“From Kin-dom to Kin-ship”
Senator Nelson was inspired by a teach-in. He wondered what might happen if hundreds of colleges hosted an environmental teach-in all at the same time. He floated the idea to a conservation group meeting in Seattle, Washington on September 9, 1969. Six days later he shared the idea with a United Auto Workers meeting in Atlantic City. The idea was picked up by the national press. Millions of people responded. Barry Commoner, a biologist and the chairperson of the St. Louis Committee on Environment Information, wrote an article in 1969 in which he said, “We don’t really know what the long-term effects of various types of environmental deterioration will be, and the kids are the guinea pigs.”
Our kids are guinea pigs? Not mine! People paid attention. Nelson and his staff picked April 22, 1970, as the first national Earth Day teach-in. They chose that day because it fit between college spring break and final exams. They called it a “National Teach-In on the Crisis of the Environment.” The event was hailed as the “Dawn of the Environmental Decade.” The Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency all became a reality within the next five years. President Carter put solar panels on the White House. Real change was happening right before our eyes. But then Ronald Reagan was elected President in 1980, and the decade came to an abrupt end. One of his first acts as president was to remove the solar panel. Protecting the environment has been an uphill struggle ever since.
It is good to remember this history. It is good to remember such a hopeful time when people were organized and mobilized. At a teach-in at the University of Minnesota students conducted a funeral for the gasoline engine. They buried it in the ground. That was in the early 1970’s. People knew we had to end our dependence on fossil fuel. But that was then, and now is now. Things have changed since the 1970’s. Today billionaires buy the votes of legislators and judges, and in turn legislators gerrymander districts so that they can hold on to power and protect the billionaires. It’s a vicious cycle. Wendell Berry says in one of his poems, “We pray, not for new earth and heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye clear. What we need is here.”
What we need is here. Things can change. But to see the possibilities we need to be quiet in heart and in eye clear, and that brings me to Psalm 8. I no longer read this psalm the way I used to. I see it with different and I hope with clearer eyes. The psalm begins: “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth! Those whose glory above the heavens is chanted by the mouth of babes and infants, thou hast founded a bulwark because of thy foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.” The psalmist is looking to the next generation to be a bulwark against the enemies of creation. Our generation is responsible to the next generation, and to the next seven generations. We cannot simply pass the environmental torch to a new generation and wish them “good luck.”
The psalmist is clear. God is mindful of us. God cares for us–which is to say, God expects something of us. Then in verse 6, this is the crucial verse: “Thou hast given us dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under our feet.” Christians are divided over that word “dominion.” What does it mean to have dominion? The word “dominion” comes from the Latin, “dominus,” (he who has subdued) and the Sanskrit (he who subdues). Conquering, subduing, and dominating are all implied in the word “dominion.” People who have dominion assume that they have the right to possess. Native American scholar Steven Newcomb says that the idea of dominion leads to the assumption that the conqueror has a divine right to conquer and to control (Pagans in the Promised Land, Fulcrum Press, 2008). Dominion is about ownership. Let me add just one more thought. In the moral system of dominion, the people who exercise dominion over others assume that they have an obligation to teach others to obey and to pay tribute. All of this is implied in the three little letters, d-o-m.
Now in the church we have had a great debate about how we interpret the idea of dominion. There is a theological school called “dominion theology.” This school teaches that the earth is our treasure chest and we have dominion over the earth, just as the Bible says. We should use it and exploit it and profit from it in any way we choose. The Earth is ours to enjoy. Others, and I think all of us, think of dominion in terms of stewardship. Stewardship means “the careful, responsible management of something entrusted to us,” particularly but not only natural resources. In the old days when I gave stewardship sermons I talked about the five “T’s” of time, treasure, talent, tissue, and trash. To be a good steward is to manage our resources, the five T’s, wisely and well. As stewards of the environment, we believe in the gospel of “R”–reuse, reduce, recycle. That’s our mantra.
But recently I have been challenged to think about the environment in a new way. If we are going to live in a world where peace reigns, justice prevails, and compassion permeates all of life, we need to stop using the word “dom.” If we are going to be “in eye clear,” we need to see that we are not managers of the earth.
When I began in ministry I thought king-dom was a good metaphor because it is very clearly political and it is biblical. Jesus preached the kingdom of God, and he was crucified because he preached the kingdom of God. He was leading opposition to the kingdom of Caesar. But then I learned that kingdom is a patriarchal word. One of the books I have on my bookshelf is “Not Counting Women and Children (Megan McKenna, Orbis, 1995). The author, Megan McKenna, says that words can make people disappear. The patriarchal language of the Bible tends to make women and children disappear. So we moved from “king-dom” to “kin-dom.” A more gender neutral and inclusive word, to be sure. But even though it is in many ways a better word for us, it still carries the notion of dominion–whether we think of dominion or stewardship–we are in charge of creation. We are the managers. I am convinced we need a new paradigm, a new image and way of thinking about the earth and the environment.
R. Buckminster Fuller, an architect, coined the phrase “Spaceship Earth.” He wrote an “Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth” in 1969. He says in the manual, “Our spaceship is superbly designed to keep life regenerating on board.” He goes on to say, “There is one outstanding important fact regarding Spaceship Earth. . . no instruction book came with it.” At the end of this article Buckminster Fuller makes a reference to Christ. He suggests that perhaps Christ was trying to teach us a generalized principle when he told the story of the loaves and fishes.
Perhaps that principle is about learning to do more with less, or managing natural resources more efficiently so that everyone is fed. That would be a good thing. There is enough to meet everyone’s need, but not enough to satisfy one person’s greed. I think that was Gandhi. But I am convinced that we need to stop thinking of ourselves as planet managers. Instead of ownership and stewardship, we need to begin using the language kin-ship. We are kin with the Earth and all the flora and fauna of the earth. The Earth is our relative. Sometimes we might wish that we could manage our relatives, but we cannot. We can respect our relatives. The Spaceship Earth can be for us a source of reverence and wonder. If we are quiet in heart and in eye clear that not only can happen, it will happen.
Then we will discover that God created this spaceship earth not for our pleasure, but for God’s own pleasure. And God continues to love it and sustain it. God renews and sustains all of creation every morning and every night and every hour of every day and every night. Creation itself is a revelation of God’s hiddenness in our midst. If we have the eyes to see and the heart to believe. Then we will learn that war, the exploitation and destruction of nature, the toxification of the earth is not just bad stewardship, poor management. It is blasphemy–violence against God, against the divine.
Using the word kin-ship, we would rewrite verses 5- 6 of Psalm 8. These verses would no longer read as it does now; “Thou hast made us a little less than God, and dost crown us with glory and honor. Thou hast given us dominion over the works of thy hands.” The new version will read: “Thou hast made us holy, living among holy creatures, in a world that is holy. Let me conclude then with this poem. It’s titled: “William Blake says: Everything that Lives is Holy.”
Long live the Child
Long live the Mother and the Father
Long live the People
Long live this wounded Planet
Long live the good milk of the Air
Long live the spawning Rivers and the
mothering Oceans
Long live the juice of the Grass
And all the determined greenery of the Globe
Long live the Elephants and the Sea Horses,
the Humming-birds and the Gorillas,
the Dogs and Cats and Field-Mice-
all the surviving Animals
our innocent Sisters and Brothers
Long life the Earth, deeper than all our thinking
we have done enough killing
Long live the Man
Long live the Woman
Who use both courage and compassion
Long live their Children
(from The Shadow Knows–Poems 2000-2003 (Bloodaxe.2004)
Copyright @Adrian Mitchell, 2004. (https://poetryarchive.org)