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DURING THE COP 28 climate change conference in Dubai, participants deliberated at length on the climate crisis and rightly set ambitious goals to address the challenges. As may seem natural, much of the conversation centered on securing a planet habitable for humans. But as Christians we must wrestle deeply with sharing God’s covenant with other creatures. Seeing creatures and the natural world as having no meaning other than how they serve human interest is a failure of human vision. The 2007 documentary Earth poignantly highlighted how an anthropocentric worldview and the human-caused environmental crisis have imperiled other creatures in a miraculously delicate system.

Perhaps out of species self-interest, much environmental work focuses on how climate shifts impact current and future human generations. But as people of faith, we can take a more wholistic view that also demonstrates commitment to the well-being of all God’s creation — animate and inanimate — because all are interdependent. In the context of the climate crisis, corrective justice requires addressing the concerns of communities disproportionately affected by climate collapse, as well as ensuring the welfare of nonhuman creatures. It is incumbent upon us to challenge the anthropocentric lens and champion biocentric approaches that affirm the sanctity of all life and creation. Our scripture readings this month present nonhuman creatures as equal partners on God’s planet and speak forcefully about their right to exist and thrive alongside our human communities. They feature animals dancing in open spaces, frolicking in the sea, and celebrating life in its fullness. Everything in nature reflects God’s glory, participates in God’s salvation, and reminds us of the divine presence.

MANY YOUNG CHRISTIANS grow up with special “adventure Bibles” composed of a curated selection of Genesis stories. Featuring colorfully illustrated characters and simplified, “age-appropriate” plot lines, these stories are admittedly easier for children to absorb. Take, for instance, the adaptation of Genesis 3 found in Zondervan’s The Beginner’s Bible: We meet Adam and Eve walking the arcadian Earth. Their bodies are hidden behind carefully placed branches and auburn waist-length hair. Acting alone, Eve takes a bite of bright red fruit and loses paradise. It’s a simple story. It’s also inaccurate.

Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis presents a much more complicated portrait of the first book of the Bible. She invites us to return to these ancient tales and allow the figures to re-introduce themselves. In Robinson’s telling of Genesis 3, Eve is much more dynamic. She is “the mother of all living” who, alongside Adam, “disobeyed, doubted, tried to deceive,” and as a result, brought about “human agency, responsibility, even freedom.”

IN THE WOUNDED HEALER: Ministry in Contemporary Society, Catholic theologian and priest Henri J.M. Nouwen analyzes how the church fails to address the heart of our collective pain and longing. Nouwen presents a paradigm for renewed Christian leadership and care founded on the archetype of the “wounded healer.” More than 50 years after the publication of The Wounded Healer in 1972, we continue to struggle — both individually and societally — with the “wounds” Nouwen names: alienation, separation, isolation, and loneliness. Whether we’re ministers or not, we need the gentle wisdom of the wounded healer to build a more loving, just world.

While the concept goes back at least as far as Plato, the term “wounded healer” was coined by psychoanalyst and doctor Carl Jung. To demonstrate the link between personal suffering and the capacity to care for others, Jung draws on the Greek myth of Chiron. Chiron is a centaur who, due to severe physical pain, becomes an important healer and teacher. Nouwen extends this principle to ministry, calling for church leaders to cultivate “a deeper understanding of the ways in which [they] can make [their] own wounds available as a source of healing.” For both Jung and Nouwen, this work develops depth and compassion. Nouwen writes, “For a compassionate [person] nothing human is alien: no joy and no sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying.”

WHEN THE FULL Revised Standard Version of the Bible was released in 1952, the translation used “young woman” instead of “virgin” in Isaiah 7:14, which so enraged conservatives like Rev. M. Luther Hux that he publicly burned that page of the Bible. This would not be nearly the most impactful RSV translation, however, as the new film 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture seeks to explain.

1946 (named for the year the RSV New Testament was released) aims to measure the drastic effects of the RSV being the first Bible translation to use the word “homosexual.”

The film follows the research by Kathy Baldock and Ed Oxford on the RSV translation, with supplementary scholarship from other academics who help explain the RSV’s rendering of the Greek words malakoi and arsenokoitai as “homosexual.” It also traces the cultural ripples of this translation, which the film asserts helped anti-LGBTQ+ Christians demonize and ostracize queer people. Finally, it shows the relationship between the film’s director Sharon “Rocky” Roggio, a lesbian, and her father Sal Roggio, a conservative pastor.

Translating portions of the Bible can be tricky business. As scholars note, arsenokoitai is a word with few other uses across the ancient world and may have been invented by the apostle Paul. Literally, it is a combination word that means “man who beds with males,” connotating a sexual usage. Malakoi means “soft,” and is understood as referring to “effeminate” men.

In the American Standard Version, a common translation that preceded the RSV, the translation used for arsenokoitai is “abusers of themselves with men.” The RSV later changed its translation to “sexual perverts,” though at the time, this was code for LGBTQ+ people. After the RSV, the New International Version used “men who have sex with men,” while the New Revised Standard Version used “sodomites.” The NRSV’s Updated Edition, released in 2021, uses “men who engage in illicit sex,” while noting that the meaning of the Greek is uncertain.

