From the UK Independent, a thorough and thought-provoking op-ed by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. This is not evangelical “creation care”; at the same time, Williams makes a solid case for the religious interests of environmental protection and sustainable development:
All the great religious traditions, in their several ways, insist that personal wealth is not to be seen in terms of reducing the world to what the individual can control and manipulate for whatever exclusively human purposes may be most pressing. Religious belief claims, in the first place, that I am most fully myself only in relation with my creator; what I am in virtue of this relationship cannot be diminished or modified by any earthly power. In the environment there is a dimension that resists and escapes us: to reduce the world to a storehouse of materials for limited human purposes is thus to put in question any serious belief in an indestructible human value.
Williams, however, is not satisfied to remain within the strictly theological realm, and notes the potential for political chaos that could result from an ever-tightening supply of life-sustaining resources. A fascinating read!
Technorati tags: sustainable development, religion
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