Making Peace with all Creation

This art icle was downloaded by: [ Randolph Haluza- DeLay] On: 05 June 2012, At : 08: 53 Publisher: Rout ledge I nform a Lt d Regist ered in England and Wales Regist ered Num ber: 1072954 Regist ered office: Mort im er House, 37- 41 Mort im er St reet , London W1T 3JH, UK Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice Publicat ion det ails, including inst ruct ions for aut hors and subscript ion informat ion: ht t p:/ / www.t andfonline.com/ loi/ cper20 Making Peace With All Creation Randolph Haluza-DeLay a a King's Universit y College, Edmont on, Albert a, Canada Available online: 05 Jun 2012 To cite this article: Randolph Haluza-DeLay (2012): Making Peace Wit h All Creat ion, Peace Review: A Journal of Social Just ice, 24:2, 171-178 To link to this article: ht t p:/ / dx.doi.org/ 10.1080/ 10402659.2012.677328 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTI CLE Full t erm s and condit ions of use: ht t p: / / www.t andfonline.com / page/ t erm s- and- condit ions This art icle m ay be used for research, t eaching, and privat e st udy purposes. Any subst ant ial or syst em at ic reproduct ion, redist ribut ion, reselling, loan, sub- licensing, syst em at ic supply, or dist ribut ion in any form t o anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warrant y express or im plied or m ake any represent at ion t hat t he cont ent s will be com plet e or accurat e or up t o dat e. The accuracy of any inst ruct ions, form ulae, and drug doses should be independent ly verified wit h prim ary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, act ions, claim s, proceedings, dem and, or cost s or dam ages what soever or howsoever caused arising direct ly or indirect ly in connect ion wit h or arising out of t he use of t his m at erial. Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, 24:171–178 C Taylor & Francis Group, LLC Copyright
ISSN 1040-2659 print; 1469-9982 online DOI: 10.1080/10402659.2012.677328 Making Peace With All Creation Downloaded by [Randolph Haluza-DeLay] at 08:53 05 June 2012 RANDOLPH HALUZA-DELAY Are we at war with nature? By all appearances, humanity has faced off against the biosphere with violent and destructive consequences, and ecological degradation is accelerating. At the regional scale, 60 percent of the world’s terrestrial ecosystems are in decline, and over half of ocean fisheries are fully exploited with another quarter depleted. Global climate change is occurring at rates higher than predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007. Degradation of nature’s capacities means environmental refugees are a growing phenomenon, with some expectations that this category will soon exceed that of displacement by war. The world is precariously situated; if we are not at war against nature, at least a deep-seated ecological violence prevails. P erhaps this deep-seated, ecological violence is part of what philosopher Charles Taylor terms the “modern social imaginary.” If so, an “ecological imaginary” capable of addressing the causes of environmental degradation must also be a form of ecological peacemaking. The search for resources with which to produce such a culture of ecological sustainability and peacemaking will be challenging. Interestingly, signs of a new imaginary of “making peace with all creation” may be emerging in the discourses and praxis of institutionalized Christianity. According to Taylor, a social imaginary is “the ways in which people imagine their social existence . . . carried in images, stories, and legends . . . that is shared by large groups of people. . . . The social imaginary is that common understanding that makes possible common practices and a widely shared sense of legitimacy.” In particular, Taylor has described the contemporary Western world and its institutions as comprising the “modern social imaginary”; one that has been exported globally (although adapted in a variety of localized ways). Environmental scholars have implicated modernity in the war on nature. In their analysis, modernity conceptualizes reality dualistically with nature imagined as inert matter and operating in machine-like ways, available to be exploited exclusively as “resources” for human utility. In the modern social imaginary, technological prowess exempts human society from ecological laws. This exemption legitimates the imaginary of 171 Downloaded by [Randolph Haluza-DeLay] at 08:53 05 June 2012 172 RANDOLPH HALUZA-DELAY unlimited growth. Concomitantly, late modernity has been characterized by a state of permanent war, or at least permanent preparation for war, as the capital–state partnership increasingly took the form of a military–industrial complex oriented toward extraction of resources. In this system, the state provides environmental protection only insofar as this allows the treadmill of production to proceed without catastrophic ecological collapse. Nature is mobilized for the war against itself. And as seen in recent American and other fundamentalist discourses, “God” is also mobilized for war. We inhabit what Duane Cady terms a “warist” culture, in which violence is legitimated and threats to the sustainability of global society are collateral damage. Building on