Communicating Climate Justice by Dennis Smith

Communicating Climate Justice: Toward s a S p ir i tu ali ty of Res i s ta nce i n S erv i ce t o Li fe I am honored to address the Assembly of the Asia Region of the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC). Your commitment to our common goals and your creative discernment of our common tasks as communication professionals and as followers of Jesus is a source of inspiration and strength to all who form part of the WACC family. Before I turn to the subject at hand, let me say a word about WACC's current strategic planning process. Because we are a membership association, the task of imagining WACC's future is entrusted to the membership, both through the direct comments of all members and as represented by Regional Assemblies, Regional Executive Committees and the Board of Directors. All of you who are members of WACC and many of you who are partners and allies of WACC have received a link to a survey asking for your input into the strategic planning process. Please take the time to send us your comments. Your voice will be heard. If you have not received this link, please let me know and I'll make sure you are included. You have asked me to offer a Christian communicator's response to the challenges of the climate crisis. As I develop my thoughts with you this morning, I will assume that we agree that environmental depredation and climate change are among the most urgent challenges facing the world today. Here in Asia and the Pacific, you see every day that climate change is not an arcane subject for scientific debate or shifting government policies, but rather a devastating and immediate reality that causes hunger and disease, deadly natural disasters and ravished economies. Climate change, you have taught me over the years, threatens the very existence of whole nations. You have also taught me that both climate change and environmental destruction are problems caused by human beings. These problems are the result of choices made by those holding political and economic power, choices that have generated great wealth for a few. These same choices have invisibilized, silenced and led to the deaths of untold millions. I will also assume that we agree that faith communities have done less than we might to frame and understand this crisis as a pastoral and theological challenge. This is not to minimize the powerful prophetic voices that we will hear during this Assembly, nor the pioneering efforts to lift up this issue by WACC, the World Council of Churches and many other faith-based groups. But for most of our local faith communities, climate justice is not a lens that we bring regularly to the reading of 1

our sacred texts nor to our understanding of what it means to be faithful. Finally, I affirm that, as communicators, many of you have done an excellent job of telling the stories of persons and communities whose lives are directly impacted by climate change and of explaining the science that describes what is happening to our world. Where we have been less successful, and this is the issue I will address with you today, is in building energy and consensus to challenge and change the future that bears down upon us. This Assembly's organizers used the phrase “climate justice” to express our common concerns. In 2009 WACC produced the “No-Nonsense Guide to Communication, Climate Justice and Climate Change.” In that pamphlet, Philip Lee describes climate justice as a movement that “raises ethical questions about corporate-driven globalization and the neoliberal policies that promote unsustainable production, consumption and trade.” http://waccglobal.org/images/stories/Resources/climatejustice.pdf

What part does climate justice play in our utopian vision as followers of Jesus? What part does climate justice play in our proclamation of the Reign of God? Sir Thomas More popularized the word utopia in his novel of the same name, written in 1516. In the novel he posits an ideal community living on an island in the Atlantic Ocean. The problem, he makes clear, is that his utopia did not exist. Throughout the ages, some have insisted that utopia, the ideal community, cannot exist. In Christian circles, some insist that God's Reign will only be realized “beyond the sunset.” Others of us insist that God, in God's good time and mercy, works through all God's people to build God's Reign, God's utopia, in our very midst. For decades, activists in Latin America have dared to believe that utopia is the place that we can dream into existence. Over the years, Latin Americans have devoted considerable energy into building tools of social analysis and nurturing utopian visions that are powerful enough, and deeply enough rooted in the need to transform a reality of exclusion, systemic violence, corruption and injustice, to mobilize resistance and struggle, while courageously creating viable and just alternatives for society. As Christians, we have been part of this conversation from the beginning. Whether it be through the ideas of Paulo Freire or Leonardo Boff or Ivonne Gebara, we have dared to believe that to affirm the presence of God's Reign in our midst is to take part in God's dream for all of humankind. 2

Yesterday, WACC General Secretary Karin Achtelstetter shared with the participants in the partner consultation a prayer composed by Saint Oscar Romero of América where he sums up what it's like to participate in this utopian vision: It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own. This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and do it very well. In recent months as I have thought about communicating climate justice, I thought back on my own journey. I grew up in the mountains of Northern California, in the United States. It was a wild and beautiful setting with mountain streams and tall trees and secret places where one could feel intimately connected with Creation. It was a time when I embraced the romantic vision of poets like Wordsworth, who, in his “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” was: . . .well pleased to recognise In nature and the language of the sense The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being. . .

