But with great box office power comes great responsibility, and there have been many examinations of the underlying themes of the movie. The first that comes to mind is When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like Avatar?, which looks at the white guilt escapism found in the movie. I include a link to this because after seeing the first preview for Avatar, I immediately sang "Colors of the Wind" from Pocahontas and explained that I had just summarized Avatar so no one would have to see it. I was probably the very first person in America to make that joke.
But the real meat of this post has to do with the religious critiques of the movie and the connections between Pantheism and Environmentalism. Ross Douthat wrote an editorial in the New York Times about the pantheism on display in Avatar.
In Cameron’s sci-fi universe, this communion [with Nature] is embodied by the blue-skinned, enviably slender Na’Vi, an alien race whose idyllic existence on the planet Pandora is threatened by rapacious human invaders. The Na’Vi are saved by the movie’s hero, a turncoat Marine, but they’re also saved by their faith in Eywa, the “All Mother,” described variously as a network of energy and the sum total of every living thing.
If this narrative arc sounds familiar, that’s because pantheism has been Hollywood’s religion of choice for a generation now. It’s the truth that Kevin Costner discovered when he went dancing with wolves. It’s the metaphysic woven through Disney cartoons like “The Lion King” and “Pocahontas.” And it’s the dogma of George Lucas’s Jedi, whose mystical Force “surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together.”
But after namedropping Alexis de Tocqueville and Deepak Chopra, we get this:
Today there are other forces that expand pantheism’s American appeal. We pine for what we’ve left behind, and divinizing the natural world is an obvious way to express unease about our hyper-technological society. The threat of global warming, meanwhile, has lent the cult of Nature qualities that every successful religion needs — a crusading spirit, a rigorous set of ‘thou shalt nots,” and a piping-hot apocalypse.
Since Ross Douthat disagrees with pantheism, I wonder what he thinks about global warming. Has pantheism co-opted or misappropriated the rigorous set of 'thou shalt nots' from global warming? If pantheism isn't true, is global warming guilty by association? One other post of his that gives some insight is on the Precautionary Principle but it seems to suggest that the costs of environmental regulations are too high. I was hesitant to put words into his mouth or to use him as anecdotal evidence of a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy joining environmental skepticism and religious conservatism, so I went looking for other cases.
And I found out that the Vatican doesn't much like Avatar either: "Vatican Radio said the movie 'cleverly winks at all those pseudo-doctrines that turn ecology into the religion of the millennium'." Again, I'm not sure exactly which pseudo-doctrines the Vatican is talking about. Is Barack Obama promoting those pseudo-doctrines? Is Michael Pollan? Is James Hansen? It's hard to tell.
But as I was listening to this Issues Etc. podcast like a good Confessional Lutheran, along came the line around the 10 minute mark:
You get the impression that ecology and relating to nature is kind of connected to religion, and as G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis and many other people have suggested, when you stop believing in the God of the Bible, you need some kind of God-replacement, and so that [Environmentalism] element is there. It's interesting, as I was watching the film, I was kind of listing in my mind the different major scenes, and certainly the Green Ecology-- I almost thought there was a part of the Inconvenient Truth movie in there from Al Gore.
This is a long way for me to say that other people think environmentalism and pantheism are connected. I probably could have saved myself some time and brought up Captain Planet and his Planeteers taking their eco-marching orders directly from Gaia herself. But I would like to sever this connection between pantheism and environmentalism without damaging the integrity of environmentalism. That is, just because you don't like pantheism doesn't mean that environmental issues are bogus.
For starters, there is a very strong theistic case to be made in favor of environmentalism. Man is the final cap to all of Creation, and is given the following charge by God:
And God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
...
God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."
Environmentalism as Stewardship- that is, God creating man and giving him a role as caretaker for the rest of Creation- is hardly new, controversial, liberal, Democratic, French, or Socialist. At this point I could do a bunch of linking to Rick Warren, Rowan Williams, and other figures on the Theological Left that Conservatives love to hate. But even that Vatican statement that I linked to above implies that Nature is a creation to defend.
Secondly, pantheism focuses on finding God in Nature, or that God is in everything, and that by communing with Nature, man can be closer to God. But many environmental issues are framed not as respecting that force that unites every living thing, but as simple human self-interest. Climate change is an important issue not because it will hurt Gaia or polar bears, but because it will hurt humans. Emission standards are not set according to a level of acceptable harm to Eywa, but how much they will hurt people.
