Recently, The BTS Center hosted our third annual Green Teams Gathering, which drew together almost 100 people representing congregational Green Teams, Climate Action Teams, Social Justice Teams, and ecologically grounded communities of faith.
Our keynote speaker, Dwayne Tomah — a Passamaquoddy Language Keeper, educator, and former Tribal Council member — shared some teaching around the Doctrine of Discovery from an Indigenous perspective.
Some have wondered: What does the Doctrine of Discovery have to do with The BTS Center’s work? How is this relevant for the work of a congregational Green Team? What’s the connection between the Doctrine of Discovery and spiritual leadership for a climate-changed world?
Rev. Dr. William Barber III — Disciples of Christ pastor, social activist and organizer, and Director of the Center for Public Theology & Public Policy at Yale Divinity School, says, “The role of the church is to engage in the dangerous ministry of telling the truth.”
With these words, Dr. Barber is challenging the church to wake up to its call to speak with a prophetic voice — in his words, “to push a hope that is subversive; to push against majority opinion.”
Dr. Barber continues, “We must keep on conjuring up alternative futures and refusing to accept what is when what is is not what God wants.”
When I look around, it seems to me that so much of what is is not what God wants.
- systemic racism
- lack of access to affordable health care
- the growing gap between rich and poor
- violence against immigrant communities
- attacks on the LGBTQ community
- war
- the unequal distribution of food and other necessities for daily living
- a crisis of homelessness
- the rise of authoritarianism
- ecosystem collapse
- climate devastation
Here’s the truth: the climate crisis did not emerge out of nowhere. It is not simply the result of destructive technology, poor policy, or a few decades of excessive consumption. The roots of the climate crisis run much deeper. They reach into stories we have told about God, land, power, and what it means to be human.
And one of those stories is the Doctrine of Discovery.
The truth is, for centuries, the Doctrine of Discovery provided theological justification for European powers to claim lands already inhabited by Indigenous peoples.
Papal decrees in the 15th century and later, embedded into colonial law, declared that Christian nations could seize territory from non-Christian peoples, claiming dominion over both land and lives. These edicts enshrined into law and doctrine the complete erasure of the sovereignty and human rights of the people who called those places home.
The Doctrine of Discovery took a beautiful theological truth — that Creation, this Earth that God created and called good, a gift to be treasured and tended — and twisted it into a possession, a triumph of terror gained through deception and violence and brutality.
It twisted the beautiful theological truth that every human being is created in the image of God, and that we are siblings to one another, and peddled the lie that some are barbarians, heathens, less than human, while others are exceptional, favored, granted divine license to steal and to oppress, to dominate others and exploit the earth for personal gain.
And it twisted the church into an agent of empire.
Centuries later, and we are still seeing the impacts of this lie. It doesn’t take much imagination to see a straight line running all the way from the Doctrine of Discovery to White Christian Nationalism — this lie being peddled today that insists that the United States of America is set apart as a Christian nation that ought to favor and benefit white men over everyone else.
For those of us who hold a different vision, a more faithful vision of God’s kin-dom, this is a time of reckoning — a time when we must reckon with the reality of harm.
Hear Dr. Barber again:
“The role of the church is to engage in the dangerous ministry of telling the truth. We must keep on conjuring up alternative futures and refusing to accept what is when what is is not what God wants.”
If we need a reminder of what it is that God wants, all we have to do is turn to one of my favorite passages in all of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures — Micah 6:8.
The prophet Micah asked important questions 2,800 years ago — questions, in fact, that we might want to ask today: How should I come before the Lord? And what does the Lord require of you?
We might use words like: What do you want of me, God? How should I live? Show me the way!
God’s response is summed up in three parts: Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly with your God.
If we claim the truth that God calls us to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly, then no one can be treated as disposable. No community can be sacrificed for profit. No land can be regarded merely as a resource to exploit without consequence.
In many Indigenous traditions, land is understood not as a commodity, but as a relative. The earth is not an object to be owned, but a living gift to which we belong.
That wisdom stands as a prophetic challenge to a culture that continually asks, “What can we take?” and insists that a more faithful question is “How shall we live in right relationship?”
What does that look like in practice?
- It looks like congregations learning the history of the land where they gather.
- It looks like partnerships with Indigenous communities.
- It looks like protecting watersheds and ecosystems.
- It looks like honoring the soul of a place.
- It looks like resisting domination, extraction, and consumption.
- It looks like solidarity with communities most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
- It looks like worship that celebrates creation not as scenery, not as the great backdrop for human activity, but as sacred community.
- It looks like getting out of our buildings and forming beloved community with our more-than-human kin.
- It looks like faith communities becoming intergenerational places of healing and new life.
Hear me: This work is not peripheral to our faith. It’s not ancillary. It’s not niche. It is the fullest expression of our faith.
The Doctrine of Discovery taught the church to ask, “What can we claim?”
Our faith asks, “How can we do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God?”
My hope, my prayer, is that you will feel deeply called by God, Spirit, the divine, to this work of spiritual leadership for a climate-changed world, including the work of decolonization and the repair of harm; that you will feel connected, empowered, emboldened, and strengthened for this work; that you will find within this community deep reservoirs of love, gratitude, hope, strength, wisdom, and joy — enough to sustain you for the long journey ahead.
We are in this together, so let’s stay fully engaged in the dangerous ministry of telling the truth. Let’s keep on conjuring up alternative futures. Let’s lead with love. Let’s never tire of doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God. May it be so. – Amen.
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