St Francis Lecture |
Behold I show you a mystery. We have a great deal of knowledge about the facts, the causes and effects of environmental degradation but it seems to be hard to translate this knowledge into the degree of awareness which transforms our way of being in the world; the awareness which generates energy for the profound changes which are needed in the way we live now.
St Francis Day was last Tuesday. It was marked in London by the visit of Mr Putin. He came among others things to discuss global warming. I wonder if the subject of the Siberian peat bog, the size of France and Germany combined, was raised? According to an article in the New Scientist in the summer, Sergei Kirpotin of Tomsk University and Judith Marquand of Oxford have reported that the sub Arctic region of Western Siberia, the world’s largest peat bog has started to thaw for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the close of the last ice age. The worry is that as it thaws it will release billions of tonnes of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
In its last major report in 2001, the intergovernmental panel on climate change predicted a rise in global temperatures of 1.4 to 5.8 degrees centigrade over the period 1990-2100. This estimate, however, only takes account of global warming driven by known greenhouse gas emissions and it may well have to be revised upward especially if Siberia thaws.
At the beginning of this year as a result of the personal leadership of the Prime Minister an international conference was held in Exeter at the HQ of the Met Office. As is well known Mr Blair has identified the problem of global warming as one of the challenges to be tackled during the UK’s stint this year in the chair both of the G8 group of rich nations and of the European Union.
The conference reprised the well known facts about global warming but there were also two unexpected disclosures. First the British Antarctic Survey reported that there was a real danger of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet breaking up. Were it to collapse into the sea it would raise global sea levels by about 16 feet. That puts Westminster at risk. Only four years ago it was stated at the previous conference in the series that the ice sheet was safe for a thousand years. The scientific assessment now is that this judgement is unsafe.
The second warning concerned the acidification of the oceans. CO2 emissions not only have an impact on climate but dissolved in water are causing chemical changes in the oceans detrimental to the small marine organisms at the bottom of the food chain. These are the organisms on which life in the sea depends.
These are not computer generated scenarios but the fruit of actual observation in the real world. More recently there have been reports from the other pole that the Arctic ice sheet is contracting. Signs of irreversible changes in our eco-system are multiplying.
Prophecy should not be strident talk about matters only dimly understood. It must be informed by the best possible science and history which is why the report laid before the General Synod of the Church of England earlier this year and entitled, “Sharing God’s Planet” starts with a brief and clear summary of the facts of the case. If you have not read this excellent and practical document, I urge you to do so.
This evening however, rather than spending our time in an immobilising inspection of the signs of approaching ecological crisis, I want to look to St Francis as a witness to a Christian tradition of living wisely on this earth which has its roots in the Bible and in the work of Jesus himself. Then I want to suggest some ways forward in our personal lives, in our life as an institution and in our role as citizens by which we can be witnesses to our generation in the face of so much evidence of ecological distress.
“Sharing God’s Planet” begins as I have said with actual observation in the real world. Consideration of the facts however leads us rapidly to the conclusion that the challenges we face are bound up with our way of being in the world and the character of our awareness. Philosophical and social/spiritual changes have combined to widen the divorce between the human observer and the web of life in which we are, in reality, participants. Despite the efforts of Darwin to return human beings to the earth and to the kind of creaturely awareness ascribed in Genesis to Adam, the creature fashioned from the dust of the ground, we have increasingly come to view ourselves in the words of Rene Descartes as “masters and possessors of the earth” and therefore justified in treating the world as mere matter to be exploited. This kind of awareness leads to lethal consequences when it is accompanied by a largely uncritical acceptance of a project of growth without limit with no end in view beyond the process itself.
This state of consciousness is increasingly challenged by the ecological distresses to which it has given rise while it certainly does not reflect the Biblical picture of our relationships as human beings, - our relationship with God; the creation; our neighbours and the dark continent within us. The Synod report makes clear that “creation care” and not simply concern for the environment as a backcloth to human activity, flows from our Christian faith.
One may design a grid to illustrate the various ways in which human beings relate to the material world. Manichees despise matter. Pagans worship matter. Materialists ironically are indifferent to matter.
