The winter of 1968-69 was the first time I experienced a federal official swing the anger hammer to smack a deliberative committee out of a river of thought and course of action they were concluding to take. The venue was the National Council of Churches’ Stewardship Division. The federal official was the Deputy Surgeon General of the US. It was a memorable performance. It accomplished its mission, which was to keep competent Christian theology and churches generally away from the then-nascent environment movement.
I had supplied the theological component for Robert Theobald’s contracted socio-economic backgrounder justifying NCC Stewardship Division’s boarding a ship of the environment movement, which was setting sail. Stewardship wanted to use Genesis 1:26-28 (Imago Dei) as their boarding pass. I pointed out that that won’t work because the verb radash means kill violently (literally: standing over, foot on neck, sword raised ready to slice off head). Radash is translated, usually, have dominion over [animals and nature generally]. Genesis 1:26-28 is about idolatry of objects in nature. It is not about stewardship of nature. An implied directive, it means annihilate your idols [before they annihilate you].
I provided an alternative boarding pass — by way of Johannes Pedersen and The Great Prophets — namely, mishpat. Mishpat is universal order, as in what nature already is and a court of law is supposed to induce and produce. Its cognate relative is shophat/shaphat, meaning judge in the sense of the proper discharge of the office of judge. In its universal sense, shophat/shaphat means the office of prophet. Universal order, judgeship, prophethood are all the same religious, meaning pietistical, phenomena and duty. This is a splendid boarding pass for the environment movement, theologically solid and salient in every way.
Prof. Dr. Johannes Pedersen
Israel: Its Life And Culture, Vol I
Israel: Its Life And Culture, Vol II
The Arabic Book
The NCC Stewardship guys and a professor from Earlham, a Quaker school — i.e. not Christian — fought me on Genesis 1:26-28. They wanted it, hotly. But I persisted, citing its actual language, and they had to desist. But they also did not like mishpat, not least for its evocation of The Establishment, then a term of deeply-felt derision even amongst many high up in The Establishment! So they were kind of stuck.
The Deputy Surgeon General had no problem with Stewardship’s using Genesis 1:26-28, likely because he knew beforehand — and also heard from me — that it would not be valid for boarding the environment movement, as in fact it is not and should not be considered as being. But he erupted when I laid out the alternative: universal order, systems theory, the nature of things being what they are, and their natural tendency towards sequential periods of homeostasis. All that and more besides is perfectly apparent in the Old Testament as well as the New Testament and is perfectly suited for NCC’s Stewardship Division to show for boarding the environment movement.
Order is the natural condition of human affairs. Disorder is an unnatural condition of human affairs. Disorder is introduced into the natural, orderly condition of affairs by some tone and tint of idolatry by humans. This was my point at NCC HQ over the winter of 1968-1969. That affirmation stands unimpeachable for millennia, as do many correlative affirmations in The Bible. No theologian would affirm otherwise.
But that was the problem. The environment movement, personified in that moment as the Deputy Surgeon General of the US, were not interested in a competent theological component, much less systems theory — see Peter Putnam — riding their movement’s little fleet of ships, which all must sail in the same direction. Moreover, the thought of order horrified them. Bolsheviks of any flavor fulminate par excellence anti-Christian because the thought of order — and Christianity stands for deep order — indicts their idolatry.
So, the Deputy SG swung his anger hammer up, around, and down — it came on suddenly, without warning, as a terrible, howling tornado, stunning everyone breathless — and smashed the entire meeting into smithereens, which, considering Stewardship’s obdurate eagerness to front Genesis 1:26-28, was on balance the best disposition for it. Then he stormed out and left the building.
In the sullen, quiet aftermath, immediately the Earlham professor offered to replace me and my work, using Genesis 1:26-28 just as Stewardship wanted. Stewardship guys said, “Yes.” Bob Theobald announced himself quit of the project. Nothing but more Quaker-Bolshevik nonsense came of it, NCC’s last chance to maintain their dignity in ethics and theology . . . and they blew it.
A few years later I recounted this story on a visit with Cat Bateson, Gregory’s daughter, and she responded along the lines of, Of course, that Genesis passage is antithetical to the environment movement. The church has no place in this movement. She was right. However, although she did not intend it so, her assessment reflected negatively on the environment movement, not on the church, Christianity, or theology.
Genesis 1:26-28 is in fact the proper response to the environment movement . . . to condemn it, not to join it.
Yet, at the time, that was not clear. It was not clear then that a movement which seemed to share Christian sensibilities — in this case, protect the mother, including Mother Earth — was in fact hostile to Christianity in every way imaginable.
Genesis 1:26-28 in context of the times was wrong for the purpose NCC’s Stewardship Division had in mind. However, so was the alternative I put forward: mishpat. That was wrong, although I did not realize it at the time, because the environment movement had nothing related to order in mind to do. In fact, their intentions were for disorder on a grand scale, as is seen today. The Deputy Surgeon General of the US made the point with uncivil, disorderly (of course), and discourteous, yet sharp clarity. Given assumptions of the time — that no one was simply, much less fiercely, anti-Christian — I at least, of those in the room, missed the point he made. Cat Bateson drove it home for me.
(I was slow to see what I was in. When I saw it, in 1971, I dropped everything right away and got out, losing everything except my white plume.)
In point of fact, NCC’s effort to join the environment movement marked the exact point in time at which the anti-Christian element in American society — Cathars / Albigensians posing now as Unitarians, Humanists, Quakers, and Bolsheviks — broke free of their centuries-long pretense of Christian affiliation in favor of pell-mell, open field running against Americans’ Christian sensibilities and institutions to annihilate them. The environment movement was their weapon of choice du jour. It continues in that capacity, feeling quite accomplished now.
NCC Stewardship’s weakness was their desire to board and sail someone else’s cruise. Paraphrasing West Point’s Cadet Prayer, one may say that NCC then chose the easier wrong over the harder right. They set their course then right up to the present day: irrelevancy.
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Principle I
Principle II
Principle III
We witness in the world all kinds of pains and sorrows. But none of these is permanent. Every term of pain is followed by pleasure. The experience of pleasure is refined and enhanced by the earlier experience of pain. Like gold is refined by melting it in a crucible, pain divinises the pleasure that follows it. The New Year or a new month does not bring with it any new joy or sorrow. Every second is new, because it heralds the march of time. A year is in fact a succession of seconds turning into minutes, days and months. It is only when every moment is cherished as new, will the new year become new. The sacred way in which every moment is spent will determine the fruitfulness of the year. If you wish to lead a sacred life and have sacred experiences, you must engage yourself in sacred actions. The good and evil in the world can be changed only by the change in men’s actions. The transformation of society must start with transformation of individuals.
