Environmental Ethics

Volume 8, Issue 1, Spring 1986

Christian Spirituality as Openness toward Fellow Creatures

In developing theologies and spiritualities of ecology, Christians can learn from the Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock and from process theology. That “feeling for the organism” of which McClintock speaks can be understood within a process context as a distinctive mode of spirituality. The feeling is an intuitive and sympathetic apprehension of another creature in a way which mirrors God’s own way of perceiving. It involves feeling the other creature as a fellow subject with intrinsic value. A subjective capacity of this sort is by no means sufficient for a spirituality of ecology, but by all means necessary.