18 Green Christian – Issue 70 – Winter 2010

FEATURE

Ian: Soil and Soul is very much a book about

roots, belonging and place. How did you come

to be so conscious of those things?

Alastair: My sense is that place is a veryhuman combination of environment andculture as well as being our location inreality as shared with the non-human world. Icame to my awareness of it by having beenraised on the Isle of Lewis in the OuterHebrides of Scotland, but while I wasgrowing up there I wasn't really aware ofsense of place. It wasn't until I went out toPapua New Guinea with Voluntary ServiceOversees and experienced their profoundlystrong sense of place that I reflected backon my own place; that woke me up torealities that had previously been dormant.

That is one of the paradoxes of place and

sense of belonging, isn't it? That you don't

know that you've got it until you're out of it.

Yes, and often you don't know that you'vegot it until you start losing it. I was involvedin development work where people werebeing constantly subject to logging, mining,the theft of their offshore fisheries and soon ... in other words they were very rapidly,in many parts, losing physical aspects ofplace and with it their general sense ofplace. That was what really woke me up tothe importance of the matter. When I cameback to Scotland after my second time inPapua New Guinea in the mid-1980s Istarted to get involved with land reformhere. I also campaigned on preventing amultinational corporation from turning one ofour mountains in the Outer Hebrides into asuper-quarry that would have violated anational scenic area.

Can you say a little bit more about that, how

that panned out, that particular protest?

Well, the super-quarry protest was onewhere the biggest mountain in the south ofHarris was going to be turned into whatwould then have been the biggest roadstone quarry in the world, to ship the stonedown to the south of England and possibly

even as far away as America. It was beingfought in all the conventional ways, onenvironmental grounds, on cultural grounds,on economic grounds and so on. Thedimension that I added was to bring in aNative American warrior chief from theMi'kmaq people and also a Calvinistprofessor of theology, Donald Macleod fromthe Free Church College, and between uswe made theological testimony as to theimportance of place as being God-given. Wehighlighted the importance of relating to aplace in a manner that respects it as thelocation from which we receive the gifts ofprovidence. Now, whereas these argumentshad no legal traction in the governmentpublic enquiry they did get people thinkingvery much more deeply about the issuelocally and, in those ways I think,contributed towards the super-quarry beingstopped.

If I were to think about Christian attitudes to

place I would perhaps first of all think about

how in Celtic Christianity, in the poetry and in

the blessings and prayers, there seems to be a

very strong sense of nature and place and the

particular geography that those people found

themselves in ... would you say that's true for

a start?

Well yes, obviously I come from a Celticpart of the world so I was very muchdrawing on that but I think it's also veryimportant not to draw just on what we wouldgenerally think of as Celtic Christianity, butalso to ground that in its wider cultural andbiblical context, and those are contexts thathave widely been overlooked in modernwestern theology until fairly recently. Inother words it is important to do what wewould now call eco-theology. My own

perspective is both Christian and interfaith –I am a Quaker of universalist disposition andfor me it was no problem whatsoeverworking with chief Stone Eagle, at that timethe warrior chief of the Mi'kmaq in Canada,who had a non-Christian traditional NativeAmerican spiritual perspective. I think inmany spiritual traditions of the world youcan find this concern for environment asbeing something that is given from a divinesource, and you can sometimes reachpeople at a different level of their beingwhen you tap into that. It awakenssomething in them that goes beyond thematerialistic utilitarian sense of using theenvironment into a recognition of theenvironment as having importance for itsown majesty, in its own right.

To get a Calvinist professor engaged with that

protest might at first seem quite surprising.

Very surprising. But when you actually lookat Calvinism there are surprises within it,one of which is that I discovered a passagein Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religionin which he talks about ‘the beautiful theatreof the Creation’ and understands the worldin which we live, the Creation, as being thecontext in which the majesty of God isrevealed. Therefore there were points ofconnection that made it possible forProfessor Macleod to come onto theplatform at the public inquiry and toquestion whether it is right to disfigure theCreation in this way.

It seems to me that there isn't a huge

enthusiasm for environmental issues generally

in Christianity, at least not in the Christian

circles I've moved in. How has that come to

be?