Knowing that Nature never did betray The heart that loved her. . . http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174796

When I moved to Guatemala in the 1970s I would see this same pastoral vision portrayed in murals painted at the front of small evangelical churches, both in the city and in remote rural communities. A utopian representation of God's peace, of God's tender care for the flock, was portrayed in pristine paintings of sheep grazing in green meadows beside mountain streams. With amusement, I find that, over the decades, I have become a very urban person. For almost 30 years I lived in the grimy bustle of Guatemala City, Central America's largest urban center. Early this year, I moved with my family to the sprawling metropolis of Buenos Aires, Argentina. I have noted over the years that urban churches frequently see themselves as bunkers where believers hunker down and seek refuge from the city. This is not surprising. Big cities are dirty, noisy, violent, corrupt and inhospitable. Many city dwellers have come seeking refuge from rural poverty and violence. The city, with its anonymity and casual vices, can be a constant source of temptation to those desperate to find a sense of community and the discipline they need to survive. Living in the midst of such bedlam drains our energy and, often, our hope. I am not surprised, then, when I hear city pastors decry the moral decay that accompanies urban living. All too often, church members cease to think of themselves as citizens, as active members of the larger community. The city not only threatens our piety, but also our sense of solidarity. We so easily become hardened to the desperation and pain that we encounter every day on every street. In an environment where the rule of law is precarious and where life itself becomes cheap, it is easy to embrace the seductive, authoritarian discourse of politicians who promise security at any cost. In such an environment, a simple incident can so easily cause us to respond in ways that would normally make us ashamed. I remember one Sunday morning last year when people were gathering for morning services at a church just a block from our home in Guatemala City. Somehow, the parishoners had captured a petty thief who was trying to escape on a motorcycle. Perhaps he had been caught trying to steal a car radio. The response of the crowd was immediate, electric. In minutes they had pulled the thief off the bike and stripped him down to his underwear. They found a rope and bound his wrists behind his back. They beat him with broomsticks til his head and back were bleeding. My wife walked by then and noted that the minister was standing at the entrance to the church. She took in

the scene in seconds; she heard someone calling for more rope to lynch the thief. She saw that the minister could not have been unaware of what was going on. She also saw that only the minister could save this person's life. She knew the minister well, they had grown up together; she told him that he must intervene, and quickly. Reluctantly, he did so; the crowd disbanded, the police came and took the thief away. Does this echo your experience of the city? Often the struggle for climate justice takes place on the margins of our world, in those precarious communities most vulnerable to the droughts and floods spawned by climate change. Extreme weather destroys roads and changes rivers that allow precarious communities to send their goods to market and gives them access to education and health care. Such communities have little access to new information and communication technologies, with the growing exception of cellular telephones. Radio continues to be their dominant communication medium. But I am learning that the struggle for climate justice is also a struggle for the city. For the city is the seat of power. Power of the political systems that rule our nations, power of economic elites, power of the media systems that generate public policy agendas, that foment the consumer society, that generate the imaginaries that nurture our dreams and expectations as peoples. As we discern how economic and political power flow in our communities, we understand that climate change and environmental destruction are two sides of the same coin. In San Marcos, Guatemala, Mayan communities are trying to shut down an open-pit gold mine that contaminates ground water and destroys the landscape. According to international law, they have the right to shut this mine down. Because of the way power flows in Guatemala, the mine remains open. La Oroya, Peru, is one of the most polluted communities on the planet. Children there are growing up with dangerous levels of lead in their blood. Despite bold communication initiatives by community leaders to tell La Oroya's story and to close the mine, the mine remains open. Alliances are now building to combat the new Pascua Lama open-pit mine being built in the high Andes on the border between Chile and Argentina, a project that will jeopardize ancient glaciers and the lowland communities that live from glacial water. Is it possible in today's world to block short-term exploitation of resources and invest in creative alternatives in the interest of humanity's long-term survival? Power, then, is concentrated in the city. In this last decade, for the first time in human history, the majority of humankind have become city dwellers. It is in the city where our youth, without jobs, 5