It is Christians in the light of the Word made flesh who reverence matter as a gift and a channel of communication with the Creator.
It is important to note that the Biblical tradition goes beyond merely commending care for creation as it is but also enrols human beings as co-creators with God. This is what we assert every time we offer bread as fruit of the earth and work of human hands. The Bible does not imply a rejection of the idea of development. According to the Book of Genesis we are to “dress and keep” creation. This implies a balance between care and development.
There is a much fuller treatment of the Biblical material which reflects on our relationship with the creation and the new creation in Christ in the report of the Environment section of the most recent Lambeth Conference 1998. It is rather dense and seems to have been composed for archangels in retreat but it is a concentrated attempt to construct an Eco-theology. Since it is difficult to obtain I intend to have it posted on the Diocesan web site, in the proposed environmental section which we shall develop to give proper prominence to our theme this evening.
The life of St Francis is of course enacted and vivid theology. To understand him we must be careful not to detach him from his context and refashion him as a kind of non dogmatic, leftist eco-freak. He was nourished by the praise of God as seen in his creation which is one of the great themes of the psalms and the canticles which he used in daily worship. Francis does not use the word “natura” and instead talks of the heavens and the earth, the world and all creatures under the heavens. Unsurprisingly he does not have a modern concept of nature as a complex of scientific laws governing the universe. Instead he was profoundly aware of the communication between creatures and their creator as we participate in the God-spun web of life.
The most celebrated expression of a lifetime of meditating on the creation in the light of the scriptures is “The Canticle of Brother Sun”.
“Be praised my Lord with all your creatures
Especially Sir Brother Sun
Who brings the day, and you give light to us through him.”
There is a text of the original Italian and a good translation in Roger Sorrell’s excellent book “St Francis of Assisi and Nature” OUP 1988.
Also as everyone knows he had a special affection for animals. The early and most reliable life of Francis by Thomas of Celano says “So, all things especially those in which some allegorical similarity to the Son of God could be found he would embrace more fondly and look upon more willingly.” An awareness nourished by the treasury of images in scripture caused him to be sensitive to references to Christ in the natural order and of course as a consequence lambs have a special place in his affections. But Francis also noticed worms and forbore to tread upon them because he remembered that verse in Psalm XXI which says I am a worm and no man. He sings with cicadas and enrols robins as friars.
Although steeped in scripture, Francis was suspicious of too much book learning and feared that it might insulate the learned person from the proper object of his study.
Brother Leo one of St Francis’ early companions described the Franciscan Way in the following terms, “The most holy father was unwilling that his friars should be desirous of knowledge and books but he willed and preached to them that they should desire to be founded on holy humility, and to imitate pure simplicity, holy prayer and our lady poverty, on which the saints and first friars did build. And this he used to say was the only safe way to one’s own salvation and the edification of others, since Christ to whose imitation we are called, showed and taught us this alone by word and example.”
Human beings are hungry and thirsty creatures. When it says in the book of Genesis that God breathed into the first human being and “man became a living soul”, the word for “soul” used in this passage is “nephesh” which also had the ancient meaning of “throat”. Human beings are hungry and thirsty not only for the wherewithal to sustain existence but for meaning and joy in life. For many their search for the wherewithal to satisfy their hunger and thirst is concentrated on acquiring things but for some, often those who in Luther’s words have “sinned boldly”, there is a breakthrough to a deeper joy and a thirst which no-thing can slake, only immersion in the living God.
Francis shows us this way. I suspect that it is significant that he had bourgeois origins and enjoyed a very jolly time as a young man on his father’s money – father being a wealthy wholesale textile merchant. After his conversion Francis would have been reluctant to join a “make poverty history” campaign because he believed that “our lady poverty” was a companion who can lead us into profound communication with God and other creatures. But there is all the difference in the world between the poverty which comes from renunciation and the grinding poverty which is inflicted on so many people in today’s world and which shrivels the brains of children and leaves millions naked to fear. In our circumstances, we are right to be involved in the anti-poverty coalition and not complacent about the suffering that so many of our contemporaries endure. Spirituality like civilisation develops when you don’t have to worry too much about where lunch is coming from.
