From Paper Plates to Disposable Homes

Consumerism is a confusing issue.  It was thought to be a form of patriotism when the U.S. President advised citizens to “go shopping” after 9/11.  News reports portray a sense of well-being when consumer spending is “up.”  But, buying more stuff isn’t a valid aid to the economy’s health and it can have misguided effects on an individual’s search for happiness – as reality television warns on shows about hoarding.

Just how much consumption is enough?

Perplexed about this issue, I did a bit of research about it while at graduate school.  What follows is a paper I wrote for a Christian Ethics course I took.  It explores the subject from several aspects — first, from my own story and the startling statistics, to an overview of consumerism’s origins, to the psychological and theological implications, to new ways to think and act going forward.

Rethinking Our Consumer Economy for the Sake of Creation
by Carol J. Hohle

Introduction

The Earth, we are discovering, is a part of a network of mutuality.  It is more than just a rich pool of resources for humanity to consume as it chooses.  It is, itself, in a complex, interrelationship with the human race.  Unfortunately, there are many horrific examples of humanity’s relationship with the Earth gone wrong.  The “environmental crisis,” as it is commonly known, is a multi-faceted problem involving a complex mix of resource depletion and species extinction, pollution and climate change, population explosion and over consumption.  The crisis is global and local.

Gratefully, however, there is a groundswell of environmental social action reaching critical mass in North America and around the globe.  The U.S. Senate approved a landmark bill that, if approved by the House of Representatives, will double the rate at which the U.S. will need to cut emissions – from just under 2% a year to more than 4.3% a year – in order to bring emissions down to where they need to be by 2020.[1] Other tangible signs of environmental restorative action can be seen in the growing number of individuals and communities taking steps to reduce their footprint on the Earth.  More and more people are examining their consumption habits and choosing more sustainable lifestyles.  Businesses and communities are exploring ways to take the current linear materials economy and create a circular system where closed loop production, zero waste, equity, green chemistry, renewable energy, and local living economies can be incorporated into the fabric of business practices and community well-being.  Religious environmentalism, a new movement across and within many denominations, and ecopsychology are addressing psychological and theological misunderstandings that have contributed to humanity’s alienation from and abuse of the natural world.

The scope of today’s ecological challenge is massive and multi-faceted.  In this article I am addressing only one area of the current issue – that of humanity’s drive to consume.  Our consumer-based economy has been so successful that it is now out of balance with what the earth can sustain.  If it isn’t fixed soon humanity may just find itself on the endangered species list.

Since the industrial revolution that began in the 1800s, the world has been on an unprecedented consumption binge.  In the last fifty years alone, humanity has consumed more goods and services than the combined total of all humans who ever walked the planet before us.[2] What is behind today’s consumer ethos, and why has it become a problem?  What will be required to shift the psyche and “shop” and “toss” behavior in our society to a sustainable one?  This article intends to address the problem of humanity’s consumption habits and suggest a way forward towards a more sustainable economy and ethic.

My Story and The Startling Statistics

As a little girl growing up in the ‘60s I remember summers with no dishwashing chores!  The innovation of paper plates and cups represented freedom to us then.  Mom and I would stock up on Dixie brand products at the beginning of the summer and delight in the free time we discovered after meals.

Disposable goods became a part of our lives. We never gave it a thought. That is, until just a few years ago.  I was sitting in an audience watching a video.  I had been invited to attend a symposium with a friend – she thought I’d appreciate the way the conference was organized.  The subject of the symposium, which already held some importance to me at the time, was environmental sustainability.  After all, I had environmental roots – my Dad taught natural science to grade school children and for years all of us kids went on early-morning bird walks with him.  We camped and hiked as a family, and had a healthy familiarity with and respect for the out-of-doors.  I remember participating in the first Earth Day in 1970, picking up trash from the banks of a local river and planting trees.  But somewhere along my life’s journey I wandered away from my connection with the Earth.  I got busy with life’s demands and my career.  Hearing about what was going on in the environmental movement in 2005 was interesting.  Little did I know it would set me on a new course for my life.

At this seminar, the Pachamama Alliance symposium, in a five-minute video clip, I heard something that struck me profoundly, deeply, and inescapably. Julia Butterfly Hill was talking about her efforts to save a tree.  She asked a question directly to the camera about where disposable goods go.  “When you throw something away, where is AWAY?” she asked innocently.  Her eyes penetrated into my soul and I gasped for air.  The fact was, I had never thought about where “away” was.  Would I find it on a map – is it a town, a county?  I realized I had never once thought about where all my trash went after I discarded it.

