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Environmental Communication
ISSN: 1752-4032 (Print) 1752-4040 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/renc20
Rhetorical Features of Green Evangelicalism
Lawrence J. Prelli & Terri S. Winters
To cite this article: Lawrence J. Prelli & Terri S. Winters (2009) Rhetorical Features of Green Evangelicalism, Environmental Communication, 3:2, 224-243, DOI: 10.1080/17524030902928785 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17524030902928785
Published online: 12 Jun 2009.
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Rhetorical Features of Green Evangelicalism
Lawrence J. Prelli & Terri S. Winters
Christian evangelicals and environmentalists are often viewed as holding irreconcilable and mutually exclusive perspectives. We argue that examination of the discourses of environmentalism and an emerging evangelical Christian discourse that we call ‘‘green evangelicalism’’ shows there are more grounds in common than is typically supposed.
Using a conceptual framework that integrates Dryzek’s ideas about how to map environmental discourses with Burke’s concepts of terministic screens, orientation, and identification, we locate the discursive parameters of a distinctly green evangelicalism as it is manifested in response to the problem of climate change. Comparing the discursive map of green evangelicalism with charts of other environmental discourses enables us to locate rhetorical opportunities and obstacles for generating identification among otherwise distinctive orientations toward environmental problems.
Keywords: Kenneth Burke; Terministic Screens; Discourse Analysis; John Dryzek;
Climate Change; Environmentalism; Rhetoric; Christian Evangelicalism
On February 8, 2006, the Evangelical Climate Initiative (ECI), consisting of a group of 86 evangelical Christian leaders, released the document: ‘‘Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action’’ (ECI, 2006; Goldstein, 2006). That document expressed the group’s moral and spiritual commitment to addressing the problem of human- induced global warming. It is well known that evangelicals participate in the public sphere to exert political influence on social and cultural issues (Gilgoff, 2007; Lindsay, 2007; National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), 2004; Wallis, 2005), but many people were struck by the apparent incongruity of American evangelicals addressing the climate change problem, let alone taking a presumptively ‘‘liberal’’ stance on that issue. That sense of incongruity is traceable to a standard view of evangelicalism as involving theologically and politically conservative Christians who read the Bible
Lawrence J. Prelli is a Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of New Hampshire. Terri S. Winters is an MA student in the Department of History at the University of New Hampshire. Correspondence to: Lawrence J. Prelli, Department of Communication, Horton Social Science Center, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824, USA. Email: ljp@cisunix.unh.edu
ISSN 1752-4032 (print)/ISSN 1752-4040 (online)#2009 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/17524030902928785
Vol. 3, No. 2, July 2009, pp. 224243
literally and place great emphasis on the conversion or ‘‘born again’’ experience. Less understood is that American Christian evangelicalism is becoming increasingly fragmented. The climate change initiative illustrates part of that fragmentation, with evangelicals divided over whether climate change specifically or the environment generally should be included among the causes of their faith.1
The emerging evangelical discourse about climate change is a manifestation of what we are calling ‘‘green evangelicalism.’’ The proportion of evangelicals who embrace that discourse is likely to increase due to an ongoing generational shift with younger evangelicals replacing their less environmentally involved elders (Cooperman, 2007; Cox, 2007; Dokoupil & Miller, 2009). Environmental communication scholars should attend to this emerging environmental discourse as it promises to open new rhetorical possibilities for building political coalitions and alliances on issues of common concern to environmentalists and Christian evangelicals.
Our goal is to disclose the salient terminological features that together constitute green evangelical discourse, and then explore whether those terminological features open or foreclose opportunities for establishing identification, or grounds in common, with other environmental discourses. Our understanding of discourse is based on Dryzek’s (1997, p. 8) use of the concept in The Politics of the Earth:
Environmental Discourses: ‘‘A discourse is a shared way of apprehending the world.’’
Thus, an environmental discourse ‘‘conditions the way we define, interpret, and address environmental affairs’’ (p. 10).
Dryzek (1997, p. 20) explains that his concept of discourse is influenced by Michel Foucault, but with important modifications. Foucault’s work typically discloses the rules of discursive formations that permeate entire societies and historical eras (e.g., Foucault, 1973, 1980). Dryzek’s concept differs in that it enables us to attend to the varieties of environmental discourse that compete or collaborate when brought into contact within specific political situations. He looks to map the features that distinguish those varieties, while Foucault centers attention on hegemonic discursive formations that operate according to rules that encompass all varieties of discourses and ensnare all who participate within them. Dryzek’s modified concept enables us to better distinguish the plurality of environmental discourses that compete, collaborate, or converge within contemporary politics and policy making.
A second advantage of Dryzek’s modified concept of discourse over Foucault’s is that it facilitates our exploration of relationships between discourse and power in the realm of public politics and policymaking. Dryzek (1997, p. 11, note 4) keeps the concepts analytically distinct, while, as he put it, Foucault ‘‘would deny that this distinction between power and discourse makes sense, on the grounds that discourse is the operation of power.’’ Power is indelibly related to discourse, but we want to distinguish the ways that discourse is used to exert power in pursuit of specific interests in particular situations. Dryzek’s modified concept enables us to explore the range of resources available to a plurality of environmental discourses that adherents deploy as means of power in pursuit of their respective interests in particular, problematic situations.
Dryzek’s survey of the varieties of environmental discourses opens opportunities for environmental communication scholars and practitioners. According to Dryzek (1997, p. 8), ‘‘the way a discourse views the world is not always easily comprehended by those who subscribe to other discourses. However. . .complete rupture or discontinuity across discourses is rare, such that interchange across discourse boundaries can occur, however difficult it may sometimes prove.’’ Dryzek maps the features of distinctive environmental discourses*some overlapping; others dis- tinctive*that could be enacted in discussion, debate, and deliberation about environmental issues. We can use his discourse maps to navigate ways to realign or bridge opposed or distinctive perspectives on environmental issues, such as climate change. Commentators on environmental deliberations and debates can attempt to discover rhetorical opportunities for unifying (or, in some cases, polarizing) adherents of the several environmental discourses.
