by Peter Harris*
Well...dream on I suppose, but I’ve been packing boxes and it’s making me think. Miranda and I are moving on from this French village we’ve called home for the last thirteen years and with us will go two reasonably heavy cartons (ok I know it will cost carbon to haul them) of north American books on the environment and Christianity--nearly all of them published since we arrived here. That seems like progress.
We first started visiting the USA in 1996 and at the end of that trip came home with the first three of these books – by Cal DeWitt et al, Ginny Vroblesky, and Loren Wilkinson. In conversations with these authors, each told us that their environmental convictions were regarded by many of their Christian friends as dangerously political and probably a wanton distraction from true discipleship. Now, as I pack all these books by a far bigger cloud of witnesses to the idea that caring for creation is normal biblical Christianity, I am thinking a lot must have changed.
After many other trips to the States, we watched exactly ten years ago as A Rocha USA finally saw the light of day. I am sure that some people viewed its birth as millennial madness even then. Growing the organisation has certainly taken persistence from its first enthusiasts. They found each other with some relief while continuing in office jobs, church work, farming, quiet desperation at suburban consumerism, butterfly gardening, environmental careers, community building and a whole host of other occupations. At the time, it seemed that most of them were largely misunderstood and their work disregarded by their fellow Christians – while their Christian faith was seen as just another toxin by their environmental friends. Ten years on, A Rocha USA now has a presence in quite a few places with creative initiatives blessing the people and places around them.
To be sure, there are still hot-button topics to argue about if arguing is your thing (it isn’t mine). But controversy and polemic have never been of great interest to people who at heart simply want to serve their communities and the living landscape around them. And when I went from east to west coasts of this great country earlier this year, I discovered that no one is in any doubt that Christians should care about God’s wonderful creation in practical ways. More than that, there was a real awareness that the USA environment, and the people who live in and from it, can only benefit if Christians really did care for the Earth as second nature and as part of their worship of their Creator Lord. For instance, so many farmers are believers and it would surely change the way they farmed. The same goes for town planners, financial decision-makers, homebuilders, gardeners, job seekers, politicians, preachers and pastors. Those who are Christians can either take their vision of how to live with God’s world off the corporate shelf, or they can be inspired by the Holy Spirit and scripture to become a shining reflection of how they understand God to be. He is, after all, the creative loving author of what John Stott reminded us is a wonderful “book of creation” that we need to read well if we are to love it at all.
It must be said that the road from being a mystery to becoming a Christ-like movement hasn’t been an easy one for the first ten years of A Rocha USA’s life. Forgive me talking about such an unBritish subject as money (these days that’s because we don’t have any – before, it was because we got embarrassed - either way, we tend to avoid the topic.) But A Rocha USA discovered that people give to what they care about; and so, with some astonishing and wonderful exceptions, few people gave much support to this emerging movement. Consequently, work began and had to end as funds ran out. There were very few people and so everyone who did get involved soon ended up turning their hand sometimes to work they didn’t feel much good at. Opportunities for field projects had to be shelved as people had to take other work to keep bread on the table or the family housed. It could be seen as frustrating. But I don’t believe it was, because the relationships in the young organisation were forged in a kind of stubborn fire. Furthermore the vision honed itself quite finely because the priorities were set firmly in a time of scarcity. Most of all, a deep conviction took hold of all those who stayed the course that this was good work, and a way of living that God cared about, and so we would see how He would provide for it in His ways and in His time.
All this matters not just in the USA. American Christianity is a global export and I have much firsthand experience of how environmentally indifferent American Christianity can have devastating effects in the global south with its fragile tropical biotopes. But the opposite can also be true – if a new, creation-friendly believing takes hold in the USA and begins to spread around the world, it will be a true sign of hope for the Earth. So forgive me the carbon of putting those books in a van and taking them with me – they’ll remind me to pray and lift my head again as I unpack them.
*Founder and President of A Rocha International
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