This year, the spring or vernal equinox falls just before the period that Christians using the western calendar call Passiontide. On the one hand we have a sense of the earth awakening from its winter slumber, of blossom emerging and the days lengthening. Yet the reference to passion—which has its roots in the word ‘suffering’—reminds us that all is not well in human relations with nature (and in ourselves). 

We have then a sense of a diverse and changing natural world. If you ask people about nature, they will often refer to trees they love or a particular landscape or watershed. From a faith perspective, this sense of attachment and celebration of nature’s profusion may be traced back to creation. The God who creates does so without point, so to speak. The sheer blooming diversity and profusion suggest that God creates lavishly and abundantly. That’s why some theologians have spoken of the extinction of species as a kind of un-creation: an undoing of God’s purposes—creation’s own ‘passion’, we might say. 

Christianity’s environmental record is mixed. US theologian H. Paul Santmire speaks of its ‘ambiguous ecological promise’. On the one hand, we have Lynn White’s indictment that ‘Especially in its Western form, Christianity is the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen’. This comment, from 1967, identifies a persistent concern: the focus of Christianity is narrowly on the human. Responses to White have stressed themes such as Christian commitment to the stewardship of natural resources and care of creation. This theological debate has accelerated recently for two reasons.

First, ecological issues have increasingly centred on climate change and the Anthropocene and so have a greater public resonance. (The significance of the latter term is debated but the Anthropocene suggests that human beings are shaping this planet’s future in new and dramatic ways.) Second, in 2015 Pope Francis published the encyclical, Laudato Si’, which stressed Christian responsibility for care of this common home, and argued in favour of an ‘integral ecology’ in which ‘everything is connected’.

The issues here have deep roots, some of which are theological. For example, the claim that humans are separate from nature and are exceptional creatures can be found in Christianity. Indeed, notions such as stewardship seem optimistically to invest human beings with a capacity to manage or administer nature. That human beings are in some way not at home on the earth and have a heavenly destiny also seems at the least ambiguous. Nonetheless, there are more ecological emphases: that human beings share in a common creatureliness with other more-than-human beings, that the world may be understood as sacramental, and that God is deeply involved in the whole of God’s creation— these sound ecological notes. 

There are other hopeful signs too. I’m leading a research project at the University of Manchester called ‘Religion, Theology and Climate Change’. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, we’re speaking with Christian climate activists and advocates about their work combating climate change—and especially about the religious reasons for their commitment. Perhaps such work is the best commendation of Christianity’s ecological credentials.