In the days and weeks that followed that symposium I contemplated her question, “where is away?”  Each time I went to the wastebasket I paused – where was this cereal box going, how long would it take for this plastic bag to decompose?  When I went to the dump to discard my trash I noticed it was identified as the “Transfer Station.”  Where was all my trash being transferred?

I couldn’t believe I had been so oblivious.  How could I have not known, or cared, where my trash went?  How could I have been so cavalier about throwing out so much?  I realized I had to change.

I started with simple steps:  reusing the plastic bags I had been tossing out and making an effort to be more thorough in my recycling.  I began to address my consumption habits.  I stopped going to the mall for entertainment and buying a new wardrobe every season.  I stopped looking at the catalogs that come to the home and began looking at the underlying motives and values related to my shopping as hobby.  As I began to replace my old habits of “shopping and tossing” with outdoor recreation (walking and riding my bicycle) and reading, I began to discover a whole new meaning to “quality of life.”  I found I was every bit as happy as I had been when I was working-and-spending.  In fact, I felt more alive.

On a hot summer day a few months ago while walking my dog on one of our regular neighborhood loops, I was vividly reminded of Julia’s haunting question, “where is away?”  A house I had loved for its simplicity had been torn down.  It had been renovated only four years ago, including a new, charming front porch.  I loved looking at it and had come to know the latest residents and their young Golden Retriever puppy.  They had moved out just 48 hours earlier. We said our goodbyes to Sadie, and the kids, as the moving van was gathering up the last of their possessions.  Then, suddenly the house was gone.  Totally gone.  The foundation was still in place in the open hole in the ground and there were piles of rubble in the side yard.  Only the thought of the house remained.

I walked on down the street so saddened.  “Disposable houses,” I sighed.  “From paper plates to whole houses.  What’s happened to cause this?  This goes way beyond my Dixie cups.  This is a national epidemic.”

In 2005 I learned the embarrassing truth that there is no such place as “Away.”  And, not unlike most Americans, I was engaged in the irresponsible habit of acquisition and disbursement.  We are a nation addicted to “shop” and “toss.”  These few statistics alone confirm it:  We consume twice what we did fifty years ago.[3] Our population, representing 5% of the world, consumes 30% of the world’s resources and creates 30% of the world’s waste.[4] And what is even more startling, 99% of the total North American materials harvested, mined, processed, and transported end up being thrown out within six months.[5]

Consumerism’s Origins

The current materials economy – based on extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal – was designed to turn the United States into a nation of consumers.  After World War II, in an effort to ramp up our economy President Eisenhower’s Council of Economic Advisors championed consumerism as a solution.  Raymond Saulnier, the Council’s Chairman, said, “the American economy’s ultimate purpose is to produce more consumer goods.”  And Victor Lebow, a retail analyst and economic activist at the time, summed up the solution the nation was seeking when he wrote, “Our enormously productive economy … demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption … we need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.”(See Annie’s Leonard’s, The Story of Stuff.) [6]

If Lebow’s statement seems crass today, in the context of its time it represented hope and a bona fide strategy.  Disposable goods, planned and perceived obsolescence all became part of the economy recovery strategy.  And it worked!  The standard of living rose significantly and luxury items that only a few could afford a few decades ago are common among the middle class today.  Other nonmaterial benefits have been realized as well.  “Life expectancy is higher, and more people than ever before in the industrial world have adequate food, housing, running water, warmth, electricity and transportation, as well as many other comforts that make life easier.”[7]

What Lebow and others did not foresee was the devastating impact consumption patterns would have on the environment itself.  In the last thirty years, one-third of the planet’s resources have been consumed.  75% of the global fisheries are now fished at or beyond capacity.  80% of the planet’s original forests are gone.  And, in the United States, 4% of our original forests are left and 40% of the waterways are undrinkable.[8]

Addicted to More

In 1997 a small cloud of concern regarding consumerism passed over the national landscape when PBS aired a film called “Affluenza.” The show’s producers defined Affluenza as a malady, “a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more.”[9] The program garnered a large audience and was followed up a year later with “Escape from Affluenza,” and in 2001 a book.  The message seemed to strike a chord with the emptiness people were feeling, and it clearly helped many readers and viewers begin to identify and address their own addiction.

