaders, philosophers, economists, artists, and policy makers from 32 countries and representatives of many religions and faith traditions. The symposium traveled by sea among the islands of the Aegean. The symposium concluded on the Island of Patmos, the small Aegean island to which John was banished from Ephesus and where religious historians note that he composed the Book of Revelation while living in a hillside cave 1,900 years before this modern 1995 Symposium landed there. The symposium achieved consensus and issued calls for action confirming the role that religion and beliefs should take in acting on the scientific evidence of environmental degradation to inspire people to adopt a more sustainable life style. Farrington Sermon November 14, 2010 Page 3

4 To me, one of the most eloquent summations of the outcome of the Symposium was a statement by the Anglican clergyman, Richard Chartres, Lord Bishop of London. The first symposium on Religion, Science and the Environment in 1995 demonstrated notable unanimity among the scientists about the seriousness of the threat to life in the seas and an equally remarkable consensus among representatives of the world religions. Speakers were able to trace in their own traditions the development of a vision of a responsible and cooperative humanity, set to work in a cosmos either conceived as a divine creation or sacred in its nature. There was also impressive agreement that these religious traditions were a challenge to any individualistic or merely consumerist perspective which failed to recognize the just claims of the world s poor and which remained unaware of the injustice of loading our children with the cost and consequences of our present lifestyle. You may ask at this point, is this really true? What is the evidence that caring for the Earth and its habitats and living creatures is a common thread among religions and beliefs? I offer as evidence the participation of a diversity of religious and belief leaders in these symposia and their concurrence with the consensus statements. Also, I offer the selected quotes of our Interfaith Readings by Day Mount earlier in this service. Another outcome of the Patmos symposium was a call for an expanded symposium with a specific emphasis on bringing the consensus of science and religion about the stewardship of the Earth to the real world problems of environmental degradation of the Black Sea. Religion, Science and the Environment II: The Black Sea in Crisis. I was fortunate to participate in that symposium/cruise. During that symposium/cruise various practical solutions to the problems of the Black Sea were discussed and proposed within the context of the necessity for human stewardship of nature. Let us reflect on the opening words of the speech to the symposium by the Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, a great thinker, and philanthropist. One of the great moral and spiritual issues of our day is the massive and increasing destruction of Creation. It occasions perhaps the greatest spiritual crisis in our world today. The root of the problem is, as Satre put it, Man s fundamental desire to be God. Let us consider a more recent event. Last year on November 2 nd to 4 th there was an international meeting titled: Many Heavens, One Earth. Faith Commitments for a Living Planet under the auspices of the Alliance of Religions and Conservation and the UN Development Program, hosted at Winsor Castle, U.K. by His Royal Highness Prince Phillip Duke of Edinburgh and attended by hundreds of religious and spiritual leaders and secular leaders from around the world, including the United Nations Secretary General Mr. Ban Ki-Moon. Farrington Sermon November 14, 2010 Page 4

5 Among the outcomes were commitments of the faith traditions and faiths represented to undertake to be more environmentally friendly with their activities worldwide. Our green church efforts here in our own church are a small but important part of that global effort. Our committee invites your participation with ideas and actions. 3) Concluding Remarks In summary, it has become clear to many scientists that the response to our environmental crisis today, including changing climate, will not only require changing our present life style and our present use patterns of fossil fuel, but will also require human engineering of corrective measures to offset what is already in progress and is unlikely to be reversed. As an example, Cape Cod and Massachusetts citizens over the next 50 to 200 years will have to decide from which areas of the coast we will retreat in an orderly fashion and for which areas of the coast we will mount a vigorous defense against rising sea level coupled with the severe storms we experience. In my message to you today I have tried to bring to your attention that religions, faiths and belief structures should be inspiring us to examine with great care and reflection how we will change our life style and convince others to do the same so that succeeding generations of humans the child baptized today, our own grandchildren and their grandchildren and future generations thereafter - will have a reasonable quality of life on our planet. Do we care about not only our local problems, but also about other places and global challenges? I hope so! Our religion and faith teaches us that we should care. The United Church of Christ Pastoral Letter on Faith and the Environment: Living in Community with God s Creation published April, 2008 is entitled: And Indeed It is Very Good. The Pastoral Letter begins: Light and Darkness, water and land, sea creatures, earth creatures, birds, plants, herbs, fruit trees, the sky with its stars, moon and sun! All mutually co-exist in an ever evolving symphony of praise to their Creator. Indeed, the creating, redeeming, and sustaining presence of our God weaves the fabric of creation. Together we sing a hymn of holy love for the beauty of the earth as it evolves and we with it, in relationship with one who has called us to love the world. Let us conclude our service by singing HYMN No. 54 For the Beauty of the Earth. Farrington Sermon November 14, 2010 Page 5

6 Religion, Science, and the Environment Brief Chronology for Today=s Sermon 1950s and 1960s Bincreasing concern about pollution of the environment B First Earth Day 1980s B concern about apathy by general public and government officials about environmental degradation leads to a partnership between several scientists and religious leaders to inspire people to take action to be stewards of the environment. Spring 1988 B international assembly of spiritual leaders, government officials, scientists, artists, journalists at Oxford University, U.K. B Global Forum for Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders@ B Joint Appeal of several prominent U.S. scientists and selected religious leaders to all religious leaders in the United States to join together and inspire stewardship of the environment. Positive response by a large number of religious leaders. January, 1990 B Moscow Global Forum for Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders to discuss environmental degradation. Mikhail Gorbachev proposes an International Green Cross B Third Global Forum for Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders meets coincidental with the UN World Environment Conference. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil B U.S. National Religious Partnership for the Environment formed B Aegean Cruise International Symposium: Revelation and the Environmental: Patmos Symposium (Religion, Science and the Environment I) B Religion Science and the Environment II: the Black Sea in Crisis B International meeting - AMany Heavens, One Earth. Faith Commitments for a Living Planet@. Alliance of Religions and Conservation and UN Development Program, Windsor Castle, U.K.

7 For Christianity: Interfaith Readings Pertaining to Stewardship of the Environment And God created the great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the water brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. (Genesis 1:21-22) For Judaism: But ask the beasts, and they will teach you; the birds of the sky, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth and it will teach you; the fish of the sea, they will inform you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Eternal has done this? (Job 12:7-9) For Islam: The All-Merciful has taught the Qur'an. He created man and He taught him the explanation. The sun and the moon to a reckoning, and the stars and trees bow themselves; and heaven - He raised it up and set the balance. Transgress not in the balance, and weigh with justice, and skimp not in the balance. And earth - He set it down for all beings, therein fruits and palm trees with sheaths, and grain in the blade, and fragrant herbs. Of which your Lord's bounties will you and you deny? (Quran 55: 1-12) For Buddhism: Rajah Koravya had a king banyan tree called Steadfast, and the shade of its widespread branches was cool and lovely. Its shelter broadened to twelve leagues... None guarded its fruit, and none hurt another for its fruit. Now there came a man who ate his fill of fruit, broke down a branch, and went his way. Thought the spirit dwelling in that tree, "How amazing, how astonishing it is, that a man should be so evil as to break off a branch of the tree, after eating his fill. Suppose the tree were to bear no more fruit." And the tree bore no more fruit. (Anguttara Nikaya iii.368)