In my experience, an awful lot ofconventional Christians are up their own

Roots, Belonging and PlaceIan Lawton interviews Alastair McIntosh

Alastair is an independent scholar, activist, writer, speaker andbroadcaster from the Isle of Lewis; a Fellow of the Centre for HumanEcology (CHE), a director of the GalGael Trust and Visiting Professorof Human Ecology at the University of Strathclyde. He participated inthe NNJPN Conference (see p.4, his question to the panel is on p.7)

The spiritual challenge ofenvironmental destruction isto ask, ‘What does it revealabout the human condition?’

Photo by Murdo McLeod

www.christian-ecology.org.uk 19

FEATURE

backsides in terms of the question ofwhether or not they are personally saved.They have this worldview that is very strongin British Protestant traditions – or at leasttraditionally it was, I think it's changing now– that the world is divided into the elect orthe damned. That of course is fundamentalCalvinism. Now although most theologianswould no longer embrace that view it's stilllingering on in the religious psyche. So youoften have this, in my view, unhealthyobsession with personal salvation and not asmuch emphasis as there could be oncommunity, on the learning to live togetherin love, and of connection to the roots ofprovidence in the natural environment.

There is also sometimes a millenarian attitude

... well if the planet's stuffed then this is

perhaps the end times, or something like that

...

We're seeing that with some Christiangroups already. I'm hearing of some clergyhaving been preaching in their sermons upin the north of Scotland and the Islands, tothe effect that climate change is God'sjudgement on human kind. This is all part ofthe apocalypse coming on. To which myresponse is to couch that in its own termsand to say, well we must deepen ourunderstanding of the word 'apocalypse'. Theword 'apocalypse' does not just meandisaster. It also means revelation. So thespiritual challenge of environmentaldestruction is to ask, 'What does it revealabout the human condition?' And that's why Icalled my later book Hell and High Water,with the subtitle Climate Change, Hope andthe Human Condition, because I think thatclimate change teaches something aboutwhere the human species is at at this stagein our biological and cultural evolution andthat the spiritual task of our times is tolisten to that and learn those lessons.

Do you think that what you've been doing in

your writing, in Soil and Soul particularly, is

something like a theology of place?

Yes. I see it very much as a book ofliberation theology. Liberation theology ofplace in relation to land reform and alsowhat underpins land reform. As you know inScotland we now have land reform since2003,* and significantly 2% of the land inScotland is now held in community trusts,thanks to that legislation, and whatunderpins that imperative of land reform ispeople getting back into touch with place.Only if people have a sense of grounding inplace do they have a solid basis on which tobuild a sense of identity, which will carrywith it a sense of values that are necessaryto apply the sense of responsibility that willfeed back into reinforcing the cohesion of asense of place. I call this the cycle ofbelonging. Our sense of belonging isdeepened by ever working on our sense of

grounding in place, our sense of place, oursense of values, our sense of responsibilityand so on round in a continuous circle. If wereinforce that cycle of belonging then ourability to belong on this earth will bedeepened; that’s to say, belonging as humanbeings in relation to one another, to theenvironment and, I would suggest, to God.Whereas if we start breaking that up, if westart fragmenting our ability to connect atthe levels of place, identity, values orresponsibility, then we disable ourselvesfrom connecting to life in its abundance.

Who else is contributing to this theology of

place, this development in theology?

A lot of what I'm saying is coming out of thecultural context in which I'm working. I'vejust published a major paper with my Dutchcolleague Rutger Henneman in the Journalfor the Study of Nature, Religion andCulture, which comes out of the Departmentof Religious Studies at the University ofFlorida. It’s called 'The Theology of ScottishLand Reform' – you'll find a link to it on mywebsite. What we're doing there is, weinterviewed 15 key Scottish land reformersabout their theology. We found that this kindof theology is something that is deeplyingrained in Scottish culture. Of course, Iwas coming at this in terms of an inspirationfrom Latin American liberation theology,which has much to say about relationship tothe land, and I was applying it in theScottish context, but to my surprise Idiscovered it was already here. It wasalready here because the theology of land issuch a strong theme in the Old Testament.

