Stewardship in Action:

Lance Long

Law Professor at Stetson University in Florida

How did you become interested in environmental law?

I first became interested in environmental law in 1971 while I was a boy living in a rustic cabin north of Ketchum, Idaho. I loved living in the Sawtooth Mountains, and was enthralled with the beauty of the west. One morning on our school bus ride to Hailey, Idaho (we rode the bus with Ernest Hemingway’s granddaughters, Margaux and Mariel) we discovered that all of the billboards south of Ketchum had been felled by an environmental activist dubbed “Chainsaw Charlie.” (The decaying wooden stumps of some of the billboards can still be seen today.) I was excited by the bold action that had resulted in a beautified landscape, but was troubled by its illegal nature. Twenty-five years later, I found myself representing industrial polluters and land developers as an attorney for Morrison & Foerster in Orange County, California. I didn’t feel good about what I was doing with my life and started changing it. I started teaching legal writing at BYU, and in 2007, I took a visiting professor position at the University of Oregon, mostly because of its environmental law programs. While at Oregon, I came into contact with some of the most intelligent and passionate environmentalists in the world, including Vandana Shiva, Gus Speth, and Mary Wood. My Oregon experience solidified my resolve to become an environmental justice activist. After Oregon, I became a tenured professor at Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport, Florida where I teach legal writing, environmental law, and environmental advocacy.

I have learned that there is no substitute for setting an example, walking the walk. I believe that the best way to create a more kind and sustainable world is to personally lead a more kind and sustainable life. I hope to have an impact on my students more because of how I live rather than the things that I teach.

Why is environmental stewardship important to you?

I believe that environmental stewardship encompasses both social justice and sustainability. For me, the two are inseparable. I believe I cannot be a Christian without caring for the earth and all living things on it.

How does the Gospel affect how you think about the environment?

The Gospel gives me the spiritual and philosophical basis for caring about others in the present and others in future generations. I admire those who strive to live lives that enrich current and future generations even though they may not believe there is any intrinsic spiritual purpose in doing so. I believe there is, and that belief makes environmental stewardship all the more meaningful to me.

What is one message you would like to convey to members of the Church about stewardship?

I would like to convey my belief that stewardship is not about serving the Church. The Church should be about serving God’s children and God’s creation. I believe that if our Church membership is not about seeking equality in temporal and spiritual things, then we are not being wise stewards. I believe happiness and peace are found in loving each other, the earth, and all things in it.

To see more of Lance is involved in, see this video promoting environmental law at Stetson, and this article about the projects Lance’s students are working on.

If you would like to suggest someone to highlight in the future, let us know! 

1. Advocacy Requires Knowledge and Humility

Advocacy is precarious. You risk becoming what Mormon thinker Hugh Nibley once called a zealot without knowledge. So you need knowledge. This includes the knowledge of large environmental issues such as climate change and air pollution and basic ecology, knowledge of the political process, knowledge of the history and environmental conditions where you live, and deeper knowledge and responsibility to your beliefs. As a result of taking the path of advocacy, I feel that I know my home and its ecology better, I know my politics better, and I know my religion better.

But advocacy thrives on an excess of selective information and a reduction of the complexity of problems; as a result, there is not a whole lot of humility. Bringing religion into the civic sphere risks adding religious fervor to what is already an arena of fanaticism. But if religion and civic engagement can keep us within sight of what we don’t know and therefore what others might understand better than we do and ultimately why we need each other, then I think the alchemy can work. As Wendell Berry puts it, “to counter the ignorant use of knowledge and power we have, I am afraid, only a proper humility.”

2. Advocacy That Stems From Your Own Beliefs Brings You to a Broader Community

I engaged in advocacy, especially on behalf of climate change, because of my deeply held Mormon beliefs, but this has given me the great gift of valuable friendships outside of my Mormon circles, no easy task for a Mormon professor at BYU with pioneer ancestors on both sides of my family who lives in Provo. I not only understand my own religion better, but I understand more my indebtedness to the different people, religions, and communities that make up this great state. These people have moved and inspired me because of their commitment to the well-being of their community and because of their interest in reaching out to Mormons. They have helped me to be a better Mormon.

3. Advocacy Tries to Change Leadership But It Needs to Change the Electorate

Activists get involved because they don’t like the political status quo, but it is often not elected officials or other power brokers who are the root of the problem but the electorate itself. The fact is that most Americans know little about the political process. They cannot name who represents them at the city, state, and national levels. And most Americans read the news so rarely or so superficially and do so little work to keep themselves informed that it is not surprising that our elected officials and party platforms so often assume positions far more extreme than the majorities. So it is not surprising, actually, that the majority of Republicans want action on climate change or that over 90% of Americans want action on gun control, but government is not responsive. They get away with this because they can. Changing leadership helps, but we can more easily lose a good leader than gain one. It is politically more sustainable to change the culture.

