Nature's Sacrament: The Epic Of Evolution And A Theology Of Sacramental Ecology

What people are saying about

Nature’s Sacrament

David McDuffie has written an engaging book that probes the rich relationship between a sacramental universe and the epic of evolution. He opens up new territory for reflection and action that has implications for how we value and protect the Earth community. We are all in his debt for this insightful contribution to ecotheology.

Mary Evelyn Tucker, Yale University, coauthor of Ecology and Religion and Journey of the Universe

By showing us how the Eucharist and the Incarnation lead us to an awareness of God’s presence in all things and how an appreciation of the evolutionary history of the world deepens our understanding of the Eucharist, David McDuffie shows how a common experience of wonder, awe and appreciation in the natural world can bring together those scientists who do not profess religious faith and those Christians who may not have appreciated evolutionary processes. As such McDuffie has provided a needed service to both groups at a critical time in history.

Robin Gottfried, Director, Center for Religion and Environment at Sewanee: The University of the South

David McDuffie has focused on what must be the heart of Christian ecotheology – the nexus between Jesus and the sacramental reality of the Earth. For way too long Christians have been unwilling to embrace this nexus with passion and intelligence to the detriment of our collective faith and the health of the planet. This book makes an important, timely, thoughtful contribution to the growing conversation in this area.

Fletcher Harper, Executive Director, GreenFaith

Nature’s Sacrament

The Epic of Evolution and a Theology of Sacramental Ecology

Nature’s Sacrament

The Epic of Evolution and a Theology of Sacramental Ecology

David C. McDuffie

Winchester, UK

Washington, USA

First published by Christian Alternative Books, 2021

Christian Alternative Books is an imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd., No. 3 East St., Alresford, Hampshire SO24 9EE, UK

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Text copyright: David C. McDuffie 2020

ISBN: 978 1 78904 717 2

978 1 78904 718 9 (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020948079

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publishers.

The rights of David C. McDuffie as author have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1: Nature’s Grace: The Epic of Evolution, Religious Naturalism, and the Conservation of Nature

Chapter 2: Sacrament and Sacramentality: A Eucharistic Theology of Ecological Grace

Chapter 3: A Beautiful Mystery: Divine Eucharistic Presence, the Epic of Evolution, and the Love of Life on Earth

Chapter 4: Toward a Sacramental Ecology: The Role of the Priesthood in a Sacramental Universe

Chapter 5: A Grandeur in this View of Life: The Ecological Significance of Tradition and Sacrament in the Theology of David Brown

Conclusion

Bibliography

To Dr. William L. Power—Professor, Mentor, and Friend

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the Religious Studies Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where the thought process that led to this book began and early work on it was done. I would also like to thank The School of Theology at Sewanee: The University of the South where these early ideas were expanded and developed further toward what became the present volume.

I am grateful to the following individuals who read and provided valuable suggestions and insight on either individual chapters or the entire text as it was being written: Norman Wirzba at Duke University; Don Saliers at Emory University; Bruce Morrill at Vanderbilt University; and Cynthia Crysdale, Benjamin King, Robert MacSwain, and Andrew Thompson at Sewanee: The University of the South. To Robin Gottfried at Sewanee, Ann Somers at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Mary Evelyn Tucker at Yale University, and Joyce Wilding, thank you for helpful and encouraging conversations along the way. To the late Frank Golley at the University Georgia, who introduced me to the academic study of Ecology, thank you for introducing me to a broader appreciation of the connectedness of life and awakening me to the possibilities available when one recognizes that religion and evolutionary biology can be quite compatible.

To my students, particularly at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, I have very much enjoyed our conversations on some of the topics covered in the book, and I greatly appreciate you helping me to develop these ideas in the classroom.

I am thankful for my family: my wife Jennie and our three children Aidan, Callum, and Isla. Their patience and love made the completion of this work possible. I am thankful for my parents, Charles and Pat McDuffie, both of whom introduced me to natural theology at an early age each in their own particular way. I also want to thank my brother, Matt, who took me on my earliest trips into the woods. His knowledge of the natural world still far exceeds my own, but I have greatly benefited from following him down the trail.

