Written by Jordan Bailey
HUmanity sponsored a conversation with Hendrix College visiting philosophy professor J. Aaron Simmons on Tuesday night. The discussion was entitled “The Widow, the Orphan, the Stranger and the Swamp-marsh: Why Christians are Responsible for Non-Humans.”
Simmons spoke to a group of students and faculty in the Rock House about the relationship between Christian ethics and environmental responsibility.
Alan Elrod invited Simmons on behalf of HUmanity, and he said the goal of the discussion was to allow people to become involved in discourse rather than listening to a lecture without any engagement.
“What we hope to gain from this is the importance of the exchange of ideas,” Elrod said.
Simmons began his discussion with the Christian imperative to care for other humans and then asked if non-humans counted as neighbors. He then quoted Bill Moyers as an example of people who claim Christian values contradict taking care of the earth.
Simmons discussed several charges made against Christians because of a lack of political involvement in environmental concerns, including that a belief in the second coming prevents investments in the care of the earth. Other charges are the interpretation of the call to have dominion over the earth as a call to exploit the planet and the dualism of spiritual and physical, which can lead to carelessness.
Simmons then discussed two general branches of evangelical environmentalism represented by the Evangelical Climate Initiative and the Cornnwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.
According to Simmons, the largest distinctions between the groups are that ECI is committed to the reality of human-caused climate change and favors direct governmental action to address environmental problems.
The Cornwall Alliance, however, is not focused on human-caused climate change, and it favors free-market environmental fixes involving technology.
“I think it’s a problem when politics guides theology,” Simmons said.
In 1970, Frances A. Schaeffer wrote “Pollution and the Death of Man,” and Simmons used this book to show how a Christian view of ecology as a political issue was not a new phenomenon. Simmons said Schaeffer argues that Christians should side with hippies about the environment, but that when abortion entered the political arena, environmental protection was overshadowed.
The landmark Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, in which the court declared most abortion laws unconstitutional, occurred in 1973, and abortion continues to be a voting issue for many evangelical Christians.
Simmons said that two reasons evangelicals are divided about environmentalism are the “fear of a slide to liberal positions on other issues and fear of dividing the evangelical community’s perceived unity.”
The discussion then transitioned to how Christians can support environmental protectionism and why Simmons believes that ecology is a central issue of Christian ethics.
“We don’t have to revise our theology; we just need to live up to it,” Simmons said.
In the Genesis creation account, God said “it is good” six times before the creation of humans, so God places value on creation, and the word water occurs more often in the Bible than the word love, according to Simmons.
Simmons also charged the group to be open to different conceptions of Christian community and to be willing to say that different interpretations are possible.
“We have to be careful with getting lost in a cause,” Simmons said.
Simmons then told a story about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian who resisted the Nazis during World War II. According to the story, Bonhoeffer stood and saluted an SS Officer when he entered a café. The theology students sitting with Bonhoeffer questioned him, and he told them that he refused to let the enemy decide when and where to fight the battle.
Simmons connected Bonhoeffer’s views on fighting when appropriate to political involvement in environmental protectionism.
“Being committed to environmentalism need not require a softening on other issues,” Simmons said.
The group asked several questions about incorporating social justice and environmentalism, and Simmons conversed with the students as the discussion shifted. He referred to the parable of the Good Samaritan as a demonstration of love by a social outcast who helps a beaten man on the side of the road.
“In my opinion, [the Good Samaritan] demonstrates how ministry is a rupturing of the logic of the world,” Simmons said.
Simmons encouraged students to be socially aware and engage people in conversation while avoiding arrogance.
“Arrogance is always a problem, but honesty is always a way forward,” Simmons said.