I BEGIN IN the garden, which sounds biblical but is literal. It’s the day after the spring equinox, and I’m standing outside the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. The National Shrine is the nation’s largest Roman Catholic church. It’s stuffed to the vaulted ceilings with religious art, but I’m not here for the soaring mosaics and gilded icons.

What I’ve come to see — the Shrine’s Mary garden — turns out to be underwhelming. A statue of the Virgin presides over an empty reflection pool; the garden’s central fountain is also dry. The circular stone terrace is flanked by cherry trees and dormant bushes. The rose bushes are pruned back, and the tulips have yet to open. Except for cherry blossoms unfurling overhead amid a hum of bees, much of the garden still sleeps from winter. I expected a profusion of tangled plants and lush greenery, but this early in the season, nothing much is blooming.

I came to the garden looking for evidence of a movement. Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home” called for a global ecological conversion. Inspired by a faith that views humans as Earth’s caretakers, and guided by the science behind native gardening, Catholics around the world have heeded the pope’s call by planting native habitats. Parishes, backyards, and schools are restoring land with local species. Some habitats take the form of Mary gardens: devotional spaces that both honor the Mother of God and enhance biodiversity. Other habitats convert manicured landscapes into pollinator gardens.

The gardeners who tend these spaces range from Girl Scouts to a pair of Instagram-savvy nuns; what they share is a belief that planting native species is a practical way to integrate their faith and environmental values — and to respond to the climate crisis.

WE WERE MARRIED for two years. He was full of love, compassion, didn’t hold grudges or anything like that, quick to forgive, just an amazing man. Loved his family, not just us here, but his family there at Holman [Correctional Facility]. He’s not a monster. Kibby was my nickname for him: “Kenny” and my “hubby” mushed together. This doll I am holding became Kibby Bear. It’s made from his pants. One of the guys [on death row] made it and dyed it green because that’s my favorite color. It’s got a lock of Kenny’s hair in it. It helps me feel close to him.

WHEN MY WIFE and I moved into our new house, one of the first things we did was tear out the surveillance system. The Ring cameras, the security keypads, the wires arming windows and doors — all of it. Previous owners, according to neighborhood lore, had run a small meth lab out of a camper on the property (until they caught themselves on fire and burned much of the house down). They survived, but the “all-seeing eyes” of an ADT Smart Alarm did not protect them from themselves. 

As we envisioned how our house would become a home, we did not desire the kind of security and protection that depends on surveillance products. More importantly, we wanted to order our lives in a way where true security is based on neighboring — not false security sold by techno-corporations.

In God, Neighbor, Empire, Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann identifies three characteristics of ancient and contemporary empires: wealth extraction from the vulnerable to the powerful; policies of commodification in which everything and everyone can be bought and sold; and willingness to use violence “on whatever scale was required” to secure the first two.

FOLLOWING THE HAMAS attacks on Israel last October, President Biden drew a parallel to the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. He remarked that in the aftermath of 9/11 “we felt enraged” and “we made mistakes.” The U.S. response in 2001 serves both as a cautionary tale to Israel and a reminder of the failures of the military-first approach the U.S. has taken to international terrorism.

After 9/11, the U.S. responded with war. This choice was just that — a policy choice. The U.S. could have used effective models of international policing to bring Osama bin Laden’s transnational criminal network to justice — and many countries stood ready to help. Instead, ex-President Bush chose a military strategy against nonstate actors. Thus began the Global War on Terror. This choice employed a war-based framework that permitted killing people suspected of terrorism as a first resort; allowed for indefinite military detention; and trained foreign forces to respond to threats of terrorism with lethal force. In 2023, according to the Costs of War Project, the U.S. was conducting militarized counterterrorism operations in 78 countries.

Twenty-three years of this approach has not defeated terrorist groups. Instead, these groups are more dispersed and recruitment has increased. This policy choice has resulted in up to 432,000 civilian deaths and cost U.S. taxpayers more than $8 trillion. The post-9/11 period has seen a fourfold increase in terrorist groups and terrorist attacks have increased fivefold per year globally. Part of this growth relates to the high numbers of civilian casualties caused by U.S. military operations, including drone strikes, which groups such as ISIS and al Qaeda exploit to bolster recruitment.

WHEN THE PRECURSOR to Sojourners magazine, The Post-American, was founded in 1971, it was in large part as a Christian response to the Vietnam War. While Sojourners was also a countercultural community equally opposed to the evils of racism, sexism, and materialism, a commitment to peace and nonviolence has always been at the center of our work.

Very few people have embodied that mission more than Jim Rice, who recently retired from our staff after more than four decades of faithful and courageous service. Readers may know Jim best as a long-serving member of the editorial staff of Sojourners, including 16 years as the editor, a tenure marked by many best-in-class awards for the magazine. Yet Jim’s time at Sojourners was also defined by a commitment to peacemaking, both before and after he joined the magazine staff.