John Gatta’s Green Gospel: Foundations of Ecotheology (Church Publishing) is an important and eloquently written contribution to the expanding body of literature addressing faith and the environmental crisis. Jürgen Moltmann wrote that “the ecological reformation of modern religion” is this century’s most important challenge. Dr. Gatta takes up this gauntlet, the urgency of which seems to increase by the day.
Reformation in the church often means going back to our roots and rediscovering truth that has been forgotten or neglected. In this work of constructive theology, Gatta demonstrates how mainstream Christian doctrine addresses our relationship with and responsibility for the earth and its whole community of life.
He rightly asserts that “worshippers have rarely found occasion to appreciate precisely how and why an environmental vision should be understood as a central … component of Christian faith and practice.” Rediscovering this is not only necessary in response to the world’s environmental crisis but also that the faith can speak afresh to today’s seekers.
He emphasizes that Christianity has been primarily understood and articulated in anthropocentric ways, concerned with the salvation of people and with healing and justice-seeking in human society. Christ came “for us and for our salvation,” as the creed affirms.
He then asks how this also contains geocentric and ecological meaning: “What does earth care have to do with core elements of the gospel proclamation? With wonder, love, and praise?” The gospel is meant to embrace everything, he replies. “God so loved the world,” declares John 3:16, not just humanity. So in the first four chapters he applies an ecological lens to doctrines such as the Trinity, the Incarnation, God’s reign, and the cross and resurrection, opening an expanded range of understanding about how God’s saving work includes “the one great household of Creation on earth.”
Gatta’s theological exploration is enhanced by quotations from writers such as Traherne, Andrewes, Hopkins, Thoreau, Muir, Merton, Levertov, and Berry, all of whom see in nature sacred dimensions of God’s presence and purpose. These stir the imagination and help us not just think but feel the truths that Gatta elucidates, as he recounts “glimpses and glimmers of godliness” that are revealed in the earth and its diverse circle of life.
When addressing Christ’s cross, Green Gospel does not shrink from describing the alarming dimensions of our environmental crisis, threatening “the flourishing and diversity of earth’s biotic communities as never before since the dawn of human civilization.” Massive deforestation and extinction of wildlife, birds, and coral reef life are “shadows of the cross.”
Gatta urges us to enlarge our understanding of Christ’s saving work to embrace our ecological fallenness and give us an “earth-hearted hope.” We are reminded of Coleridge’s words in his poignant poem about the ancient mariner who callously slaughters a beautiful albatross: “He prayest best, who loveth best / All things both great and small; / For the dear God who loveth us, / He made and loveth all.”
Green Gospel concludes with two chapters discussing eco-spirituality and the adoption of a “green rule of life” to engage us in loving the whole of creation and promoting its welfare. This includes a moving journey through the ways that the Holy Eucharist continually opens our awareness of the sacramentality of all creation. In its gathering together of nature’s elements of bread and wine and water with the remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice, we experience the continual renewal of what Evelyn Underhill called “that primal Charity by which the cosmos is sustained.”
This book needs to be widely read. It speaks compellingly about a defining issue of our time in the context of a generous religious orthodoxy. It means to stir us and get us moving. Green Gospel’s spiritual depth, enhanced by helpful questions at the end of each chapter, make it not just ripe for individual enlightenment but an ideal resource for parish study and conversation.