There are countless others who have contributed something to make this book a possibility. To all who contributed in ways recognized or not, I am truly appreciative.

Finally, I want to express my deep gratitude to Dr. William L. Power, Professor Emeritus of Religion at the University of Georgia, to whom this book is dedicated. He taught me that all truth claims, religious or scientific, should be judged by the critical criteria of reason and experience and that there is no contradiction in valuing and respecting Christian tradition while holding it accountable to maintaining applicability in our contemporary context. While his name does not appear frequently in the following pages, his influence is present throughout. Without this influence, this book would not have been possible.

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.¹

Introduction

These are the last lines from the 1859 first editionof Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in which he developed his theory of evolution through natural selection. The culmination of Darwin’s work on speciation served to illuminate the realization that all living things (humans included) are connected in one giant web or tree of life that spans millions of years of natural history on Earth. Ironically, Darwin had no understanding of the primary biological factor perpetuating this process. The emergence of the science of genetics unlocked this mystery, and in the more than 150-year interval since the publication of Origin, we have been provided with evidence that supports Darwin’s brilliant insight. We now know that we are genetically related and ecologically connected to all living things from chimpanzees and bonobos, our closest living relatives with whom we share approximately 99% of our genetic information, to microscopic bacteria. In brief, all living things on our planet are related through our genetic codes, and it is probable that this genetic kinship can be traced back to the emergence of life’s common ancestor, the first single celled life on Earth. These developments in the biological sciences combined with the sciences of geology and cosmological physics have revealed to us that we live in an approximately 14-billion-year-old universe on a planet that is approximately 4.6 billion years old and that we are a part of the ongoing process of life that has existed on Earth for roughly 4 billion years. This is the story of the natural history from which we emerged and of which we are inextricably a part, and it is a narrative that is added to on nearly a daily basis by ongoing scientific investigation.

E. O. Wilson has referred to this narrative as the evolutionary epic and claims that the evolutionary epic is probably the best myth we will ever have. It can be adjusted until it comes as close to truth as the human mind is constructed to judge the truth.² Elsewhere, he claims that to the degree that we come to understand other organisms, we will place a greater value on them, and on ourselves.³ The implication here is that an awareness of ecological connectedness will lead to a greater valuation and concern for the diversity of life on Earth of which we are only a part. This narrative has been adopted by others such as Thomas Berry and Ursula Goodenough who claim that the Epic of Evolution has not only scientific but also religious significance in terms of how it achieves the attribution of ecological value. For instance, Berry describes the scientific narrative of the story of the universe as a manifestation of Divine revelation in order to argue that this new story of the universe is now needed as our sacred story.⁴

I agree that there is a connection between an understanding of, a valuation for, and, consequently, the protection of the ecological connections that sustain all forms of life, and the purpose of the following book will be to examine the ways in which the emerging narrative of the universe’s natural history can be correlated with and enhance the sacramental tradition of the Christian church.⁵ More specifically, I will focus on the religious and ecological significance of the Epic of Evolution in an effort to seamlessly connect the ecological value attributed as a part of this scientific narrative with the grace understood to be present in Christian sacramental worship with a particular emphasis on the Eucharist. I will argue that the sacramental emphasis on grace being conveyed through material reality, in conversation with the acceptance of ecological value as demonstrated in the Epic of Evolution, provides the potential for Christian sacramental tradition to make a significant contribution to conserving the threatened ecological communities of our planet.

In a conversation I had a number of years ago with the Rev. Dr. Jerry Cappel, current Director of Province IV Environmental Ministries of the Episcopal Church, he said that it was time that we move ecology from the committee to the pew in order for it to be seen as a primary aspect of Christian formation and not just another peripheral issue of concern for the church. The following pages are my attempt to do just that. The potential religious implications of the Epic of Evolution