Scharper, Stephen

Full Research Description:
1. Religion and Politics

My M.A. thesis on the notion of liberation in the work of Gustavo Gutiérrez, a key founder of the theology of liberation, helped underscore for me the role that religion can play in progressive social change. Gutiérrez¹s path-breaking 1971 work, Teologia de la liberacion (translated into English by Orbis Books in 1973) came amidst a widespread social scientific acceptance of secularization theories suggesting a diminished or inconsequential role for religion in social movements.

Yet, with the advent of the Iranian Revolution, the role of Christians in Nicaragua¹s Sandinista Revolution, the involvement of the Catholic church in Poland¹s Solidarity movement, and the progressive Sanctuary coalition in the U.S. during the 1980s, social theorists of religions were compelled to revisit and in some cases revise their views of religious agency in social change. ( I explored this theme in terms of the impact of religious publishing on shaping political attitudes, using Sheed and Ward and Orbis Books under the direction of Philip Scharper as a case study in my article for U.S. Catholic Historian [Scharper 2003].)

My research on the role of religions in general and Christianity in particular in ecological and environmental movements is in keeping with such renewed appreciation of the part religious groups can and do play in periods of significant social transformation. Currently, religious groups are very active in a number of political arenas and, in some cases, have acquired considerable influence over both national and international agendas. The roles that religious constituencies are playing in environmental politics is varied, but it is clear that they will remain important players as environmental policies and practices unfold over the next two decades.


2. Role of Religion in Environmental Movements and the Impact of Ecological Concerns upon Religion

Part of my past and current research encompasses the involvement of religion in environmental concerns, and the type of rethinking within religious traditions the ecological challenge has spawned, especially in the areas of cosmology, ontology, religious anthropology, and ethics (Scharper 1997; 1999a).

Prodded in part by thirty-two world-renowned scientists in their 1990 ³Open Letter to the Religious Community,² religions in North America have been prompted to take seriously the environmental challenge both theologically and politically, aspects I have explored in my book, Redeeming the Time(1997) and elsewhere (Scharper 1999b). One of the fruits of this conversation is the Forum on Religion and Ecology. Spearheaded by Profs.

Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, the Forum has produced a ten-volume book series (available through Harvard University Press) on world religions and ecology based on conferences held at Harvard University. I was an invited participant and respondent to the conference on Christianity and ecology, and have been a member of the Religion and Ecology working group of the American Academy of Religion. I have also been an invited participant at Forum-sponsored academic panels on religion and ecology at the Parliament of World Religions at Capetown, South Africa, where I spoke of the distinctive prospects and challenges of Christian involvement in environmental movements (Scharper 2001) and Barcelona, Spain, where I addressed the cosmological and social justice dimensions of the commoditization of water, a paper I am presently preparing for publication.

It was through seed money from the Forum that in March 2004, Heather Eaton of St. Paul University (Ottawa), James Miller of Queen¹s University (Kingston, Ontario) and I founded the Canadian Forum on Religion and Ecology (CFORE). This organization aims to explore, research and deepen the conversation between religious perspectives and environmental concerns within the Canadian context. With CFORE¹s two additional Steering Committee members, Anne Marie Dalton (St. Mary¹s University, Halifax) and Peter Timmerman (York University, Toronto), we are preparing, at the invitation of the University of Toronto Press, a three-part series on religion and ecology in Canada. The first volume, which will be written by myself and the other members of the CFORE Steering Committee, will attempt to provide a broad overview of the state of the conversation between religion and environmental concerns in Canada (see letter of contract attached). The subsequent two volumes will be edited collections, one dealing with Canadian scholars representing different religious traditions speaking of environmental concerns in general, and the other volume centering on special environmental issues from different religious perspectives within Canada (see proposal, attached). The University of Toronto Press has also asked the CFORE Steering Committee to serve as editorial consultants and readers for manuscripts in the area of religion and ecology, to which we have consented.

A research focus for me as well has been the possibilities, prospects, and challenges of Christian involvement in this emerging conversation. In my book, Redeeming the Time, I schematized Christian theological responses to Lynn White¹s 1967 polemic, ³The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis² (Science 1967) in terms of ³apologetic² or defensive, ³constructive² and ³listening.² I have critically examined a chief exposition of this approach, represented by geologian and cultural historian Thomas Berry¹s ³new cosmology,² pointing out its richness and evocative power, but also its need for political and social analysis (Scharper 1997; 2001).

