Moltmann, Muslims  and Al-Mizan

Let’s offer thanks to Jürgen Moltmann, Muslims and Al-Mizan for listening to prophecies regarding the future of our planet, Earth. Like the prophets of ancient Israel, today’s scientists have delivered the Word of the Lord to which we on Earth should listen and respond.

Scientists in 2023, writing for Earth System Science Data, forecasted that “human-induced global warming rates are at their highest historical level, and 1.5 °C global warming might be expected to be reached or exceeded within the next 10 years.” What might this mean? It means the condo our family dwells in might soon get flooded due to sea level rise. Would denial help preserve our home? “The scientific concept of human-caused climate damage is rejected by America’s far right,” says our local newspaper (Spotswood, 2024).  Even if America’s far right turns deaf ears to scientific prophecy, theologians are certainly ready to listen. Right? Well, sorta.

This Patheos post adds to my recently published piece, “Can Scientists Become Prophets? Christian and Islamic Eco-Theology“(Peters 2024).

Theologians seem deaf to scientific prophecies

When the scientific prophets announced that the coming Day of the Lord would be darkness and not light, they were ignored by most Christian theologians. One of the earliest prophets was Lynn White writing on “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis” in Science in 1967. White alarmed us by saying that we are confronted by an ecological crisis for which biblical religion bears considerable responsibility. White’s article was followed by another prophecy in 1970, the first Earth Day. And that was followed by The Limits to Growth published in 1972 in 30 languages by the Club of Rome. It’s time to “think globally” and “act locally”, declared the World Future Society in 1979. In 1985 the U.S. Congress entertained testimony from astrobiologist Carl Sagan on climate change. We are being called to “global consciousness,” said Sagan. Here the future of Planet Earth was forecasted with prophetic implications for intergenerational and global moral responsibility. No one could hide behind ignorance.

But Christian theologians in the 1970s and well into the 1980s largely ignored the eco-prophecies of their own decades. If you would ask Christian theologians in 1972, “do you trust science?”, their answer would likely be negative.

Why? Because the rising loyalty to feminist theology and liberation theology rejected the global model with which scientists work. Feminists represented the interests of oppressed women against all oppressors. Liberation theologians represented the interests of the oppressed poor against all oppressors. European and North American scientists belong to the oppressors, those whom we stand against. Scientists could not be supported by conscientious theologians because those wearing lab coats represent white, male, colonial powers. No global holism allowed here!

Feminist and liberation theologians reversed themselves after the Chernobyl nuclear reactor melt down in 1986. Why? Because it became clear that the eco-crisis is a crisis for all, oppressed and oppressors alike. Two decades had passed between the mouth that prophesied and the Christian ears that listened.

One theologian did not wait. That was Jürgen Moltmann.[1]  For the Tübingen theologian of hope, justice along with liberation plus the healing of a groaning creation come together in a single package. We anticipate God’s…

“…liberating future in the midst of the enslaved creation…[We] take up the struggle for the liberation of God’s creation from godless and inhuman powers” (J. Moltmann, Hope and Planning 1971, 47).

In subsequent years Moltmann would publish additional treatises connecting theology with environmental ethics such as the Future of Creation (J. Moltmann, The Future of Creation 1979) and God in Creation (J. Moltmann, God in Creation 1985). More recently he wrote:

“Human wisdom will search for viable harmonizaitons between human civilization and earth’s ecosystems. Then the goal is not human domination over nature; i9t is a well-judged and prudent conformity with nature” (Moltmann, Science and Wisdom, 2003, 29).

I’m remembering Jürgen Moltmann these days because this theological Titan passed away this month (June 3, 2024) at age 98.

Muslims and Al-Mizan

Muslim ears have heard the prophets and have this year responded theologically with Al-Mizan: Covenant for the Earth(Llewellyn and Fazlun Khalid 2024).

• 1.2. The world we live in is now degraded, corrupted, and dangerously unstable. We have changed the face of the Earth, and we struggle to restore its equilibrium. Toxins, from insecticides to radiation, contaminate the air and water, the atmosphere is overloaded with greenhouse gasses from burning fossil fuels, soils are eroded and impoverished, oceans fill with plastic, alpine glaciers and polar icecaps melt, sea levels rise, coral reefs bleach and die, droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, and floods grow in frequency and violence….The oppression of indigenous, racial, ethnic, and religious minorities persists, manifested in the obliteration of cultures and history of nations in the name of one ideology or the other and in the growing number of forcibly displaced people, estimated at more than 110 million as this Covenant goes to press.

