The Green Bible
Every newspaper carries stories of further scientific proof of climate change and of the human contribution exacerbating it. Countries are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to reduce green house emissions, create clean coal, and to find alternatives to fossil fuel.
They need not do all this of course, if they only listened to the people who know better than everyone else – the climate skeptics. Since a significant number of these are found in the membership ranks of the CDP and are conservative Christians, including a disproportionately high percentage of those who are also conspiracy theorists, it must come as a shock to discover “The Green Bible”.
We have been used to Bibles being “Red letter” where the words of Jesus are printed in red (helpful for those who do not realize all the words of Jesus outside the four Gospels) and Holy Spirit Bibles, with all the words about the Holy Spirit being in marked boxes, and the blank spaces Bible where all the verses about poverty, issues of social justice, homelessness, financial greed and so have been cut out (leaving a very mangled Bible for those who think salvation is purely an individual matter with no flow-on obligations to our communities). The inclusive Bible gets rid of all the exclusively male references and makes it female inclusive (not ‘mankind’ but ‘person kind’, etc.)
We have been used to seeing in the 20th Century the Scofield Reference Bible, which promoted the theories of the 19th Century Irish lawyer J.N. Darby, who was influential in the development of the Plymouth Brethren and the Exclusive Brethren. The Bibles which espoused his theories on religious separation from those Christians with whom he did not agree, the theories of dispensationism and pre-millennialism were used by separatist fundamentalists but rarely found in Orthodox, Anglican, Catholic and most Protestant denominations.
Now there is a new Bible, with verses marked, as those mentioned above, except they are printed in green. The Green Bible is designed for Christians who understand climate change and who buy Prius cars!
David Van Biema writes in TIME magazine last month (Sep. 18, 2008) “Green runs through the Bible like a vine. There are the Garden, and Noah’s olive branch. The oaks under which Abraham met with angels. The “tree standing by the waterside” in Psalms. And there is Jesus, the self-proclaimed “true vine,” who describes the Kingdom of Heaven as a mustard seed that grows into a tree “where birds can nest.” He dies on a cross of wood, and when he rises Mary Magdalene mistakes him for a gardener.
“Now there is a Bible trying to make gardeners of us all. On Oct. 7, HarperCollins is releasing The Green Bible, a Scripture for the Prius age that calls attention to more than 1,000 verses related to nature by printing them in a pleasant shade of forest green, much as red-letter editions of the Bible encrimson the words of Jesus. The new version’s message, states an introduction by Evangelical eco-activist J. Matthew Sleeth, is that “creation care”—the Christian catchphrase for nature conservancy—”is at the very core of our Christian walk.”
“Using recycled paper with soy-based ink, The Green Bible includes supplementary writings by, among others, St. Francis of Assisi, Pope John Paul II, Desmond Tutu and Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright. Several of these essays cite the Genesis verse in which God gives humanity “dominion” over the earth, a charge most religious greens read to mean “stewardship.” Others assert that eco-neglect violates Jesus’ call to care for the least among us: it is the poor who inhabit the floodplains.
“Mainline Protestants have long been green, and a Pew Foundation study recently found that 54% of Evangelicals—and 63% of those ages 18 to 29—agreed that “stricter environmental laws and regulations are worth the cost.”
I do not think the climate sceptics will jump for joy over this one. Neither will I. The trouble with all of these Bibles, with the exception of the words of Jesus in red, is that the promoters of the Holy Spirit Bible, The Scofield Bible, The Green Bible and so on, are using a very unsound principle called eisegesis rather than exegesis – that is, reading into the Bible what their theory says, rather then reading out of the Bible what the Bible says. Theories are still theories so we should proclaim only what the Bible says, not what we would like it to say.
Rev The Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes, A.C., M.L.C.