4. Mormon Environmentalism is Not an Oxymoron, But It Ain’t Easy

Although stewardship does not get the attention it deserves in Mormon culture, LDS church leaders have made it emphatically clear that we should be engaged in civic causes that are related to our doctrines. As Elder Oaks once said in a speech to the students at BYU in 2004: “a less concerned, less thoughtful and less informed citizenry… results in less responsive and less responsible government.” Every Mormon knows that “men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness” (D&C 58). Elder Christofferson said this at a recent worldwide training:

“There doesn’t have to be an agreement on all points of doctrine for us to collaborate with and work with others. My own experience is that I’m a better person through that kind of association. I’ve had many opportunities in the different places that I’ve lived around the country and outside the U.S. to work with other groups, people of other faiths and, in some cases, no faith, I suppose, but people of real goodwill. And as I said, I feel like I’m a better man for it. And the Church organization really lends itself to group service. Our quorums and wards and all the organizations really do facilitate and prepare us to lead out and, in some cases, to join others.” (emphasis mine)

The paradox is, of course, that despite strong stewardship doctrines and clear encouragement of civic engagement, there remains in this state a strong, even ironclad resistance to policies that promote clean energy, that mitigate against climate change, that protect species, and that seek to protect Utah’s extraordinary wilderness. Because their environmentalism isn’t mainstream, every Mormon environmentalist I know has had to overcome a persistent nagging feeling that others think something might not be right with them. I took comfort from this marvelous statement from President Dieter F. Uchtdorf last weekend: “Sometimes we confuse differences in personality with sin. We can even make the mistake of thinking that because someone is different from us, it must mean they are not pleasing to God. This line of thinking leads us to believe that the Church wants to create every member from a single mold–that each one should look, feel, think, and behave like every other. This would contradict the genius of God…But we are diverse in our social, cultural, and political preferences. The Church thrives when we take advantage of this diversity and encourage each other to develop and use our talents to lift and strengthen our fellow disciples.” Indeed, in all of our attention on the environmental uniformity of the Utah congressional delegation, the governor, and the state legislature, a vibrant and growing Mormon environmentalism has the chance to help the church and the state of Utah thrive, but sadly it remains almost invisible in the public eye. The LDS Earth Stewardship blog hopes to highlight these stories before long because the anti-environmentalism of some prominent Mormons simply gets too much air time.

5. The More We Wait for the LDS Church to Change the Picture, the Less the Picture Will Change

In the absence of strongly worded and frequent messages about environmental stewardship like we heard from Elder Nash, indifference and hostility have flourished, bolstered by what I would call folk theology that, as far as I can make out, has weak doctrinal basis, or none at all, ideas such as the notion that because we are in the last days, there is no need to worry ourselves about climate change, loss of biodiversity, or endangerments to supplies of clean air and water; that individual freedoms are more important than collective responsibilities; that science is categorically suspect; that good stewardship is merely about financial planning, or if it is about the earth, it is only manifested in developing earth’s resources but never about conserving natural resources and natural beauty for future generations; that fossil fuels were given to us by God to allow the development of civilization without a single mention of the possibility that God also gave us sun, wind, geothermal energy, not to mention our own brains to process new information and make appropriate changes in our policies.

When I took a tour of the LEED-certified, solar paneled, Farmington chapel, I was moved to see what the church was doing to be a better steward and was inspired by Bishop Burton’s comment that this was the responsible thing to do as members of the “community of man.” But my biggest concern was that over time, just like every other built environment, the chapel’s connections to the environment would become invisible or insignificant to its attendees without some pedagogical change that would teach worshippers to be more aware of and concerned about how their consumption levels and energy use impact the environment and the poor. A green building cannot substitute for users who are indifferent or hostile to environmental concerns. So more teaching of stewardship doctrines from the church would certainly help.

But it is also important, as President Uchtdorf’s comment implies, that we recognize the necessary gap between doctrines and its various political manifestations. We aren’t all going to agree on policy. We should agree on principles, however. But those who pine for the church to make the definitive statement about environmental issues and policies are wanting a church of strict political uniformity and are pretending that there is, indeed, only one solution to problems that often require many. Besides, focusing on the church’s actions distracts us from our own responsibilities to act on what we already know and may inspire even more passivity as citizens. If we expect the church to be an activist institution, we implicitly suggest that we don’t need to be activists ourselves.

