And so, after posting my previous Facebook post, wondering about Hillary laughing off a question and pondering the possible political reasons and ramifications, I am intentionally turn my thoughts away from that world, to THE PHYSICAL WORLD of earth and cosmos, and the predicament of the church in facing (or NOT facing) the urgency of the questions of what to do about the state of the ecosystem. If the church was attending to this, we’d see a theological reformation in the re-tooling of all the functions of the church. It’s preaching, teaching, community-building, discipleship, physical structures and facilities, political action, and re-conceiving (or “recovering”) notions of The Kingdom of God which pay APPROPRIATE attention to how we can re-orient ourselves to be a Church in the Anthropocene. But the rub is sometimes and often overwhelming:
There IS NO URGENCY. And that drives me up a wall. If we truly believe “the science”, and most people left of The Right say they do, but refuse to really listen to what they are saying about what the science tells us about consequences which have only BEGUN to surface, then we REALLY AREN’T LISTENING. We’re participating in DENIAL. You’re still a “Denier” if you don’t think this requires a collosal effort across the board. Krugman’s article exemplifies this problem. Krugman’s article is a DENIAL of the scope of the problem. (see http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/01/opinion/wind-sun-and-fire.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=1)
I posted this article a couple days ago, and so I turned off the Facebook phtotolink box for the above link, since It’s already present in my “downstream’, and because I want to highlight INSTEAD, the state of the denominations in this light. They , too, are IN DENIAL. Not all of their people, but enabled in their denial by the everyday theology and business as usual of the church.What people learn about what the church considers important, COULD be derived from what the church does as a habit, and consider UNIMPORTANT whatever DOES NOT come up and become topic of grave concern ON A REGULAR BASIS. I’ve been having a real problem facing this DENIAL in my own denomination (to be more specific:
The United Methodist Church as it is communicated through it’s media and website (which I assume should be SOME indication of what that church thinks of its own identity). The RARITY of attention to this CLIMATE CRISIS is becoming really disturbing, especially when I try to inquire about it, or raise the subject. I’ve posted comments, and written direct emails to ask why the coverage is so sparse. Ive received polite responses, but when I suggest things such as “What about assigning someone specifially and exclusively to cover the issue?” the reply is “There;s no way we could do that”. That is basically an “Economics” answer, and one full of presumption and indicative of the LACK of a sense of ANYTHING LIKE a crisis. When I see numerous things listed as “Special Coverage”, NONE of those include, at present, anything on the church addressing or acting on Climate in some way (unless you count Disaster Relief, but we really can’t count that as “ATTENTION TO the Climate Crisis” because the connection is NOT DRAWN. Same goes for “TOPICS” on the Website. No topic for Climate Issues.
This is not just a problem in The United Methodist Church, of course. But I tend to react most strongly to the church I consider to be MY HOME DENOMINATION at present, and one in which I have spent a number of years in the business of helping build the Web presence for the denomination. And I am concerned about this. It has me really down this morning. (Don’t worry, I’ll get going again. I always do. But I grow tired of being tired of the continued DENIAL. Again, this is not your Right Wing, Classic “Climate Change isn’t happening” denial. This is the continued, business as usual, “not all that pressing” (apparently) denial. And I count myself as one , for the 35 or so years prior to my own “conversion” into a new awareness of just how crucial this is. One could say that it has been 25 years since the world has really begun to hear the most pressing concerns of the Climate Science community. Since then, we really don’t have any excuses for how long we’ve allowed things to simply continue (to continue systematically poisoning the ecosystem in unprecedented ways; “unprecedented” in the history of the planet.
So is this unprecedented and immanent danger a “concern” for theology? Does it have “currency” enough to make it into our TOP TEN? (“Top Ten” is obviously a sarcasm here. Of course, the obvious message here is that there is NO LIST for this. The very unprecedented nature of the problem renders it “relevant”. And yes, it IS a matter of SALVATION, since I have long ago left the notion of a “salvation of the soul” that is paramount and “of a higher importance” than any other sort of “making right”. This SALVATION that is NON-DUALISTIC is very much a theological issue, so much so that it should be , AT THE VERY LEAST, unmistakably so. But alas, it doesn’t warrant mention as “Special Coverage” or even as “Topic”. That is INEXCUSABLE, but sadly, that is only a symptom that is systemic. Not only of the denominational world and throughout evangelicalism, but a problem with the whole story under which our “Modern World” operates.
Blog post: The denial of Denial in the Church https://t.co/CtmQSMqjoF
Blog post: The denial of Denial in the Church https://t.co/rbd8OiuTZa
Blog post: The denial of Denial in the Church https://t.co/l8M1xcO2OX