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I begin with two stories from the opposite poles of planet Earth. First, the Nenet caribou1 herders of the Siberian Arctic peninsula of Yamal are among the last surviving racial subgroups of nomads anywhere in the world. The Yamal is home to the largest number of caribou on the planet and they are “managed” by the 15,000-strong Nenet people.

Working in small groups of two to five tent-dwelling families, they follow the centuries-old traditional cycle of taking their caribou north for the summer, where the animals graze on the exposed tundra. The people and their herds move south for the winter so that the caribou can dig into and feed upon snow-covered lichens. The Nenet retain animist beliefs that all their world and its component parts—animal, vegetable, earth, and human—are inextricably bound together as a “spiritual” whole. But both their world and worldviews are threatened.

The Yamal is one enormous gas field and is now being exploited in its commercial development by the Russian conglomerate GazProm, bringing the railroad, settlements, and roadways to the region. Now, each Nenet family receives a monthly $30/£20 allowance from the state to help them meet the necessary costs of encounters with twenty-first-century materialism. One hangover of the old Soviet system is that all Nenet children must now go away for state boarding school education for at least ten years from the age of seven; many Nenet teenagers fail to grow up learning the traditional crafts and skills to maintain their culture’s nomadic lifestyle.

In 2013, global warming was acknowledged to have led to a winter thaw then refreeze, which resulted in the starvation and death of over 15,000 caribou and thus sixty families lost their livelihoods. They became wage-slaves and predominantly slaughtermen, killing their remaining and other caribou to help feed the railroad staff, construction teams, and gas workers. Now the number of caribou is not being viably sustained, because of those growing human demands, so a vicious cycle of potentially terminal decline has begun for both Yamal’s caribou and the traditional Nenet way of life.

Second, in the Antarctic’s oceans, a battle is raging. Each year, the Japanese whaling fleet is challenged by the ships, helicopters, and tactics of the international marine wildlife conservation organization, Sea Shepherd,2 to prevent the further killing of whales. My views about the consumption of whale meat and personal objections to the hunting of whales are already documented.3 The publication and broadcast of my two-voice graphic poem about the demise of a South Atlantic whaling station are in the public domain.4 My commitment to peacemaking and nonviolent action5 makes me question the more extreme tactics of Sea Shepherd’s fleet.

Having seen orcas from the Orkney ferry and minkes off the Irish coast, I love whales and their graceful joie de vivre as they swim wild as God intended. They are gentle creatures, although the adjective is relative when considering the courtship rituals of the larger species (which weigh many times more than yellow school buses!). Most whales feed on plankton or krill and even the alpha predator orcas have never been documented as deliberately killing humans in the wild (in marked contrast to captive orcas6). Why do allegedly civilized nations, like Japan or Iceland, persist in the hunting of increasingly endangered whales? How many Japanese or Icelandic consumers have witnessed the innate cruelty of harpooning a live, unanesthetized giant of the sea and dragging it to a slow death by drowning?

Despite the International Court of Justice ruling in 2014 that Japanese whaling is illegal and must stop, the Japanese declared in late 2015 that they would resume limited whaling in 2016; as we go to press this saga continues. There are sustainable alternative sources of marine protein. No wonder acquaintances who support Sea Shepherd have challenged me to be a volunteer for the internationally staffed Antarctic fleet; regrettably, my life-limiting heart condition means I could not even pass the medical to be a ship’s cook.