Environmental communication scholars and practitioners also can amend Dryzek’s discourse maps or chart the features of emerging or overlooked environmental discourses. We chart the features that distinguish green evangelicalism from other environmental discourses and then use that chart to explore prospects for collaboration among green evangelicals and other environmentalists on the climate change issue.
We pursue these dual tasks from a rhetorical perspective that integrates Dryzek’s ideas with rhetoric precepts drawn from the work of Burke. Dryzek indicates that discourses are ‘‘embedded in’’ and enabled through language (Dryzek, 1997, p. 8).
Burke’s (1966) ‘‘terministic screens’’ metaphor explores the communicative implica- tions of that embeddedness. Language, for Burke, is inherently rhetorical because its use is necessarily selective and partial. Burke makes that point with precision: ‘‘Even if any given terminology is areflectionof reality, by its very nature as a terminology it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent it must function as adeflection of reality’’ (p. 45, italics in original). Our terminological choices direct the attention toward some meanings while excluding others that could have been evoked through selection of alternative terms. Burke’s notion of terministic screens enables us to scrutinize how efforts to come to terms with problematic situations often involve similarities and differences about what meanings to reveal and conceal, disclose and foreclose. At stake in efforts to ‘‘screen’’ meanings terminologically is the adequacy of underlying perspectives in depicting a situation’s reality.
Terministic screens enable entry into a logic of terms through which discourses transform the particularities and details of experience ‘‘into coherent stories or accounts’’ (Dryzek, 1997, p. 8). For Burke (1984), this system of terminological relationships is an ‘‘orientation.’’ The adequacy of any orientation depends upon whether its terminological classifications and relationships can account for the contingencies of experience within particular situations. If situated expectations induced by those terms are violated, the orientation’s adequacy is left open to challenge from other orientations that evoke different and potentially more service- able points of view.
Terministic screens also invite others to share orientations for assigning meaning within particular situations. Dryzek (1997, p. 8) observes that those who share a discourse make similar ‘‘assumptions, judgments, and contentions that provide the basic terms for analysis, debates, agreements, and disagreements.’’ Whenever adherents of different orientations come into contact and clash, the effort to find a common set of terms*to locate ‘‘grounds’’ in common*requires operational pursuit of what Burke calls ‘‘identification.’’ Identification involves sharing of symbols; whenever people evoke the same terms to depict a situation they are likely to agree about that situation’s meaning. Burke uses the philosophical terms of
‘‘substance’’ and ‘‘properties’’ as rhetorical precepts for elaborating the concept of identification (Burke, 1969, pp. 2021). When we share terministic screens for interpreting a situation with others, we undergo the experience of feeling
‘‘substantially one’’ or ‘‘consubstantial’’ with those who otherwise are different from ourselves. Pursuit of identification involves searching for and exhibiting terminological and other symbolic properties shared with others, properties that screen situations in ways that imply mutual adherence to the substance of a point of view. Burke also points out that whenever we come to terms regarding a situation’s meaning with some we risk division from others who regard that situation from vantages afforded by different terms (p. 23). Thus, for analysts of discourse, the major indicator of conflicting attitudes and meanings is found in how people use language differently in ‘‘screening’’ a situation.
Mapping Terministic Screens of Environmental Discourses
How, then, do we map the terministic screens of environmental discourses? Dryzek (1997) examines four general features that together make up the typical stories and accounts of environmental discourses: (1) basic entities whose existence is recognized or constructed; (2) assumptions about natural relationships; (3) agents and their motives; and (4) key metaphors and other rhetorical devices (pp. 1518). Dryzek charts several distinct environmental narratives by identifying how they terminolo- gically depict these four-story elements.2
Consider for example the environmental discourse that Dryzek calls ‘‘green romanticism.’’ Dryzek (1997, p. 163) summarizes green romanticism’s basic narrative:
‘‘(I)ndustrial society involves and induces a warped conception of persons and their place in the world. Required to remedy this situation are new kinds of human sensibilities, ones that are less destructive to nature.. . .(G)reen romantics would all agree that they involve a less manipulative and more humble and reverential human attitude to the natural world.’’ He then charts the four kinds of story elements that together constitute the stories of green romantic discourse.
Dave Foreman’sConfessions of an Eco-Warriormanifests this sort of narrative. His opening chapter illustrates nearly all of the story features that Dryzek identifies as typical of the green romantic’s narrative. For illustration, consider this passage:
We must break out of society’s freeze on our passions, we must become animals again. We must feel the tug of the full moon, hear goose music overhead. We must love Earth and rage against her destroyers. We must open ourselves to relationships with one another, with the land; we must dare to love, to feel for something*
someone*else.. . .
Breaking free from the gilded chains of civilized banality is not easy. One cannot achieve a state of wilderness grace through books, through intellectualization, through rational argument. Our passion comes from our connection to the Earth and it is only through direct interaction with the wilderness that we can unite our minds and our bodies with the land, realizing there is no separation. (Foreman, 1991, pp. 56, italics in original)
Foreman tells a story that turns on the struggle to transform civilization’s unnatural practices that distorted humans’ connectedness with ‘‘wilderness’’ (or Nature) by alienating them from their own inner natures. That struggle pits those who ‘‘love the Earth’’ against those who destroy it. Our denatured selves can be reintegrated through passionate connection and empathy with Nature. Only through passion can we experience the ‘‘grace’’ or, to put it otherwise, the higher consciousness that we are animal, the wilderness, the Earth, Nature; there are no divisions.
Let us examine how Foreman’s story is constructed from among the four story features that Dryzek attributed to the discourse of green romanticism (Dryzek, 1997, pp. 163166; see Figure 1).