without access to education, without a future, are portrayed by the news media as hooligans. It is in the city where we fear to gather peacefully in public spaces because they are ravaged by crime and violence. It is in the city where our right to organize and express our utopian visions is monitored, controlled and, all too often, labeled as sedition. This is the context in which we need to remember that in the Bible, in the book of Revelation, chapter 21, God's Reign is portrayed as a city! Can we envision the city as our utopia? As a place where we encounter the constant presence of the Creator? We know that well-planned and well-administered cities emit fewer greenhouse gases per capita than other population centers. We know that the city is a perfect place to cultivate the practice of citizenship, and to institute accountability under the rule of law, So our commitment to climate justice calls on us to help make our cities more healthy, humane and pleasant places to live. Perhaps our long emphasis on the pathologies cultivated by the city has played into the hands of those who want to silence our voices and quell our desire to mobilize and build for the common good. In no sense am I suggesting that we should accommodate violence, moral decay and corruption. I suggest only that we need to learn to discern and to be at peace with the rhythms of the city. If we look, we will find in the city beauty and courage, solidarity and vibrant energy. When we look at the faces and listen to the stories of those we encounter each day, we will understand that these are the faces of Jesus. The particularities of the struggle for climate justice will vary from one community to the next, but the vision that we propose â&#x20AC;&#x201C; as communicators and as people of faith, remains the same. As WACC, the Christian Principles of Communication give us a useful road map as we seek to influence public policy, as we create cultural products, as we report the news, as we engage in social research and as we reflect on our pastoral and theological task: ď&#x192;ą We seek to create community. This means inviting, including, welcoming those who are different than we are, and learning to celebrate that difference. It means coming to understand that without the other, we are incomplete. That our wholeness is bound up in the well-being of the other person. ď&#x192;ą We seek to promote participation. We understand that participation is not chosing between Coke and Pepsi; participation is becoming actors in our own history, of coming to have confidence in our own voices, of learning to be accountable for the power we have and to respectfully demand that others be held accountable, of honing our ability to share ideas and energy that build the common good. 6

ď&#x192;ą We seek to promote freedom. To promote freedom means to name the many chains that bind us: isms and dependencies of every kind. We understand that our liberation is physical, emotional, spiritual. We understand that freedom is economic, political, cultural. We understand that our liberation is a function of our dignity as human beings, as children of God. ď&#x192;ą We support, defend and develop human culture. The communities we celebrate speak different languages, wear different clothes, eat different foods, sing different songs, have differerent histories, different sacred stories, practice different customs. Each culture is a constantly evolving, unique way of being in this world. That is the gift that each community can offer to all other communities, to make our common experience richer, more nuanced, more complete. As we promote climate justice, to affirm human culture means to build deeper partnerships between marginalized rural communities and the city. We do not propose paternalism or dependency, but rather a deeply respectful relationship of mutual accountability and interdependence. Comment on opening ď&#x192;ą We speak prophetically to power. Not because we are without sin, nor because all that the powerful do is evil, but because we seek to create community in a world where some seek to divide us, to promote participation and freedom where some seek to enslave and to silence, to support and defend human culture where some seek to destroy it. We speak prophetically to power because those in power always, in every time and every place, can become seduced by power itself. When that happens, power becomes an agent of death. If we are to serve the God of Life, we must speak truth to power and challenge death's cruel hegemony. But we must do so humbly, with fear and trembling, understanding that the lust for power, this voracious worm, gnaws away at our souls, too. One of the great strengths that we bring to this struggle as followers of Jesus is that we believe that all truth, all beauty, all justice flows from the One Creator. This frees us to build alliances with all people of good will, no matter what their faith tradition, who seek to build the common good.