More overt teachings about stewardship from the church would certainly clear the air of suspicion regarding the importance of sound environmental stewardship and unleash the power of the majority of Mormons who await clearer signals to find the courage to speak out and act on behalf of their concern for creation. Politicians and other civic leaders who deny such problems as species extinction and climate change don’t stand much of a chance with such an electorate. In the end, though, I choose not to focus on what the church does or doesn’t do, both because I respect the process of revelation and because I believe religion gains meaning not merely from how frequently or correctly truth is preached but from how deeply it is lived; its power comes not from being right but from inspiring people to be and do good. Environmentalists and people of faith alike sometimes hunger too much for vindication when we should be more worried about finding ways to create good societies in a context of real political and religious differences. We Mormons don’t need new doctrines. We need more thoughtfulness, courage, and common sense. Those aren’t uniquely Christian traits, of course, but when a Christian exhibits them, it sure makes Christianity work a lot better.

In 1999, I was involved in a panel discussion on LDS perspectives on stewardship, sponsored by Save Our Canyons and held on the campus of the University of Utah. Elder Vaughn J. Featherstone spoke, along with three other members of the church, Ted Wilson, Rich Ingrebretsen, and I. In our own ways, we expressed the reasons why we believed Mormonism was consistent with the idea of environmental stewardship. At the time, Elder Featherstone explained that he was not speaking as a formal representative of the church. He wanted to make that clear. Moreover, his comments were personal, reflective, and not systematically doctrinal.

Fourteen years later, this was, as far as I am aware, the only another opportunity to hear from a General Authority on the topic, and it was a very different experience. Elder Nash stated that he was here to formally represent the church. His speech systematically covered the basic doctrines of stewardship in the Mormon faith as found in the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, The Book of Mormon, and in statements by church leaders. His presentation was impeccably well prepared, and he left no doctrinal stone unturned. He talked of the divine and human-centered purpose of the creation, the spiritual creation that made of plants and animals “living souls,” the mandate for human beings to have righteous and not greedy dominion over the earth, which he explains means to use the earth with judgment and modesty, with an interest in blessing the poor and future generations, and with a desire to preserve all of life. He made it clear that we will be judged by how we have treated the physical elements.

I have spent many years emphasizing the doctrines of the church that teach respect for all of life. I think the doctrines of the church are clear enough on the central importance of our creation and our purpose as spirit children of God. My concern has been that without properly understanding our importance in the context of the broad and diverse forms of life, the doctrine of our divine parentage becomes an excuse to use the earth however we want. So I have wanted to emphasize that we have an obligation to learn proper humility and respect for all of life. Indeed, I sometimes hear my fellow Mormons articulate our human importance in a way that strikes me as out of balance with the importance of all other living things, as if our divine parentage were an excuse to abuse or over-consume the earth’s resources and not a call to learn to love, honor, and serve God’s creations with humility. Mormon doctrine is pretty clear about the need to care for the poor, but I have heard many Mormons argue that we can’t care for the poor and care for creation at the same time. Elder Nash beautifully and convincingly stressed the central importance of human life while also emphasizing the need to use the earth’s resources with respect for life and with a desire to bless the poor and future generations. This, of course, is a delicate balancing act, but the doctrines suggest that we have no other choice but to learn how to walk this walk. All other uses seem to fall short of their divine purpose.

I was taught by his talk how to make these doctrinal connections more clear. I think environmentalism has often made the mistake of wanting to denigrate our humanity, let alone the divine spark within us, but it is precisely this spark that can motivate the best kind of behavior when we understand ourselves and our purpose in proper context. A philosophy that exalts human life at the expense of the planet will not do, of course, but neither will a philosophy that exalts all of life while denigrating humanity’s exceptional qualities, which include our capacity for deliberate moral action. If human activity is now affecting the globe as pervasively as it seems it is, making itself felt in the depths of the oceans, in the heights of the atmosphere, and in every corner of the globe, then surely it will not do to be ashamed of our special role as moral agents who can weigh and judge the evidence and make needed changes in our behavior. If we are exceptional in the creation because we are moral agents capable of repentance, we can prove our worth by redressing our now exceptional impact on the planet.