At the time of Affluenza’s initial airing Scott Simon, the program’s host, acknowledged, “More Americans were feeling fatter bank accounts–and more hollowness inside.”[10] The adage that “money can’t buy you love” seemed to be gaining renewed meaning.  But four years later, President Bush called for Americans to go on a spending spree following the September 11, 2001 destruction of the World Trade Towers in New York City.  It was clear that affluenza had infected the national economy.  How could it be that the national call to duty and sacrifice in the face of the 9/11 tragedy was to go shopping?  Why should the “new normal” mean acquiring more?

Up to a certain point “more” really does equal better.  Humans require food, shelter, and warmth (or shade depending on location), and studies have shown that money consistently does buy happiness, up to about $10,000 income per capita.  Past $10,000 the happiness trend line does not rise along with increasing income.[11] Despite this, what has occurred in our society is a tightly bound association between what we acquire and our personal identity.  And, the race has been on for several decades to “keep up with the Joneses” as a means of measuring one’s self worth.  The Joneses may not be our next-door neighbors.  More often they are an imaginary “reference group” of people we do not personally know whose income is three, four, or five times our own.  Far beyond the $10,000 basic satisfaction index figure, the perceived standard of living in the United States has soared:

Making Americans’ Dreams Come True[12] Question:  How much income per year would you say you (and your family) need to fulfill all of your dreams? Median Response
1987	$50,000
1989	$75,000
1991	$83,800
1994	$102,000
1996	$90,000

Since 1996, the perceived income required for the “good life” has continued to escalate.  Today, people in the new category of “working-class millionaires” still harbor significant anxieties about their financial futures.  In the most recent installment of The New York Times series, “Age of Riches, No Rest After Success,” Hal Steger was profiled.

Mr. Steger, 51, a self-described geek, has banked more than $2 million. The $1.3 million house he and his wife own on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean is paid off. The couple’s net worth of roughly $3.5 million places them in the top 2 percent of families in the United States.  Yet each day Mr. Steger continues to toil in what a colleague calls ‘the Silicon Valley salt mines,’ working as a marketing executive for a technology start-up company, still striving for his big strike. Most mornings, he can be found at his desk by 7. He typically works 12 hours a day and logs an extra 10 hours over the weekend.  ‘I know people looking in from the outside will ask why someone like me keeps working so hard,’ Mr. Steger says. ‘But a few million doesn’t go as far as it used to. Maybe in the ’70s, a few million bucks meant ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,’ or Richie Rich living in a big house with a butler. But not anymore.’[13]

Paradoxically, the search for “the good life” is rooted in humanity’s common quest for meaning.  As a species we share the trait of self-awareness and the desire to know something of life’s meaning.  As far back as 350 bce, Aristotle spoke about the human race finding meaning in the “pursuit of happiness.”  To him happiness was not what we think of today, but rather, the pursuit of one’s highest self – the opportunity to lead a flourishing life.

Over the past century this culture had adopted the ethos that happiness can be found in material goods – that the “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” is the standard for happiness.  We are consumed with the idolatry of materialism – thinking it is the cure for our sense of meaninglessness.  In The Poverty of Affluence, Paul Wachtel labels this unfulfilled search as an addiction, “having more and newer things each year has become not just something we want but has become the center of our identity and our security, and we are caught by it as the addict by his drugs.”[14]

Getting Off the Consumer Escalator

Many people alert to the signs of affluenza’s addiction treat it by downshifting and living more simply.  Juliet Schor offers readers nine principles to “get off the consumer escalator.”[15] Briefly, they are:

1. Control desire
2. Create a new consumer symbolism
3. Create community voluntary restraints on competitive consumption
4. Learn to share – being both a borrower and a lender
5. Become an educated consumer
6. Avoid retail therapy
7. Decommercialize the rituals
8. Make time – getting beyond work-and-spend
9. Coordinate intervention – legislative approaches

Six of Schor’s nine principles recommends focus on the individual’s own transformation.  Controlling desires, avoiding retail therapy, creating non-commercial rituals, and so on are important individual actions to re-direct addictive behaviors.  But the other three relate to communal change.  These principles involve collective will to change the status quo.

In a recent article for Mother Jones magazine, environmentalist Bill McKibben calls for a new communal ethic.