First, a discourse enacts an ontology that constructs or recognizes some entities as
‘‘real’’ or existing while simultaneously concealing alternative possible entities that a different selection of terms would disclose. Dryzek maintains that green romantics see Nature as real and existent, including an individual’s authentic inner nature of mind, body, and spirit. Humans’ inner nature is now in disharmony with Nature due to the unnatural practices of industrial exploitation and unbounded consumption. The way
Discourse Chart for Green Romanticism
1. Basic entities recognized or constructed 3. Agents and their motives
• Global limits
• Inner nature
• Nature
• Unnatural practices
• Ideas
• Human subjects, some more ecologically conscious than others
• Extra-human subjects as agents
2. Assumptions about natural relationships 4. Key metaphors and other rhetorical devices
• Natural relationships between humans and nature which have been violated
• Equality across people and nature
• Wide range of biological and organic metaphors
• Passion
• Appeals to emotions, intuitions
Figure 1. Discourse chart for green romanticism (adapted from Dryzek, 1997, p. 167, Box 9.1).
to restore harmony is through transformative ideas. The green romantics are idealists who seek to change consciousness so that material changes in industrial society presumably will follow. Foreman’s passage exhibits terms of a green romantic ontology:
our ‘‘inner nature’’ as passionate animal, Nature as ‘‘wilderness,’’ ‘‘unnatural practices’’
as ‘‘the gilded chains of civilized banality.’’
Second, a discourse makes assumptions about what constitutes ‘‘natural relation- ships.’’ Dryzek (1997, p. 164) explains that green romantics assume a natural order in which humans area part of rather than superior to nature. Humans violate natural relationships ‘‘through anthropocentric arrogance, patriarchy (for ecofeminists), or industrial indifference.’’ The green romantics see Nature and humans as equal; only anthropocentric privileging disrupts that essential harmony by subordinating Nature to humans. Foreman thus wrote that there is ‘‘no separation’’ of ‘‘our minds and our bodies with the land.’’ Harmony and connectedness is sought when ‘‘we. . .open ourselves to relationships with one another, with the land.’’
Third, a discourse constructs agents and imputes their motivations. For the green romantics, Nature itself has agency; ‘‘it is alive with meaning and purpose’’ (Dryzek, 1997, p. 165). All individual humans are agents with the capacity to restore the right relationship with Nature, but some possess a higher ecological consciousness than others. Those with a higher ecological consciousness must live in accord with Nature and thereby pose a challenge to those who live unnaturally.
Finally, there are ‘‘representative metaphors and other rhetorical devices.’’ Dryzek explains that green romantics make use of biological and organic metaphors. For example, green romantics might embrace Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis of a living earth.
Deep ecologists might contend that humans should become deeply aware of a ‘‘black bear’s’’ existence or that of some other animal and experience the world from that perspective (Dryzek, 1997, p. 166). Green romantics do use reasoned appeals, but a rhetorical device peculiar to green romantics as ‘‘romantics’’ is the centrality of appeals to intuition, passion, and empathy. For Foreman, connection with the Earth requires that we thaw ‘‘society’s freeze on our passions’’ (p. 5) and eschew ‘‘books,’’
‘‘intellectualization,’’ and ‘‘rational argument’’ (p. 6). ‘‘Passion,’’ Foreman contends,
‘‘comes from our connection to the Earth,’’ and only through passionate connection to the Earth can we ‘‘realize there is no separation’’ (p. 6). Passionate connection requires no less than that we ‘‘become animals again. We must feel the tug of the full moon, hear goose music overhead’’ (p. 5).
Dryzek (1997, pp. 184187) sorted environmental discourses into radical discourses, reformist problem-solving discourses, and sustainability discourses.3 Green romanticism falls within the first, since it aims to transform human consciousness so that society’s economic, political, and social practices can undergo radical change. The other version of radicalism is ‘‘green rationalism.’’ Rather than changing consciousness, green rationalism attempts to bring about radical change in society through a new green politics. Examples include political parties that form around ‘‘green issues’’ and organized efforts to assign ‘‘rights’’ to non-human creatures. Three reformist discourses turn to conventional modes of problem-solving thought and conduct to address environmental issues. ‘‘Administrative rationalism’’
(pp. 7376) turns to the state and technical expertise as affording the means of problem solving (typified, say, by state environmental agencies). ‘‘Democratic pragmatism’’ (pp. 9597) attempts to address environmental issues by mobilizing the citizenry and lobbying to pressure political decision makers to address environmental problems of concern to them (for examples, the Audubon Society and the Sierra Club). ‘‘Economic rationalism’’ (pp. 112116) directs attention to the market, private initiative, and incentives as the means by which to address environmental problems (for example, the Nature Conservancy’s position that to preserve special lands you should buy them). In contrast with these ‘‘prosaic’’
approaches, ‘‘imaginative’’ discourses of sustainability attempt to avoid conflicts through invention of inclusive perspectives that accommodate all major ‘‘stake- holders.’’ One of these sustainability discourses is ‘‘sustainable development’’ (pp.
129132). The discourse of sustainable development attempts to work out reforms that enable economic development and environmental protection, rather than one at the expense of the other, since from its vantage one is not possible over the long term without the other.4
The discourse of sustainable development differs from the problem solving and radical discourses in important respects. One feature of this discourse is that it evokes a global orientation that treats environmental problems as interconnected with questions of distributive justice, economic development, and commitments to posterity. These interconnected relationships are considered ‘‘natural’’ since this discourse evokes an ontology in which social systems are not treated as though separate from but as nested within biological systems at whatever level chosen for examination*from the local to the global. The sustainable development story includes many agents, but emphasis typically is placed either on indigenous local agents or on global agents in the form of transnational organizations rather than on agents of states. Those levels are suitable sites for addressing interconnected and international problems of poverty, environmental degradation, and economic development that extend beyond the political boundaries that divide states (see Dryzek’s chart of the discourse of sustainable development in Figure 2).
