I expect that someday soon, when there is enough of a groundswell of church folks calling for some serious “Reformation” in the church*** along ecological lines, that this will become a tremendously divisive issue, even as divisive as the issue of slavery was for churches in America in the Civil War era. The confrontation is , politically and socially, very similar. It is a confrontation of a way of life that has been “achieved” through exploitation. People will side with the ideologies that put forth a particular “Biblical” narrative which underwrites their chosen place and “way of life”, which is dependent on the continued acceptance and defense of fossil-fuel use, agricultural methods, waste disposal, and extraction of resources from those people we have determined to be “other”, and therefore relegated to “sacrifice zones” where the people are considered “collateral damage”.

It’s like Naomi Klein saw it in her book “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate”. The urge to defend the veracity and right-ness of one’s chosen “way of life” as a “right” and a living example of “the way it should be”, is strong. It will show up as eco-theology becomes increasingly central and unavoidable in church life.

*** that the original “eco-message” and/or “eco-narratives” of the Bible have become lost in our Industrial/Technological/Carbon-Intensive world that has become so embedded into our “story” that we cannot and will not consider how radically destructive humankind has become