Elder Nash’s intention was not to talk about the application of these doctrines. When asked about such, he quoted from Joseph Smith that the LDS church teaches correct principles and lets members govern ourselves. This struck me as right, and I will say more about this in a subsequent post. But given how unprecedented his speech was in its doctrinal focus on and comprehensive coverage of stewardship, it seems reasonable to hope that the church will make this speech and these teachings more widely available to the church membership. Given how much confusion and disagreement there is in the church on our responsibilities as stewards of the earth and how many ideas I have heard that diverge from what Elder Nash taught, it seems that more teaching is needed if we are to hope that the desired self-governing happens in appropriate ways. In all of my years of writing and teaching about these wonderful doctrines, it is almost universally true that members of the church respond positively but also with a bit of surprise. They are excited and inspired by the doctrines and want to live up to them, but they are a bit perplexed why they haven’t seen them gathered together in speeches by church leaders devoted exclusively to the topic or in topical lessons in the manuals of the church, as they were by Elder Nash. You simply cannot find them organized in this way. The doctrines are all over the scriptures and isolated statements by church leaders are not hard to find, but you will be hard pressed to find such clear and comprehensive coverage as we heard from Elder Nash. I take his presence at the conference and the care with which he prepared his remarks as a positive and unambiguous sign of the church’s commitment to raise the profile of our stewardship doctrines. Given how aggressive the church has been in the greening of its architecture, it only seems appropriate then that we highlight the reason for the faith that is within us.

Her interest in the relationship between religion and ecological thinking began with a trip 40 years ago to Japan, where she saw the interaction of nature and religion at Shinto temples, in Zen gardens (this was before Japan was a tourist attraction, she said), etc. It’s the like the desert here in Utah—“the simplicity of bare stone and sand and a few plants; it awakens you to something greater than yourself.”

Our common ground is wonder—it unites all disciplines [and, though she didn’t say it, can bridge vast idealogical chasms]

As religions move into the ecological phase (with many bumps along the way, of course), a three-pronged approch will include engagement by leadership, grassroots efforts, and engaged scholarship. She sees an unexpected ally in the Catholic Church, with the recently named Pope Francis (“who would have thought he’d take the name of St. Francis of Assissi?”) who has eschewed the “carnival” of the papacy—his word—and mentioned care for the Earth nine times in his first address. Others include the Dalai Lama, the patriarch Bartholomew of the Greek Orthodox Church, the Plum Village monastery.

The most valuable and exciting parts of her talk were no more than bullet points, where she outlined ways of thinking about the relationship between religions and ecology. Here are a few of those lists:

Problems of religions, ecologically speaking: intolerance, dogmatism, exclusive claims to truth, otherworldly orientation, personal salvation—think the Rapture, nature devalued (sacred groves as pagan), anthropocentric [later during Q&A she added “patriarchy”]

Promise of religion for ecological concerns: Huge numbers of people, institutional authority [but to what degree WOULD a papal encyclical affect day-to-day actions of Catholics?], power of text and tradition—she talked about the “Green Bible” and asked, “What would this look like for Mormonism?”

Five elements of religion that can lead to environmental responsibility:

·         Cosmology—orienting

·         Community—grounding

·         Ritual—nurturing

·         Ethics—transforming

·         Personal—awakening

She talked about the new atheist movement—folks like Dawkins—and how their strong, loud voices rail against a caricature of religion. We can recover that picture, shift the conversation, provide a larger understanding that all religions have situated humans in the cosmos and in nature.

She urged a shift not only to nature-centric, but cosmos-centric, to understanding the way that, for instance, carbon-based life was only made possible by supernovae.

Regarding Mormonism in particular, she talked not only of a Mormon version of “green” scriptures, but also the fact that she sees this as an important moment in making Mormonism part of the larger religion and ecology movement. She spoke of relying on folks like George Handley, Jason Brown (who studied with her at Yale), Terry Tempest Williams, and other insiders. She hopes Mormonism can have a place on the Yale Center’s website. Her address made me feel like we are a part of a larger community, helping me realize that environmentally and religiously minded individuals and organizations are all over the place.

She provided a few ideas of where to go for more resources:

Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology—fore.research.yale.edu—they have bibliography, curriculum ideas, can sign up for newlsetter

www.journeyoftheuniverse.org—her current project.

The Earth Charter (http://www.earthcharterinaction.org)—an attempt to put together a universal set of environmental ethics

renewalproject.net—documentary on evangelical Christianity and ecology

Tri Robinson spoke today at the Stegner Symposium on “Religion, Faith, and the Environment” at the University of Utah. Robinson is a pastor from Boise who described his journey from a young boy who found God in the outdoors to a career as a pastor. He described the journey of evangelicalism in the United States over the course of the 70s and 80s and argued that evangelicalism dropped its early interests in creation care when the environmental movement polarized around the question of population control. The more environmentalists focused on population control in the 80s, evangelicals were drawn increasingly to a concern about abortion and the sanctity of life. This led to many Christians feeling that environmental degradation was simply a sign of the times and something to accept as inevitable and it meant, he argued, that they lost sight of the sanctity of all earthly life.

