Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T23:37:33.209Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From Arbor Day to the Environmental Sabbath: Nature, Liturgy, and American Protestantism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Leigh Eric Schmidt
Leigh Eric Schmidt
Affiliation:
Drew University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the past two decades considerable theological energy has been expended in the construction of various ecological theologies and spiritualities. Process theologians, ecofeminists, and theologians of creation, earth, nature, ecology, and land have been elucidating religious perspectives that they hope will help transform human attitudes toward nature and the environment. These writers have sought to reorient Christianity away from anthropocentric views that claim human dominion over nature, premillennial expectations that embrace the destruction of this world, soteriological preoccupations that focus on individual salvation, and otherworldly assumptions that foster alienation from the earth and nature. Some sanguine observers have seen this recent ferment as the greening of American theology or even the greening of the American churches. At the same time, intellectual historians have paid increasing attention to the history of Western ideas about nature and have debated at length the impact of Christianity's theological heritage on the environmental crisis. Specifically, a number of historians have constructed a genealogy of American conservationist and preservationist thought by tracing out a line that includes, among others, George Catlin, Henry David Thoreau, George Perkins Marsh, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and Rachel Carson.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 84 , Issue 3 , July 1991 , pp. 299 - 323
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Despite the reservations of the editors, I have continued to use “American” in this article as an adjective denoting the United States. The possible alternative of using “North American” would suggest that Canadian Protestantism is included in this article's analysis, which is not the case.

For a collection of essays that serves as a helpful window on recent ecological theologies, see Birch, Charles, Eakin, William, and McDaniel, Jay B., eds., Liberating Life: Contemporary Approaches to Ecological Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1990)Google Scholar. For exemplary intellectual histories, see Nash, Roderick, Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967)Google Scholar; Cherry, Conrad, Nature and Religious Imagination: From Edwards to Bushnell (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980)Google Scholar; Worster, Donald, Nature's Economy: The Roots of Ecology (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1977)Google Scholar.

2 Albanese, Catherine L., Nature Religion in America from the Algonkian Indians to the New Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990) 200Google Scholar.

3 Alexis de Tocqueville quoted in Mitchell, Lee Clark, Witnesses to a Vanishing America: The Nineteenth-Century Response (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981) 1Google Scholar.

4 On Cole, see Cikovsky, Nicolai, “The Ravages of the Axe': The Meaning of the Tree Stump in Nineteenth-Century American Art,” Art Bulletin 61 (1979) 611–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Marsh, George P., Man and Nature; Or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action (New York: Scribner, 1864)Google Scholar.

6 See Mitchell, Witnesses to a Vanishing America; Pisani, Donald J., “Forests and Conservation, 1865-1890,” Journal of American History 72 (1985) 340–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Furnas, Robert W., comp., Arbor Day (Lincoln, NB: State Journal Co., 1888) 103Google Scholar.

8 Ibid., 113; Northrop, Birdsey G., “Arbor Day-Progress of the Tree Planting Movement,” Transactions and Reports of the Nebraska State Historical Society 4 (1892) 106–10Google Scholar. For basic secondary accounts of Arbor Day's origin and history, see Olson, James C., “Arbor Day-A Pioneer Expression of Concern for Environment,” Nebraska History 53 (1972) 1–13Google Scholar; Johnson, Mary Elizabeth, “Arbor Day,” in Davis, Richard C., ed., Encyclopedia ofAmeri-can Forest and Conservation History (2 vols.; New York: Macmillan, 1983) 1. 21–23Google Scholar; Pearson, Marcia, “The Other Founder of Arbor Day,” American Forests 78 (1972) 6-7, 58Google Scholar. The holiday has received passing note in most works on nature and conservation. See, for example, Huth, Hans, Nature and the American: Three Centuries of Changing Attitudes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957) 171Google Scholar; Ekirch, Arthur A. Jr, Man and Nature in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963) 86Google Scholar; Lowenthal, David, George Perkins Marsh, Versatile Vermonter (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958) 268Google Scholar; Hays, Samuel P., Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890-1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959) 28Google Scholar.