Taylor, Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar describes a social imaginary as “ways of understanding the social that become social entities themselves.” Given environmental degradation on a global scale, a widespread change in the social imaginary of the modern world would appear to be necessary for movement toward ecological sustainability, with corresponding changes for social entities—institutions, worldviews, behaviors, and so on. This is, of course, not an easy task and many call widespread, transformative, global social change unlikely. Such a reaction would be expected. Peace activists of all belief systems have long battled the plausibility structures of societies that call peace “unrealistic” amidst the dominant imaginary of state and interpersonal violence. Gaonkar continues his analysis by asserting, “It is only through the mediation of the imaginary that we are able to conceive of the real in the first-place.” Whether a peace imaginary or an ecologically sustainable one, the challenge is to find the cultural resources to undermine the existing violent and exploitative imaginary and move institutions and belief systems toward new ways of conceiving of the human relationship with nature. Social theorists have increasingly acknowledged the ongoing prevalence of religious perspectives in contemporary societies. Into the modern materialist imaginary, religious traditions insert their sense of the divine and the place of human beings in the cosmos. Religion—which is a complex of beliefs, practices, symbols, values, and institutions—has considerable influence in the public sphere, an influence beyond the impact on individual adherents. Pluralistic dialogue in a multicultural society incorporates diverse and interacting understandings of the nature of reality. In this context, explicating perspectives from one faith tradition is intended as a non-sectarian consideration of resources for rethinking ecological relations. R eligions are themselves highly contested internally, and while the basic doctrines do not change much, their manifestations in ideas, institutions, and practice do, especially as new questions are asked, and new understandings are brought alongside tradition. A substantial area of change over recent decades includes how “the environment” is to be understood, with a burgeoning literature in the “greening of religion.” Downloaded by [Randolph Haluza-DeLay] at 08:53 05 June 2012 MAKING PEACE WITH ALL CREATION 173 Within historic Christianity, for example, a variety of approaches to pro-environmental practice exist, the most common of which is stewardship. Sociologist Laurel Kearns articulated three major Christian environmental approaches: stewardship, eco-justice, and creation-spirituality. Other scholars have developed typologies with more variation. Stewardship, however, remains the most common Christian way of expressing the human role regarding the environment, and the most common public, secular expression. Stewardship is a form of eco-managerialism, which befits rationalization inherent in the modern social imaginary. While the stewardship model may help in taking initial steps to protect the environment, ultimately it is limited. The stewardship model is still one of distancing; humans are categorically set apart from the earth and set above the rest of creation as its manager. Furthermore, the assumption that humans can manage the planet is a technocratic offshoot of a mechanistic worldview. Rarely has stewardship argued beyond the notion of continued development (whether or not that development is “sustainable”) to action that abundantly benefits the rest of nature. After all, we do not talk about being “stewards” of things whose value is in their own ends, such as other human beings. As a case in point: Settler countries have represented themselves as stewards of indigenous peoples. The consequences of that worldview in the Americas and other countries have been abhorrent but still shape the policies and cultural mindsets in these nations. Colonization of indigenous peoples is a consistent problem of environmental injustice in such countries. For these reasons, stewardship is not a satisfactory ecological imaginary. Increasingly, peace and environment have been linked by several Christian traditions in interesting new ways. First, Roman Catholic Pope John Paul II’s first major statement on ecology for the World Day of Peace (January 1) in 1990 was titled, “Peace with God the Creator, Peace with all of Creation.” Pope Benedict XVI’s 2010 World Day of Peace statement was similarly themed. Such statements assume that other-than-human nature has its own relationships with the Creator unmediated by human stewardship. Roman Catholic theology articulates a non-peace as the sundering of relations for which reconciliation is necessary. The pre-eminent rift is that between Creator and created, but corresponding rifts also occur in relations with our fellow humans and other fellow creatures, that is, the other-than-human portions of creation. Second, when an international dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Mennonite World Conference published its culminating report, peace and environmental concerns were clearly linked and provided common ground for Christian discipleship: Redemption has restored to creation the peace lost by sin. . . . We agree that the biblical vision of peace as shalom entails protecting the integrity of creation. . . . The Church is called to witness, in the spirit of stewardship, that people may live as caretakers and not exploiters of the earth. 