Religion and the Environment in the Rhetoric of Thomas Berry and Pope Francis

Abstract

Thomas Berry, geologian, has been called one of the leading commentators on religion and the environment. This paper compares Berry’s writings with Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’. Pope Francis and Berry both use the root metaphor of integral ecology that implies a connection and reciprocity with the universe. However, Berry focuses on the rights of the earth that has existed billions of years before humankind. Humans are part of the earth community. Pope Francis focuses on social relations between human beings and the consequences for the environment because of egoism and begins his analysis with the past 20 centuries. Berry does not disagree but gives a special place to the earth and believes once respect is given to the earth social problems will be solved. Pope Francis wants to awaken a dialogue, where Berry believes we have become locked into reified stories, some of them from the Judeo-Christian interpretation of the Bible. Berry uses the metaphor of a “new story.” His story leads to cosmogenesis, or a new created order. For both writers, the challenge is implementation before it is too late for the human community.