9 For exemplary Arbor Day programs, see Chester, Emma E., Practical Arbor Day Exercises (Lebanon, OH: March Brothers, 1892)Google Scholar; Schauffler, Robert Haven, ed., Arbor Day: Its History, Observance, Spirit and Significance; with Practical Selections on Tree-Planting and Conservation, and a Nature Anthology (New York: Moffat, Yard and Co., 1917)Google Scholar; Skinner, Charles R., ed., Arbor Day Manual (1890; reprinted Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries, 1971)Google Scholar; Willis, Annie I., Exercises for Arbor Day with Notes, Hints, and Suggestions (3d ed.; Boston: New England Publishing, 1898)Google Scholar.

10 Peaslee, John B., Trees and Tree-Planting with Exercises and Directions for the Celebrations of Arbor Day (Cincinnati: Ohio State Forestry Association, 1884) 7Google Scholar.

11 For allusions to liberty trees, see ibid., 32-33, 51; Skinner, , Arbor Day Manual, 56Google Scholar.

12 Lawrance, Marion, Special Days in the Sunday School (New York: Revell, 1916) 191Google Scholar; Furnas, , Arbor Day, 35Google Scholar.

13 Peaslee, , Trees and Tree-Planting, 12Google Scholar.

14 Ayars, James Sterling, Getting Acquainted with the Out of Doors (n.p.: Board of Education of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1931) 11Google Scholar.

15 Ziegler, Edward Krusen, Country Altars: Worship in the Rural Church (New York: Commission on Worship of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, 1942) 24Google Scholar. See also Rich, Mark, comp., Rural Life Prayers for Rural Life Sunday, Harvest Home Services, and Other Occasions (New York: Commission on Worship of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, 1941) 3, 28Google Scholar.

16 Geoffrey Lilburne in his recent theology of the land has lifted up Arbor Day for reinvention and emulation. Noting its importance on the campus of United Theological Seminary over the last half century, Lilburne comments that “from this annual event a new sense of carrying on the tradition of the care of the earth and the love of this place emerges.” “Trees,” he says, “are the single most important element in reviving of ecological health.” See Lilburne, Geoffrey R., A Sense of Place: A Christian Theology of the Land (Nashville: Abingdon, 1989) 125, 128–30Google Scholar. See also Jenkins, Christie L., “Caring for Creation,” Liturgy: Journal of the Liturgical Conference 9 (1990) 63–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Huth, , Nature and the American, 169Google Scholar.

18 Quoted in Willis, , Exercises, 64.Google Scholar

19 Furnas, , Arbor Day, 44Google Scholar.

20 Ibid., 39, 55.

21 Skinner, , Arbor Day Manual, vGoogle Scholar.

22 Ibid., 28-29, 425.

23 Ibid., 28.

24 William Cullen Bryant, “Forest Hymn,” quoted in Schauffler, , Arbor Day, 199–204Google Scholar.

25 Joaquin Miller, “Arbor Day,” quoted in Furnas, , Arbor Day, 181–82Google Scholar.

26 Jefferson, Charles E., Nature Sermons (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1925) 16Google Scholar. For an excellent survey of this outdoors movement, see Schmitt, Peter J., Back to Nature: The Arcadian Myth in Urban America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969) esp. 141–45Google Scholar on “The Church in the Wildwood.”

27 Jefferson, , Nature Sermons, 13Google Scholar.

28 Ibid., 7.

29 Dana, Malcolm, Christ of the Countryside (Nashville: Cokesbury, 1937) 128Google Scholar.

30 Barton, Bruce, The Man Nobody Knows: A Discovery of the Real Jesus (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1925)Google Scholar.

31 Quayle, William A., Out-of-Doors with Jesus (New York: Abingdon, 1924) 9Google Scholar.

32 Ibid., 13. On Quayle, see Rice, M. S., William Alfred Quayle: The Skylark of Methodism (New York: Abingdon, 1928) esp. 226–42Google Scholar.

