It’s the ‘ism’ that makes all the difference. The ‘environment’ is just all the stuff around us. ‘Environment’ is first recorded in 1830, and comes from the much earlier word ‘environ’, which, in turn, is first recorded in one of Wycliffe’s sermons from 1375. ‘Environ’ comes from an Old French word meaning “that which makes a circuit (or veers) around us”.
’Environmentalism’, on the other hand, is a now a morally charged word. It wasn’t always so. When ‘environmentalism’ was first coined in 1923, it referred to the theory that the main influence in the development of a person or group was their environment—a nurture over nature sort of theory. Well, today ‘environmentalism’ is all about nurturing nature—“the advocacy of the protection and conservation of the natural environment” in the words of the Macquarie Dictionary.
In biblical terms, this basic definition is fine. It does little more than capture the stewardship of the natural world entrusted to humanity by God in Genesis 1:28-30 and displayed by Adam’s naming of the animals in Genesis 2:19 (and Adam was, after all, a gardener). But in more recent years the word—and the concept—of ‘environmentalism’ has taking on a much larger, more sweeping, place in our society.
It appears to me that Christianity is (effectively) dead in our popular culture and that its place has been taken by environmentalism. Today, both spirituality and morality are found in environmentalism. The vague, popular notion of ‘spirituality’ is found, in practice, in communing with nature: bushwalking, whale watching, swimming with dolphins, even planting a tree. All of these can be seen today as ‘spiritual’ experiences. Furthermore, environmentalism is now also the source of morality. Abortion is not seen as immoral (in fact, it’s widely viewed as a morally neutral medical procedure), but Japan’s whaling program raises great moral indignation and is roundly condemned as grossly immoral behaviour.
Environmentalism tells us something about the world in which Christians are to live and speak the gospel—a world where the dominant belief system is a bizarre combination of indulgent consumerism whose conscience is salved (and made both spiritual and moral) by caring for the environment.
