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Quaker Environmentalism - Page 3

© Marshall Massey

Well, it seems to me that these same three features also shape the way that Quaker environmentalists approach environmental issues. Here is what I mean:

Mystical Character

First, because of our Society's essentially mystical character, our Quaker environmental movement has been swifter than most to give up old, unhealthy ways of thinking about nature.

For instance, we have been quick to shake off the idea that the natural world is simply a collection of "properties" or "resources" that we are to exploit as "stewards". For that may be how we are taught to think of nature by the profit-chasing world, with its superficial pseudo-pieties by which it seeks to justify the hardness of its heart⁶ -- but that is not how we Friends experience nature in God's presence.⁷

Our religious experience of the natural world is pervaded by a strong sense of God's presence immanent within it -- a feeling so strong that it moves us directly to the worship of God, just as we would be moved to worship in a church or temple where we suddenly became strongly conscious of God's presence.

And so we have come to look upon nature as a temple God created for Himself, and as deserving not of "stewardly" exploitation, but of healing and humble respect. And we have come to recognize that the non-human creatures are our fellow worshipers in that temple, our fellow inhabitants of God's Kingdom, and to realize that as such they are entitled to all the rights, all the gentleness and consideration, that Christ himself would give them.⁸

This difference has brought us to a rather more radical environmentalism than most churches have developed, because a concern for the creature's rights and the sanctity of the natural world cuts far deeper than a mere concern for stewardship of resources. But I hasten to add that our radicalism is a very gentle one, in keeping with our peaceable character as Friends.

Prophetic Approach

Second, in keeping with our religion as a whole, our approach to environmental issues is markedly prophetic.

I must confess that it has taken time for this prophetic character to emerge. When our modern Quaker religious-environmental movement began in the 1980s, most of us who became involved in it didn't understand at all what God was calling us to do; and so we spent our efforts on things like recycling programs, Earth Day tree-plantings, and lobbying for laws -- good activities, yes, but really just carry-overs from the secular environmental movement, without any deeply religious or spiritually inspired character about them.

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