It’s up in the air

LOUISVILLE — For several months, members of Presbyterians for Earth Care have been meeting online to study “Let Justice Roll Down: God’s Call to Care for Neighbors and All Creation,” the Presbyterian Women/Horizons Bible Study for 2024-25.

Last month, the author of the study, Dr. Patricia K. Tull, stopped by to lead a discussion on air quality, the subject of the study’s fifth chapter. Watch the 45-minute discussion here.

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Tull, the A.B. Rhodes Professor Emerita of Old Testament at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, said she wrote “Let Justice Roll Down” in part to learn more about environmental justice.

“The thing that intrigued me the most was not so much the depth of the problems we have and how broad and how multifarious they are, but the ways Scripture can speak to those was very intriguing to me,” Tull said. “As a biblical scholar, I tried hard to avoid saying, ‘The Bible says this and therefore we should do this,’ and proof texting.”

“Grappling with how to talk about what the Bible’s doing is always intriguing to me, and I hope it was helpful to you in thinking about more complex ways to think about the Bible,” Tull said. “Sometimes I just had to sit down and be dismayed by the depth and the complexity of the problems and by how interlinked they are with each other.”

“I think all of this can overwhelm us,” and so “we have to take a small wins approach,” she said. “We have to take the most local approach we can to addressing the environmental issues in front of us a piece at a time.”

Presbyterians for Earth Care then showed the PW/Horizons video Tull recorded for her chapter on air quality. She pointed out some of the Hebrew found in key verses, including the latter part of Genesis 2:7: “… and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life [nishmat chayim], and the human became a living being [nefesh chayah].”

“We come to life only when God breathes into us,” she said, and the Bible uses other words to talk about air. One synonym is ruach, which means “wind” or “spirit” as well as “breath.”

“These two words for breath, with their various shades of meaning, highlight the close tie between God’s creative work and the air we breathe,” Tull said.

Another Hebrew word to consider for air, heavens or sky is shamayim, found in Genesis 1 in verses 1, 8 and 26, which describe God’s dwelling place. “It’s something majestic, holy, God-breathed,” Tull said, “fundamental to human life and to all of life.”

In 1969, just before Congress enacted and President Nixon signed the Clean Air Act, Tull’s family moved from Austin, Texas, to Southern California. “My siblings and I had never seen smog before. The LA air was so dense that as close as we moved to the mountains, we never saw them,” she said. As an adult, she’s traveled to places like New Delhi and Cairo, “where people have to wipe [the smog] off their cars daily with a brush.”

“Thankfully, air pollution is less visible in most cities than it was 50 years ago. But the problem of invisible pollution can be even more insidious because it’s harder to see,” Tull said. The American Lung Association reports that more than 4 in 10 people in the United States live with unhealthy levels of pollution, she noted, and people of color are three times more likely than white people to live in a county with air that exceeds allowable daily pollution levels.

While the government “is committed to improving air quality for all people, as soon as one source of pollution is resolved, another pops up,” Tull said, citing as one tragic example the 85-mile cancer alley stretch in Louisiana between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, which is home to dozens of petrochemical and plastics plants as well as refineries.

Tull also talked about “excellent alternatives” to combustion and natural gas, including heat pumps and induction stoves.

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“Just as we who believe the Earth belongs to its Creator seek to protect our land and our water, we have every reason to protect the air that we breathe,” she said. “We are creatures of both land and air, both Earth and spirit. Our bodies are holy. They are God-breathed. Every one of us on Earth has the right to clean air.”

As “we act to clean up our air locally and nationally, we help fulfill God’s intention of life-giving ruach to support ourselves and every living being,” Tull said in concluding the prerecorded video.

Webinar participants had a few questions for Tull after meeting in small groups. Asked what gives her hope, Tull said she and her husband had just been discussing that very topic. “I think we’re all kind of reeling. I know I am,” she said. “I do not base my hope on the conviction that things are going to turn out well. I base my hope on the conviction that the work we are doing is worthwhile and good and is what God would have us do — getting up and doing that every day in whatever form I can, and in whatever form you are doing.”

“It’s going to be an uphill slog over the next few years, if not longer,” Tull predicted. “I have noticed — and you may have noticed this as well — that a lot of times the people who are cynical or discouraged are often the people who are not very active, or not doing a lot about this. I find that if you’re busy working to solve these problems, you don’t have a lot of time to just cry about it. You’ve got too much to do.”

She recalled a comment that’s stayed with her for many years: “One of the things I love about being and environmentalist,” this person said, “is all the beautiful people that I meet along the way.”

Last fall, she and her husband were in Kenya with a group from the Africa Inland Church planting tree seedlings to, among other goals, try to beat back encroachment by the Sahara Desert. “Anyone planting a tree anywhere — that’s a hopeful thing to do. The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago,” she said, “and the second-best time is today.”

The Rev. M. Courtenay Willcox offered this closing prayer: “Giver of life’s breath, we rejoice in the thin membrane of atmosphere surrounding our planet, holding all life in its care. We delight in breezes and clouds, in bird-filled skies by day and star-filled skies by night. Teach us to do all we can to keep our air healthy for our neighbors and for future generations. Amen.”