During the Gore/Bush election, his children approached him and asked: who can we vote for? If we vote for one, we vote against the sanctity of life, if we vote for the other, we vote against the well-being of the planet. Why, they asked, have you never given a sermon on environmental stewardship? Why has Christianity remained silent as the earth is being plundered? He described feeling convicted and turned to a serious study of the Bible with a green pen, looking for insight about stewardship. He drew special inspiration from the Old Testament. He finally got up the courage a number of years ago to give his first message about stewardship. He spoke and his audience of some 3000 hearers was silent. They then rose to their feet and applauded. He realized that they had been waiting, hungry for instruction on caring for the earth, needing permission to pursue their concerns. Today environmentalist evangelicals are no longer an anomaly.

He had come full circle and had finally found a way to honor the God he found in the woods, the God Paul speaks of in Romans 1:

19 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.

20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.

Up next, Elder Marcus Nash of the LDS Church will be speaking. More anon!

So this month, take some time to plant some trees, shrubs, or other plants in your yard or community if you can. The best time to plant is usually in the spring or the fall when the weather conditions are ideal for new plants to put down their roots before it gets too hot in the summer.

Going along with this theme, here’s a few ideas for things you can do this month:

• Take a landscaping or gardening class. If you’re in Utah Valley like me, UVU’s Community Education program is offering a landscape design class this month for $45. It meets on two Tuesday evenings and includes a tour of the Morinda Gardens. Central Utah Gardens also offers some classes around this time.
• Purchase a book about local flora and fauna in your area and learn some of the names of plants. Go on a hike and see if you can identify any of them.
• Watch the Oscar-winning animated short The Man Who Planted Trees with your family for Family Home Evening.
• Volunteer to help your ward’s boy scout group to get one of these merit badges: Plant Science, Nature, Forestry, Insect Study, Gardening, Animal Science, Bird Study, Mammal Study, or Reptile and Amphibian Study.

April 22nd is also Earth Day. LDSES is sponsoring an activity for Earth Day, so mark that date on your calendars. More details will be forthcoming.

In David Kinsley’s companion essays that I mentioned in my last post (these essays were published in the indispensable collection This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature and Environment, edited by Roger Gottlieb), Kinsley pays particular attention to the environmental implications of Christianity’s rejection of animism. To see nature as dead matter makes the question of ethics a rather easy one. If nature has no intrinsic value, then there doesn’t seem to be much of a point in worrying ourselves about what we do to it, especially if we also consider the notion that all things were made for the “benefit and use of man,” as it states in D&C 59. He argues that those Christian thinkers, such as Francis of Assisi, who focused on the spiritual dimensions of the physical world, rescued an ethical tradition within Christianity that almost went extinct with the rise of the scientific and industrial ages.

Mormonism has had a deep romance with capitalism and technology; it has often wanted to see all advances of technology, all economic growth, and all improvements in human quality of life as necessary, providential, and sanctioned steps of progress in humanity’s march toward perfection and in the quest to build the kingdom of God on the earth. But there are several important strains of Mormon belief that run counter to these notions that I wish to highlight here.

LDS Belief as Ecologically Responsible:

1)    The Spiritual Creation: All living things—plants, animals, and human beings alike—are “living souls” and are dignified with the opportunity of mortal experience and its chances for happiness. Happiness comes in the fulfillment of purpose, in the flourishing and reproduction of all life. This is unmistakably taught in the restored account of the creation. Everything, therefore, also has intrinsic worth and has a right to enjoy posterity.

2)    Law of Consecration: Yes, LDS doctrine teaches that “there is enough and to spare” and that marriage and childbearing should be encouraged, but there is no mandate to have as many children as possible but only as many as a husband and wife decide together they want to have. Evidence shows that when women receive more education and are in relationships of greater equality, the average size of families decreases. More importantly, the verse from D&C 104 from which this phrase is excerpted does not guarantee there is enough for the world’s population as long as there is inequality and disparity of wealth. This is an important condition to the promise that many Mormons fail to notice. Indeed, it seems that the promise is what then creates the conditions of our accountability before God. It is what then makes us stewards. If we are to protect the sacred nature of family and the central importance of reproduction in marriage, we must be serious about the call to live modestly and to seek to redress poverty.