33 Bailey, Liberty Hyde, The Nature-Study Idea: An Interpretation of the New School-Movement to Put the Young into Relation and Sympathy with Nature (4th ed.; New York: Macmillan, 1920) 28Google Scholar.

34 Lawrance, , Special Days, 134, 190–92Google Scholar.

35 Ayars, Getting Acquainted.

36 Cobb, Cora Stanwood, God's Wonder World: A Manual for Religious Instruction in Junior Grades (Boston: Beacon, 1918)Google Scholar.

37 Mattoon, Laura I. and Bragdon, Helen D., Services for the Open (New York: Century, 1924)Google Scholar.

38 See Macleod, David I., Building Character in the American Boy: The Boy Scouts, YMCA, and Their Forerunners, 1870-1920 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983) 190–99Google Scholar. Protestants perceived their support as even greater, estimating that eighty percent or more of troops had at least some connection with their churches or Sunday Schools. See Richardson, Norman E. and Loomis, Ormond E., The Boy Scout Movement Applied by the Church (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1919) 57Google Scholar.

39 See The Scout Program in Protestant Churches: A Manual of Practical Procedures Related to the Program of the Church and the Boy Scouts of America (New York: The Protestant Committee on Scouting, n.d.) 63-66, 82Google Scholar; “Boy Scouts and the Church,” Federal Council Bulletin 23 (1940) 12Google Scholar; Scouting under Protestant Leadership (New York: Boy Scouts of America, n.d.) 8, 23, 31Google Scholar; The Scoutmaster Speaks: A Booklet of Testimony by Church Leaders Who Are Also Leaders in the Boy Scout Movement (New York: Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, n.d.)Google Scholar. The Boy Scouts of America also produced a pamphlet, “Source Materials for Scout Sunday,” specifically to aid churches in their celebrations. For mention of this pamphlet see Scout Program, 82.

40 Lotz, P. Henry, Worship Services for the Church Year (St. Louis: Bethany Press, 1944) 37–40Google Scholar.

41 On Boy Scouts and “the wilderness cult,” see Nash, , Wilderness and the American Mind, 147–48Google Scholar; Schmitt, , Back to Nature, 108-14, 143–44Google Scholar; Wadland, John Henry, Ernest Thompson Seton: Man in Nature and the Progressive Era, 1880-1916 (New York: Arno, 1978) esp. chap. 4Google Scholar; Richardson, and Loomis, , Boy Scout Movement, 125-32, 331–32Google Scholar.

42 For a fine recent overview of the Federal Council and its role within ecumenical Prot-estantism, see Schneider, Robert A., “Voice of Many Waters: Church Federation in the Twentieth Century,” in Hutchison, William R., ed., Between the Times: The Travail of the Protestant Establishment in America, 1900-1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) 95–121Google Scholar.

43 These booklets on the Christian year received in themselves wide distribution, but to disseminate further their version of the church year, the Committee also published wall and desk versions of their calendar. See Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, Committee on Worship, Minutes, 7 Feb. 1939, Record Group 18, Box 78, Office of History, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Philadelphia.

44 Federal Council of Churches, Committee on Worship, Minutes, 12 Nov. 1935.

4577 The Christian Year: A Suggestive Guide for the Worship of the Church (New York: Committee on Worship of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, [1937])Google Scholar

46 Ibid. See also Adams, Fred Winslow, “For a Modern Church Year,” Christian Century, 25 05 1938, 651–53Google Scholar.

47 The Christian Year (1st ed.) 15-16, 22, 25.

48 Fred Winslow Adams, “A Church Calendar Year Modelled on the Historic Christian Year,” in Federal Council of Churches, Committee on Worship, Minutes, 9 May 1935, Appendix A. Adams had a keen sense of nature, liturgy, and seasonal rhythms evident in his draft proposal calling for a Summertide and a Harvesttide, both of which were rejected by members of the larger Committee who encouraged “the lessening of emphasis upon the seasons of Nature's year.” See Federal Council of Churches, Committee on Worship, Minutes, 12 Nov. 1935.