Francis surprised within himself a longing, a hunger and thirst for joy, for truth, for a depth of compassion which could not be satisfied by having things but which could only be tasted by an immersion in the reality of the living God.
In his life, especially in the one by Thomas of Celano you can see the course he followed. One very profound turning point came in the little ruined church of San Damiano outside Assisi. The church in which Francis was praying earnestly for guidance was very dilapidated and as he gazed on the face of Christ on the cross he heard a voice addressing him, “Francis go and repair my church which as you see is falling down.”
In parenthesis I am always amused by the indignation of the rich when it comes to repairing and beautifying the church of God. You would think they had reached the pinnacle of spiritual awareness at which they had passed beyond the veil and did not need any symbols to point the way. In reality of course they often combine a taste for private opulence with a tolerance of public squalor which is truly amazing.
Francis by contrast began rebuilding the church with his own hands but also contributed cash raised by selling some of his father’s stock. The old man was not amused and the case came before the bishop. The bishop decided that the money should be returned since the church should not profit from money which had not been freely given. Good for the bishop. Whereupon Francis who understood the power of acted parables, stripped off there and then and gave back not only the money but also his clothes. Standing naked he gave himself utterly to the service of God and entered a life of hardship and privation but which also brought him into the zone of joy which was and is fascinating and attractive.
We brought nothing into the world and it is certain that we can take nothing out. This is a fearful truth but if we want liberation from fear then as Philoxenus of Mabbug said we must embrace this reality. “Let people look at their beginning and their end and try to be like that also during the time in between.”
Stripping off the surface self, the self with which our ancestors covered themselves to hide from the living God in the Paradise Garden, to be in the state in which Jesus presented himself to the Father, progressively simplifying our lives and embracing in all humility our creatureliness, kissing as Francis did the leper - that is the hard way through the barrier of fear to the joy and liberation of which Francis sings.
He followed the way that Jesus Christ opened up. According to the letter Paul addressed to the Christians of Philippi, Christ “did not snatch at equality with God but came in the form of a servant”. In his coming in this form, Christ teaches that the first step in becoming a human being is to refuse to be a little god living in the delusion that the universe and all things exist for our commodity. On the Christian way there is no evading the challenge to make sense of what this Copernican revolution means for each of us personally.
It is crucial not to be so intoxicated with the beauty of the idea of the self emptying of God and the story of Francis that we fail to take the simple and hard steps to wean ourselves progressively from our addictions and turn ourselves towards the living God.
Francis it must be confessed was a tad theatrical. This can be off putting and he has not always appealed to those who like me tend to be nature’s Dominicans. But he and his movement were fortunate perhaps in being rooted in a culture which did not jump to the comfortable conclusion that he really just needed therapy and he continues to fascinate in every age.
He calls us to be practical and to return to the body, and to recognise our frailty and our companionship with fellow lepers. If we are called to joy then we make progress on this road by acts of renunciation and simplification.
Any contemporary approach to the ecological distresses of the planet from a Christian point of view requires personal action not only because tactically we ought to put our own house in order before we lecture others which is true but also because returning to the humus and to our bodies is a pre-condition for a strengthening of the awareness needed for greater spiritual adventure in a joyful spirit.
I am impressed by the 25/5 challenge proposed by Colin Challen MP. If we are convinced that global warming is a fact and that carbon emissions have something to do with it then it is tempting to believe that what I do will make very little difference and just wait for government or developments in technology to come up with the answer.
But as we saw in the Jubilee 2000 campaign, the Christian community with allies from other faiths and people of simple good will can make a difference by putting the subject on the agenda and by demonstrating that there is a constituency for change. In this way they can enlarge the room for manoeuvre so that sympathetic politicians can be emboldened to act without placing themselves too far distant from public opinion. I studied the party manifestoes at the last election and the sections on climate change were very disappointing. One manifesto after talking in semi mystical terms about the party’s kinship with nature promised as a commitment to “end the war with the motorist”. But I expect that action on climate change did not feature very much in the focus groups and other measurements of what we want from our governments. We and our neighbours can change this situation.