What is your understanding of the theology of

place contained in the Bible? What is it saying

to us?

I think it is central in the Hebrew Bible.Place was the context in which people weregranted the full providence of God. In theNew Testament this is integrated into theBody of Christ. The Orthodox Churchunderstands the mysticism of this muchbetter than the western churches do. It isone of the places in which a deepertheology needs to be integrated to unblockthe flow of the Spirit. And that also needs tohappen on an interfaith basis. For example,there is much that Christianity can learnfrom religions like Hinduism, Taoism andeven so-called ‘animism’.

If you survey the calamitous events in the

Holy Land over the centuries what does that

say to you about God, people, place and

Scripture?

I think that God is present where there isconflict, not because God causes theconflict, but rather, as a presence amidstthe suffering. But of course, beingimmersed in hubris human beings typicallyproject their own ego aspirations onto God,and so God gets a bad press but, if I mightspeak anthropomorphically, God is prettygood at putting up with that!

What were some of the Christian responses to

Soil and Soul and to your work generally?

Well, Professor Timothy Gorringe, now atExeter University, describes it as havingbeen one of the most important recentBritish pieces of liberation theology. TheChristian response generally was either toignore it completely or to be enthusiastic.Interestingly, nobody has damned it becauseto damn it of course you have to engagewith it. So I suspect quite a few Christiantheologians would have shaken their headand considered me to be sadly deluded.Because my concern is not with personalsalvation, my concern is with how wecollectively learn to live, with one another, incommunity on this earth and the salvationthat is inherent within that. I think that's whatJesus is teaching. Jesus wasn't interested inthe Pharisees with all their obsessions as towhether they were following the right rulesand regulations, Jesus was interested inwhat was in people’s hearts and how thataffected their inter-relationships.

I've heard you talk about the difference

between communities of interest and

communities of place. Can you say something

about that?

Yes. A community of place is a kind of meta-community context because placegeographically holds a wide range ofactivities. Those activities will be connectedtogether as communities of interest. Forinstance. a chamber of commerce is acommunity of interest concerned withbusiness; you can have community amongthieves, honour among thieves etc ... itdoesn't necessarily require any deepspiritual grounding. But in my view. acommunity of place – that is ageographically-bounded community – is acontext of holding all things that happen inthat place. I think that this is constellated, isheld together, by what is sometimes called'spirit of place'. That there is a sense inwhich a place has got its own values, itsown energy, its own way in which it shapespeople. You see this very clearly, forexample, when you contrast mountainpeople with people who live on the plains.Plato in The Laws makes that contrast and

If we reinforce the cycle ofbelonging, then our ability tobelong on this earth will bedeepened; that is to say

belonging as human beingsin relation to one another, tothe environment and to God.

20 Green Christian – Issue 70 – Winter 2010

FEATURE

sees a wide difference between suchpeople. The geography of a place, whenpeople are connected to it, has a big effecton shaping them. To my mind, groundedcommunity of place is very important inshaping who we are, although I would haveto concede that we live in a world wherehigh levels of mobility mean that more andmore people are not grounded in the place.They can so easily move away from it andso quickly do move away from it, which isquite a problem of our times.

What is the solution to that un-groundedness?

I think the solution is to re-ground ourselvesor, if that's not possible because the natureof our lives means we travel a lot, we needto learn how to take sense of place with usas a portable ability to relate. I discoveredthat in Papua New Guinea when I discovereda very strong sense of place. And now I cango anywhere ... you may have noticed whenI visited you down in Brighton, I wasimmediately looking for ways of connectingwith a sense of place in that place.

I like that idea of a portable sense of place.

It's a matter of respecting the ground onwhich we happen to be treading. Of treatingall places with a sense of veneration and ofasking what has this place got to offer meand what do I bring to offer to this place;then I think the magic happens.

In Christianity there is a long history of

people being called by God to relocate to

other places of need or opportunity. Is that

perhaps what you are doing, having moved to

Glasgow, with the work you are doing in

Govan?

