Climate Justice

A review of James B. Martin-Schramm, Climate Justice: Ethics, Energy, and Public Policy (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010)

Climate change is now very well documented, and its apparent connection with the combustion of fossil fuels and certain land use practices raises important ethical questions. Martin-Schramm grapples with these issues at a public policy level, looking particularly at the ethical responsibility of industrialized countries, especially the United States.

In his opening chapter, he proposes an ethic of ecological justice based on the moral norms of sustainability, sufficiency, participation, and solidarity. These norms are complemented by a series of twelve guidelines – equity, efficiency, adequacy, renewability, appropriateness, risk, peace, cost, employment, flexibility, timely decision-making, and aesthetics – to create a toolbox of ethical resources that he applies to the issue of climate justice in the subsequent chapters.

Chapters 2 and 3 offer an optimistic survey of the range of energy options currently available to the United States. The first deals with so-called conventional energy options – coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power – and the second with alternative/renewable sources of energy – solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, marine. He mentions the concept of peak oil but does not dwell on its implications, opting for the relatively optimistic view that global oil production will not peak until about 2026. He is similarly optimistic about uranium supplies. However, he proposes that we should shift from conventional to renewable energy for environmental (and security) reasons and seems to believe this is a feasible (if difficult) way forward.

Chapter 4 explores international climate policy just prior to the Copenhagen summit at the end of 2009. Viewed in the light of the ethical toolbox developed in chapter 1, he commends the Greenhouse Development Rights Framework proposed by the Stockholm Environmental Institute.

His fifth chapter focusing on US climate policy paints a bleak picture of fine words unmatched by effective action. He concludes that ‘Failure to take aggressive action now to reduce emissions will perpetuate current rates of GHG emissions and condemn future generations to a rate and degree of warming unprecedented in human civilization’ (p. 158).

The final chapter consists of a case study, examining greenhouse gas reduction strategies implemented by Luther College, Decorah, Iowa. He uses this to show how individual institutions and communities can implement energy policies that meet the ethical criteria spelled out at the beginning of the book.

As indicated above, my main reservation is that I think he is unduly optimistic about continuing conventional energy supplies and our capacity to move seamlessly from conventional to renewables. But, that reservation apart, Martin-Schramm has produced a very helpful practical survey of climate justice issues for anyone involved in the development of energy policies whether at community, company, or national government level.

Engaging Deconstructive Theology

A review of Ronald T. Michener, Engaging Deconstructive Theology, Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies Series (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007)

‘If Christians are to continue to communicate and incarnate the gospel in a world with postmodern assumptions, then they must seek to understand their culture and seek relevancy’ (p. 7). This is Ronald Michener’s starting point for an exploration of what he calls deconstructive theology with a view to developing insights that might make Christian apologetics more relevant to postmodern culture.

In his introduction, Michener acknowledges the intellectual and cultural diversity of the postmodern phenomenon. Clearly it would be impossible to treat the entire spectrum of postmodernism adequately in a single volume. He opts instead to focus on what he sees as the most radical intellectual strand of postmodernism: deconstructionism. Having set the boundaries of his study, he proceeds in Chapter 2 to offer a very sketchy outline of the historical context of deconstructionism, focusing on its intellectual forebears from Francis Bacon to Claude Lévi-Strauss, before offering a brief introduction to the deconstructionist programme.

Part II of the book offers an account of the ‘holy trinity’ of deconstructionism: Lyotard, Derrida, and Foucault. The three chapters in this part provide useful but inevitably brief introductions to their thought. Michener’s main aim here is to identify themes in their work that are relevant to the task he has set himself. Among the themes he highlights are Lyotard’s scepticism with respect to metanarratives and Foucault’s rejection of the Enlightenment self. But most of the space in this part is devoted to Derrida. Picking up on hints in Derrida’s work, he suggests that deconstruction does not amount to the destruction of theology. Rather Derrida’s goal is destabilize or subvert the traditional metaphysics that is so closely wedded to Western theology. Thus deconstruction can be seen as a new via negativa. Michener is even prepared to recontextualize Derrida’s notion of the ‘messianic’.

Parts III and IV turn to the effect of this on two American academics (Mark Taylor and Richard Rorty) and one British theologian (Don Cupitt) whose writings have had an impact on recent theology in the English-speaking world. These chapters follow the same pattern as those in Part II: a brief introduction to their thought followed by a teasing out of various themes that are relevant to the challenge of developing a Christian apologetic for a postmodern context. Again he finds concepts that can be appropriated by a postmodern Christian theology, for example, Taylor’s notion of ‘mazing grace’ and Cupitt’s ‘solar living’ and ‘poetical theology’.

