Dark Green Religion - Bron Taylor

The following, written by Bron Taylor, was originally published in the St. Petersburg Times on December 6, 2009, with the title "Toward a natural religion".

One hundred-fifty years ago, on Nov. 24, 1859, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, shattering traditional explanations for the diversity of life on Earth. Scientific understanding will never be the same. Neither will religion.

Religious conservatives often reject evolution, religious liberals incorporate it, and secularists embrace it. But there is a little-recognized, rapidly growing fourth reaction to the Darwinian revolution. It is emerging from those engaged in what we might call nature spirituality, or nature religion.

Devotees of this religion are consecrating evolution, understanding it as a newfound and compelling sacred story. They find meaning and ethical guidance in the evolutionary-ecological worldview — without appealing to divine beings.

This religious naturalism is inspired by...

Evolutionary Christianity

Evolutionary Christianity values big history—the 14-billion-year epic of physical, biological, and cultural evolution—as divine revelation and as our common creation story.  As I've been teaching and preaching it, here are four core tenets of Evolutionary Christianity:

1.  It is impossible not to trivialize and demean God and gospel without a science-based, deep-time appreciation of human nature, our shared ancestry, the trajectory of big history, and the creative role played by death at all levels of the universe.

2.  The history of everything and everyone can be interpreted in hopeful, soul-nourishing ways, and in ways that inspire people to cooperate across ethnic, religious, and political differences in service of a just and thriving future for all. 

3.  An understanding of human instincts and our empathic nature, as given by evolutionary brain science and evolutionary psychology, can help each of us live with greater integrity and zest for life.  It can also deepen and enrich (naturalize/REALize) traditional views of The Fall and Original Sin.

4.  When church leaders study the epic of evolution as they now do the Bible, and when they teach and preach the discoveries of science as divine revelation—as God's word and guidance for us today—Christianity will experience a revival unlike anything the world has ever seen.

To be clear: I am neither a theist, nor an atheist; I'm an emergentist, a religious naturalist.  The concepts of theism and atheism came into use before we had an evidential understanding of how the world, in fact, came into being, and before we learned that Creation itself is creative.  Given what we now know about our origins, the theist-atheist dichotomy no longer makes sense.  Both presuppose a trivial, unnatural God and a Cosmos that is not itself divinely creative.  Reality is my God and integrity is my religion.  By this, I mean that what is real is my ultimate commitment and being in right relationship with Reality/God, and assisting humanity in this process, is my calling and deepest inspiration.

For those not already familiar with us and our itinerant ministry...

FourYearsGo: Getting It and Diving In

The following is a guest post written by Tom Atlee of The Co-Intelligence Institute. It can also be found on his Posterous website here. Tom is the author of The Tao of Demorcracy and the recently published, Reflections on Evolutionary Activism: Essays, Poems, and Prayers From an Emerging Field of Sacred Social Change.

Dear friends,

FourYearsGo (4YG) is a planetary effort to draw together people and organizations working to shift civilization in positive directions, with the intention to make clear progress by 2014.  Their view is that the next four years will determine the quality of life on earth for the next thousand years.  I believe there is tremendous truth and power in that perspective.

I've seen many wildly ambitious visions like this.  They tend to remain fringe.  It seems clear to me now that 4YG is not  destined to be fringe.  With its combination of light organizational touch, laser-focused intention and professional support, I expect it will expand quite rapidly.  Only months into its existence, over 500 organizations have joined, including both mainstream and leading edge.  I sense this is something very real.  Heaven knows, we need it.

I have decided to put time into helping the 4YG campaign become a force for innovation, coherence, influence, and co-evolution among the many individuals and groups who are getting involved in it.  I see tremendous potential here and I invite you to both join it and support its evolution into potency.  I know many reading this could play a significant role in that.

On the surface, 4YG can seem like just a loose collection of people and organizations who have pledged to upgrade their separate efforts in the next four years in the hope that together they can add up to the needed global shift.  This, in itself, is commendable.  But it would not be revolutionary.

There is, however, more to it than that and, with a little effort, I believe this initiative could attain unprecedented potency.  Here are a few areas of evolutionary leverage I see:

The Empathic Civilization & The Age of Empathy

Jeremy Rifkin's The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis and Frans de Waal's The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society are truly books for these times.  If you read only two books this year, make it these!  (If you read three, add Tom Atlee's Reflections on Evolutionary Activism: Essays, Poems and Prayers From an Emerging Field of Sacred Social Change.)

I carefully read every page of Jeremy Rifkin's doorstopper (616 pages, not counting footnotes).  I marked it up extensively.  I re-read some sections.  Next, I listened to the audiobook version of Frans de Waal's take on the deep evolutionary roots of human (and mammalian) empathy.  Nearing its end (his discussion of "The Dark Side"), I was moved to tears more powerfully than by any other book I can remember.

Out of the hundreds (perhaps thousands) of books I've read in my 51 years of life on this planet, I consider Jemery Rifkin's The Empathic Civilization to be one of the 5 most significant, important, inspiring, and realistically hopeful I've yet encountered.  And The Age of Empathy is also in my "Top 20" list.  (HERE is a great 10-minute YouTube introduction to Rifkin's book!)

The history of cosmic, biological, and human evolution understood meaningfully is my field of expertise.  Rifkin's book does it all (including his quoting of de Waals' earlier writings).  Rifkin integrates humanity's best collective intelligence regarding human nature and human history and does so in a way that is an absolute delight to read.  (I could hardly put it down.)  Midway through the book I thought to myself, incredulously, "How can one person know all this?!"  That's when I went back and re-read the acknowledgments.  Rifkin had a director of research working on this project for 4 years, with two dozen interns.  No wonder it's so complete!

If you give both of these books a good reading, you will gain a lifeline for maintaining a sense of deeply grounded hope—no matter how disillusioning the news of the day and no matter how challenging your own life experience with our species' evolved nature.

ALSO SEE: 

Excellent RSA YouTube intro to The Empathic Civilization
Is Kindness an Evolutionary Advantage?
The Young Pioneers of the Empathic Civilization
Video interview with Jeremy Rifkin via Huffington Post
Only Empathy Can Save Us: Why Jeremy Rifkin's The Empathic Civilization is February's HuffPost Book Club Pick
'Empathic Civilization' Excerpt: Homo-Empathicus, The Big Story That Historians Missed
Jeremy Rifkin's New Book: The Coolest Online Reading Experience
Our Brains Were Built For Feeling Each Other's Pain
'Empathic Civilization': Where the Jobs Are
'Empathic Civilization': Building a New World One Child at a Time
'Empathic Civilization': Amazing Empathic Babies
'Empathic Civilization': How Little Minds Are Wired For Compassion
'Empathic Civilization': Why Empathy is Essential For Doctors and in Conflict Resolution

[Posted March 7, 2010]