Restored to Earth: Christianity, Environmental Ethics, and Ecological Restoration

219 Pages·2013·1.338 MB·English

by  Gretel Van Wieren

Restored
to
Earth
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Restored

to
Earth
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Christianity, Environmental Ethics,
and Ecological Restoration
Gretel Van Wieren
Georgetown University Press
Washington, DC
© 2013 Georgetown University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Van Wieren, Gretel.
Restored to earth : Christianity, environmental ethics, and ecological restoration /
Gretel Van Wieren.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references (pages) and index.
ISBN 978-1-58901-997-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Human ecology—Religious aspects—Christianity. 2. Environmental
ethics. 3. Restoration ecology. I. Title.
GF80.V38 2013
261.8’8—dc23
2012042487
∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American
National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.
15 14 13 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 First printing
Printed in the United States of America
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Contents
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Preface vii

Introduction: From Wounded Land and Spirit to
Healing Land and Spirit: The Significance of
Ecological Restoration for Environmental Ethics 1
Part i: restorinG earth
ChaPter 1:
“Let There Be a Tree”: A Field Guide to
Types of Ecological Restoration 35
ChaPter 2:
For the Sake of the Wild Others: Restoration
Meanings for Nature 55
ChaPter 3:
Restoration of the Personal Heart: Toward a
Spirituality of Environmental Action 84
ChaPter 4:
Regenerating Communities of Place: Public
Restoration Values 113
Part ii: restored to earth
ChaPter 5:
Ecological Symbolic Action: Restoration as
Sacramental Practice 145
ChaPter 6:
Re-Storying Earth, Re-Storied to Earth 170
Bibliography 189
Index 199
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Preface
l
Volunteer Revegetation
After all the stabbing at
slick clay soil in the rain,
and all the hands, backs,
eyes, knees, working the plants in
in the mud,
and after passing pots, picks,
spades, cups, bagels, chuckles, shovels,
and so many how-to’s and
how-come’s and
all too simples explanations,
the last thing we did was back out,
driving live stakes into the ground as we went,
erasing our own
route in.
If it is the path
that makes the garden,
and the garden that
civilizes the wild,
we are disengardening now,
turning on our past
and our pioneering ways
to make amends for the
scythe that went too far,
to say a thank you
audaciously
for the future.
—Cindy Goulder1
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Preface
Recently, over dinner, a colleague and friend of mine expressed frustration about a
keynote address that we had both just attended by a prominent ecological theolo-
gian. My friend was lamenting what he perceived as an overly negative, crisis-ori-
ented, and dour message that ran through the talk, as well as through contemporary
environmental ethics in general. He wondered if mourning the environmental cri-
sis and our bad environmental behavior was really going to motivate better envi-
ronmental actions. Was a professional theologian telling us why we ought to be
more ecologically thrifty, self-sacrificial, and virtuous really going to make us so?
Were there not more positive, solution-oriented, and inspiring stories that could
be told about how we as modern human beings might live more cooperatively and
graciously with land?
This project is, in part, an attempt to respond to these questions. It investi-
gates the human relationship to nature, including ethical and religious values in
relation to natural landscapes, from within the context of a particular healing eco-
logical practice. The arguments that follow are based on my perception that much
of contemporary environmental ethics, especially religious environmental ethics,
has been based on a crisis-oriented approach to environmental problems and ethi-
cal responses. While this approach may have had its time and place within envi-
ronmental ethical thought, and still may have a place in certain circumstances, the
time has come for environmental ethics to move toward more positive, forward-
leaning approaches and solutions to environmental issues—not toward a romantic
optimism that overlooks the gravity of the world’s escalating environmental prob-
lems, rather toward a course charted between lament and hope.
Among the most distinctive contributions of ecological restoration is its
simultaneous focus on degradation and healing, impoverishment and empower-
ment, loss and recovery. “All is not well in the land community,” most restoration-
ists heartily acknowledge; yet they also recognize, firsthand, that “all can be well,”
or at least, “more well” in terms of health in land and the human relationship to
land. Restoration, as I state persistently throughout this book, lives in that creative,
paradoxical place between despair over what has been destroyed and gladness that
it is still possible to give back to land the capacity for self-healing and renewal. As
the poem at the outset states: “we are disengardening now, turning on our past and
our pioneering ways to make amends for the scythe that went too far, to say a thank you
audaciously for the future.”
This book argues that fundamental, significant, and lasting environmental
change will occur only when avenues are created for people to physically, intel-
lectually, socially, and spiritually connect with the natural world. Accordingly, it
assumes that the generation of environmental virtues—attentiveness, respect,
admiration, care, and love—are rooted primarily in our experiences of nature.
Human beings can alter their minds, an intellectual act, but they must also change
their hearts, an emotional endeavor, for real change to occur. Before we can act
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Preface
ethically in relation to earth we must experience an obligation, and a fundamental
desire, to act in a particular way. We must, in other words, feel and know something
from within, which is often inherently tied to something experienced from with-
out. The experiences of touching, feeling, and participating in the processes and
ways of the natural world will need to form the fundamental basis of a land ethic.
It is these basic experiences that the work of ecological restoration can provide.
The ideas put forward here would not have reached book form without the
considerable support, information, inspiration, and goodwill of numerous people.
I want to thank my wonderful teachers at Yale, Margaret Farley, Tom Ogletree,
Gene Outka, Steve Kellert, Baird Callicott, and Holmes Rolston, whose particular
perspectives on the study of religion, ethics, and the environment helped to shape,
and have their mark on, this project throughout. To Margaret in particular go my
deepest admiration, respect, and affection, for lending her clear ethical thinking,
profound insight, sharp editorial eye to the manuscript in its entirety, and for her
friendship throughout. Many thanks go also to Willis Jenkins, who read and pro-
vided feedback on the whole manuscript, and to Bill Jordan and the Values Project
Roundtable members for numerous stimulating conversations about ecological
restoration practice, ritual, and environmental values.
The initial stages of this project were supported financially by Yale Univer-
sity and the Louisville Institute, and I am grateful for their aid. I completed and
revised the manuscript during my first years of teaching at Michigan State Uni-
versity, where colleagues in my home department of religious studies, as well as in
the broader university, have welcomed and encouraged cross-disciplinary think-
ing about environmental ethics. At Georgetown University Press, many thanks to
Richard Brown for his early enthusiasm for the project for and his guidance—and
that of his entire staff—through the publishing process.
I owe special thanks to those who, offering their time and goodwill, served
as guides through the on-the-ground realities, struggles, and joys of restoration
work: conversations with Marty Illick from the Lewis Creek Association, David
Brynn from Vermont Family Forests, Sister Mary David Walgenbach from Holy
Wisdom Monastery, and Gene Bakko from St. Olaf College provided invaluable
insights and substance for the heart of this book. And finally, innumerable thanks
to my family, Jeff, Inga, Clara, and Carl, for their willingness to help put in a little
prairie of our own and mostly for their unending love and encouragement through
it all.
note
1. Goulder, “Volunteer Revegetation.” Originally published in Ecological Restoration
14.1 (1996): 62. © 1996 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin
System. Reproduced by the permission of the University of Wisconsin Press.
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