Francis Schaeffer Cuts the Cake at the First Earth Day in 1970
Francis Schaeffer Cuts the Cake at the First Earth Day in 1970
By Lowell Bliss, Director of Eden Vigil
April 22, 1970, fifty years ago on Wednesday: The first Earth Day celebration was a huge party, but we Christians weren’t invited. Actually, we were, but only in the way that your mom made you hand out invitations for your birthday party to all the students in your class without exception. The other kids however considered us to be the Class Bully. We weren’t, at least not any more so than anyone else alive in 1970, but our classmates had become enthralled by the most popular kid at the time, one Lynn Townsend White, Jr.
White was a professor of medieval history at UCLA when a lecture that he gave on December 26, 1966, at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science became an article in Science magazine. It was entitled “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis.” White explains, “What people do about their ecology depends on what they think about themselves in relation to things around them. Human ecology is deeply conditioned by beliefs about our nature and destiny—that is, by religion.” He asks the question, “What did Christianity [particularly Western Christianity as postulated during the Middle Ages] tell people about their relations with the environment?”: namely, according to White: 1) that the created order is anthropocentric and 2) that doctrines of Man’s dominion over nature encourage the wanton exploitation of non-human species. “Man named all the animals, thus establishing his dominance over them. God planned all of this explicitly for man’s benefit and rule: no item in the physical creation had any purpose save to serve man’s purposes. And, although man’s body is made of clay, he is not simply part of nature: he is made in God’s image.”
It hardly seems fair: how in the world do you get to be the most popular kid in the class when your name is Lynn Townsend, you are a “junior,” and your favorite topic of conversation is medieval history?! But White had a point. His critique of the prevailing theology of the time was in large part valid. (Yikes, maybe we were environmental bullies?) Fortunately for us, however, also in 1970, God sent a wise Principal, a conciliatory guidance counselor, an inclusive youth pastor, a different popular kid—whatever image helps extend our metaphor of a contentious playground, whatever image helps explain the salubrious effect of the publication of Pollution and the Death of Man: The Christian View of Ecology by Francis Schaeffer. Schaeffer would come to be known as a great apologist, and a harsh and contentious one at that. If he had taken that posture toward White and the Earth Day kids at the time of Pollution’s publication in 1970, then likely he would have just contributed to the bullying. Instead, Schaeffer reprinted White’s essay in full in an appendix in his book. He gave White and the Earth Day movement their due. “The hippies of the 1960s did understand something,” Schaeffer told us, “They were right in fighting the plastic culture and the church should have been fighting it too. . . As a Utopian group, the counterculture understands something very real, both as to the culture as a culture, but also as to the poverty of modern man’s concept of nature and the way the machine is eating up nature on every side” (24).
The amazing quirk in Pollution and the Death of Man is the way Schaeffer could say to White and to Christian Dominionists: you are both right. . . and you are both wrong. The reason this could be possible, according to Schaeffer, is because modern culture, including modern Christian culture, was failing to honor the mystery in the created order.
I was heading into this week’s commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Earth Day without a single thought in my head about Francis Schaeffer, his book, or that it was published in 1970 when on Friday I was interviewed by a grad student at John Hopkins University for her thesis on the contemporary evangelical creation care movement. One of her questions invoked a Schaeffer reference in my answer and I suddenly had a revelation: Thank you! This is exactly how I want to remember the environmentalism of 1970! I want to spend April 22 contemplating the mystery that Schaeffer had pointed out. The student, whom I’ll call Allison, had asked my opinion on one of her underlying hypotheses, namely that contemporary evangelicals operate under one of two models in their creation care: either they want to be good stewards of a sustainable use of nature for humanity’s benefit, or they see the inherent value of nature and so want to protect it in its own right. (In both cases, Allison’s models seem to give evangelicals the benefit of the doubt; she isn’t accusing us of being bullies.) I told her that, in my thinking, those models aren’t exclusive to evangelical Christians, and certainly are reflected in the battle that John Muir and Gifford Pinchot fought for Teddy Roosevelt, the conservation president’s attention. Both men were tree huggers of sorts, but Muir’s trees are watched over by the National Park Service which is in the Department of Interior, while Pinchot’s trees are watched over by the US Forest Service which is a division of the Department of Agriculture. Beauty and utility, protection and use: both can be governed by love.
Then I told Allison about Schaeffer. There is a model for the created order, according to Schaeffer, which places God at the top of that order, and which recognizes God as both personal and infinite. When we reflect on God as personal and recognize indeed that Man (Schaeffer’s usage) is created in the image of God, then if you chart out created order, you must put Man on the side with God, and then a chasm with Animal, Plant, and Machine on the other side of that chasm. (“Machine” was Schaeffer’s shorthand for non-living matter: rocks, water, etc.) So it goes:
Personal God
Man
[chasm]
Animal
Plant
Machine
However, if you contemplate God as infinite or transcendent—God as unconditioned and eternal Creator—then the chasm rightfully must shift, and we as Man must take our place as creature among creatures.
Infinite God
[chasm]
Man
Animal
Plant
Machine
Which of these models are right? They both are. Which of these models are wrong? Either could be if we fail to hold them simultaneously in our worldview—because it is impossible for God to be personal without also, at the same time, being infinite, or infinite without simultaneously being personal. All of created order is caught up in the mystery of God. Schaeffer writes,
On a very different level, we are separated from that which is the “lower” form of creation, yet we are united to it. One must not choose: one must say both. I am separated from it (i.e. animal, plant, machine, “nature”) because I am made in the image of God; my integration point is upward, not downward, it is not turned back upon creation. Yet at the same time, I am united to it because nature and man are both created by God (52).
Generally speaking, we H. Sapiens are not very good at the delicate care and keeping of mystery. Admittedly here in 2020, it feels like we’ve become habituated in the over-simplification of choosing sides. In my opinion, Francis Schaeffer’s work later in life did much to force march American evangelicalism back into its roots in exclusionary and exploitative fundamentalism. But in 1970—round about the same time as the big party on the National Mall—Pollution and the Death of Man was a life-giving force. Cut the cake, Schaeffer said. Grab a balloon or a rainbow banner. When you shout “Save the whales!” or “Give a hoot! Don’t pollute!” say it with as much zest as anyone else. God who created the Earth is throwing this party too, and everyone is invited.
Interested in learning more about Creation Care? Check out Lowell Bliss’ book, Environmental Missions, & People, Trees, and Poverty!
References:
White, Lynn (1967). “The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis”. Science. 155. pp. 1203-1207. (pdf here.)
Schaeffer, Francis. Pollution and the Death of Man: The Christian View of Ecology. Wheaton: Tyndale, 1970.