We’ve had many questions about yesterday’s chapel, conducted as part of @ccarvalhaes‘ class, “Extractivism: A Ritual/Liturgical Response.” In worship, our community confessed the harm we’ve done to plants, speaking directly in repentance. This is a beautiful ritual.
We are in the throes of a climate emergency, a crisis created by humanity’s arrogance, our disregard for Creation. Far too often, we see the natural world only as resources to be extracted for our use, not divinely created in their own right—worthy of honor, thanks and care.
We need to unlearn habits of sin and death. And part of that work must be building new bridges to the natural world. And that means creating new spiritual and intellectual frameworks by which we understand and relate to the plants and animals with whom we share the planet.
Churches have a huge role to play in this endeavor. Theologies that encourage humans to dominate and master the Earth have played a deplorable role in degrading God’s creation. We must birth new theology, new liturgy to heal and sow, replacing ones that reap and destroy.
When Robin Wall Kimmerer spoke at Union last year, she concluded her lecture by tasking us—and all faith communities—to develop new liturgies by which to mourn, grieve, heal and change in response to our climate emergency. We couldn’t be prouder to participate in this work.
And here’s the thing: At first, this work will seem weird. It won’t feel normal. It won’t look like how we’re used to worship looking and sounding. And that’s exactly the point. We don’t just need new wine, we need new wineskins.
But it’s also important to note that this isn’t, really, that radical a break from tradition. Many faiths and denoms have liturgy through which we express and atone for the harm we’ve caused. No one would have blinked if our chapel featured students apologizing to each other.
What’s different (and the source of so much derision) is that we’re treating plants as fully created beings, divine Creation in its own right—not just something to be consumed. Because plants aren’t capable of verbal response, does that mean we shouldn’t engage with them?
So, if you’re poking fun, we’d ask only that you also spend a couple moments asking: Do I treat plants and animals as divinely created beings? What harm do I cause without thinking? How can I enter into new relationship with the natural world?
Change isn’t easy: It’s no simple business to break free from comfortable habits and thoughts. But if we do not change, we will perish. And so will plants and animals God created and called “good.” We must lean into this discomfort; God waits for us there.
Let’s not forget unborn babies – are we going to confess the harm done to them? I can’t even…
this is my favourite line in the story someone please buy this guy a cold beer.
Don’t joke. People might soon be getting engaged TO them.
Even plants give rise to suckers. Really there is no way to take this ‘theology’ seriously. It is pathetic.
Well, if Episcopalians give up eating both meat and plants, because consumption harms the animals and plants, and is therefore sinful, I predict that the numerical decline of TEC will accelerate.
But their cemeteries will quickly fill.
Nothing new. Oak trees heard many confessions from penitents hanging in a wicker basket back in the days of Druids.
“we’d ask only that you also spend a couple moments asking: Do I treat plants and animals as divinely created beings? ”
NO. Divinely created, yes, but plants are not “beings.” Neither are animals. Only humans, angels and God are beings. Repentance & prayer are owed to God, no one else. Prayers to created things are, by definition, idolatry.
Don’t you love confessing to plants that have been forced by you to be enslaved in pots and forced from their natural habitats. Many of them look mistreated by these people, who advocate we confess to them.
I am an advocate for conservation and good stewardship of God’s creation. Yes, many people on earth do not do this. But when you turn your liturgy to the creation and not the creator, you have gone astray.
Theology that treats them as “fully created beings” does not understand biblical creation. God created vessels for differing purposes. He created from the beginning plants for human consumption. You will have to stop eating all things.
I apologize to plants for having my food eat them.
I confess that I have observed some of the inanity, hypocrisy, hysteria, misuse of science and so on and on, being perpetrated by the “climate emergency” enthusiasts. I confess that I believe that most climate scientists believe there is high probability that man is having a significant effect on global warming, and that I have accepted that in a sober way and have not become sufficiently stupid in the way I express that acceptance. From these and all similar bits of common sense, good liberal bishops deliver me.
Now I finally understand what is meant by church plants.
It would explain why all the money TEC has put into church plants in recent years has not revived the membership numbers. I should put in for one of their grants- I have several trees that need pruning.
This is just plain stupid!
Plants are not made in the image of God.
Fr. K- I think they are doing it the other way around. They have made a goddess idol in the image of a plant.
I am so old, I can remember the days when confirmation required a knowledge of the 10 Commandments. Now, apparently, you can be a seminary professor or candidate for ordination without a rudimentary understanding….
It is sad that’s true, but then my experience of so called Christian academics is very much that they lack a grasp of the fundamentals