An environmentalist martyr? Some Christian reflections

Honduran indigenous and environmental organizer Berta Cáceres, winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize, has been assassinated in her home. She was one of the leading organizers for indigenous land rights in Honduras, which Global Witness says has become the deadliest country in the world for environmentalists.

- Democracy Now, 3rd March 2016.

This crime is part of a broader pattern of indigenous leaders being assassinated and repressed in Honduras since the coup in 2009.

It is also part of a broader pattern (especially in Central and South America) of environmental activists being murdered. Hundreds are killed each year.

What is different here is that Berta Cáceres had more global prominence than most indigenous leaders and global south environmentalists, partially due to having received the Goldman Prize.

Persecution of environmentalists and indigenous people in (some) western nations, generally takes more subtle forms: designation as terrorists, surveillance, restrictions of legal rights, demonisation in the corporate press for environmentalists and dispossession, marginalisation, racism (overt and systemic), elevated incarceration, and demonisation in the corporate press for indigenous peoples.

Christians who follow the crucified and risen Messiah are discipled into a narrative that often places us in conflict with empire (even if some Christians haven't realised that yet or suppress it). If Jesus is Lord, then Caesar's claims to universal jurisdiction are idolatrous and false. Failure to recognise and submit to imperial claims can be bad for your health. This is why so many Christians have been killed through the ages (and today!) for following Christ.

Today, empire takes various forms: aggressive militarism, economic exploitation, corporate hegemony, individualist consumerism, neo-colonialism and what Karl Barth called the "almost completely demonic" force of capitalism (CD III/4, 531).

But empires are empires because they become adept at wielding the sword (in its various guises) against all opponents, not just Christians. That environmentalists and indigenous leaders (and in this case, both) are being persecuted and killed for standing against corporate profits and corrupt governments ought to lead followers of a crucified man into a measure of solidarity with them.

Christians bear witness to the truth of Christ's victory through words and lives that conform to a different logic of grace and peace. This will lead us into a variety of responses to the contexts in which we find ourselves; there is no one-size-fits-all Christian response to empire. However, the Nazarene will not let us make any lasting peace with empire. If we don't at times find ourselves in (at times) dangerous contradiction to the powers of this age, then perhaps we've grown a little too used to seeing through the eyes of our dominant culture and may need to be awakened once again to the call of the one who bid his first disciples leave their nets, their tax booths, their swords and take up their cross.

Berta Cáceres was very likely killed for her work bearing witness to certain truths. Are there any truths that you believe are important enough to risk doing the same?
Image from online search. Photographer unknown.

Lest we forget

Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

- Rudyard Kipling, Recessional, 1897.

Lest we forget the ephemerality of empire and the dangerous temptation to national self-aggrandisement. Lest we forget the divine judgement upon human folly and pomp.

And lest we forget the hope of mercy, despite our manifold failures. Spare us yet.

Christianity: a tool of villainy under the banner of progress?

“Despite its protests to the contrary, modern Christianity has become willy-nilly the religion of the state and the economic status quo. Because it has been so exclusively dedicated to incanting anemic souls into heaven, it has, by a kind of ignorance, been made the tool of much earthly villainy. It has, for the most part, stood silently by, while a predatory economy has ravaged the world, destroyed its natural beauty and health, divided and plundered its human communities and households. It has flown the flag and chanted the slogans of empire. It has assumed with the economists that “economic forces” automatically work for good, and has assumed with the industrialists and militarists that technology determines history. It has assumed with almost everybody that “progress” is good, that it is good to be modern and up with the times. It has admired Caesar and comforted him in his depredations and defaults. But in its de facto alliance with Caesar, Christianity connives directly in the murder of Creation. For, in these days, Caesar is no longer a mere destroyer of armies, cities, and nations. He is a contradictor of the fundamental miracle of life. A part of the normal practice of his power is his willingness to destroy the world. He prays, he says, and churches everywhere compliantly pray with him. But he is praying to a God whose works he is prepared at any moment to destroy. What could be more wicked than that, or more mad?

"The religion of the Bible, on the contrary, is a religion of the state and the status quo only in brief moments. In practice, it is a religion for the correction equally of people and of kings. And Christ’s life, from the manger to the cross, was an affront to the established powers of his time, as it is to the established powers of our time. Much is made in churches of the “good news” of the gospels. Less is said of the gospel’s bad news, which is that Jesus would have been horrified by just about every “Christian” government the world has ever seen. He would be horrified by our government and its works, and it would be horrified by him. Surely no sane and thoughtful person can imagine any government of our time sitting comfortably at the feet of Jesus, who is telling them to “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you…” (Matt. 5:44).

— Wendell Berry, "Christianity and the Survival of Creation"
in Sex, Economy, Freedom, Community: Eight Essays (full essay available here).

Quotes like this can be hard to hear. It can be tempting to ignore them.

Sometimes, when I talk with people about some of the crises of our times and suggest that Christianity might have something to say to us at this historical moment that is interesting and worth paying attention to, I am told that the church is part of the problem, not the solution.*

I often feel more than a little sympathy for this comment. Christian defence of the indefensible (which is quite different from defence of the defenceless!) or unreflective acquiescence in the status quo are both depressingly common. The Christian church has, for all its noble achievements, also many sad failings.

To be Christian is to recognise that this is nearly always the case, and so to expect that I will very frequently find myself contributing to the problems of the world. This is one implication of the doctrine of sin. However, to be a follower of Christ means also being open to grace: to the word of forgiveness, the task of repentance and the possibility of liberation. Such an openness requires the belief that grace ultimately superabounds wherever sin abounds, and so trusting that sin is not an ultimate reality, and so can be turned away from. It is unnecessary.

This openness requires practices that build into our sense of self the expectation of change and growth. It means remaining open to the wounds of false accusation in case they turn out to be less false than we first thought. And it means immersion in the scriptural narratives until what appears normal about life today is revealed as abnormal.
*The idea that Christian ideas are to blame for ecological degradation has a long history within the environmental movement, arising from Lynn White's seminal paper "The Historical Root of our Ecological Crisis" in which he accused certain elements of the Christian tradition as standing at the root of exploitative attitudes towards the non-human world. I won't add here to the huge amount of commentary on this article (which has its strengths and weaknesses) nor to explore the degree to which these charges stick (short answer: somewhat, but by themselves these ideas are neither necessary nor sufficient as historical explanations for the rise of exploitative attitudes).