3)    We are nothing: This is a companion doctrine to the notion that we are children of God. Moses, when he has a vision of the creation not only of this world but of the many worlds under God’s care, is overwhelmed by what he has seen. He collapses and says, “now for this cause I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed” (Moses 1:10). What does this mean? It seems related to the lecture the Lord gives Job in order to teach Job perspective. Both men learn and have faith in the fact that they are sons of God, of divine parentage, but they also must learn requisite humility, lest this idea become an excuse to see their own importance out of proportion with all of life. To do so leads to unrighteous dominion and is what must be tempered by the radical humility that comes from a true apprehension and appreciation for the wide and expansive diversity of God’s creations. Anthropocentrism, in other words, is no excuse for selfishness or disregard for God’s love of his creations. Our divine parentage is a call to service, as Hugh Nibley once said, not a license to exterminate.

4)    Freedom: For some, the need to protect our freedoms is a reason to be suspicion of environmentalism. For others, it is a reason to be concerned about environmental degradation. We are not free when we can’t choose the quality of the air we breathe or the water or food we ingest. Pollution, waste, toxins, and other symptoms of environmental degradation and their impact on human health make us increasingly less free to live our lives without undue restraints. We are often not in a truly free market, able to choose sources of energy, methods of transportation, clothing and food that are calculated to be gentler on the earth. We are seduced by a commercial society, slaves to our own greed. Good modest gospel living and stewardship of the air, water, and earth are ways to fight our way back to greater freedom.

5)    Aesthetic and Spiritual Pleasure: All things are made for our benefit, but chief among those benefits appears to be aesthetic and spiritual pleasure. Nature is not intended to clothe us and feed us alone. It is also to “please the eye and to gladden the heart… to strengthen the body and to enliven the soul” (D&C 59: 18, 19). Adam and Eve were commanded to “dress” the garden but also to “keep” it. In short, the world is a test of our ability to distinguish between needs and wants, to find the deeper and more sustainable pleasures in accepting the bounties of the world independent of what we might need or want to do with the earth’s resources. We are not to be wasteful or excessive, nor to be content to live at a material level above others.

6)    The End is Near: Precisely because the end is near, for some this seems to be an excuse to bypass environmental concerns, but for others, this is precisely what motivates stewardship. Showing gratitude to our Creator by taking care of what we have and living with our hearts and minds turned to future generations, for many, is precisely what an awareness of mortality inspires. Knowing that our time here is limited only makes what we experience here all the more sweet and knowing that providence provides assurance of an end that will not be tragic but redemptive inspires a desire to be worthy of such a magnificent gift. Worthiness can only come by working to make this world, here and now, more like the world to come.

This is not a complete list. There is also the Word of Wisdom and its mandate to eat meat sparingly and fruits and vegetables in season. There is the great notion of a sacred grove, of the need for spiritual refuge in nature. And many more ideas.

One theme emerges as we contemplate the differences between this list and the list from my previous post. We are faced with some interesting and challenging paradoxes. Mormonism asks us to live with a deep appreciation of our central human significance but with profound humility; it asks us to accept the earth’s bounty as God’s gift to us for our well being and to work hard for our own provision but to live in such a way to provide for all of life’s flourishing; it asks us to understand the importance of family and children without losing sight of the right of all living things to posterity; its asks us to be creative engineers of our constructed world but to appreciate the beauties of an untouched “unimproved” nature; it asks us to protect our agency but to learn to work together with others so that freedom is never merely individual but also social; it asks us to keep our eye on the eternities while seeing the life we make here and now as the most important manifestation of our spirituality.

Paradoxes are not easy to live with and there is no shortage of packaged ideologies offered to us that seduce us into thinking we can do without them, but they are the crosses or contradictions we must bear and suffer in order to generate more creative, more compassionate, and more acceptable responses to life.

This is cross-posted at

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/homewaters/2013/03/lds-belief-as-ecologically-responsible.html

White-winged Crossbill, Spruce Run Reservoir, New Jersey

Millions of years of crossbills and coniferous forests adapting to each other, overseen by their creator, experiencing joy in the sphere of their creation. As inheritors of these forests, we honor these birds and their Creator by preserving that sphere. So on this Good Friday, as we think about Jesus on the cross, perhaps we can also think on the legend of the crossbills, as well as their history and our duty to their creation. All things testify of Christ–as long as we learn to recognize, and protect, their living testimony.

Around 2008, Harris decided to create a small polar bear sculpture out of white plastic grocery bags and attached the bear to a subway grating in New York. When the sculpture is at rest, it looks like an ordinary piece of trash on the grating. But as as the subway passes by, it pushes air up through the grating, animating the bear in a pretty life-like way:

It’s best to see a video of the bear so that you can see how it works. Harris has posted an excellent video of Air Bear on his home page if you’d like to check it out. He also later did a video with Sesame Street of a similar sculpture that I’m rather partial to:

Harris eventually forgot about the bear until someone took a video/picture of it and posted it on the Internet. People started gushing about the bear statue and it quickly went viral on the web. The overwhelming attention the bear received inspired Harris to make several more more inflatable bag animals and place them throughout New York.