Finally, a pastoral word to all of us who share this journey. The struggle in which we are engaged is long and difficult. We must learn to care for ourselves and our loved ones along the way. We must find for ourselves a desert where we can find solace, a community that will nurture us and to which we will be accountable. If we are to survive for the long haul, we must cultivate a spirituality of resistance in service to Life.

Let me illustrate with a story from Guatemala. At this particular event, I was the translator. The speaker was a Mayan pastor with deep roots in the spirituality of his people. The audience was a 7

delegation representing several theological seminaries from North and Central America. The delegation wanted to know if the peace process in Guatemala had brought resolution to the conflict. 36 years of civil war had left more than 250,000 people dead or disappeared, more than a million displaced people. The delegation wanted to know what the pastor could say about Mayan cultural resistance. The Maya had somehow survived 500 years of adversity and still maintained languages, cultures, a vibrant spirituality, a unique way of being in this world.

The Mayan pastor talked about rediscovering roots; he explored how hard and necessary that is after a time of massive brutality. How does one restore oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s humanity? How does one recover oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s connectedness with all things?

Being immersed in so much violence for so long, he said, breaks something inside us. Trust is shattered. Suspicion becomes a way of life.

One professor wanted to talk about the problem of evil. Is there not a time when one must take up arms against the oppressor? This pastor wanted to hear that the other side was evil.

The pastor did not answer.

Another posed a similar question.

Still no answer.

I noted to myself that the pastor did not trot out his credentials of suffering. I knew he had lost close relatives. I knew he had witnessed monstrous acts.

The pastor and I talked later. I asked him why he had chosen not to tell his own story. Such memories, he told me, should not be violated. To do so can trivialize the victims, can cheapen their ongoing presence as they accompany us on lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s journey.

We talked about living in a time of great violence. We agreed that in these circumstances, there 8

are no good guys. Within each of us exists the capacity to do monstrous acts. That is who we are as human beings. To celebrate violence only lessens us, no matter what the justification. But victimhood also lessens us. To perpetrate violence breaks something inside us. Always. There are no exceptions.

In such struggles, my friend explained, it can be honorable, it can be necessary to say: â&#x20AC;&#x153;My time, for now, is done. I now must step aside because I am embittered, I have become hard. I sense within myself the lust for power, the temptation to say that ends justify means. Now I must attend to my own soul and seek healing for my family. I must help my community recover the gifts of tenderness and vulnerability. We must restore the fragile balance between past, present and future.

So how do we deal with continued violence and injustice? Do we just step aside and let it roll unchecked? No. The struggle to build the world imagined by God must continue. But we must know that the struggle will consume us. In our brokenness we will become even more broken. It is our common brokenness that we offer to one another as a gift. The Spirit of God gathers up our brokenness and makes us whole.

A spirituality of resistance in service to Life.

The signs are all around us: in a blade of grass bursting through a crack in the concrete, in poetry and song and the laughter of children. In silence. Perhaps most especially in silence. Chilean poet Pablo Neruda reflects on â&#x20AC;&#x153;Keeping Quietâ&#x20AC;?:

Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still. For once on the face of the earth, let's not speak in any language; let's stop for one second, and not move our arms so much. It would be an exotic moment without rush, without engines;

we would all be together in a sudden strangeness. Fisherman in the cold sea would not harm whales and the man gathering salt would look at his hurt hands. Those who prepare green wars, wars with gas, wars with fire, victories with no survivors, would put on clean clothes and walk about with their brothers in the shade, doing nothing. What I want should not be confused with total inactivity. Life is what it is about; I want no truck with death. If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving, and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death. Perhaps the earth can teach us as when everything seems dead and later proves to be alive. Now I'll count up to twelve and you keep quiet and I will go. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;from Extravagaria (translated by Alastair Reid, pp. 27-29, 1974) - Dennis A. Smith 15 May 2011 Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Dennis A. Smith, DD (honoris causa), is President of the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC). He is a Mission Co-Worker of the Presbyterian Church (USA) based in Buenos Aires, Argentina and serving as PCUSA Regional Liaison for Brazil and the Southern Cone. densmithfam@gmail.com. www.waccglobal.org