Environmental Stewardship as a Religious and Spiritual Responsibility

I have a family member who grew up in a small, predominantly conservative and Christian town in coal country USA. In this town, the men and boys would go out with their rifles every hunting season, claiming that hunting animals for fun was their “right.” There were guys who argued that it was okay to hit animals on the road, to not even try to avoid them, claiming that God gave us the animals, and thus it was our right to use them as we will. There was a general belief that environmentalists were delusional hippies and that the true followers of God understood their right to use the Earth as they willed. This is an attitude prevalent among many of the so called “self-righteous.”

This is a disgusting inversion of our responsibilities as viceregents of the Earth. This is also a complete misunderstanding of what the religious texts of our world actually says about environmental stewardship, which I will touch upon below.

And yet this entitled attitude is emblematic of the problems in the USA in general. It is no secret that we lag behind the globe on environmental matters. When I went to Spain, there was eco-friendly lighting everywhere. Everywhere you went, lights would automatically turn off when no one was using them, even if you were in the bathroom. But not to fear, all you would have to do is clap, and the lights would turn back on.

I could never imagine such a thing in the U.S., land of hummers, jeeps, and gas guzzling trucks. If you asked people here to use widespread eco-lighting, many people would complain, “But MUH RIGHTs!”

Many people in the West are leaving establishment religion behind for several reasons. One reason is because of the toxic ideas presented in the West as “religion.” It’s this idea of a white, patriarchal fantasy where God made the planet as a plaything for straight Caucasian men. Even Jesus is depicted in the West as a blue eyed white guy. And there has long been an idea in the West of the right — or even a responsibility of the white man to consume the Earth for his pleasure. This has been called Manifest Destiny, which resulted in the genocide of Native Americans and the buffalo. In the 19th century, this was called “The White Man’s Burden,” which resulted in the Europeans committing genocide, rape, and ecocide in Africa and Asia.

Now in modern times we call it Neo Liberal Economics. There is this idea that the USA has some supposed god given right to spread its consumer culture around the globe, even if we kill the planet in the process. This is a sense of entitlement and arrogance that knows no bounds. How could any higher moral truth sanction this?

The truly righteous do not demand entitlements, they focus on service. Many of the great religious and philosophical traditions throughout time call on people to embrace responsibility, to embrace service to others as the highest good.

In the Quran (the holy book of Islam), God calls on people to be viceregents of the Earth, to take care of the Earth, and to not be excessive. It’s not a suggestion; it’s a divine command. And those who refuse God’s commands face the most dire consequences.

Here is some religious and spiritual guidance about the importance of taking care of the Earth. I included quotes from different religious sources to show the interconnection of our faiths where it counts.

• Buddhist wisdom on environmental stewardship:
• Buddhism places a strong emphasis on compassion, interconnectedness, and mindfulness towards all living beings, including the environment. While there might not be direct references to “environmental stewardship” in traditional Buddhist texts, the teachings emphasize principles that align with the concept of caring for the Earth. Here are some Buddhist quotes that highlight the importance of environmental stewardship:
• “Mindfulness must be engaged. Once there is seeing, there must be acting… We must become aware of the real problems of the world.
  Then, with mindfulness, we will know what to do, and what not to do, to be of help.” (Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen master, poet, activist and author.)
• “As Buddhists we are meant, we are urged to direct metta [positive energy and kindness] towards all living beings. That doesn’t just mean all human beings, it means all animals, insects, plants, birds, beasts of every kind. So this is the basis, we may say, of our ecological concern as Buddhists: we wish well towards all living beings.” (Sangharakshita, talk: ‘The Next Twenty Years’)
• Verses from the Quran — Environmental Stewardship, Anti-Excess
• Surah Al-Baqarah (2:30):
  “When your Lord said to the angels, ‘I am placing a successor on Earth.’ They said, ‘Will You place in it someone who will cause corruption in it and shed blood, while we declare Your praises and sanctify You?’ He said, ‘I know what you do not know.’”
• Surah Al-A’raf (7:31): “O children of Adam! Take your adornment at every masjid and eat and drink, but be not excessive. Indeed, He likes not those who commit excess.”
• Surah Al-Rum (30:41):
  “Corruption has appeared throughout the land and sea by [reason of] what the hands of people have earned so He may let them taste part of [the consequence of] what they have done that perhaps they will return [to righteousness].”
• Surah Al-Hadid (57:7): “Believe in Allah and His Messenger and spend out of that in which He has made you successive inheritors. For those who have believed among you and spent, there will be a great reward.”
• Verses from the Bible on Environmental Stewardship:
• Genesis 2:15:
  “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.”
• Psalm 104:24–30:
  “How many are your works, Lord! In wisdom, you made them all; the Earth is full of your creatures. When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground.”
• Proverbs 12:10:
  “A righteous man cares for the needs of his animal.”
• Job 12:7–10:
  “Ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you; or speak to the Earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind.”
• Isaiah 24:4–5:
  “The Earth dries up and withers, the world languishes and withers, the heavens languish with the Earth. The Earth is defiled by its people; they have disobeyed the laws, violated the statutes, and broken the everlasting covenant.”
• Romans 8:19–21:
  “For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.”
• Revelation 11:18b:
  “…and [You] should destroy those who destroy the Earth.

Parable of the She-Camel:

The Quran and the Islamic tradition have many of the same stories as the Bible. But one of the stories in the Quran that is lesser known by Western Christians is the story of the Prophet Saleh and the she-camel.

The story of the Prophet Saleh and the she-camel is a parable for environmental action. The people in Saleh’s town were told to take care of a she-camel. Instead, they hamstrung and then killed the camel. (Hamstringing is a method of crippling a person or animal so that they cannot walk properly by severing the hamstring tendons in the thigh of the individual. It is used as a method of torture, or to incapacitate the victim. It is extremely cruel.) The people of this town were asked to repent for this crime, but they were arrogant and refused. So they were destroyed by an earthquake.

I think the she-camel is an apt metaphor for our time. Not only are humans destroying life on the planet, but they are also cruel when you look at our treatment of animals in factory farming. The idea that the Creator of the planet would condone cruelty and destruction toward His own creation is unthinkable.

It is time for a religious rethink for how we live on the Earth. It is time to put our entitlements aside and see ourselves as servants of the greater good.