Here’s a few of my favorites (although there’s plenty more interesting ones besides these on his website):

Again, it’s best to see these sculptures in animation, so I’d recommend checking out Harris’s website to watch some of the videos about them. I’d also recommend watching a video interview with Harris posted by the New York Magazine.

There are a number of reasons why I’m intrigued by Harris’s artwork. One reason is that his artwork has an element of surprise and drama. As Harris says: “Part of the magic is that it looks like trash on the street and then it becomes animated and comes to life.” As I mentioned earlier, sometimes it’s easy to get used to seeing litter to the point where we stop thinking about it. But Harris’s inflatable bag animals cause us to take notice of trash bags and think about them in a different way. For me, it makes me reflect on how our trash in some ways has a life of its own. (Literally, in this case!) Even though I might throw a plastic grocery bag away, it doesn’t mean it no longer exists. It will continue to exist and have an impact on the environment over the long-term whether I realize it or not. Using humor and whimsy, Harris’s artwork makes us notice the litter in our environment that is otherwise invisible and taken for granted as “somebody else’s job to clean up.”

Another thing I find intriguing about Harris’s sculptures is that they can sometimes evoke an emotional response. On one level, I recognize that these sculptures are non-living objects made out of plastic trash bags or grocery bags. But on another level, I find that I respond emotionally to the creatures as though they were alive. Some people have commented that watching the sculptures deflate makes them feel sad, as though the sculpture is dying. This is especially poignant with the polar bear sculptures. Polar bears are often a visible symbol of the effects of climate change. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the use of the subway (i.e. public transportation) is what brings these polar bears back to life?

Lastly, what I like about these sculptures is that it makes us think differently about cityscapes. In an interview with New York Magazine, Harris said: “The part that is exciting is [that the] city decides how it’s going to animate the sculpture.” Harris’s artwork reminds me that a city is an ecosystem too. I often erroneously think of cities as existing independently of the environment, as being somehow separate or removed from nature. But the truth is that cities are a kind of unique, human-created ecosystem with many of the same characteristics of natural ecosystems. They, too, depend on the interaction of living and non-living processes to sustain life and support the cycling of goods such as food, air, and fresh water. I wonder if I don’t always think of cities as being ecosystems because I don’t see large animals roaming about them. What’s cool about the inflatable bag animals is that they come to life and even begin to interact with unsuspecting pedestrians or cars in humorous ways. Watching humans interact with these faux city animals gives me pause and makes me think more about the city as a kind of unique environment in its own right.

At any rate, these whimsical sculptures are quite simply awe-inspiring feats of engineering in and of themselves. I wish that we had an underground subway system here in Utah because I think it would be fun to try making a few inflatable bag monsters of my own. Seriously cool!

As much as many of us might want to believe that our religion, if deeply believed and lived, should produce certain inevitable and tangible goods in terms of the behavior of the adherents, I am also aware that devotion to the religion is not the only ingredient that determines such outcomes. After all, leaders at the highest levels of the church disagree often. If it were not the case, councils would not be necessary. The principle seems to be that we need to listen and engage in more dialogue in order to arrive at a deeper level of understanding of the truth. A human truth is that we are selective and willful readers of texts. We miss as much as we gain, which is another reason why we need to listen to one another, so that we might be corrected and edified together.

I am fully aware that for many LDS, environmental concerns are very low on their list of priorities. I am also aware of another phenomenon, which is perhaps even more perplexing than indifference: it is that for many LDS, stewardship simply means very different things to people. Many fellow Mormons have told me that stewardship means that we should care for the environmental but never at the expense of our eternal quest for spiritual development. For such believers, their strong opposition to the environmental causes of the day—whether it be climate change, wilderness preservation, or species protection—stems directly from this definition of stewardship as informed by LDS belief. Their anti-environmentalism does not stem from indifference to nature, in other words. They might find respite and spiritual renewal in the outdoors as easily as I do, but they find the urgency of environmentalism off-putting because it isn’t necessary. Our attitudes and behavior might be harmful to nature, but for many LDS that is the cost of focusing on the eternities, a cost many believers feel we should be willing to pay. Indeed, some go so far as to see this as a kind of virtue, since it demonstrates fortitude in light of strong opposition and perspective on the things that matter most.