Discourse Chart for Sustainable Development 1. Basic entities recognized or constructed 3. Agents and their motives
• Nested social and ecological systems
• Capitalist economy
• (No limits)
• Many agents at different levels
• transnational and local rather than the state
• motivated by the public good
2. Assumptions about natural relationships 4. Key metaphors and other rhetorical devices
• Subordination of nature to humans
• Economic growth, environmental protection, distributive justice, and long- term sustainability go together
• Organic growth
• Connection to progress
• Reassurance
Figure 2. Discourse chart for sustainable development (adapted from Dryzek, 1997, p. 132, Box 7.1).
Dryzek’s charts provide convenient shorthand descriptions of the central discursive elements that together characterize major environmental discourses. Those charts can function as heuristics for thinking about possible strategies for fostering identifica- tion (or division) among adherents to those discourses. Which terministic screens suggest possible opportunities for identification and possible sources of division among several environmental discourses? The discourses of administrative rational- ism and democratic pragmatism share the screens of ‘‘liberal capitalism’’ as an enduring economic reality and of the ‘‘public interest’’ as motive for acting (however variously defined), while green romanticism does not encompass either within its terms. Despite differences, we might expect that administrative rationalists and democratic pragmatists would find much to say to each other given those terms in common. The two might collaborate in addressing environmental problems by using the democratic pragmatists’ tactics of lobbying or mobilizing citizen pressure on elected decision makers to pass legislation that advances the administrative rationalists’ preference for addressing environmental problems through stronger state regulatory and oversight measures that empower experts and managers to act in the public interest. Green romantics, in contrast, would reject the conditions of liberal capitalism and agents’ pursuit of various public interests as sources of the unnatural practices that alienate people from Nature. For the green romantics, the time for reformist, problem-solving discourse is over; instead, they call for a radical shift in consciousness to rearrange the conditions of human society.
Mapping Terministic Screens of Green Evangelicalism
Dryzek’s approach to discourse analysis*identifying the typical story line and its four kinds of story features*illustrates how to chart environmental discourses not found in his study. We use that approach to chart the emerging environmental discourse of green evangelicalism.5 We noted that green evangelicalism is open to contrary if not conflicting associations. Environmentalists might link evangelicalism with a politics that maintains destructive practices toward the natural world rather than ‘‘green’’ concerns about its protection. Evangelical Christians might connect the green stances of environmentalists with a secular liberal politics that is anathema to their faith. Environmentalists, evangelical Christians, and others would at least initially find themselves struck by such efforts as the ‘‘Evangelical Climate Change Initiative’’ as somehow incoherent (for example, see Gunther, 2006) since it would appear to unify opposites. Green evangelical discourse works to resolve those tensions through active application of a biblically based interpretation of Christian doctrine to environmental problems.6
Based primarily on analysis of discourses associated with evangelicals’ concerns about climate change, we identified this emerging faith-based orientation’s typical story line and associated terministic screens.7 Green evangelical discourse is exemplified by the core story line that evangelical Christians must join with others to improve stewardship or ensure ‘‘care of creation’’ through moral actions that rectify humans’ sinful degradation of creation and, thereby, reconcile humans with
their Creator. Of course, as with all other kinds of environmental discourses, this core story line is subject to multiple variations. Whatever the variations among particular stories, they are sure to be woven from among the terminological ingredients exhibited in Figure 3.
Green evangelical discourse enacts an ontology that discloses ‘‘evangelical Christians,’’ the ‘‘Creator,’’ and the ‘‘creation’’ as central among real and existent entities. Perhaps due to green evangelicalism’s relatively new emergence on the political scene, these entities are invisible from the vantages afforded by the other environmental discourses. The opening of the document, ‘‘An Evangelical Declaration on the Care of Creation,’’ is representative of these ontological features8: ‘‘As followers of Jesus Christ, committed to the full authority of the Scriptures, and aware of the ways we have degraded creation, we believe that biblical faith is essential to the solution of ecological problems.’’ Following this opening, the declaration continues:
‘‘Because we worship and honor the Creator, we seek to cherish and care for the creation’’ (Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN), 1994, bold in original).
Green evangelicalism is ontologically distinct from other environmental discourses in that it situates environmental issues within a biblically derived nomenclature of
Discourse Chart for Green Evangelicalism 1. Basic entities recognized or constructed 3. Agents and their motives
• Creator
• Creation
• Evangelical Christians
• Global environmental problems
• Capitalist economy
• Liberal democracy
• Poverty and the world’s poor
• Sin
• Limits
• Many individual and collective agents with good or bad motives
• Evangelical Christians motivated by moral struggle between sin and reconciliation with God
2. Assumptions about natural relationships 4. Key metaphors and other rhetorical devices
• Subordination of nature as God’s creation
• Humans responsible for creation care
• Sin responsible for degradation of creation
• Environmental degradation and poverty interrelated
• Designer
• Healing
• Garden
• Stewardship
• Reconciliation
• Creation care
• Moral witnessing
• Appeals to scientific authority
• Appeals to biblical authority
Figure 3. Discourse chart for green evangelicalism (based on Dryzek’s framework for environmental discourse).
Christians seeking restoration of God’s creation. The arenas of practical action, however, remain the politics of ‘‘liberal democracy’’ and the market-based economics of ‘‘liberal capitalism.’’ Green evangelicals thus adopt a reformist stance toward climate change that assumes current political institutions and the market economy afford the only real opportunities for significant, large-scale change. It is not surprising, then, that green evangelicals’ favored policy is ‘‘cap-and-trade’’ legislation, the quintessential combination of both. The call to action endorses ‘‘national legislation requiring sufficient economy-wide reductions in carbon dioxide emissions through cost-effective, market-based mechanisms such as a cap-and-trade program’’
(ECI, 2006). The signatories of that document ‘‘applaud’’ large corporations (BP, Shell, General Electric, Duke Energy, DuPont) for ‘‘the steps taken’’ that ‘‘have moved ahead of the pace of government action through innovative measures implemented within their companies in the USA and around the world’’ (ECI, 2006).