174 RANDOLPH HALUZA-DELAY Downloaded by [Randolph Haluza-DeLay] at 08:53 05 June 2012 The report on the dialogue was itself named “Called Together to be Peacemakers.” Although stewardship is mentioned in the above quote, it is placed in a wider, less managerial context. The Canadian Catholic bishops, in a 2003 pastoral letter, highlighted that attention to right relationships and justice must now include the more-than-human world as participants in the drama: All serious solutions to the ecological crisis demand that human beings change our thinking, relationships and behaviours in order to recognize the interconnectedness of all creation . . . While beginning to listen to the experiences of the marginalized in society, we must also be attentive to the cry of the creation that surrounds and sustains them. Whereas we once began by developing critical analysis of economic, political and social structures that cause human suffering, we must now also bring the additional riches of ecological justice to bear on such realities. (emphasis added) Present in this statement are signs of an altered ecological imaginary that now also includes all creation in the circles of the peace and justice work. The extension of peace to all of creation is similar to the move from environmental justice to ecological justice. Environmental justice scholarship has often been a rather traditional political-economy of the environment, unpacking injustices in the distribution of environmental goods and hazards among human social groups. Ecological justice extends justice to nonhuman portions of creation, a perspective often expressed in Aboriginal worldviews, as well as many eco-theological works. T he imaginary of making peace with all creation is being applied to specific issues. In 2009, the Roman Catholic bishop of the diocese that includes the controversial Alberta oilsands wrote a pastoral letter that positioned moral decisions about oilsands development in terms of peace and violence. Also known as the “tar sands,” this set of huge unconventional petroleum projects has caused social dislocation and environmental harm while also serving as a major economic driver of the province. It is a major point source of greenhouse gas emissions and represents the last gasp of petroleum extraction in conditions of declining production. Bishop Bouchard concluded that the moral legitimacy of the oil sands was in doubt. Specifically, among the operative principles of his analysis was that the environment could be treated with violent disrespect, and this may constitute a breakdown of peace. Therefore, he explicitly positioned a Catholic praxis on the extraction of petroleum within the context of peace with creation. The important question is how is “making peace with nature” to be imagined and made practical? Within religious and civil discourse there are many conceptions of “peace,” from simplistic “personal peace” to concepts of shalom or harmony, to pacifism, just war theory, just peacemaking, peacekeeping, peacemaking, and peace-building. In terms of ecology, it is difficult Downloaded by [Randolph Haluza-DeLay] at 08:53 05 June 2012 MAKING PEACE WITH ALL CREATION 175 to understand how peace can be part of the ecological systems that include predatory creatures. How can the owl and the mouse make peace, or the lion and lamb lie down together? By “peace,” I do not mean an idealized or illusory freedom of conflict. As evident in the United Nations’ “Culture of Peace” campaign and the scholarship of peace researchers, peacemaking includes developing such norms, practices, values, and institutions to keep particular human lions from devouring the rest of creation. Ecological peacemaking will need further articulation to become a productive imaginary capable of guiding collective and institutional praxis. A vibrant debate in the journal Political Geography has concluded that scholars are better at studying the conditions that facilitate war than imagining the conditions of peace. But “peace” is a consistent theme through Christian and Hebrew scriptures, as well as in the traditions of the world’s other great faiths. Most importantly, while peace in human social relations is difficult to imagine, we do not stop seeking it, despite our historical propensity to national and interpersonal violence. Ecological peacemaking must always remain cognizant of the predatory potential of some humans toward other humans and the earth. Well-researched and carefully conceptualized analyses of peacemaking at all scales of human social relations do exist in the philosophical, social scientific, and theological literature, and could be a basis for developing a praxis of ecological peacemaking. The statements referred to may be signs of an imaginary-in-process. Such signs are more than merely discursive. Bishop Bouchard’s pastoral letter on the oilsands initiated a flurry