Both of these narratives describe learning journeys. Each year the Nenet find that ancient migratory herd-ways are now blocked by new rail-track or road embankments. Although most Sea Shepherd volunteers are white, westernized, and well-educated, they are also of all creeds or none and learned about the plight of whales, making considered choices to risk their lives to “save the whales.” In today’s world, as the hunt for resources strengthens in the face of human need, we all have to do three things:

1. Recognize the plight of the planet for both human and other species.

2. Learn about the cost of making changes for the benefit of all.

3. Decide how much commitment each of us will make to ensure those changes occur—whatever the cost.

As the economist Robert Costanza summarizes: “Probably the most challenging task facing humanity today is the creation of a shared vision of a sustainable and desirable society, one that can provide permanent prosperity within the biophysical constraints of the real world in a way that is fair and equitable to all of humanity, to other species and to future generations.”7

It is relatively simple to see how this can apply to caribou, Yamal, and the Nenet or whaling in the southern oceans. Yet between the poles is literally a world of similar tensions perhaps not so easily identifiable nor solvable. Theologian Sallie McFague personalizes the cost of Costanza’s vision: “The route to it, however, for folks like me and you . . . involves limitation and sacrifice, a radically different view of abundance. It involves re-imagining the good life in just and sustainable ways.”8 If the Nenet, their caribou, or Antarctic whales are to have a future, we must learn to see ourselves as part of that shared future, too.

Oikos means “household”

The interconnectedness of planetary life is masked by westernized consumerism and lifestyles. Would GazProm in their commercial search for profit welcome the global community’s intervention to protect the Nenet people and the caribou? However, the increasing moral support for the Sea Shepherd organization demonstrates that globally people are prepared to object when westernized consumerism goes too far. Over some time, without baleen whales, the exponential growth of krill will ultimately clog up the oceans, just as effectively as a chemical pollutant. Hunting whales to extinction engenders geo-suicide.

We have to make connections. That “we” means people like you and me who have both time and education to read books, to explore the issues, and to act both politically and economically for change. In my lifetime, we have seen the growth of the multinational (a.k.a. transnational) corporation, whose economic powers transcend those of single nations and whose political might can overcome community protest or ecological concerns. A relatively neutral example is that (as I write) World Bank statistics identify that the gross turnover of Coca-Cola is greater than the gross national product of all but four African nations and the majority of European Union countries.

We now live in a global community. No longer can we consider our own nation as its own household. There are at least as big if not bigger transnationals, whose economic priorities can (and often do) override the best interests of our own nation. We have to learn to live as part of a new global community, in which decisions taken in one region can have repercussions around the world. The global financial crash of 2008 is often attributed to Japan as its source by those who would prefer to divert attention from the overselling of subprime mortgages in North America or a too-rapid fiscal expansion of the European Union. We are in this together—but what we should note is that all these contributory factors took place in westernized, northern hemisphere regions. Westernized Australasia may have been implicated in the recession but was not to blame for the crash. But what is more frightening is to realize that one billion-plus nations of India and China also cannot be held responsible for the 2008 crash. Neither can the poorer southern hemisphere nations, meaning that over half the world’s peoples had no say in what could destroy their economies. They have no real control over the north’s effects upon them. It is as though the prophetic challenge of the 1980 Brandt Report9 never happened.

There is a helpful Greek word, oikos, which means either “house” or “household” depending upon its attendant verbs or adjectives. It is from this Greek root that English speakers gain three important words: “economical,” “ecological,” and “ecumenical.” Those words gain an even more “life-giving” significance when considering the future of our planet. The interrelationship of economic, ecological, and ecumenical factors help us reflect upon, then ask, the necessary questions needed to act decisively and live together for the sake of this single small planet.

Christians and those from other faith communities have a distinct worldview, which is neither nihilist nor fatalistic but realistic about the future. We have to acknowledge that particularly non-believers but often ourselves find it hard to accept that “God envisions church and world as they currently are not.”10 More about the church, later. For now—if the classical “faith views” of God can be accepted as a premise—then that same God has a purpose for the creation, which does not mean its self-destruction but a different culmination. The Bible repeatedly uses the word oikos in its expansion of the divine purpose for the world.

A Small Planet?

