October 16th, 2008 · No Comments

By Harriet Blake

A new Bible published this week will speak volumes to anyone who cares about all creatures great and small.
The Green Bible, published by HarperOne (a division of Harper Collins), highlights in green all passages that relate to the environment and humankind’s duty to protect it. In keeping with its green message, the new Bible is printed on recycled paper using soy-based ink and is bound in earth-friendly linen.

“You visit the earth and water it, you greatly enrich it; the river of God is full of water; you provide the people with grain, for so you have prepared it.” Psalm 65:9

The Bible includes essays by theologians and conservationists that point to the environmental issues raised in the scriptures. It also contains a reader’s guide to locating these themes in the Bible. The Sierra Club, the Humane Society and the Eco-Justice Program of the National Council of Churches have high praise for it.

Founder and director of Restoring Eden, Peter Illyn, notes that the message of the Green Bible “is not breaking new ground. We’ve known about these scriptures for a long time, but the Green Bible brings the conversation more mainstream…It’s symbolic, the conversation has matured and now we are taking seriously the language that Jesus uses.”

Illyn’s organization, Restoring Eden, is a grassroots movement based in La Center, Washington, that focuses on environmental stewardship. Although the group is Christian-oriented, Illyn , who is an evangelical, has worked with people from many faiths including other Protestant groups, as well as Orthodox, Catholic and Jewish denominations.

“Such a Bible is redundant, in the best sense,” says Paul L. Escamilla, associate Director of Public Affairs and Adjunct Professor of Preaching at SMU’s Perkins School of Theology. “That is, the Bible highlights the environment even before we take the marker to the page to seek out such points of emphasis. Inherent in the sacred story, as found in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, is the prominent place of creation in God’s care and purposes.”

“God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.” Genesis 1: 31

Illyn agrees. “From the Book of Genesis to Revelations, the scriptures are very clear that God calls us to protect the circle of life,” Illyn says. He says the timing of the Green Bible represents a conversation that’s come into its own.

“There’s been a real generational shift for young people,” he says. “They need to have a right relationship with God, a right relationship with humanity and a right relationship with nature.” All three are needed, he says, for economical and just sustainability. “The scriptures say nature teaches us about God. The Green Bible demonstrates that there’s an interconnectiveness between nature and God. It’s about harmony and balance.

“Unlike the earlier beliefs of other evangelicals, such as James Dobson, who said you don’t put nature before people, today we realize that it’s all woven together. We need to fight things like drilling oil in the Arctic and the [loss] of the Endangered Species Act,” says Illyn.

In the last decade, environmental stewardship has become the context for everything, he says. “It replaces the old world view for the new generation.”

Despite the prominence of global warming in the news, Escamilla sees environmental awareness as part of a bigger picture, in the spiritual sense. “Environmental awareness is, in the larger sense, simply an aspect of living reverently,” says Escamilla. “The community of faith is called to a relationship of wonder, joy and mutual provision. That covenant transcends any contemporary issues of environmental problem-solving, though it certainly undergirds such concerns and provides their theoretical and technological basis.”

“Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture, but you must tread down with your feet the rest of your pasture? When you drink of clear water, must you foul the rest with your feet?” Ezekiel 34:18

“What hurts the environment, hurts us all,” says Illyn. “Maybe you can only donate money to fight AIDS in Africa, but with the environment, we can all do something about it.”

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media