Since the settings for evangelical actions in response to climate change are liberal democracy and liberal capitalism, evangelical Christians acknowledge a wide variety of agents. The federal government and major corporations are among those agents, but so too are ‘‘state and local governments, churches, smaller businesses, and individuals’’ (ECI, 2006). Scientists and scientific institutions also are included among important agents. For example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is lauded as ‘‘the world’s most authoritative body of scientists and policy experts on the issue of global warming,’’ a panel that Sir John Houghton, an evangelical Christian, chaired from 1988 to 2002.9 Green evangelicals are open to engaging with a wide range of individuals, groups, and institutions on the climate change issue. Accordingly, the ECI’s call to action is addressed ‘‘to all who will listen, beginning with our brothers and sisters in the Christian community’’ (ECI, 2006).
Many different agents appear in green evangelical stories, and when they do they often exhibit moral or immoral motivations. Whether within or outside of the evangelical community, individuals, groups, and institutions are motivated for the moral good when they enact practices that work toward the care of God’s ‘‘good’’
creation. Those who act in ways that degrade creation are sinful. Evangelical Christians are thus motivated to work with others regardless of their secular or religious standing insofar as they are rightly motivated.
Green evangelicalism’s moral preoccupation is illustrated by how the ECI addresses the concern that working with non-evangelicals meant that evangelicals were becoming liberals or nature worshippers (ECI, no date). Included among frequently asked questions (FAQs) on the ECI’s website is the question, ‘‘Does addressing climate change mean we’re becoming liberals?’’ The answer offers reassurance by minimizing the politics of climate change: ‘‘No. We believe that creating a better future for our children and grandchildren by fulfilling our biblical call to stewardship and love of neighbor through reducing pollution is simply being a good biblical Christian. Climate change is not a liberal issue. It is a profound problem for people Jesus loves, people Jesus died to save.’’ The FAQ page also includes the question, ‘‘Are we working with environmentalists?’’ The ECI answers: ‘‘No. While we are not working with environmentalists, and are critical of some of their views and
approaches, we also feel that once we have established our own view on this issue we should use this as an opportunity to share the gospel with those who care about
‘environmental’ issues.’’ The answer leaves open the possibility of working with environmentalists despite differences in ‘‘views and approaches.’’ ‘‘We also appreciate all environmentalists have done to protect God’s creation,’’ the response continues, culminating in the conclusion that ‘‘we do not rule out working with environmen- talists and anyone else of goodwill in the future.’’ It appears, then, that green evangelicalism enacts a story in which a plurality of agents, both within and outside of the evangelical community, can join together in taking positive moral action against the climate change problem.
The paramount motivation for evangelical Christians to engage the climate change issue is to reconcile those who have become spiritually estranged with God through performing and witnessing moral actions in the effort to heal ailing creation. The
‘‘opportunity to share the gospel’’ is the primary reason the ECI offers for engaging with people concerned about the environment. Green evangelical discourse characterizes the entire plurality of actors as engaged in a great cosmic struggle that pits moral agents motivated to care for God’s creation against those who are, quite literally, careless. The drama enacted through green evangelical discourse is no less than the spiritual and moral struggle between sin and redemption.
This drama is manifested in green evangelicalism’s assumptions about ‘‘natural’’
relationships. The chief assumptions are that God (the Creator) created the environment*His creation*and created humans in his own image. It is through these relationships that nature*as creation*takes on spiritual meaning. The
‘‘Evangelical Declaration on the Care of Creation’’ succinctly expresses these relationships:
The cosmos,in all its beauty, wildness, and life-giving bounty, is the work of our personal and loving Creator.
Our creating Godis prior to and other than creation, yet intimately involved with it, upholding each thing in its freedom, and all things in relationships of intricate complexity. God is transcendent, while lovingly sustaining each creature; and immanent, while wholly other than creation and not to be confused with it.
God the Creatoris relational in very nature (sic), revealed as three persons in One.
Likewise, the creation which God intended is a symphony of individual creatures in harmonious relationship.
The Creator’sconcern is for all creatures. God declares all creation ‘‘good’’ (Gen.
1:31); promises care in a covenant with all creatures (Gen. 9:917); delights in creatures which have no human apparent usefulness (Job 3941); and wills, in Christ, ‘‘to reconcile all things to himself ’’ (Col. 1:20).
Men, women, and children, have a unique responsibility to the Creator; at the same time we are creatures, shaped by the same processes and embedded in the same systems of physical, chemical, and biological interconnections which sustain other creatures.
Men, women, and children, created in God’s image, also have a unique re- sponsibility for creation. Our actions should both sustain creation’s fruitfulness and preserve creation’s powerful testimony to its Creator. (EEN, 1994, bold in original)
Based on these spiritual relationships, humanity is responsible for the stewardship and care of the whole of creation. ‘‘God gave the care of his earth and its species to our first parents,’’ reads the NAE’s, ‘‘For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility.’’ That document continues, ‘‘We affirm that God-given dominion is a sacred responsibility to steward the earth and not a license to abuse the creation of which we are a part’’ (NAE, 2004). Humanity, however, has shirked that sacred obligation and ‘‘failed in our stewardship’’ (EEN, 1994) through sinful conduct that has degraded creation:
Our God-given, stewardly talents have often been warped from their intended purpose: that we know, name, keep and delight in God’s creatures; that we nourish civilization in love, creativity and obedience to God; and that we offer creation and civilization back in praise to the Creator. We have ignored our creaturely limits and have used the earth with greed, rather than care.