The contracts for this book were signed just weeks before NASA’s planet-hunting spacecraft, Kepler, had located a “cousin” to Earth, now called Kepler 425b. This new (to us) planet is in the Cygnus constellation, some 1,400 light years away from Earth. Kepler 425b is what is known as an exo-planet, which circles a “sun-like star” in 385 days—similar to Earth’s orbit of 365 days. Kepler 425b is about one and a half times the size of Earth, giving it a mass of five times Earth’s. These facts place it in the “Goldilocks zone,” meaning Kepler 425b may be inhabitable (and even inhabited), sustaining surface water and equable temperatures, if its surface is rocky (scientific projection suggests 60 percent probability), rather than a “gaseous surface,” like Neptune. Neither I nor my publishers claim any monopoly on prophetic wisdom, but the very presence of such a world as Kepler 425b does mean that Earth is truly the “Small Planet” of this book’s subtitle.

The ecology of this “new” planet will take generations, if not light years, to discover. Whether we as homo sapiens ever get that opportunity will be determined by our survival beyond mere subsistence existence. What it will take will be globally shared priorities both economically and ecumenically if ecologically wise policies are to prevail to ensure humanity does not curtail planet Earth’s future. Philosophers may take a que sera sera approach, accepting global annihilation or mutually assured destruction or survival with a logical, even reasoned equanimity. However theologians, of whatever faith, must argue from a Godward dimension.

As this book goes into its final production phase, in September 2016, Harvard University sources confirmed the existence of another large planet, Proxima b, close to Proxima Centauri, which also has the capability to sustain human life. During all this, scientific confirmation of the existence of “running water” on Mars continues to beg the question, “Is there life on Mars?” Scientific investigation of Kepler 425b, Proxima b, and Mars reminds us that Earth is still a small planet in comparison to these others.

God’s big word

To understand that economical, ecological, and ecumenical interrelationship, as a theologian and/or as a Christian disciple or simply an inquisitive bystander, means that all the developing debate can have a Godward dimension. God’s oikos vision in the Bible is of Earth as a “household.” In our homes, to live harmoniously within our means, we must live within our economic constraints, within the nature and sustaining of our neighborhood’s environment, sharing peaceably with the human community around us. Why should that set of constraints and questions be any different, except in scale, when we consider what it means to live in this part of God’s household—Earth? Therefore oikos is God’s big word for a small planet.

God’s purpose for humanity is to share fully in creation together. The biblical allegories of creation in Genesis, with the placing of humanity in the garden of Eden (Gen 2) were just that. Adam wrecked that by taking the apple from Eve. When ongoing humanity failed to live “ecumenically” with one another, many Middle Eastern narratives tell of a divinely inspired flood in the Tigris-Euphrates valley to prophetically begin again good living together within creation.11 The story of Joseph’s interpretation of Pharaoh’s dream tells of both stewardship and “economic” planning so that resources could be justly shared in future days of famine, drought, and privation. God’s invitation to the Hebrews to accept wilderness wandering was on the basis that future generations, forty years hence, would enjoy “a land flowing with milk and honey.” For many contemporary Jewish believers, the promises of God, their praise in the Psalms and the biblical prophets of past centuries, found their fulfilment in the 1948 creation of the state of Israel—the promised homeland—oikos within God’s creation. When I have been a guest of Galilean kibbutzim, having been well fed on homegrown vegetables and local lamb, sitting in good company, drinking local arak as the sun went down, this betokened a Jewish theology of oikos—dwelling well within God’s creation.

I recently edited a book about UK housing, in which I used the life and teaching of Jesus to help readers construct a coherent theology of housing.12 We need only think of Jesus’ encounter with Zacchaeus or Peter’s mother-in-law or Lazarus, Martha, and Mary, or consider the Parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, to realize how important “dwelling well” within God’s creation is for Jesus, and his ministry and mission. The Christian New Testament is woven through with both greetings and references to household ministries. The Greek-language New Testament uses oikos 114 times with its differing emphases; fifty-five of those instances are within Luke-Acts, which majors upon the “household” imagery surrounding God’s people and their Jesus-shaped mission. Oikos must be at the heart of every reasoned Christian theology if it was so much a part of Jesus’ life and legacy.