of protest and condemnation in Alberta, including negative reactions by government and industry. More importantly, where faith groups fail to be oppositional to existing hegemonies, it is because they lack counterhegemonic discourses. Fr. Emmanuel Katongole’s critique of Roman Catholic complicity in the Rwandan massacre, for instance, reached the conclusion that inadequate discussion of Christian discipleship and peace could not compete with social legitimation of violence and ethnic nationalism. The importance of countercultural discourses was also evident during focus groups held with Alberta church members. Mennonites, more used to challenging the social orthodoxy of militarism, were also more critical of petrocapital extraction in the oilsands and the moral implications of their own social complicity as citizens and consumers than were the Pentecostal church members who appeared to hold more socially mainstream worldviews. Mennonite counterdiscourses also led to far more active support for Aboriginal rights and environmental justice. Finally, although ecological peacemaking has been described here primarily through Christian frames, its signs are also present in sources such as the Earth Charter. The Earth Charter is a decade-long process initiated by the United Nations and involving widespread consultation about the values-basis of a sustainable society. The Charter describes the Earth’s current situation as 176 RANDOLPH HALUZA-DELAY Downloaded by [Randolph Haluza-DeLay] at 08:53 05 June 2012 one of widespread environmental devastation and global economic injustice and violence, such that, “The foundations of global security are threatened.” It concludes that the way forward requires “we must imaginatively develop and apply the vision of a sustainable way of life” founded on “respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace.” Throughout, the Charter names peacemaking as central to this new imaginary and the practices and values necessary to address the roots of injustice and conflict. E nvironmental social scientists also provide support to peacemaking as an ecological imaginary. Environmental sociologists Liam Downey and colleagues have recently made a strong case that armed violence is a critical driver of persistent, global environmental degradation. Framing his most recent Marxian analysis as “making peace with the planet,” John Bellamy Foster considers capitalist expansion to be structural violence against the earth. Geographer Nick Megoram disrupts the so-called “realist” position that violence is unavoidable and central to political praxis by considering the variant ways that “peace” is conceptualized in peace studies, biblical studies, and international relations theory. Finally, as an on-the-ground example of making peace with creation, one can point to 2004 Nobel Peace laureate Wangari Maathai who founded the tree-planting, gender-equity, ecological-restoration Green Belt movement in Kenya. Such examples and a growing body of research show that violence is not endemic to the human condition. Instead, it is a complex of local cultural norms, the logic of global capital, and the discourses that support these processes as self-evident. The counterimaginary begins with processes of collective reimagining about peace and environmental sustainability. The imaginary which we inhabit shapes the ways we conceive, or even can conceive, of the environment and socioecological relations. The modern social imaginary and its rationalization of societal operations have shrunk the socially legitimate scope of social attention. Non-human actors, the divine, and the relational entirety of the cosmos have been excised from the deliberation of the modern imaginary, with violent consequences. Peace is paradigmatic, by which I mean it is a revolutionary breach with other ways of thinking about international and interpersonal relations. In the present warist and ecologically unsustainable culture, both an ecological and peace imaginary are “precarious.” By describing peace in this way, Mennonite theologian Chris Huebner means that we cannot decide on the content of “peace” in advance, as all peace work must be contextual with specific circumstances. To conclude, ecological peacemaking is an alternative to eco-managerial approaches and anthropocentric control of nature. It may appear illogical to instrumental rationality, but the structural violence of contemporary human–environment interrelations is so deep-seated that new imaginaries are Downloaded by [Randolph Haluza-DeLay] at 08:53 05 June 2012 MAKING PEACE WITH ALL CREATION 177 needed, ones that are normatively compelling enough to capture the imagination, yet dense enough to challenge a warist culture. That the latter is the dominant imaginary of our times is why “making peace with all creation” is presented here as an evocation for further creative and practical work. The paradigm of ecological peacemaking extends valued relationships beyond the human world. This way of imagining the relations of the world becomes operative as sets of practices, worldviews, institutions, and lifeways—an ecological culture of peace. Although it has been expressed here from within the particularities of the Christian tradition, such ways of thinking provide critique of the limited imagination of modernity about the environment, an imaginary that has nevertheless influenced modern Christians also. Ultimately, it also provides additional resources for citizens and scholars to engage the political, economic, and cultural hegemony that impedes social and ecological justice. RECOMMENDED READINGS Agyeman, J., Cole, P., Haluza-DeLay, R., and O’Riley, P. (eds.). 