Environmentalism (a WordWatch)
Kel Richards is a fount of wisdom and rare information about words. Today he explores the history of the word ‘environmentalism’ and challenges us to swim against the tide.
It's the ‘ism’ that makes all the difference. The ‘environment’ is just all the stuff around us. ‘Environment’ is first recorded in 1830, and comes from the much earlier word ‘environ’, which, in turn, is first recorded in one of Wycliffe's sermons from 1375. ‘Environ’ comes from an Old French word meaning “that which makes a circuit (or veers) around us”.
’Environmentalism’, on the other hand, is a now a morally charged word. It wasn't always so. When ‘environmentalism’ was first coined in 1923, it referred to the theory that the main influence in the development of a person or group was their environment—a nurture over nature sort of theory. Well, today ‘environmentalism’ is all about nurturing nature—“the advocacy of the protection and conservation of the natural environment” in the words of the Macquarie Dictionary.
In biblical terms, this basic definition is fine. It does little more than capture the stewardship of the natural world entrusted to humanity by God in Genesis 1:28-30 and displayed by Adam's naming of the animals in Genesis 2:19 (and Adam was, after all, a gardener). But in more recent years the word—and the concept—of ‘environmentalism’ has taking on a much larger, more sweeping, place in our society.
It appears to me that Christianity is (effectively) dead in our popular culture and that its place has been taken by environmentalism. Today, both spirituality and morality are found in environmentalism. The vague, popular notion of ‘spirituality’ is found, in practice, in communing with nature: bushwalking, whale watching, swimming with dolphins, even planting a tree. All of these can be seen today as ‘spiritual’ experiences. Furthermore, environmentalism is now also the source of morality. Abortion is not seen as immoral (in fact, it's widely viewed as a morally neutral medical procedure), but Japan's whaling program raises great moral indignation and is roundly condemned as grossly immoral behaviour.
Environmentalism tells us something about the world in which Christians are to live and speak the gospel—a world where the dominant belief system is a bizarre combination of indulgent consumerism whose conscience is salved (and made both spiritual and moral) by caring for the environment.
(Kel Richards, ‘WordWatch: Environmentalism’, The Briefing #356, May 2008.)
Is Kel a “fount of wisdom” or a “font of wisdom”? Perhaps he could tell us.
Unless you’re of the Nick Minchin School of Climate Theory, this doesn’t adequately describe our society. I doubt many of our leaders (let alone ordinary people) are either Christians or environmentalists. They’re the same hedonistic materialists they were 20 years ago, though I’m sure there are parts of the soggy middle class who feel all spiritual and superior when they plant a tree. Kel probably knows them through the ABC social club. But these people are probably less serious about environmental issues than (say) Landcare, the Australian Plants Society etc. Personally, I see opportunity: people can see there is something wrong with the world, and accept that there are morals beyond having a good time (hence Fair Trade coffee and FSC timber), and that ethical behaviour costs more. There’s plenty of room for Christian ideas to be introduced there. Try that with a merchant banker’s world view!
Like all idolatries, environmentalism takes something good and treats it as God. In doing so, by trying to make something good into the centre of life, it ends up distorting all of life and ultimately, failing to love even that which it tries to worship. But the solution is not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, but to show how loving God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength gives us a <i>greater</i> capacity to love our neighbour and to respect the beauty and integrity of the living spaces of the planet. Christians ought to be more humane than the humanists, more wealthy (in the things that matter) than the capitalists, more concerned about glory than the celebrities, more free than the liberals and more green than the greenies!
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