The formula for human well-being used to be simple: make money, get happy.  So why is the old axiom suddenly turning on us?  For most of human history, the two birds More and Better roosted on the same branch.  You could toss one stone and hope to hit them both.  That’s why the centuries since Adam Smith launched modern economics with his book The Wealth of Nations have been so single-mindedly devoted to the dogged pursuit of maximum economic production. … But the distinguishing feature of our moment is this:  Better has flown a few trees over to make her nest.  And that changes everything.  Now, with the stone of your life or your society gripped in your hand, you have to choose.  It’s More or Better. … Growth no longer makes people wealthier, but instead generates inequality and insecurity.[16]

McKibben goes on to make a case for changing our patterns of accumulation and growth for a new paradigm of connection and companionship.

One key part of this new evolving communal paradigm is being in right relationship with the environment.  Authors Schor and de Graaf both mention the role of the environment in healing humanity’s consumption addiction.  But, a much deeper healing opportunity exists than merely being better stewards of the Earth.  We need to see ourselves as parts of the complex, interdependent relationship among the whole of God’s creation – not the dominant elements, not the owners, not the caregivers, but humble participants open to and curious about others.  Such humility involves a willingness to rethink our assumptions and to be comfortable with change in our surroundings and in our sense of self.

The Sin of Self-Sufficiency

It is now time for the human race to re-assess its right place within creation.  Humanity is not separate from, or superior to, the all of creation.  Theology and technology have tended to place humanity above the Earth and the other creatures on it.  And, in recent decades we have grossly exploited the Earth.  Not understanding our place as one part of creation is a grave oversight.  Sallie McFague goes further, she calls it humanity’s sin!

To McFague sin is “living a lie … living out of proper relations with God, self, and other beings.”  It is “not just breaking divine laws or blaspheming God; rather, it is living falsely, living contrary to reality, to the way things are.”[17] Knowing the “way things are” awakens us from the belief that we are separated from God and the natural world, and enables humanity to live in “proper relations with God, self and other beings.”  It includes, according to McFague, an understanding that we are not the crown of creation, that we share space and land with the other human beings, and that we recognize that our nature intermingles and interpenetrates with the rest of creation.[18]

A New Model of “Self”

This view that McFague suggests is being shaped into a new psychological model of self by a growing number of ecopsychologists, including a process theologian, Catherine Keller.  This self is neither separate nor apart from the other, but instead is a self in constant relationship, more permeable, and engaged with external forces.  In From a Broken Web, Keller describes the detrimental role that separation and sexism play in our culture’s self-shaping assumptions.  She writes of “being one/being many” and asks the reader to acknowledge two intertwining dimensions of the self as –

my many selves as the fabric of other persons, plants, places–all the actual entities that have become part of me–and my many selves as the necklace of experiences that make up my personal history from birth to now.  These selves are all there; if I acknowledge their influence, they become part of the community of my psyche, working together even through the painful contrasts of desire, through seemingly irreconcilable differences of perspective, to produce the integration of a greater complexity of feeling.  If I cannot claim these many, if I exclude great portions of them as contradictory to my makeup, they may wait to pull me into depression or to erupt into destructive violence.  Moreover, mere inconsistency and unreliability may shortchange multiplicity….  This multiple integrity, while always unfinished, is no less whole or coherent than that of a closed substance, an exclusive individual.  Individuality–meaning literally undividedness–can then connote an integrity of radical inclusion.  My selves selve my worlds: I am not simply one, but many ones of the open world surrounding me.[19]

This relational self is not three separate entities – self, other, and the relationship.  Rather it is a “we self” that co-mingles and transforms the whole trinity.  It’s a view of life made up of connection, differentiation and integration.

Not unlike Keller, nineteenth-century theologian Mary Baker Eddy looked at the “self” relationally.  Eddy defined the “self” as a compound, spiritual idea reflecting Spirit, God.   Her sense of self is never as a separate entity – it is always in relationship with God as one of God’s interlinked compound ideas.  Informed by the scriptural statements such as, “For ‘In him we live, and move and have our being’”[20] and “The Father and I are one,”[21] Eddy observed, “As a drop of water is one with the ocean, a ray of light one with the sun, even so God and man, [sic] Father and son, are one in being.”[22] Further, Eddy linked humanity with the universe (her term for the natural world) extensively in her writings.  No fewer than ninety times in her published writings she speaks of “man [sic] and the universe” as if they were brother and sister.  And, she always spiritualizes them, “The compounded minerals and aggregated substances composing the Earth, the relations which constituent masses hold to each other, the magnitudes, distances, and revolutions of the celestial bodies, are of no real importance, when we remember that they all must give place to the spiritual fact by the translation of man [sic] and the universe back into Spirit.  In proportion as this is done, man [sic] and the universe will be found harmonious and eternal.”[23]

A spiritual, interconnected sense of self is more needed and valuable in today’s culture than the separate, self-determined “I-self.”  By understanding a “we-self” we can help move our culture toward healing the narcissism and emptiness that comes from over-consumption.

