God of the Soil

THis is an interestingly provocative article written by George Monbiot about the myth of progress and how he thinks that it is born in the soil of Abrahamic faiths. Interesting because of the parallels between soil types and the conditions for agricultural-suprlus civilisation and the experience of life as cyclical [paganism] or progressive [desert-born monotheism]. He writes:
"My untested hypothesis is as follows. The peculiarities of the Abrahamic religions – their astonishing success in colonising the world and their dangerous notion of progress (now inherited by secular society) – result from a marriage between the universal god of the nomads and the conditions which permitted cities to develop. The dominant beliefs of the past 2000 years are the result of an ancient migration from soils such as xerepts and xeralfs to soils such as fluvents and rendolls.
At Easter, the Christian belief in a permanent resurrection is mixed up with the pagan belief in a perpetual cycle of temporary resurrection and death. In church we worship the Christian notion of progress, which has now filtered into every aspect of our lives. But, amid the cracking of easter eggs and the murmur of prayer, there can still be heard the small, faint voice which reminds us that our ecological hubris must eventually be greeted by nemesis."
I'm thinking about how I respond to that as a Christian. Clearly it is not so simple for in practice both Judaism and Christianity acculturated to agricultural conditions in several climates and societies. And it ignores the other issues around paganism such as the way that it tended to divinise the rulers and support a feudal system and enshrine an ideology based on the myth of redemptive violence and thus of the permanent suppression of the peasantry and justification of violence to support that. Judaism has significant prophetic strands critiquing that in order to support a more egalitarian conception of humanity rather than condemning people to poverty and servitude simply because that was the divine order. Christianity at its worst has been when it has been seduced by the ideas of palaeo-paganism: divine kingship, moral order of necessary inequality and the necessity of violence. All of these are inimical to the genius of the Christian faith at its truest.

However, he does have a point that the present ecocidal tendencies of humanity have not been well addressed by Christian theology. On the other hand there is no reason why they should not be. It is the child of theology the myth of progress and modernism more widely that is the chiefest culprit which bent Christian thinking to its will after the Enlightenment. To our shame we let it, but not without significnat voices of protest both at the environmental impacts and the social.

The Christian notion of progress that Monbiot alludes to is not the same as the modernist one he actually means. The Christian notion of progress is shot through with the wariness about human moral frailty in the face of power, wealth and pleasure; all of which has a direct and critical bearing on the present ecological crisis.

Christian faith sees human beings living in and through matter -the earth- it sees vital relationships including ecological ones disrupted by human sin and calls us to the never-ceasing vigilence in order to make sure that our neighbours are loved practically and that justice, peace and the integrity of what God has made are upheld. That is progress in Christian terms ... always tempered by the realisation that sin is at the door waiting to undo or subvert what little progress we do make.

Not sure Monbiot's these sticks, you?
God of the Soil