An interview with Sallie McFague

Fortress Press: Your most recent work with us—A New Climate for Theology—relates theology, economy, and climate change. In what way does climate change pose a theological issue?

Sallie McFague: In an essay in The New York Times (3/08/09), Thomas Friedman writes, “What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last fifty years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall--when Mother Nature and the market both said: ‘No more.” The economic meltdown and the climate crisis are two sides of the same problem, a problem based in large part on the basic assumptions we well-off Western human beings hold about ourselves: that we are “individuals” who deserve whatever we want and can legally hoard for ourselves, our comfort, and our pleasure. The major religions disagree about many things but none of them commend “Blessed are the greedy.” If “sin” is still an appropriate theological category (and a think it is), then the sin of us well-off human beings is our insatiable greed that is causing financial chaos and ecological destruction. Moreover, if the “abundant life” is also an appropriate theological issue, then suggesting alternative satisfying possibilities for human and planetary flourishing is part of the religious task. Theology is into the business of suggesting that “a different life is possible.” The religions critique the ways we are living that are detrimental to us and our world and give us hope—and some practices—for living in better ways. Hence, theology, economy, and climate change are natural and necessary conversation partners in the flourishing or deterioration of our common life.

FP: Your work on climate change is very critical of our present economic configuration. Do you see some hopeful elements of an alternative for the future?

SM: As the above quotation from Thomas Friedman states, economics and climate change are intimately related. They are both the product of excessive, unbridled use of scarce resources in unjust and unsustainable ways. Moreover, what the present dual economic-ecological crisis is telling us is that the kind of economics currently practiced worldwide is a failure needing serious revision. Its most serious error is what is called “externalities,” those things such as the just distribution of resources and planetary sustainability that are not a part of neoclassical market economics. Just distribution of resources to all life-forms and long-term sustainability are two sides of the same issue, for unless the parts of the planetary system have the basics of existence, the whole cannot be healthy. However, in market economics, the “environment” usually enters the loop only when government action demands the redress of a disaster, such as toxic pools from manufacturing waste. The “environment” is not factored into the price of goods at the front end, nor are necessary resources distributed with a view to the planet’s health.

However, the current economic-ecological crisis may be a wake-up call to the falseness of our current economic system. We will always need a system of allocating scarce resources (which is what economics does), but our current model strongly suggests that living within this system is “living a lie.” Reality is not set up to accommodate it.

The religions are or should be one of the voices in a society that calls attention to such lapses. As theologian John Hick claims, the function of the main religious traditions is “the transformation of human existence from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness” (An Interpretation of Religion [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989], 300). In our time, “reality” is understood as the evolutionary, ecological story of the radical interrelatedness and interdependence of all living creatures and physical processes. Therefore, there is no way we can have a just, sustainable planet unless all its parts have access to the necessary resources on a permanent basis. The individualistic, consumer anthropology is a false view of reality, one that is unjust to most living beings and unsustainable over the long run. The role of religion in our time is to critique the anthropology that is destroying our planet and suggest alternatives that are “reality” centered.

FP: Climate change and other issues seem inherently global. How do you formulate a Christology that is open and not exclusive? How is the figure of Jesus a resource for addressing climate change? How has your own Christology changed since The Body of God?

SM: The figure of Jesus is a resource for addressing climate change because of the self-emptying love for others manifest in his life and death. Jesus is not unique in displaying this manner of living, for most religious traditions are countercultural, suggesting that non-attachment, non-possessiveness, deep sharing, self-limitation, and giving space for others to live is central to good communal practice as well as the way to personal fulfillment. Could the crazy notion of self-emptying be a clue to what is wrong with our present way of being in the world as well as a suggestion of how we might live differently? What we see in the life and death of Jesus (as well as in the lives of many of his disciples such as John Woolman, Dorothy Day, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Simone Weil, Martin Luther King Jr, and so on) is not self-emptying as self-denial in order to purify oneself but rather an invitation to imitate the way God loves the world. In the Christian tradition “kenosis,” or self-emptying, is a way of understanding God’s actions in creation, the incarnation, and the cross. In creation God limits the divine self, pulling in, so to speak, to allow space for others to exist. This is an inversion of the usual understanding of power as control; instead, power is given to others to live as diverse and valuable creatures. In the incarnation, as Paul writes in Phil. 2:7, God “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,” substituting humility and vulnerability for our insatiable appetites. In the life of Jesus and his death on the cross, God gives of the divine self without limit in order to side with the poor and the oppressed. Therefore, Christian discipleship also becomes a “cruciform” life, imitating the self-giving of Christ for others.

Could this be an ethic for well-off human beings on our planet at the present time? What characterizes our time is two things: first, an awareness of our radical interdependence with all other life-forms and, second, an increasing appreciation of the planet’s finitude and vulnerability. These realities of our time mean that the vocabulary and sensibility of self-limitation, ego-lessness, sharing, giving space to others, and limiting our energy use no longer sound like a special language for the saints but rather sound like an ethic for all of us, especially those using much more than our fair and sustainable share of the world’s goods. The religions may be the greatest “realists,” with their intuitive appreciation for self-emptying and self-limitation as a way not only to personal fulfillment but also to sane planetary practice. Could it be that the religions might take the lead in exploring and illustrating how an ethic of self-limitation might function in light of the twenty-first-century crisis of climate change?