The earthly resultof human sin has been a perverted stewardship, a patchwork of garden and wasteland in which the waste is increasing. ‘‘There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land. . .Because of this the land mourns, and all who live in it waste away’’ (Hosea 4:1,3). (EEN, 1994, bold in original) Sinful actions have had terrible consequences for our neighbors and for posterity:
‘‘one consequence of our misuse of the earth is an unjust denial of God’s created bounty to other human beings, both now and in the future’’ (EEN, 1994). The ECI’s call to action devoted an argument toward redeeming the claim that misuse of the earth, as exemplified by the problem of global warming, will have its harshest impacts on the world’s poor. In contrast with many environmental discourses, the world’s poor occupy a central position within the ontology of green evangelicalism. That argument surveyed the ‘‘likely impacts’’ of increased global temperatures manifested in ‘‘sea level rise, more frequent heat waves, droughts, and extreme weather events such as torrential rains and floods; increased tropical diseases in now-temperate regions; and hurricanes that are more intense.’’ Given that the world’s poor lack sufficient resources with which to mitigate those impacts, the ECI drew the conclusion that ‘‘The consequence of global warming will therefore hit the poor the hardest, in part because those areas likely to be significantly affected first are in the poorest regions of the world’’ (ECI, 2006).
Since creation ‘‘is suffering from the consequences of human sin’’ (EEN, 1994), Christians are called upon to accept responsibility for the restoration of harmony and reconciliation with the Creator and creation. Rev. Howard Snyder’s Biblical Theological keynote address at the 2004 Conference on Creation Care placed
‘‘creation care’’ within the fundamental mission of the Christian faith. Rev. Snyder explained:
God created man and woman in harmony with himself, with each other, and with the created world. Man and woman were at peace (shalom) with God, with themselves and each other, and with the plants and animals God had made. Sin, however, brought disruption in a fourfold sense. As Francis Schaeffer pointed out years ago, human disobedience brought alienation between humans and God and as a result an internal alienation within each person (alienation from oneself), alienation between humans, and alienation from nature. These are the spiritual, psychological, sociocultural, and ecological alienations that afflict the whole human family. All derive from sin; all distort God’s good purpose in creation. These are the concerns, therefore of the gospel of reconciliation, and they clarify the church’s mission agenda. Faithful Christian mission focuses on healing the four alienations or divisions that have resulted from the fall. Creation care, therefore*working for reconciliation between humans and the created order*is an indispensable element in Christian mission. It is part of the gospel (italics added). (Snyder, 2004)
Our analysis has already alluded to several of green evangelicalism’s representative metaphors. In common usage is the ‘‘designer’’ system of metaphor, consisting of terms associated with ‘‘Creator’’ and ‘‘creation.’’ The metaphor of ‘‘stewardship’’
depicts humanity’s moral role, and often is associated with the idea of nature as a
‘‘garden.’’ Thus, the ‘‘Evangelical Declaration on the Care of Creation’’ concludes:
‘‘We make this declarationknowing that until Christ returns to reconcile all things, we are called to be faithful stewards of God’s good garden, our earthly home’’ (EEN, 1994, bold in original). ‘‘Reconciliation’’ (with God and creation) is a standard metaphor for the ultimate purpose of creation care. ‘‘Creation care’’ itself falls within a ‘‘healing’’ system of metaphor that includes terms such as health, sickness, disease, healing, caring, and nurturing. Consider for illustration the healing metaphors in this passage:
Becausein Christ God hashealedour alienation from God and extended to us the first fruits of the reconciliation of all things, we commit ourselves to working in the power of the Holy Spirit to share the Good News of Christ in word and deed, to work for the reconciliation of all people in Christ, and to extend Christ’shealing to suffering creation.
Because we await the time when even the groaning creation will be restored to wholeness, we commit ourselves to work vigorously to protect and heal that creation for the honor and glory of the Creator*whom we know dimly through creation, but meet fully through Scripture and in Christ. We and our children face a growingcrisis in the healthof the creation in which we are embedded, and through which, by God’s grace, we are sustained. Yet we continue to degrade that creation.
(EEN, 1994, bold in original; italics added)
Green evangelical discourse also deploys several other distinctive rhetorical devices.
Moral witnessing, for instance, presumes that evangelicals can address public issues with special moral authority insofar as their witnessing is biblically based. Moral witnessing is at one stroke ‘‘an opportunity and a responsibility’’ since it can ‘‘shape public policy in the most powerful nation on earth’’ and, thereby, ‘‘contribute to the well-being of the entire world.’’ Green evangelical discourse adds climate change to the ‘‘many issues’’ that call for moral witnessing (ECI, 2006).
The extension of moral witnessing to the climate change issue is predicated on the assumption that there are both scientific and theological reasons for doing so. In the ECI’s call to action, appeals to scientific authority are joined with appeals to biblical authority as rhetorical resources.10 Indeed, in that document, the need to consider the biblical grounds of creation care is contingent upon the reliability of the scientific argument establishing the existence of human-induced climate change. The scientific argument appeals to the authority of the IPCC, the US Academy of Sciences, and the scientific academies of the G8 nations (along with the Bush Administration’s acknowledgment that climate change is real and probably is human-induced). That argument concludes: ‘‘In face of the breadth and depth of this scientific. . . concern. . .we are convinced that evangelicals must engage this issue without any further lingering over the basic reality of the problem or humanity’s responsibility to address it.’’ The ECI then appeals to biblical authority to advance the claim that evangelicals’ moral convictions demand their response to the climate change problem. For example, the document maintains: ‘‘Christians must care about climate change because we love God the Creator and Jesus our Lord, through whom and for whom the creation was made. This is God’s world, and any damage that we do to God’s world is an offence against God Himself ’’ (Gen. 1; Ps. 24; Col. 1:16).