2009. Speaking for Ourselves: Environmental Justice in Canada. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press. Benedict XVI. 2009. If You Want to Cultivate Peace, Protect Creation. The Vatican: Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Available at <http://www.vatican.va/holy father/benedict xvi/ messages/peace/documents/hf ben-xvi mes 20091208 xliii-world-day-peace en.html> (last accessed July 3, 2011). Bouchard, Bishop Luc. 2009. “A Pastoral Letter on the Integrity of Creation and the Athabasca Oil Sands.” Available at <http://www.dioceseofstpaul.ca/index.php?option=com docman& task=doc download&gid=14&Itemid=5&lang=en> (last accessed July 3, 2011). Bowers, C. A. 1993. Critical Essays on Education, Modernity, and the Recovery of the Ecological Imperative. New York: Teacher’s College Press. Cady, D. 1989. From Warism to Pacifism: A Moral Continuum. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Canadian Council of Catholic Bishops (Commission on Social Affairs). 2003. “You Love all that Exists . . . all Things are Yours, God, Lover of Life: A Pastoral Letter on the Christian Ecological Imperative from the Social Affairs Commission.” Ottawa: Canadian Council of Catholic Bishops. Available at <http://www.cccb.ca/site/Files/pastoralenvironment.html> (last accessed July 3, 2011). Downey, L., Bonds, E., and Clark, K. 2010. “Natural Resource Extraction, Armed Violence, and Environmental Degradation.” Organization & Environment 23(4): 417–445. Earth Charter. 2001. Preamble. Available at <http://www.earthcharter.org>. Foster, J. B. 2009. The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet. New York: Monthly Review Press. Gaonkar, D. P. 2002. “Toward New Imaginaries: An Introduction.” Public Culture 14(1): 1–19. Gottlieb, R. S. (ed.). 2003. Liberating Faith: Religious Voices for Justice, Peace and Ecological Wisdom. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Huebner, C. K. 2006. A Precarious Peace: Yoderian Explorations on Theology, Knowledge, and Identity. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press. John Paul II. 1989. Peace with God the Creator, Peace with all of Creation. The Vatican: Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Available at <http://www.vatican.va/holy father/john paul ii/ Downloaded by [Randolph Haluza-DeLay] at 08:53 05 June 2012 178 RANDOLPH HALUZA-DELAY messages/peace/documents/hf jp-ii mes 08121990 xxiv-world-day-for-peace en.html> (last accessed July 3, 2011). Katongole, E. M. 2005. “Christianity, Tribalism, and the Rwandan Genocide: A Catholic Reassessment of Christian ‘Social Responsibility.’” Logos 8(3): 67–93. Kearns, L. 1995. “Saving the Creation: Christian Environmentalism in the United States.” Sociology of Religion 57: 55–70. Lederach, J. P. 1995. Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press. Luke, T. W. 1999. “Eco-Managerialism: Environmental Studies as a Power/Knowledge Formation,” in F. Fischer and M. A. Hajer (eds.), Living with Nature: Environmental Politics as Cultural Discourse. New York: Oxford University Press. Megoran, N. 2011. “War and Peace? An Agenda for Peace Research and Practice in Geography.” Political Geography 30(4): 178–189. Menkhaus, J. 2009. “Ignatian Spirituality and the Just Peacemaking Theory.” Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice 21(4): 448–456. Merchant, C. 1980. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Project. 2005. Summary Report of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Project. Available at <http://www.millenniumassessment.org/en/index. html> (last accessed July 3, 2011). Plumwood, V. 2002. Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason. London and New York: Routledge. Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity & Mennonite World Conference. 2003. “Called Together to be Peacemakers: Report of the International Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and Mennonite World Conference 1998–2003.” Available at <http://www.mwc-cmm.org/index.php/component/docman/cat view/10-interchurchdialogue-reports?Itemid> (last accessed July 3, 2011). Stassen, G. 1998. Just Peacemaking: Transforming Initiatives for Justice and Peace. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press. Taylor, C. 2002. “Modern Social Imaginaries.” Public Culture 14(1): 91–124. Turner, D. D. 2005. “Are We at War with Nature?” Environmental Values 14: 21–36. Randolph Haluza-DeLay is Associate Professor of Sociology at The King’s University College, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He was the lead editor of Speaking for Ourselves: Environmental Justice in Canada (UBC Press, 2009) and has authored over 20 journal articles and scholarly book chapters. He is currently coediting a book on global religions and climate change. E-mail: [email protected]