The 25/5 Campaign asks individuals to reduce their carbon emissions by 25% over a five year period ending not later than 2010. I hope that we shall be able to provide quickly on the web site a link to a carbon reduction calculator based on Mayer Hillman and Tina Fawcett’s “How to save the Planet” Penguin 2004.
This is a relevant modern way of enacting Francis’s call to greater simplicity for the sake of profounder communication with God and all other creatures. So many commentators have looked with hope to the Church and her spiritual resources as a potential ally in the common struggle.
One obvious example is the urgent need for a Christian re-discovery of the Sabbath as the crown of creation and a festival of equilibrium and enoughness.
The Genesis narrative asserts that creation reaches its consummation not in the creation of human beings on the sixth day but in the peace of the Sabbath on the seventh. At the same time the Sabbath concept when related to the fallow season for the earth points to the need for respect for our common home and restraint on human intervention and exploitation of the natural order.
Rather than being a mere pause between bouts of activity, the Sabbath was to be a feast of contentment. The rhythm of Sabbath days and Sabbath years reclaims time itself from being a mere succession of passing moments. It gives life a shape which flows from the recognition so powerful in Francis that creation was brought into being not to serve any transient human purpose but to be material for the praise and glory of the Creator.
Creation “wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell” knowing no respite from our demands for “more”. The Sabbath must be re-invigorated not as a nostalgic symbol of the religious past but as an anticipation of the harmony and sustainable equilibrium of the Kingdom. Needless to say our Jewish relatives have much to teach us in this respect.
The six people who occupy our quite modest flat [it is important for bishops to be prolier than thou these days] are urgently researching our personal response to 25/5 and I hope that our Diocesan Environmental Policy which is being prepared by Chris Brice and others will include similar examples of practical change that we can make.
After a rash of ecological concern in the seventies, the subject seems in more recent years to have receded from view and relegated to the suburbs of our interest. I believe that we are now close to a tipping point in popular consciousness and we must play our part as followers of Jesus Christ in indicating clearly what one person, what single communities can do to develop a transforming awareness of the peril in which we stand and to assist a shift into a way of living wisely.
In this connection I should also like to commend the Conference, Hope for the Planet, organised by A Rocha and to be held on November 24th at St Michael’s Chester Sq. There are fuller details of the very impressive panel of speakers for that occasion at the back of church. This occasion is not primarily for the usual suspects. You are encouraged to bring a non green friend.
I have said something about our personal responses but our institutional response as a church is also important. There are three new bishop’s houses being planned Bristol, Leeds and Oxford. I am struck by the symbolic and practical possibilities. Hats off to the Co-op Insurance Society which occupies the tallest building in Manchester whose large array of solar panels are planned to generate enough power to satisfy 75 houses. I was also very impressed by a visit to the Reichstag in Berlin and the use of renewable energy there. Surely there must be scope for a partnership with local authorities in looking afresh at the potential of our buildings in the light of developments in the field of renewable energy. It must be also possible to set tough new environmental standards for all new buildings but in the absence of those I believe that the church should act in an exemplary way.
As institutions of course we are also responsible for developing ethical investment policies, especially those with a bearing on the environmental challenge we face. Earlier in the year I was invited to launch the International Interfaith Investment Group. It goes under the rather pithier name of 3IG. Representatives of the founding members were assembled; Buddhists, Christians, Druze, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs and Zoroastrians supported by major banks and investment advisory groups.
It has been estimated that the portfolios held by the world’s religious bodies amount to about 6% of the total world investment capital but of course the reach and influence of the great world faiths into their various constituencies is even greater. We should not underestimate the influence which we could exert. Together we could be influential in developing a dialogue and a practice of faith-consistent investing. This is one of those moments where our single wired-up world is struggling to express its unity while celebrating the diversity of our voices.
There has always been a via negativa in that we do not invest in areas which we consider to be negative or inimical to human well being such as the international arms trade. This obviously continues to be a vital part of any faith-consistent investing.
While respecting this via negativa, 3IG is proposing something rather more adventurous, a via positiva.
It could have three tracks.