With Part V we arrive at the real heart of the book: the development of an apologetic methodology in view of the deconstructionist concerns highlighted in Parts II to IV. Chapter 9 deals with some methodological preliminaries, highlighting the inadequacy of some current apologetic methodologies and indicating what those deconstructionist concerns require of a postmodern apologetic. Specifically, such an apologetic must be post-individualistic, post-rationalistic, post-dualistic, and post-noeticentric (by which he means shifting away from knowledge to wisdom). In the next chapter he turns to Scripture, with an examination of the beginnings of Christianity in the book of Acts in the light of deconstructionist concerns. Michener is concerned to present the gospel as a non-totalizing metanarrative (i.e. one that does not fall foul of postmodern scepticism). The early Christian community as it appears in Acts is heterogeneous: open, multicultural, and pluralistic. And St Paul provides us with an apologetic model that majors on listening and dialogue.

That last point is developed further in Chapter 11, ‘Apologetic Engagement and Dialogue’. Michener stresses the importance of being a good listener. He is even prepared to speak of atheism as being ‘prophetic’ for those prepared to listen well. This leads him in to a discussion of what is involved in a critical reappropriation of deconstructionist concerns, providing the theoretical underpinning for the examples of reappropriation earlier in the book.

If Michener were to stop at this point, his contribution would be just one more rationalistic approach to apologetics. However, he is not content to leave it here and moves on in Chapter 12 to explore the ‘Apologetic Imagination’. It is his contention that imagination, myth, and story have a powerful role to play in apologetic dialogue. His role model for this change in apologetic strategy is the literary scholar and Christian apologist C. S. Lewis, perhaps a surprising choice given his intention to engage with deconstructionism/postmodernity. In this chapter, he also explores the place of hope in Christian apologetics.

Finally, Michener takes up the question of foundationalism. Postmodernism is notoriously resistant to any suggestion that our beliefs can have any indubitable grounding. By contrast, much Christian apologetics (at least since the Enlightenment) has taken such foundations for granted. Is it possible to develop a Christian apologetic that can engage constructively with the anti-foundationalism of the deconstructionists? Michener proposes what he describes as a soft foundationalism: he accepts the postmodern critique of classical foundationalism but does not want to give in to complete scepticism. Certainty about religious beliefs is not possible, but neither is it necessary. He wants to speak instead of provisional beliefs, which cohere together into a ‘belief mosaic’ that is open to continual testing, reinterpretation, and recontextualization. Furthermore, this gathering of truth is eschatologically based, rather than foundationally based.

I must admit that, as I read through the book, I could not shake off the nagging question of whether the French deconstructionists were the most appropriate dialogue partners for a Christian apologist seeking to engage with postmodern culture. Nevertheless, there is a lot of interesting and thought-provoking material here, and, for the most part, it is presented in a clear and approachable manner.

In lieu of a spiritual father

For many Orthodox, the gold standard of spiritual direction is a personal relationship with a starets (or staritsa) –   elder or spiritual father (mother). They are charismatic teachers in the hesychast tradition who are recognized as giving particularly insightful spiritual guidance (and may also be regarded as having gifts of prophecy and/or healing). But genuine startsi have always been rare – so much so that even Orthodox religious cannot always find suitable spiritual fathers/mothers.

In his introduction to Chariton of Valamo’s The Art of Prayer, Kallistos Ware describes the young monk’s response to this problem:

Father Chariton’s anthology springs directly from his own monastic experience. On his first entry to the monastery – following the normal custom in Orthodox religious communities — he was placed under the supervision of a staretz, who instructed the young novice in the practice of the Jesus Prayer, and at the same time in other forms of prayer and ascetic effort. On the death of his staretz, Chariton — in the absence of a living teacher — turned to books for guidance. It was his custom to copy down in a special notebook the passages which particularly impressed him, and so in course of time he compiled an anthology on the art of prayer. (p.10)

It strikes me that this is a good way forward for anyone in a similar situation (which, I suspect, includes most Orthodox in the West who want to take the spiritual life seriously).

Berdyaev on spirituality and social justice

Nikolai Berdyaev reminds us that Orthodox spirituality should never treated as a withdrawal from the world into ‘a sort of transcendental egoism, the unwillingness to share the suffering of the world and of man’:

Care for the life of another, even material bodily care, is spiritual in essence. Bread for myself is a material question : bread for my neighbour is a spiritual question.’ (The Fate of Modern Man in the Modern World, SCM Press, 1935, p. 123f.)

Incurable curiosity

According to Dorothy Parker,

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.