The creation stories you probably haven't heard
It's time for the church to listen to indigenous people.
For
Shantha Ready Alonso, the fight for environmental justice goes back to
the 15th century, to the doctrine of discovery, a series of papal bulls
that started with Pope Nicholas V. These documents, for which the
Vatican has yet to apologize or repudiate, gave European nations the
pope's blessing to colonize non-Christian lands and kill native peoples.
"These
were the documents that Christopher Columbus and others used to justify
their actions," Alonso says. "It's a really horrible part of church
history." Americans can still see the legacy of the doctrine of
discovery in manifest destiny, Native American reservations that forced
indigenous people off their land and took away their rights to
ownership, and the Christian boarding schools that many Native Americans
were forced to attend.
Today Protestant denominations
have started to examine the legacy of the doctrine of discovery in their
own traditions. One organization that is trying to foster such dialogue
is Creation Justice Ministries, where Alonso is executive director.
Creation
Justice Ministries started in 1983 when the National Council of
Churches USA came together and created an eco-justice program. Today
Creation Justice Ministries is an independent organization, but its
faith-based work, Alonso says, has not changed. "We are all connected
through the global church to people all over the world. That makes us
intimately connected to places that are fighting for their existential
reality because of climate change."
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