Well yes, I grew up in an island communitywhere I was always out in boats or out inthe hills, growing things and catching things,gathering things, and for the past five andhalf years I've been living in a deprived cityarea in Govan in Glasgow. My work here isvery much about trying to rekindle a senseof place with people who have often beendeprived of it because of poverty. I think it'ssomething we can learn to do. We learn todo it by connecting with the elementalnature of place – with fire, air, earth andwater. I mean literally things like getting outin boats, making fires and cooking our foodtogether – that kind of elemental connection– and also through engaging our creativity.The project I'm involved with in Glasgow, theGalGael Trust, uses creativity to help peoplemake things of beauty. They'll come into ourworkshop, our staff will give them a hammerand chisel and a piece of wood and getthem learning how to carve. We'll get themto help with building a boat, then they goout in the boats. So in these ways peoplecan learn to connect and get an idea ofwhat it means to be a community of place.

It's harder to connect in a city environment

with that elemental nature that you might

easily do in the highlands or islands ...

It is, but we're doing it here. The River Clydeflows just half a mile from my house. Once itwould have been seen by many of theseyoung people as a dirty old river into whichbodies are dumped with concrete roundtheir feet. That would be a common localimpression, yet when they get out onto thatriver in the boats they've built themselves,and they see the swans or maybe see asalmon jumping ... as somebody said,‘GalGael has given me back my river.’

Have you ever been on a pilgrimage?

I went on one last year. I wanted toreconnect with the island where I grew up –the island of Lewis and Harris – and so Itook a fortnight out and went up to thesouth of Harris and walked all the way up tothe most northerly point of Lewis throughsome of the most remote mountain areas. Inthe middle of it I went for four nights withoutseeing anybody. But also I went through thevillages; it took me twelve days in all. I tookit very slowly and meditatively andspecifically I was visiting ancient chapelsites, pre-Reformation church sites, knownas temples on the island. I was also visitingholy wells and the ancient shieling sites, thestone huts built for practising transhumance– that is, taking animals out in the summerto the distant grazings.

What would pilgrimage have meant in days

gone by to people in Scotland?

I think they meant the same as they meannow – a context in which you take yourselfout of the hustle and bustle of everyday lifeand you enter into a greater inner stillnessand a place of reflection. It’s about lettingyour life be punctuated by visiting placesthat are considered holy, perhaps in T SEliot's sense, where he talks in FourQuartets of kneeling at places ‘where prayerhas been valid’.

It seems that these days more and more

people are interested in making pilgrimage to

those sites. Would you say that's a fair

observation and what do you think is going

on there?

I think there's a huge resurgence ofinterest in pilgrimage at the moment. I'veseen it with a lot of my fellow environmentalactivist friends who are feeling stuck aboutwhat to do given the obstacles that are inthe way of trying to save the environmentand they are feeling moved to a deeperspiritual activism in how they tackle theseissues. One of the ways they're expressingthat is by going on pilgrimages and it'sinteresting how often these climate change

marches are precisely that. They aremarches that may last several days going toa protest site and they have many of thequalities of pilgrimage – perhaps in the fullsense of Chaucer and his Canterbury Tales– all different things, from people having ariotous good time and getting drunk alongthe way, and getting goodness knows whatelse, to people seeking silence, reflectionand spiritual sharing. Pilgrimage can bemany different things to different people andI think we're seeing a resurgence of thatbecause it is necessary to sustain ourselveswhen our energies start to run dry and werisk burn-out. That’s the point at which weneed to replenish the oil in the lamp of ourlives, and to do so from a source not bybombing our way into somebody else’soilfield, but in a way in which I would say isnothing less than God-given. I think that thisis the meaning of providence, of deepgrace-given providence.

Thank you Alastair. That seems like a fine

sentence to end on. n

*In 2003, moved along by high-profilecampaigns, some of which Alastair wasdeeply involved with, the Land ReformScotland Act came into force, making iteasier for communities to gain theownership of the land on which they live andwork. It gives communities a right of pre-emptive purchase over land when it goes onsale if they have registered a priorcommunity interest.

Ian Lawton is an emergent Christian, acommunity arts worker, a permacultureenthusiast and a part-time agitator onsustainability issues. He worships at StPeter’s Brighton but dreams of an intentionalChristian eco-community in the wilderness.He can be contacted atlawtonian@btinternet.com