Rhetorical Opportunities for Bridging Environmental and Evangelical Discourses Now that we have mapped the terministic screens of green evangelical discourse, we can ask which environmental discourses share terministic screens with green evangelical discourse and, thus, provide opportunities for establishing points of identification and, potentially, collaboration. Our mapping also suggests obstacles to identification between green evangelicals and adherents of other environmental discourses.
Comparison of our chart of green evangelicalism (see Figure 3) with those of other environmental discourses at once discloses opportunities for identification with the reformist, problem-solving discourses. For example, both green evangelicalism and democratic pragmatism accept ‘‘liberal democracy’’ as political reality and, thus, as the chief arena of environmental action. Moreover, both acknowledge that a variety of political agents participate in that arena from a variety of motives. The democratic pragmatist who, in Dryzek’s (1997, p. 97) depiction, acknowledges that agents pursue
‘‘multiple conceptions of public interest,’’ has common ground with the green evangelical. Green evangelicals acknowledge the plurality of motives sought through democratic forums and procedures, but insist that their distinctive motive of serving biblically based morality be included among them. As shown earlier, green evangelical discourse about climate change does not foreclose collaboration with others who act for different motives provided that their actions culminate in better care of creation.
An excellent example of green evangelicals joining with democratic pragmatists to engage the climate change problem is the 2007 Step It Up campaign for climate action, a largely grassroots political effort planned by environmentalist Bill McKibben and several of his former students from Middlebury College to exert pressure on
Congress to pass legislation that calls for significant reductions in carbon emissions (See Dewitt, 2007).
On the other hand, the reformist perspective of green evangelicalism clashes with the radical environmental discourse of green romanticism (Figure 1). Green romanticism rejects the very political and economic institutions that green evangelicals assume as the backdrop for political action: liberal democracy and liberal capitalism. Nor does the green romantic’s emphasis on nature-based spirituality comport with the green evangelical’s focus on nature as creation and, thus, as sacred and worthy of reverence. Green evangelicals, as Christian evangelicals, would consider the green romantic’s spirituality as nature worship. Fundamentalist theologian and philosopher J.P. Moreland, for example, would reject any call to adopt the perspective of an animal as heretical since God is ‘‘intelligent and creative’’ and made us in ‘‘His image’’ (Strobel, 2004, pp. 269271). Similarly, Jay Wesley Richards thinks the Gaia hypothesis deifies the earth (Strobel, 2004, p. 166). Green romantics, in turn, would reject green evangelicalism because they see Christian practices as having estranged humanity from Nature by grounding spirituality in an extra-natural reality that leaves humanity free to engage in unnatural practices as they exercise
‘‘dominion’’ over the earth. Here, then, is a profound clash over terms for the ultimate purpose of environmental thought and action.
Although green evangelical discourse is avowedly reformist, perhaps its strongest potential ally is the ‘‘imaginative’’ environmental discourse of sustainable develop- ment (see Figure 2). Green evangelical discourse depicts human and natural systems as interconnected and, to that extent, it resembles the ‘‘nested systems’’ of sustainable development discourse. Green evangelical discourse distinguishes humanity from the rest of creation on spiritual grounds, but it also acknowledges that humans are
‘‘creatures’’ who are ‘‘embedded in the same systems of physical, chemical, and biological interconnections which sustain other creatures’’ (EEN, 1994). Both discourses use a terminology of interconnectedness or embeddedness to account for the existence of environmental degradation, the refugee crisis, political instability, overpopulation, and other transnational global issues.11
A specific locus of intersection between green evangelical and sustainable development discourses is found in depictions of relationships between environ- mental degradation and poverty. Despite many ‘‘signs that we are pressing up against the finite limits God has set for creation,’’ the EEN tells us, wealthier countries perpetuate a rampant consumerism without regard for their poorer global neighbors.
This interconnection between environmental degradation and poverty is linked inextricably with the Christian imperative ‘‘to love your neighbors’’ and ‘‘protect and care for the least of these as though each was Jesus Christ himself.’’ And the ‘‘least of these’’*‘‘our poorest global neighbors’’*are confronted with prospects of disloca- tion, famine, and death because the ‘‘consequences of global warming will hit the poor the hardest’’ (ECI, 2006). The ‘‘Evangelical Declaration on the Care of Creation’’
makes an explicit call for action based on this relationship:
We recall Jesus’ words that our lives do not consist in the abundance of our possessions, and therefore we urge followers of Jesus to resist the allure of wastefulness and overconsumption by making personal lifestyle choices that express humility, forbearance, self restraint and frugality.
We call on all Christiansto work for godly, just, and sustainable economies which reflect God’s sovereign economy and enable men, women and children to flourish along with all the diversity of creation. We recognize that poverty forces people to degrade creation in order to survive; therefore we support the development of just, free economies which empower the poor and create abundance without diminish- ing creation’s bounty.
We commit ourselves to work for responsible public policies which embody the principles of biblical stewardship of creation. (EEN, 1994, bold in original)
This passage contains terminological resources for a more ‘‘imaginative’’ green evangelicalism. The declaration implies that the practices of capitalism, which green evangelicals take for granted, failed to reflect ‘‘God’s sovereign economy.’’ Should green evangelicals ‘‘support the development of just, free economies that empower the poor and create abundance without diminishing creation’s bounty,’’ they may find their aspirations clashing with the practices of market-based, consumer-driven capitalism that have culminated in the current, worldwide financial crisis and economic recession. Should that conflict occur, green evangelicals might find additional terms in common with sustainable development discourse in its stress upon the connectedness of sustainable economic development, distributive justice, and responsibility for the welfare of future generations.
