Like anyone who is asked to preach or speak on ‘environmental issues’ from a Christian perspective, I find that before I even begin to prepare, I am up against some huge questions. They aren’t the generally sceptical ones that I faced in earlier years, and we can be grateful that there is a widespread and informed consensus that the world faces a crisis. But the issues seem so huge, and the suggested responses can appear so trivial. In consequence, many people, Christians included, can feel immobilised, helpless and hopeless.
Furthermore, we have to ask whether there is ‘a Christian perspective’ on a spectrum that can run between lament, through tweaking our ongoing lifestyles, to radical calls for action. And, of course, we have to acknowledge the understandable question that still persists in some Christian circles, particularly now that so many people face acute need and distress, which asks why we should give any time or resources to the non-human creation at all?
But now that we know what David Attenborough’s recent programme rightly called ‘the facts’ of extinction, perhaps the biggest question of all is how Christian hope can mean much on a planet where all of life is so rapidly being depleted. We live in a time when species are being lost at unprecedented rates and even the formerly healthy populations of abundant living beings are disappearing at breakneck speed.1 Many of the drivers for these global changes seem so inexorable, and some, like climate change, even appear now to be ‘baked in’ already: the greenhouse gases which already blanket our heating earth are due to exercise their effect for centuries to come. So is it possible to be hopeful and even joyful, as the poet and farmer Wendell Berry put it, ‘even though you have considered all the facts’?
