Sir David Attenborough is such a national treasure, that it feels almost like treason to say anything critical about him. But really, when he talks about Christianity or the Bible, he does utter the most dreadful tosh. Take his recent TV documentary on Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life. It was part of the commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth, and was packed with those wonderful shots of the natural world that we have come to expect from Sir David’s programmes. The commentary is so beguiling, so authoritative, that we accept it as gospel truth. But then he goes and spoils it all with generalizations about what Christians believe, that are just plain wrong.
He suggested, for example, that most Christians believe the universe was literally created in six days, because Genesis chapter 1 says so. This is just sheer ignorance about the kind of writing the Bible contains, and the way it has been interpreted. Since at least the third century, theologians like Origen and later, Augustine, have recognized that we must read the biblical accounts of creation figuratively. They are wonderful poetry and drama, not scientific descriptions. When Darwin began to popularize evolution as a theory, his ideas were welcomed by as many Christians as opposed them. They could see that science was not undermining religion, but helping believers to appreciate the natural order even more, as the scientists taught them to understand its workings. The Christian doctrine of creation does not require us to reject the findings of science, but to embrace them as showing us how God creates the universe through the physical, chemical and biological processes that we have discovered. Which, we would say, God invented.
Sir David’s second error was to blame the environmental crisis on Christians, again on the basis of Genesis 1. There God creates human beings and tells them to ‘subdue’ the earth and ‘have dominion over’ every living creature. According to Attenborough, this has been interpreted by Christians as giving them carte blanche to exploit and abuse everything under the sun. But again it’s just not true. It is not religion that has caused the environmental catastrophe of our time, but technology - technology out of control, with none of the guiding moral principles that religion could have supplied. There may indeed be some extreme fundamentalists who think there’s no need to protect the planet, because the Second Coming is going to bring an end to history any day now. But they too are guilty of misunderstanding the very scriptures they claim to follow so faithfully.
What Genesis actually shows is a relationship between God and his human creations, in which human beings are told to be faithful stewards of creation. They are to care for it, love it, look after it, study and understand it, and eventually, at the end of their time, hand it back to the Creator in good order. It’s not for nothing that the first home of human beings in this story is called the garden of Eden. The image of a gardener, sometimes wrestling with what grows from the soil, but mostly tending and training it, conveys the right sense of what this stewardship means. Certainly no gardener I know hates his garden and is hell-bent on destroying it.
Far from opposing the environmental movement, many Christians are very active in it. Charities like A Rocha are promoting projects in many countries to respond to the biblical challenge of care for creation. Many churches have signed up to Eco-congregation, an ecumenical programme that aims to help local churches make the link between environmental issues and Christian faith, and respond in practical action. Perhaps we could all make this a part of our Lenten discipline. Don’t just give up something that may be harmful to your health, but try and give up something that’s harmful to the health of the planet, by using the car less, or saving energy in other ways.
Published in the Marston Times, March 2009