First is there a potential for deliberately investing in those enterprises directly involved with beneficial developments in areas of most concern to people of faith?
Faith communities invest for the long term which in any case has an impact on their investment strategy. Could support for the industry concerned with developing the technology for and the production of renewable energy be the kind of investment which balances responsibility to beneficiaries with pro-active faith consistent investing? There is recent evidence that faith investors are taking this possibility seriously.
Britain according to the recent survey in the Economist derives only about 4% of its energy from renewable sources which is less than America or China. There would seem to be scope locally for a closer look at this sector as a subject for a proactive faith-consistent strategy.
Second as responsible players we are in a position to engage in dialogue even with multinationals given the international character of our constituency and our many opportunities to highlight particular issues.
Global business is organised in conglomerates and it is difficult to target investment in a way that isolates ethically challenging parts of the business. Hence it is very important that faith communities should use their involvement in the market to be ethically informed and concerned investors, and at the very least more frequent attenders at AGM’s to ask searching questions. I am grateful for the lead given in this respect by Andreas Whittam Smith a former financial journalist who is now the First Church Estates Commissioner.
Recent examples of more probing dialogue by faith based investors include conversations with Shell about oil extraction in the Delta of Nigeria and what can be done to reduce corruption and to secure a fairer return for the local community from the wealth that is being extracted. Also, just to draw another example from the experience of my own community, as both a landowner and investor, our continuing dialogue with the large supermarkets aims at providing a fairer return for primary producers.
These are activities which are both ethically responsible and also in line with our fiduciary responsibility to our beneficiaries.
Thirdly there is the possibility and this cannot fail to be enhanced by the network we are launching together in 3IG, of ourselves developing in partnership with banks and other providers of expertise some faith based vehicles for investment in beneficial areas. Our constituencies dispose of infinitely more resources than the relatively modest historic assets held by the central institutions of the faiths themselves and we could develop attractive investment opportunities with the hope of appealing to our wider membership.
One example of such a potential investment opportunity is the plan developed by the Church of Sweden with its close links with government and centuries of experience in managing forests, to replant the forest on the Lichinga plateau in Northern Mozambique, one of the poorest regions of that very impoverished country. The forest was cut down and sold during the era of Soviet domination and the present plan endorsed by the Mozambique Government and the World Bank has been developed in partnership with the Anglican Diocese of Niassa to benefit local people. In the process they have been enlisted as enthusiastic allies in protecting the investment. They will benefit also from the development of secondary enterprises like a furniture factory.
If we want to taken seriously as citizens with a distinctive contribution to make to the debate on how to secure our future on this planet then we have to earn our place at the table by the kind of actions I have outlined but that does not mean that we should omit sharp and public challenge to government to substantiate its own rhetoric. I have worked through the executive summary of the Government’s policy document “Securing the future; delivering UK sustainable development strategy.” It is an impressive programme but last year’s report of the Sustainable Development Commission suggests that the UK will fall short of the goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2010. The Commissioners go on to say that “the Government’s projections do not yet show the radical shift needed to a low carbon path, nor are there policies in place to achieve more sustainable a patterns of energy generation and consumption”. Mr Blair has shown leadership on this issue but as he has said, “to acquire global leadership on the issue then Britain must demonstrate it first at home.” Quite so.
St Francis had the courage and temerity to travel to Egypt to address Sultan Melek-el-Kamel. He did not succeed in converting him but according to Jacques de Vitry the Sultan’s last words to Francis were “Pray for me that God may deign to reveal to me that law and faith which is most pleasing to him.” It was a real conversation, challenging but charitable. Once again Francis shows the way in our own day.
We all need conversion not once only in words but decisively in a way of living wisely which leads to progressive transformation. Conversion means turning from the attempt to satisfy our hunger and thirst just by being consumers. Consumers are to grow into citizens and communicants, beings in communion with God’s creation, then perhaps we shall know the joy which comes with being a true contemplative. Consumer to citizen, communicant and contemplative that is the way of conversion which was enacted by our brother Francis. Thank God for him and may God give us grace to follow his saints in faith and hope and love Amen.