Like Moltmann, these deliberating Muslims authoring Al-Mizan connect justice and liberation with planetary sustainability.[2]

Conclusion

One of today’s prophetic scientists is Michael Mann at the University of Pennsylvania. In a recent interview with Jackie Defusco, Mann tells us that our planet’s over-heating due to anthropogenic causes is responsible for the current increase in heat waves, hurricanes, and other death-dealing weather changes. This is the penalty for not listening to the prophets a half century ago.

Borrowing in part the language of the World Council of Churches speaking to the widest public possible about the global common good, I believe today’s believers should lift a vision for the future of Earth as a just, sustainable, participatory, and planetary society (Peters 2023). Our eco-scientists are offering to map and even to pave the roads to get from here to there (Meadows and et.al. 1972) (Dryzek, Norgaard and Schlosberg 2011). That’s the direction I believe our theologians and ethicists along with all people of goodwill should direct traffic.

Patheos PT 3016 Moltmann, Muslims and Al-Mizan: Common Good Part Six

PT 3001 Eco-Theology when it’s “Time to Act”

PT 3002 The Science-As-Savior Eco-Myth

Patheos PT 3003 Public Theology for the Common Good

Patheos PT 3011 Politics vs Common Good Governing Part One

Patheos PT 3012 Economism vs Common Good Part Two

Patheos PT 3013 Economism vs Common Good Part Three

Patheos PT 3014 Economism vs Common Good Part Four

Patheos PT 3015 Just, Sustainable, Participatory, and Planetary. Common Good Part Five

Patheos PT 3016 Moltmann, Muslims and Al-Mizan: Common Good Part Six

Science and Religion Resources

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Ted Peters is an emeritus professor at the Graduate Theological Union (GTU), where he co-edits the journal, Theology and Science, on behalf of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS). His current focus is Public Systematic Theology with a strong emphasis on the creative mutual interaction between science and religion within the framework of public theology. He recently edited, AI and IA: Utopia or Extinction (ATF 2019). Along with Brian Patrick Green and Arvin Gouw, he has published, Religious Transhumanism and Its Critics (Lexington 2022). Visit his website, TedsTimelyTake.com and his Patheos Public Theology column.

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Notes

[1] There were some theological ears who listened to the ecological voices sounding the alarm. We must thank for their foresight process theologian John Cobb, evangelical ethicist Ron Sider, and Union Seminary Lutheran ethicist Larry Rasmussen, as well as selected leaders of the World Council of Churches. Most recently, Pope Francis gifted the world with one of the best theological treatments of the eco-crisis to date, Laudato Sí (Vatican 2015). My Berkelely colleague, Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, articulately presses the inveterate connection between justice and climate change in eco-theology and eco-ethics (Moe-Lobeda, 2015). [2] Does this include retributive justice exacted against the fossil fuel industry? Lawsuits suggest this. According to the New York Times, “All of the cases follow more or less the same script: They claim that oil companies like Exxon and Chevron deceived the public by concealing their understanding of the devastating effects of global warming, and seek to make those companies pay for the billions of dollars in damages now being caused by rising seas and extreme weather.”

References

Dryzek, John, Richard Norgaard, and and David Schlosberg. “Climage Change and Society: Approaches and Responses.” In The Oxford Handbook of Climage Change and Society, by Richard B. Norgaard, and David Schlosberg, eds John S. Dryzek, 3-17. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Llewellyn, Othman, and et.al. Fazlun Khalid. Al-Mizan: Covenant for the Earth. Birmingham UK: The Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Sciences. https://www.almizan.earth/, 2024.

Meadows, Donella, and et.al. The Limits to Growth. New York: Universe Books, 1972.

Moe-Lobeda, Cynthia. Resisting Structural Evil. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015.

Moltmann, Jürgen. God in Creation. New York: Harper, 1985.

—. Hope and Planning. New York: Harper, 1971.

—. Science and Wisdom. Minneapolis MN: Fortress, 2003.

—. The Future of Creation. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1979.

Peters, Ted. The Voice of Public Theology. Adelaide: ATF, 2023.

__. “Can Scientists Become Prophets? Christian and Islamic Eco-Theology.” Theology and Science 22:2: 1-5; 2024.

Spotswood, Dick, “Ignoring Marin sea level rise is costliest option,” MarinIJ.com (June 6, 2024) 11.

Vatican. Laudato Si. 2015.