from Issue 77, Advent 2024
It felt like an exciting and inspiring time. I had been involved with Christian Climate Action for several years and was now getting involved with Extinction Rebellion (XR)— at, or even before, its beginning. The organisers seemed to have a well-organised and thoroughly researched plan to bring about the kind of revolutionary change that was — and still is — needed to respond to the climate and environmental emergency.
Of course, growing in understanding of the full urgency and scale of the climate emergency was not exciting. It was horrifying. What was exciting, however, was the possibility that this could really change things. The change needed to protect the life of God’s Earth is a move toward a post-growth, post-capitalist economy. Perhaps something akin to the model described in Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics— a space between ecological and social boundaries where just relations between humans and all life on Earth could flourish, and where all of creation could receive the love, respect, and protection it deserves as God’s gift.
Hindsight is a fine thing, of course. By the summer of 2019, there were loud voices calling on XR to avoid scaring people too much, and to be cautious about raising unrealistic hopes that would inevitably be disappointed. I did not really expect such revolutionary change, but I thought it was worth trying, and it seemed like the best opportunity I had seen— or had the chance to be part of— in my adult lifetime to create that change. In any case, I was convinced that taking part in XR was, for me, a necessary response to the climate emergency.
At its peak, XR seemed to me like a real Pentecostal miracle— an authentic expression of the life and work of the Holy Spirit. And I still believe that. Looking back now, on one hand, it seems to me that the (Divinely) providential combination of XR, Greta Thunberg and the School Strikes, and David Attenborough’s TV show Climate Change— The Facts (which aired during the most famous XR Rebellion— pink boat in Oxford Circus and everything) did have a massive and almost revolutionary impact on national and global consciousness regarding the need to respond to this emergency. But on the other hand, it has obviously not brought about the more fundamental, non-violent, revolutionary change we were hoping for.
So my question is: What do we do after a ‘failed revolution’? What are the choices, the right path? Where do we go after mighty struggles seem to have ended in defeat? How do we deal with the emotional fallout? It could be disappointment, or a temptation to despair. It could be grief. Or simply exhaustion. It could be like the miners’ strike of 1984 and the Thatcher years, or the Extinction Rebellions of 2018-2020. Or the Latin American liberation struggles of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. The list goes on. My last proactive involvement in the ‘climate emergency movement’ was in autumn 2021, when I participated in two weeks of Insulate Britain (IB) blockades on the M25 and at Dover Port. After that, I had to stop, mainly because of personal and family challenges. But I also started questioning whether the strategies XR and IB were using had run their course, at least for the time being.
So now what? Last year, I read for the first time Gustavo Gutiérrez’s famous book A Theology of Liberation. Published in 1970, during the struggles for liberation, justice, and freedom in Latin America, it kicked off the whole liberation theology phenomenon. A recurring theme of the book is that those who work only on the level of ‘charity’ or even ‘reform’ for the poor and oppressed are naïve. What is really needed, according to Gutiérrez, is revolution.
I’d like to agree with that. However, the Latin American liberationists discovered they were not just struggling against the ‘powers and principalities’ (Ephesians 6:12) in the form of local elites and dictators. They were also up against the overwhelming power of the USA and its allies, including the UK.
Shortly after Gutiérrez’s book was published, socialist Salvador Allende was elected president of Chile. Three years later, on 11 September 1973, he was deposed in a CIA-backed coup and replaced by the military dictator Augusto Pinochet. Similarly, the revolutionary Sandinista government took power in Nicaragua in 1979, but the US responded by funding the Contra guerilla war and imposing an economic blockade, successfully undermining popular support for the Sandinistas, who were eventually defeated in the 1990 elections. Elsewhere, the US funded and supported military dictatorships protecting extreme capitalism across Latin America. This includes the attempted CIA-backed ‘Bay of Pigs’ invasion and coup in Cuba, as well as the ongoing economic embargo.
In their own terms, the Latin American liberation struggles and their support from liberation theology appear to have failed. The same could be said of XR. On the other hand, Latin America is generally democratic today, and left-of-centre governments have been elected to support the poor, the indigenous, and the working class. Relatively speaking. Alongside that, the central themes of liberation theology— ideas like structural sin and the option for the poor— have become mainstream in Catholic Social Teaching and official Catholic doctrine. Similarly, although XR did not fully succeed, it did have a massive and positive impact.
What does all this mean? The struggle for life, justice, peace, and freedom must continue, for sure. But what is the best way to direct our energies on behalf of God’s suffering people— the oppressed and impoverished among the growing wealth of the elites— and on behalf of God’s suffering Earth?
For myself, I see questions of strategy. There are also questions of personal calling, gifts, strengths, and weaknesses. Of emotional and spiritual pull. As well as personal, family, and other circumstances. Some might say I’m just experiencing burnout. Perhaps it’s more a question of cycles, like the liturgical cycle, rather than a linear view of time where campaigns have a beginning, a middle, and end in success or failure?
For Christians, of course, we look to Jesus. As Dorothy Day said, even Jesus failed. He ended up crucified. Most of his friends left him, denied him, or betrayed him. It was the women who remained with him till the end. But that was followed by the seemingly miraculous success of the Resurrection! Yet even after that, life went on. The Romans continued to occupy, oppress, kill, and enslave for three more centuries— ‘a time, two times, and half a time’ in the language of the Book of Daniel— until that empire collapsed. And history goes on.
I take comfort in what happened after the crucifixion and resurrection. The disciples took shelter and went home. Even after the resurrection, they had to wait for the revolutionary, spirit-led day of Pentecost. And after Saul’s dramatic conversion, he spent months processing what had happened. Perhaps this is what happens. After being in the middle of dramatic events, everything needs to be processed. We need to find our feet again.
Maybe the ‘80-20’ rule can help too. In Catholic Worker terms, this might mean a good balance is 80% of energy in the daily work and life of hospitality, with the remaining 20% in resistance or activism, trying to work for change on one level or another. In hospitality work, it’s possible to see, feel, and experience the direct and immediate benefit of, for example, giving a meal to a hungry person, or a home to someone who is homeless. A human being, a sister or a brother in God’s family, has clearly benefited. With activism, the benefits can be enormous, but often the outcome is disappointment, or it can feel like all that work and effort was ultimately futile in terms of seeing positive change. For three years of my life, the balance of energy was probably the other way around. So I, and others, need time to recover and regenerate. After all, even the army has tours of duty and time off afterward.
On the other hand, the climate and environmental emergency continues. Carbon emissions still rise. Many species are rapidly approaching extinction and some have already disappeared. The risk of crossing irreversible tipping points grows every day. Right now, I can only do what is at hand and pray to God for further miracles and Pentecostal days.