49 The Christian Year: A Suggestive Guide for the Worship of the Church (2d ed.; New York: Committee on Worship of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, [1940]) 13, 28, 33.Google Scholar

50 The Book of Worship for Church and Home (Nashville: The Methodist Publishing House, 1944) 120Google Scholar.

51 In the 1935 draft of The Christian Year Adams slated Nature Sunday for the first Sunday in July; in the official 1937 and 1940 publications, the date was set as the last Sunday in June. For a full liturgy for Nature Sunday, see Lotz, , Worship Services, 137–40Google Scholar.

52 Committee on Town and Country of the Home Missions Council and the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, “Suggestions for the Observance of Rural Life Sunday Fifth Sunday after Easter May 2, 1937,” Record Group 26, Box 17, Office of History, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Philadelphia.

53 Rich, , Rural Life Prayers, 3Google Scholar.

54 Federal Council of Churches, Committee on Worship, Minutes, 5 Oct. 1948.

55 In Record Group 26, Box 17, Office of History, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Philadelphia, there are sample liturgies or “Suggestions for the Observance of Rural Life Sunday” from 1930 to 1950.

56 Seidenspinner, Clarence, Great Protestant Festivals (New York: Henry Schuman, 1952) 117–19Google Scholar.

57 “Suggestions for the Observance of Rural Life Sunday” for 1937, 1940, and 1944.

58 Rauschenbusch, Walter, Prayers of the Social Awakening (Boston: Pilgrim, 1925) 47–48Google Scholar. See also Rich, , Rural Life Prayers, 23Google Scholar; Hymns of the Rural Spirit, 115; and the “Suggestions for the Observance of Rural Life Sunday” for 1930 and 1947.

59 Bailey, Liberty Hyde, The Holy Earth (1915; 1943; reprinted, Columbia, OH: National United Methodist Rural Fellowship, 1988)Google Scholar.

60 Kester, Howard and Kester, Alice, “Ceremony of the Soil-A Service of Worship,” Christian Rural Fellowship Bulletin, 69 (1942) 1–4Google Scholar. The Kesters' liturgy was regularly endorsed for use on Rural Life Sunday. See Ziegler, , Country Altars, 22Google Scholar, and the “Suggestions for the Observance of Rural Life Sunday” for the years following 1942.

61 Bailey, , The Holy Earth, 9Google Scholar.

62 Ibid., 11.

63 Ibid., 2.

64 bid., 11.

65 Ibid.

66 Committee on Town and Country of the Home Missions Council and the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, “An Order of Service for a Harvest Festival 1946,” Record Group 26, Box 17, Office of History, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Philadelphia. Special harvest festival liturgies are available in this collection for the years 1942 to 1950. See also Ziegler, , Country Altars, 24–25Google Scholar.

67 “Suggestions for the Observance of Rural Life Sunday” for 1940; Lowdermilk, Walter C., “The Eleventh Commandment,” Christian Rural Fellowship Bulletin 74 (1942) 1–4Google Scholar.

68 Bailey, , Holy Earth, 18Google Scholar.

69 Carson, Rachel L., Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962)Google Scholar.

70 Williams, Donald A., “Christian Stewardship of the Soil,” in Christians and the Good Earth: Addresses and Discussions at the Third National Conference of the Faith-Man-Nature Group (Alexandria, VA: The Faith-Man-Nature Group, [1968]) 17–20Google Scholar. Williams highlighted an attempt, beginning in 1950, to rename and continue Rural Life Sunday as Soil Stewardship Sunday. He noted that six hundred thousand church bulletins and 1.7 million program inserts were being distributed annually for the occasion, especially to churches in the South and Southwest, by an interdenominational Soil Stewardship Advisory Committee for the National Association of Soil and Water Conservation Districts. This observance, now called Soil and Water Stewardship Week, has survived and is still being promoted.