Green evangelical discourse also diverges from major reformist discourses and converges with sustainable development discourse in its global orientation and transnational sense of mission. Administrative rationalism, democratic pragmatism, and economic rationalism still dominate American environmental discourse, but sustainable development is a major environmental discourse beyond American shores. Christian evangelicals have exhibited a transnational outlook by engaging issues such as poverty, sex trafficking, and the AIDS/HIV crisis in Africa. Insofar as green evangelicalism maintains a perspective on climate change that sees economics and environmental degradation as inextricably related, we can anticipate that its global sense of mission could be exercised in ways that complement, rather than detract, from the discourse of sustainable development.
Yet, green evangelicalism also contains terminological elements that, if worked out and extended, could generate an outlook toward environmental issues that is more radical in its implications than the reformist and sustainability discourses. Green evangelicalism evokes a distinctive orientation that ultimately does not situate the climate change crisis within a local, state, transnational, or natural order, but within a cosmic order. Within that cosmic order, all human actions, not only environmental actions, participate in a moral and spiritual struggle between sin and redemption.
The ‘‘Evangelical Declaration on the Care of Creation’’ stated: ‘‘our actions and attitudes toward the earth need to proceed from the center of our faith, and be rooted in the fullness of God’s revelation in Christ and the Scriptures. We resist both
ideologies which would presume the Gospel has nothing to do with the care of non- human creation and also ideologies which would reduce the Gospel to nothing more than the care of that creation’’ (EEN, 1994). How people respond to a whole range of issues, therefore, is both morally and spiritually consequential from the theological vantage of green evangelicalism. Therein rests a powerful potential resource for radical critique of the sources and consequences of climate change that is not available to green evangelicalism’s more secular counterparts.
The spiritual and moral resources of green evangelicalism are potential grounds of division from more secular environmental discourses, but those same resources might disclose rhetorical opportunities for engaging with powerful potential allies among the variety of religious discourses now undergoing a ‘‘greening’’ in response to climate change and other environmental problems. An analysis of theologically grounded environmental discourses might yield sufficient terms in common to enable us to characterize a wider, more encompassing, discourse that might be called*for lack of a better expression*‘‘green monotheism.’’12One is likely to find, to take but one example, similarities in outlook on climate change between green evangelicalism and, say, a green Catholicism. To the extent that such similarities are disclosed, green evangelical discourse would become a variation of a more comprehensive monotheistic discursive theme that, perhaps, might compare with green romanticism in its radicalism even as it exceeds that and other environmental discourses in the size of the potential audiences it is capable of reaching. Although such an investigation is well beyond the scope of this study, we have shown one way to map the terminological elements of those discourses.
Probing the story elements underlying environmental discourses and extrapolating their terministic screens enables the compilation of a rich inventory of resources for rhetorical inducement whenever different environmental discourses are brought into contact. That inventory, in turn, makes it feasible to work out strategies that enable people who hold different perspectives toward environmental problems to enter one another’s orientation, become more strongly aware of similarities and differences in their respective outlooks, and, perhaps, explore ways to generate new terms in common. Nowhere is rhetorical coalition building more critical than on the problem of global warming.
Notes
[1] Wallis (2008) maintains that the religious right era is over because real world concerns, such as climate change, transcend theological feuds (see especially Chapter 6, ‘‘Stewardship and Renewal: The Earth is the Lord’s’’). Wallis’s positions correspond more closely with liberal politics than do the views of his more theologically and politically conservative counterparts.
[2] For an alternative approach to ‘‘mapping’’ discourse based on Kenneth Burke’s ideas see Anderson and Prelli (2001).
[3] Dryzek (1997) begins his inquiry with two other discourses that turn on the question of global resource limits. ‘‘Survivalism’’ is a ‘‘tragic’’ discourse that tells a story of humanity eventually surpassing the capacity of the earth’s resources to sustain them (pp. 3437).
‘‘Prometheanism’’ denies that story based on arguments about the sufficiency of vital
resources to meet human needs long into the future and the capacity of human ingenuity and technological prowess to mitigate any problems (pp. 4953). Prometheanism serves as a foil for all the environmental discourses mapped in Dryzek’s book.
[4] Another sustainability discourse is a predominately European discourse called ‘‘ecological modernization’’ (Dryzek, 1997, pp. 143146).
[5] The newly emerging discourse of green evangelicalism is not original in making the case on biblical grounds for an evangelical Christian perspective toward nature as creation that is reverential rather than exploitative (see, for example, Schaeffer, 1970).
[6] National evangelical leaders were not convinced and opposed the climate change effort (Gilgoff, 2007, pp. 268274).
[7] We examined the EEN’s ‘‘An Evangelical Declaration on the Care of Creation’’ (1994); the speeches and documents associated with the EEN’s Conference on Creation-Care held on June 2830, 2004 at the Sandy Cove Christian Conference Center on Chesapeake Bay; the ECI’s (2006) ‘‘Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action’’, and other associated documents.
[8] For a collection of papers related to the declaration see Berry (2000).
[9] As an evangelical Christian, Sir John A. Houghton has considerable credibility among evangelical Christians for religious reasons, as well as reasons of science. See his conference presentation on the science case for climate change (Houghton, 2004).
[10] The combined authority of science and evangelical Christianity is no better illustrated than in the symbolic ‘‘urgent declaration’’ of leaders from both about the issue of climate change (see Center For Health, Global Harvard Medical School, & National Association of Evangelicals, 2007).
[11] For a useful account of the rhetoric of sustainable development that draws from Burke’s precepts see Peterson (1997).
[12] See examples of reflections on the ‘‘greening’’ of Judaism (Gendler), Catholicism (Fritsch), and Ecumenical Protestantism (McDaniel), as well as an essay on evangelicalism (Dewitt), in an edited collection of essays on the greening of faith (Carroll, Brockelman & Westfall, 1997).
Also see Gardner’s (2006) contention that the world’s major religions have an important role to play in transforming understandings of progress from its strictly material manifestations into a new spiritually grounded vision that he purports is compatible with sustainable development perspectives.
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