I would like to briefly explore this reasoning a little further. LDSES is devoted to understanding how Mormonism is environmentally friendly, but perhaps it will be useful to pose the two philosophies together so as to understand the grounds for the differences we sometimes find in the church about environmentalism. There is no doubt that one chief obstacle for many Mormons is that environmentalism seems to be the purview of liberals, and since the majority of Mormons identify as conservatives, LDS anti-environmentalism may simply stem more from political ideology than from theology. I have addressed this question earlier, and there is more to say about it (not the least of which is that environmentalism is conservative by definition—it wants conservation, caution, and caretaking—and that much of our most important environmental legislation has come from Republican presidents), but my focus here is on theology itself. What follows are ideas I hear and are not offered with any criticism or claim to objectivity. I simply think it is useful to hear the reasoning. My intention is to follow up with a second post that explores LDS Doctrine as Ecologically Responsible. You can read a taste of my own views on this here.

LDS Doctrine as Ecologically Harmful:

1)    The parable of the talents:  I often hear this parable cited as evidence that the Lord is never pleased when we are given resources and choose only to preserve or protect them from harm. To worry unduly about conservation is to adopt fear and exhibit mistrust in ourselves and in God. This fear is not warranted by the gospel of hope and eternal progression in which we believe. True stewardship, then, means that we should make full and creative use of God-given resources and make improvements on a fallen world; we should, in short, develop or “dress the Garden.” What we can make of the world is a test of our creativity and our trust in the spark of divinity within us. To bypass the use of such things as fossil fuels is to ignore that they are what have provided for the improvement of the human condition under modernity and the meteoric rise of the church in the last days. They were God-given, in other words. It would be ingratitude to God to imagine the use of such resources as a mistake. Besides, the scriptures promise that there “is enough and to spare,” so we needn’t worry ourselves about diminishing resources (D&C 104).

2)    We are God’s children: LDS belief is arguably one of the most anthropocentric, or human-centered, theologies in Christianity because it elevates human significance to the status of being gods in embryo. We are offspring of divinity and this alone makes us stand in stark contrast to every living thing around us. This stands in opposition, it seems, to virtually every environmental philosophy out there, all of which imply if not directly state that the roots of our environmental indifference and poor caretaking of the natural world stems from an inflated and overstated sense of human significance. Indeed, for many LDS, worry about the environment is a symptom of a failure to understand the spark of divinity with us. LDS scriptures seem to imply that all of creation is for us, and we are expected to make use of the earth’s resources for our ends alone. This is what is understood by the idea of having been given dominion over the whole earth.

3)    Eternal Perspective: Because LDS theology stares so deeply into eternity, we should expect to live with a keen sense of the temporary nature of earthly conditions. If we understand our bodies, this earth, and all of creation as the rhetorical stage upon which we are learning to work out our eternal progression, then what happens to the earth in the process of doing such work is merely part of the plan and is certainly accounted for by divine providence. We will make mistakes, to be sure, but we ought not to panic and stay focused in our trust in God’s purposes. What is lasting and eternal is what becomes of us, not the conditions of this earth.

4)    Family comes first: We are a pro-family religion, one that believes that procreation is itself divinely mandated. We are to multiply and replenish the earth, and philosophies that denigrate well-intended parental desires to have a family or erode the freedom of parents to decide the size of their own family are to be avoided. Moreover, the family is the locus of our most important moral and ethical considerations. If we adopt philosophies that point us beyond the home and beyond concerns for human well-being, we might run the risk of compromising our ability to sustain family life.

5)    Freedom: Free will is central to LDS theology. We have seen a gradual erosion of freedoms over the course of the last century, particularly as a result of secularism. Environmentalism often requires large-scale solutions that impinge upon the freedoms of individuals and communities and is therefore to be treated with suspicion.

6)    The End is Near: A Church that has “Latter-day Saints” in its title is unapologetically focused on the final preparations for the Second Coming. To worry ourselves about sustainability or long-term environmental effects of our actions is to miss the point. We should not only be focused on eternity but also on the relatively brief future ahead of us before we enter into the millennium where much of these concerns will be taken care of. What is the point of worrying ourselves about the planet when it is destined to die and ressurrect anyway?

This is not a complete list, and perhaps my readers will have more ideas on this. Given these positions, it might be debatable whether or not ecological harm even matters in an LDS worldview, but there is no doubt that these attitudes–as important as they may be– are not conducive to careful consideration of environmental harm we might cause as a result of the myriad of choices we make individually and as a society on a daily basis. There is, of course, another side to the coin.

To be continued…

[Cross posted at

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/homewaters/2013/03/lds-belief-as-ecologically-harmful.html]