2020 WAS A YEAR of ecological breakdown. Simultaneous climate disasters have roared, including the worst wildfire season in the history of California and, as I write this, the most active hurricane season on record in the Atlantic. Meanwhile, freak wind storms called derechos plagued the Midwest and heatwaves baked the Southwest. In the midst of such devastation, it can seem downright irresponsible to search for hope. Yet, the paradoxical call of the cross is that, in the deepest darkness, joyful and beautiful transformation might be possible.
In The Green Good News, T. Wilson Dickinson does not settle for platitudes of hope. He does not affirm, as is so tempting for Christians, that all will be fine because of faith in God. Instead, Dickinson finds good news in the possibility of a beautiful and joyful set of responses to ecological breakdown. With humble writing grounded in stories of his own life, Dickinson offers a reading of scripture that does not separate the liberation of creation from the liberation of the poor but follows the vision of Jesus, in whom all creation—human and more-than-human—holds together. In a refreshing move, The Green Good News sheds the romanticism of creation care in favor of a biblically based environmental justice from the margins. Dickinson unequivocally offers a call to conversion from neoliberalism to solidarity with all oppressed creatures. This ecological conversion takes place at the heart of the Christian witness: the table.
Over a shared meal, threads of justice and health for all creation come together and enter our bodies. At the Last Supper, the shadows of empire and the looming crucifixion of Christ were held at bay by the liberating light of the bread and the wine. In this simple yet transformative act of ingestion, Jesus invites his followers into his new economy. It is an economy not driven by extraction and exploitation but by participation and membership in the health of all creatures. In participating in the shared meal, Christ followers ground ourselves in this liberation, remembering where we stand in dependence and solidarity with all creation.
Just as climate change is tearing down things we love, so too is it tearing down the “corporatized, consumerist, individualistic orders that are striving to colonize the entire planet.” This apocalyptic crisis has peeled back layers of malice and greed, exposing their sinful foundations. Perhaps the climate crisis is also an opportunity to follow the path of Jesus Christ, who came not to bring sanitized, individualistic peace but to dismantle systems of empire. As Dickinson writes, “Like the current ecological crisis, the cross of Christ marks the site of both catastrophe and new hope.”
Avery Davis Lamb is an activist, ecologist, and public theologian working at the intersection of Christianity and environmental justice. He is the executive director of Creation Justice, whose mission is to educate, equip and mobilize Christians to protect, restore, and rightly share God's creation.
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