Michael Schut writes and teaches within the faith-based creation-care movement. He was formerly with Earth Ministry, a Seattle-based non-profit whose mission is to deepen the relationship of individuals and congregations with God’s creation. He currently serves as Economic and Environmental Affairs Officer, a new position within the Episcopal Church.p> The book begins with Schut’s Overview piece, in which he asks, “Is simplicity only a fad, or can it lead to lasting change?” His thesis is that “voluntary simplicity” on a mass scale is a path to environmental sustainability, and to the abundant life that God has promised, for all.
Schut poses the “good life” against the “abundant life” – the life that the culture promotes through systems of materialism and economic growth, productivity, anthropocentrism and individualism, with that of voluntary simplicity, in which can be found freedom and compassion (or, the freedom for compassion).
Schut provides a useful articulation of compassion, via Frederick Buechner:
“Compassion is that sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside another’s skin, knowing that there never can really be peace and joy for any until there is peace and joy finally for all” (p. 30). Compassion—suffering for all—felt as empathy but embodied as justice, is a hallmark of the abundant life.
In the ensuing collection of essays, authors invoke the various obstacles to simpler living: the way societal changes have robbed us of time, redirected our money, led us to fear “down-time” and empty spaces. Henri Nouwen conceptualizes the problem as opacity, needing to get to transparency—in our relationships with nature, time, and people. Evy McDonald name the problems as affluence and over-consumption. William Stringfellow points out how our relationship with money, labeled as virtuous by our culture, really is idolatry, because as Christians all that we have and all that we are belongs to the whole world.
One of Schut’s goals for the book is to show how poverty and ecological degradation are connected to consumption levels in affluent countries. While the connections are not necessarily obvious, the fact is that there no longer is “away”; everywhere is “here”. This is a theme that speaks loudly to a geographer like me; it has been at the core of my teaching and research. Schut’s response to this problem: draw on local resources; move against cultural messages. While the “local movement” still has its detractors, there is no question that as a community of faith part of our task is to move against cultural messages—to be the countervoice to those that are destructive to the “abundant life.”
John Cobb offers a helpful Christian framing of our call to better care for creation, as a need for repentance and transformation. He invokes individualism and nationalism as problematic to this, and points to the best teachings of the church as resources to accomplish this turning about.
Wendell Berry’s essay, “Word and Flesh,” offers a perspective that I have not encountered before: that the massive social movements of the last half-century have not gotten us very far beyond talking, because of their scale. The place where humans can effect change is at the household and community level. Berry also writes in support of responsible eating—we should grow and cook our own food, know its origins, buy it locally, be in relationship with its producers, and know its biography.
An important point of the book is that striving toward the abundant life involves more than getting our individual lives in order and caring for the earth. Building community also is an essential element in that life, whether at the neighborhood or village, or even online. Democratic practices within these communities will undermine systems of oppression.
In total, the book suggests that our current economic system embodies a certain story, theology, and worldview. Schut’s Epilogue emphasizes two themes: the need for us to change our worldview, and the need for us to change the way we act, grounded in compassion.
One of the most useful aspects of this book is a 12-session guide that is included, for use with congregations or other groups.
For anyone seeking a Christian theological framing and articulation of the obstacles that stand between us and the promise of “abundant life” that we, ourselves, must help to achieve, this book is a rich and valuable resource.
