Bethel University - Spire Yearbook (St Paul, MN)

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Edgren Dorm 1) Dave Anderson 2) hot air 3) Don Olsen, Brian Howard 4) Fred Gaals-wyk 5) Dorm Dad: Al Russell 6) Tom Stewart 7) Don Olsen again. Rich Goodsell, Doug Johnson (camera). Steve Lindberg 8) Dale Ny-strom sunning 9) Joann and Danny Russell 10) Walt Geery 11) Norm Swanson. Fred Witzgall, cohorts. Tom Strong deporting Jim Amels-berg Deeper Life (next page) 1) Elaine Mooney 2) Rich Zadcraka. Ron Troxcl. Leigh Young 3) Cindy Brown. Jim Gulian. Dave Kennedy 4 5) still strangers 6) fruit LEASE FEED THE ANIMALS!

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Unlike people in many other cultures, we see man’s basic role as that of dominating nature, rather than as living in harmony with it. This entire problem has been elegantly discussed by Professor Lynn White. Jr., in Science magazine. He points out, for instance, that before the Christian era trees, springs, hills, streams, and other objects of nature had guardian spirits. These spirits had to be ap proached and placated before one could safely invade their territory. As White says. “By destroying pagan animism. Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects.” Christianity fostered the wide spread of basic ideas of “progress” and of time as something linear, nonrepeating, and absolute, flowing from the future into the past. Such ideas were foreign to the Greeks and Romans, who had a cyclical (repeating) view of time and could not envision the world as having a beginning. Although a modern physicist’s view of time might be somewhat closer to that of the Greeks than the Christians, it is obvious that the Christian view is the one held by most of us. God designed and started the whole business for our benefit. He made a world for us to dominate and exploit. Both science and technology can clearly be seen to have their historical roots in natural theology and the Christian dogma of man’s rightful mastery over nature. Therefore, as White claims, it is probably in vain that so many look to science and technology to solve our present ecological crisis. Much more basic changes are needed, perhaps of the type exemplified by the much despised hippie” movement-a movement that adopts most of its religious ideas from the non-Christian East. It is a movement wrapped up in Zen Buddhism, physical love, and a disdain for material wealth. It is small wonder that our society is horrified at hippies’ behavior-it goes against our most cherished religious and ethical ideas. I think it would be well if those of us who are totally ensnared in the non-hip part of our culture paid a great deal of attention to the movement, rather than condemn it our of hand. They may not have the answer, but they may have an answer. At the very least they are asking the proper questions. Here is what White, a churchman, has to say: Both our present science and our present technology are so tinctured with orthodox Christian arrogance toward nature that no solution for our ecological crisis can be expected from them alone. Since the roots of our trouble are so largely religious, the remedy must also be essentially religious, whether we call it that or not. Dr. Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb, 1968. pp. 170-72

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WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?