Currently I am co-writing an analysis of the ecological teachings of the Compendium of the Catholic Church with sociologist Andrew Weigert of the University of Notre Dame. The work will form a chapter in a book manuscript edited by Paul Sullins and Anthony Blasi, the proposal of which has been reviewed favorably by Oxford University Press. Two of the criteria I bring to the work are the notions of the common good and the preferential option for the poor, important cairns in the journey of Catholic social teaching, which have direct relevance to ecological concerns.

3. Ecology and Poverty

My doctoral research at McGill University built upon my previous work on liberation theologies, as well as my own experience as an editor at Orbis Books, a main publisher of Latin American liberation theology, and Twenty-Third Publications. At Twenty-Third, I was able to work with such authors as John B. Cobb, Jay McDaniel, Catherine Keller, and Thomas Berry on ecologically oriented titles. I found that, in much of the emerging Christian ecological literature, the role of the human in light of contemporary ecological destruction remained problematic. Trying to navigate between the Scylla of a deeply anthropocentric understanding of the human as lord and master over the natural world and the Charybdis of a radically eco-centric view that dismissed the role of the human as immaterial to the functioning of the earth¹s ecosystems, Christian theories, and some of the scientific schemas they were in dialogue with (such as the Gaia theory of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis) seemed to have a rather underdeveloped or unarticulated perspective on the role and place of the human within our present ecological moment.

I addressed this topic in my dissertation entitled the Role of the Homan in Christian Ecological Literature, under the direction of Prof. Gregory Baum.

This was later revised and published as Redeeming the Time: A Political Theology of the Environment (New York: Continuum, 1997, now in its second printing). In addition to providing a typology of responses to Lynn White¹s accusatory article, I interrogated in the work process theology, new cosmology, ecofeminism, the Gaia theory, and liberation theology concerning the role of the human in each, the presence of an ³option of the poor² and a social justice perspective, and the extent to which each approach forged a nexus between global poverty as a system and global environmental despoliation. I concluded with a call neither for an anthropocentric approach nor an ecocentric approach, but what I term an ³anthro[po]-harmonic approach,² which acknowledges the importance of the human in its ability to alter planetary systems (i.e., climate change) yet also recognizes the deep integration of humans with, and their dependency on, the other life systems of the planet.

In a forthcoming chapter for a book co-edited by Gustavo Gutierrez and Daniel Groody, (tentatively titled: Option for the Poor: Interdisciplinary Perspectives,² under review at The University of Notre Dame Press, I have continued to probe the implications of the preferential option for the poor and a liberationist perspective for environmental studies. The option of the poor, and liberation theology's incisive critique of economic development stratagems of the 1950s and 1960s, as well as the modern paradigm, yields an important caveat to current sustainable development schemas, a point I explore in my article, ³Liberation Theology, and Ecology: At The Crossroads of Social Justice² (presently under review at the Journal of Religion).

Currently I am also developing a new area within religion, ecology and poverty debates. A particular tension has emerged in Christian circles between liberationist or social justice voices and new cosmological perspectives. The former have a tendency to view new cosmology as lacking a plan of social action and seeing ecological concerns as secondary to issues of poverty and social injustice, while the latter view ecological systems as primary. (This research builds on a new graduate course I offered in the fall of 2005 entitled Liberation Cosmologies: The Thought of Gustavo Gutiérrez and Thomas Berry in Conversation.) To help address this question I have prepared a SSHRC research grant proposal and a book proposal (under review at SUNY Press) exploring the work of Gustavo Gutiérrez and Thomas Berry, noting points of difference and confluence in their work. This work argues that the ecological crisis runs along the same fault lives as economic, political, racial and gendered oppression, and that a social justice perspective and a new cosmological perspective, though in tension at times, have many prospects for integration.

My research will continue to highlight the intersections among religion, ecology, politics and poverty. With approximately 85% of the world¹s population viewing reality through a religious lens, it behooves scholars to take these perspectives seriously particularly as communities, faith-traditions and nation-states face the environmental and economic challenges of the 21st century.