Theological Misunderstandings

Religion has played a significant role, for better and worse, in shaping how humanity relates to the Earth.  Since the time of the Enlightenment, the traditional Christian anthropocentric view has not been friendly to the environment.  This view has traditionally given humans a prominence and superiority by which we have justified our abuses and maltreatment of the Earth and its inhabitants.  “Too frequently and falsely in recent centuries, both the image of God and dominion have been interpreted as the divine grant of a special status making humanity the sole bearer of intrinsic value in creation, or of a special, divine mandate to pollute, plunder, and prey on creation to the point of exhausting its potential.”[24]

The references in Genesis to humanity’s “dominion over the fish of the sea …” and God’s blessing to “fill the earth and subdue it” have become scriptural foundation stories upon which humanity’s totalitarian rule over nature has been justified.[25] Both Christianity and Judaism are often accused of being anti-ecological religions.  This, of course, grossly oversimplifies their traditions and histories.  And, this anthropocentric and exploitive view is not consistent with the findings of scholarly exegesis.  In both Christian and Jewish theology, dominion is not the dominion of exploitation or ownership.  The original meaning of dominion probably meant little more than agricultural cultivation, similar to “tilling and keeping.”[26] In his extensive study of interpretations of Genesis 1:28 from biblical antiquity to the Reformation, Jeremy Cohen concludes, “Rarely, if ever, did pre-modern Jews and Christians construe this verse as license for the selfish exploitation of the environment.  Although most readers of Genesis casually assume that God had fashioned the physical world for the benefit of human beings, Genesis 1:28 evoked relatively little concern with the issue of dominion over nature.”[27]

In fact, the historical view of Genesis 1:28 is theocentric – where God, not humanity, is the continuing owner of all of the Earth.  Jewish traditions and ethics of the Hebrew Bible, as explained by Rabbi Saul Berman, existed within a framework of creation being about God, not humanity.  Humanity (shomer) is leasing, or borrowing, the planet from God.  As a borrower (sho’el) humanity must ensure that, at the end of the term of the lease, and at any given moment during the lease, the property is at least as valuable as it was at the beginning of the lease.  According to the Torah, humans are responsible representatives/stewards and must act benevolently and justly in accord with the will of the ultimate owner.[28]

This original concept of dominion is rich in ecological potential.  Religions would do well to preserve and revisit it.  And perhaps, since dominion often has such a tyrannical meaning in contemporary society, other words might be substituted to better convey the original connotations.  Dominion, after all, is a Latin-derived translation from the Hebrew.  Other terms, such as caregiver, preserver, or defender of creation might provide a more accurate and sensitive meaning of dominion.[29]

History of Separation

Just as history has altered the theological understanding of the creation story, so too have certain historical events conspired to distance humanity from its normal connection with, and benign impact on, Earth.  Cultural historian and eco-theologian, Thomas Berry, identified three events as defining “moments” leading to our current ecological crisis.  The first event he cites occurred when the Biblical-Christian emphasis on the spirituality of the human joined with the tradition of Greek humanism to create an anthropocentric view of the universe.  The second “moment” occurred between 1347 and 1349 when a third of the human population in Europe died during the Black Death.  This plague caused the natural world to lose its innocence in human thought, and grew to be considered an actual threat to humanity’s existence.  The third event occurred at the end of the nineteenth century when the world economy shifted from an organic to an extractive model – when humanity began extracting ores to create metals; petroleum for fuel, fibers, and plastics; wood for paper and lumber; water for electricity; engineering technologies to form chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides.[30] These three changes, combined, stood out to Berry as foundational in triggering the current separation that exists between human beings and the natural world.