As a radical Christian from the Anabaptist tradition, I believe Jesus’ life and teaching provide the exemplar for all human discipleship—both individually and in community.13 I have had a blessed life journey, visiting four continents of Earth, have never been homeless or starving, spending half of my life as a Christian pastor working within communities and local neighborhoods for change. Some of the detailed theology of that Jesus-ethic, green politics, and lifestyle changes will become apparent in the coming pages. But all these have gradually contributed to an oikos theology—that God is calling all people to live within a new economic order and ecological lifestyle for the sake of the planet and for all my sisters and brothers who share life upon it, both now and in the future. As I have preached on Sundays and led conferences or seminars, I have increasingly understood that oikos is God’s big word to and for a small planet.

Rethinking the future . . .

A theology of oikos is a coherent framework for presenting afresh a global ethic for the interrelationship between economy, ecology, and ecumenism. Amplifying my previous McFague quotation:

The issues are global, systemic, economic and political: hence the solutions must be as well. An ecological liberation theology will involve at least two such tasks. One is envisioning an alternative good life, and the other is working to make systemic changes, especially economic ones, so that this alternative vision can have a public impact. The alternative notion of the abundant life would be radically different from the current ‘good life’ from which most of us benefit.14

This oikos book represents a lifetime of praxis, both action and reflection, upon such oikos thinking, inevitably challenging our westernized views and comforts as McFague’s quote predicts we should.

What lies ahead are three topic-focused sections—“Economy,” “Ecology,” and “Ecumeny”15—before a concluding three-part section, which attempts through both biography and practical advocacy to demonstrate making such oikos a prophetic reality now. Each of those three topic-focused sections contain their own three chapters: one explores the subject, another explores humanity’s predilection to its abuse, while each section’s final chapter offers some alternative Godward patterns of that topic’s daily expression. Within all the analysis and advocacy is the God-talk about it, enabling us to weave new patterns of theology to speak into the world’s debates as Earth’s crises deepen for all its peoples.

As the central focus is to make the unifying oikos link, I can only paint the broad brushstrokes of each part of this triptych. Other than the narratives offered and the geographical examples provided, much of the detail and pointillistic moments for you will be provided by your experience, reading, and context.

Some years ago, the zoologist John Walsh led the rescue of animals trapped or abandoned by the rising waters behind Surinam’s newly built Afobaka dam. He recounted his experiences in his book, Time is Short and the Water Rises.16 The economic and ecological waters respectively threaten to drown our planet metaphorically and literally, as ecumenically more of God’s people live at odds with both one another—whether poor or rich, of faith or not—and with our fellow species. No longer is this just about Antarctic whales or the Nenet and their caribou. It is about the agenda of the world between them, too. “Time is Short . . .” means it is time to read on . . .

1. Caribou are called reindeer in English-speaking Europe and Australia.

2. www.seashepherd.org.

3. Francis, What in God’s Name, 108–10.

4. Francis, Earth, Air, Fire, Water, 75.

5. Francis, Shalom, 138–48.

6. Kirby, Death at Sea World.

7. Costanza, ed., Introduction to Ecological Economics, 179.

8. McFague, Life Abundant, xii.

9. Brandt, ed., North-South.

10. Brueggemann, Living toward a Vision, 40.

11. Francis, Shalom, 19.

12. Francis, Foxes Have Holes, 103–11.

13. Francis, Shalom.

14. McFague, Life Abundant, 35.

15. I have deliberately kept the word “ecumeny” rather than the better known adjective “ecumenical.” I first encountered the frequent use of the word “ecumeny,” as a noun meaning “those who are ecumenical” or more loosely “the outward looking (religious) community,” amongst English- and German-speaking Lutherans. The term was frequently used at the annual German Kirchentag, a city-wide ecumenical festival of lectures, seminars, worship, and other gatherings.

16. Walsh and Gannon, Time is Short.