71 For good descriptive accounts, see “A Giant Step—Or a Springtime Skip,” Newsweek, 4 05 1970, 26–28Google Scholar; “A Memento Mori to the Earth,” Time, 4 05 1970, 16–18Google Scholar. On recycling, see Bell, Garrett De, The Environmental Handbook Prepared for the First National Environmental Teach-in (New York: Ballantine, 1970) 214–18Google Scholar.

72 National Council of the Churches of Christ in America, “Environmental Stewardship,” Record Group 6, Box 60, Office of History, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Philadelphia. The National Council had organized an Environmental Stewardship Action Team in advance of Earth Day.

73 Quoted in “Earth Day,” New Yorker, 2 05 1970, 30Google Scholar.

74 Santmire, H. Paul, Brother Earth: Nature, God, and Ecology in Time of Crisis (New York: Nelson, 1970)Google Scholar.

75 Elder, Frederick, Crisis in Eden: A Religious Study of Man and Environment (Nashville: Abingdon, 1970)Google Scholar.

76 Barnette, Henlee H., The Church and the Ecological Crisis (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972) 7Google Scholar.

77 Aydan, Zehra, “Doubling and Redoubling: A History of the Environmental Sabbath,” Environmental Sabbath Newsletter 2 (1990) 1, 4–5Google Scholar.

78 United Nations Environment Programme, Only One Earth (New York: United Nations, 1990)Google Scholar.

79 See the Newsletter of the Network for Environmental and Economic Responsibility of the United Church of Christ (NEER) based in Nutley, New Jersey and Pasadena, California. NEER also distributes various flyers and worship resources for the Eco-Justice Sabbath. See also issues of Firmament published by the North American Conference on Christianity and Ecology; the recent pamphlet produced by the Eco-Justice Working Group of the National Council of Churches, 101 Ways to Help Save the Earth, with Fifty-two Weeks of Congregational Activities to Save the Earth (n.p.: The Greenhouse Crisis Foundation and the National Council of Churches of Christ, 1990)Google Scholar s; Bush, Joseph E. Jr, ed., Environmental Sabbath Worship and Educational Resources (n.p.: The Board of Church and Society, Northern New Jersey Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, 1990)Google Scholar. On the covenants, see “Covenant,” Environmental Sabbath Newsletter 2 (1990) 6Google Scholar.

80 McDonagh, Sean, To Care for the Earth: A Call to a New Theology (London: Chapman, 1986) 155, 158, 161Google Scholar. See also Fox, Matthew, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988) 211–28Google Scholar; Reinhart, Peter, “Eternal Festival: Folk Culture, Celebrations, and Earth Stewardship,” Epiphany: A Journal of Faith and Insight 6 (1985) 46–50Google Scholar.

81 The Christian Year (1st ed.) 9.

82 On Knowles, see Nash, , Wilderness and the American Mind, 141–43, 157Google Scholar.

83 This appellation is from the subtitle of M. S. Rice's biography of Quayle. See Rice, William Alfred Quayle.

84 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, The Poetical Works of Longfellow (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975) 322Google Scholar.

85 Quayle, William A., With Earth and Sky (New York: Abingdon, 1922) 170Google Scholar.

86 See Schmidt, Leigh Eric, “The Commercialization of the Calendar: American Holidays and the Culture of Consumption, 1870-1930,” Journal of American History 78 (1991) 887–916CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Boorstin, Daniel J., The Americans: The Democratic Experience (New York: Random House, 1973) 157–64Google Scholar.

87 Dunkle, William Frederick Jr, Values in the Church Year for Evangelical Protestantism (New York: Abingdon, 1959) 120Google Scholar.

88 Fred Winslow Adams, “The Value of the Christian Year for Worship: Extracts from the Address Given at the Biennial Meeting of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America at Buffalo, N.Y., Thursday, Dec. 8, 1938,” in Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, Record Group 18, Box 78, Office of History, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Philadelphia.

89 lbid.

90 The Christian Year (2d ed.) 5.