The most recent of the three events, the industrial revolution, was born with a vision “to supplant poverty, disease, and toil with an abundance that permits the good life as enriching, expanded choice.”[31] But with the success of the industrial revolution and the consumer economy came humanity’s alienation from and domination of nature.  No longer working with natural forces, humans overcame and dominated nature for their own ends.  Production processes were separated from intrinsic ties to the land.  Energy could be stored and processed for manufacturing and commerce, and humans could move away from their intimate contact with nature.  Insurmountable physical obstacles were conquered using ever bigger, ever more powerful machines.  Humans became the subject and nature became the “other,” and humanity dominated nature for its own ends.

The Way Forward

There is a way forward out of humanity’s addiction to more.  This article has lifted up some of the solutions being explored and implemented.  They include the embrace of sustainable business practices, theological teachings that reframe the scriptures in an environmental light, and psychological healing modalities that shift our understanding of the “I-self” towards an interconnected “we-self.”  As humanity awakens to a clearer understanding of our interconnectedness with one another and all of the Earth we will design lasting technological, scientific, business, and lifestyle solutions that meet the need for humanity to live in balance with all of creation.

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[1] “Environmental Defense Hails Landmark Vote on Lieberman-Warner Climate Change Bill,” http://www.environmentaldefense.org/pressrelease.cfm?contentID=7404 (accessed December 8, 2007).

[2] Dave Tilford, “Why Consumption Matters,” http://www.sierraclub.org/sustainable_consumption/tilford.asp (accessed December 8, 2007).

[3] Betsy Taylor and Dave Tilford, “Why Consumption Matters,” in The Consumer Society Reader edited by Juliet B. Schor and Douglas Holt (New York: The New Press, 2000), 467.

[4] Frances Harris, Global Environmental Issues (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2004), 247.

[5] Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins, Natural Capitalism, (New York: Back Bay Books, 1999), 81.

[6] Annie Leonard, “The Story of Stuff,” http://www.storyofstuff.com (accessed December 7, 2008).

[7] Tilford, “Why Consumption Matters.”

[8] Leonard, “The Story of Stuff.”

[9] John de Graaf, David Wann, Thomas H. Naylor, Affluenza – The All-Consuming Epidemic (San Francisco: Berret-Koehler Publishers, 2001), 2.

[10] Ibid, ix.

[11] Bill McKibben, “Reversal of Fortune,” Mother Jones, March/April 2007, http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2007/03/happiness_extra.html (accessed October 9, 2007).

[12] Juliet B. Schor, The Overspent American (New York: Basic Books, 1998), 15.

[13] Gary Rivlin, “In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don’t Feel Rich,” The New York Times, August 5, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/technology/05rich.html (accessed October 10, 2007).

[14] Paul Wachtel, The Poverty of Affluence: A Psychological Portrait of the American Way of Life (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1989), 71.

[15] Schor, The Overspent American, 145.

[16] Bill McKibben, “Reversal of Fortune,” Mother Jones, March/April 2007.

[17] Sallie McFague, The Body of God – An Ecological Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993),114.

[18] Ibid, 112-129.

[19] Catherine Keller, From a Broken Web – Separation, Sexism, and Self, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986), 227-228.

[20] Acts 17:28 (New Revised Standard Version).

[21] John 10:30 (New Revised Standard Version).

[22] Mary Baker Eddy, Message to The First Church of Christ, Scientist, or The Mother Church, Boston, June 15, 1902, (Boston: The Writings of Mary Baker Eddy, 1930), 12.

[23] Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (Boston: The Writings of Mary Baker Eddy, 2004), 209.

[24] James A. Nash, Loving Nature – Ecological Integrity and Christian Responsibility (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991), 103.

[25] Genesis 1:26-28 (New Revised Standard Version).

[26] Genesis 2:15. (New Revised Standard Version).

[27] Jeremy Cohen, “Be Fertile and Increase: Fill the Earth and Master It”: The Ancient and Medieval Career of a Biblical Text (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989), 5.

[28] Rabbi Saul Berman, “Jewish Environmental Values: The Dynamic Tension Between Nature and Human Needs,” Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, http://www.coejl.org/learn/je_berman.php (accessed December 8, 2007).

[29] Nash, Loving Nature, 107.

[30] Thomas Berry, The Great Work – Our Way Into the Future (New York: Bell Tower, 1999), 136-138.

[31] Larry L. Rasmussen, Earth Community, Earth Ethics (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1996), 60.