{"id":134,"date":"2009-11-01T18:00:55","date_gmt":"2009-11-01T17:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=134"},"modified":"2009-11-01T18:00:55","modified_gmt":"2009-11-01T17:00:55","slug":"leaving-fear-sin-and-guilt-to-the-environmental-movement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2009\/11\/01\/leaving-fear-sin-and-guilt-to-the-environmental-movement\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaving fear, sin and guilt to the environmental movement"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a recent radio programme<\/a> the following exchange took place:<\/p>\n

Jane Little's Introduction<\/strong>:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> \u201cThe Government\u2019s former Chief Scientific Advisor, Lord May, has called on religious leaders to play a bigger role in helping to tackle climate change. The Peer said religious groups could use their influence to motivate believers on green issues and suggested that the belief in hell and a punishing God might spur them to action. \u00a0Well joining me now to discuss the role faith groups can play are Chris Goodall, Green Party candidate for <\/span><\/span>Oxford<\/span><\/span> and Abbingdon West at the next election, and author of \u201cHow to Live a Low Carbon Life\u201d, and by Martin Palmer, Secretary General of ARC, the Alliance of Religions and\u00a0Conservation\u201d.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Jane Little<\/strong>:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> \"<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>Martin, this fear of eternal damnation would be a good motivator to save the planet wouldn\u2019t it\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Martin Palmer<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>: \u201cNo, I don\u2019t think so and in the 25 years or so in which most of the major religions have been very active on environmental issues, something that Lord May perhaps hasn\u2019t noticed. \u00a0What they have focused on is not fear, and sin and guilt, we have rather left that to the environmental movement. \u00a0What they have focused on is celebration, empowerment, abundance and joy. \u00a0Because if we go into an issue like this with a notion that if you can scare people into morality, you will discover what every religion has discovered, which is that that lasts for a very short period of time. Whereas if you speak to people, say in the Christian tradition or the Daoist tradition about partnership, both with the planet and with the Divine, then you\u2019ve got something that is long lasting. \u00a0It is slightly worrying that aetheists always want the very God that they want us to reject, ie angry, domineering, stroppy God and then they get very cross with us when we say that that is not actually the God we believe in.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Thanks to Nick Jones for this link.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a recent radio programme the following exchange took place: Jane Little's Introduction: \u201cThe Government\u2019s former Chief Scientific Advisor, Lord May, has called on religious leaders to play a bigger role in helping to tackle climate change. The Peer said...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}