This article is an adapted excerpt from the author's book, Nice Churchy Patriarchy: Reclaiming Women’s Humanity from Evangelicalism.
In Western patriarchal societies, Christians have often focused on the “subduing” and “dominion”—exercising part of the Genesis 1 story.[1] This has not served us well. We find ourselves disconnected, lonely, profit-driven, diseased, and part of a world rapidly spinning toward ecological disaster. Patriarchal interpretations of scripture that promote domination exercised by one group at the expense of everyone have brought us to a place of environmental and social crisis.
But this is not the story Genesis 1 tells. Genesis 1 tells a story of flourishing, a story of human beings belonging to a very good creation. What if, rather than focusing on the “subduing” in these texts, we zeroed in instead on the goodness of the natural world? Genesis 1 paints a gorgeous picture of light and darkness, dry lands and seas, plants of all sorts, sun and moon, aquatic animals and flying animals, land animals and humans, woven together in life-giving, mutually-sustaining relationships.[2] As Potawatomi author and poet Kaitlin B. Curtice writes, “We are not only made for community within our own species—we belong to all the creatures of the earth, our kin.”[3]
I have heard preachers say that God did not declare the created world “very good”[4] until humans were made. This strikes me as true but potentially misleading. It may sound as if humans are, in and of ourselves, “very good”—while the rest of creation, including plants and animals, are only “good.” It may sound as if humans are better, separate, superior, dominant.
This is the opposite of what I see in the text. Really, it is not just humans who are “very good” on our own; rather, it is the whole of creation, all together. This includes humans but does not necessarily privilege us over others—and it certainly does not give us the right to do whatever we want at the expense of others. Humankind is not on its own. We are created in God’s image, blessed by God, given the fruits and vegetables of Earth as a sacred gift. The animals, in turn, are given all the plants of Earth, also as a holy gift.[5] All of this—together, intertwined in relationships of giving and receiving, in cycles that could go on forever—is “very good.”
In Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Potawatomi author and botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer writes this:
In the Western tradition there is a recognized hierarchy of beings, with, of course, the human being on top—the pinnacle of evolution, the darling of Creation—and the plants at the bottom. But in Native ways of knowing, human people are often referred to as ‘the younger brothers of Creation.’ We say that humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn—we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance. Their wisdom is apparent in the way that they live. They teach us by example. They’ve been on the earth far longer than we have been, and have had time to figure things out . . . Plants know how to make food and medicine from light and water, and then they give it away.[6]
Plants have been here longer than we have. We are their younger siblings. I like that—and I find it challenging, because it is so vastly different from how white U.S. American society tends to think. Dominant U.S. society operates in hierarchies; living healthily within our natural world breaks all these hierarchies down.
Patriarchal hierarchies are intricately tied to other human hierarchies—hierarchies based on race, class, ability, sexuality, and other aspects of human identity. And human hierarchies are tied to hierarchies among species—hierarchies among beings, as Kimmerer puts it.
Once we start poking at the power structures of patriarchy, if we’re doing it right, we end up poking at all the oppressive power structures in our world. The ones that have degraded people of color. The ones that have degraded people living in poverty. And not just the ones that have degraded and marginalized people, but also the ones that have degraded animals, plants, waters, soils. It’s all connected. As women and others on the underside of our world’s power structures find ways of becoming healthy and whole individuals, we’re really finding ways of becoming a healthy and whole humanity—and a healthy and whole web of interconnected beings of all sorts.
This may sound like a far cry from the Christianity most of us know. But if that’s the case, it may be because the Christianity we know is a far cry from the Jesus of the scriptures. Jesus walked humbly as flesh on Earth. He spoke peace to the wind and waves.[7] Yes, he had dominion—but he was also God, not just any human, and he always used this dominion for the flourishing of all people. He used his authority to heal withered hands. He used his power to tell a marginalized woman from a people group who were enemies of his own people: God wants what you want. Let it be done for you as you will.[8]
When he taught, Jesus used his authority to direct people’s attention to other teachers—teachers who would be around in physical form much longer than he would. Teachers, that is, like plants and animals. Consider the wildflowers, he said.[9] See the birds.[10] Learn from the wildflowers, from the birds—from all the beings who, as Kimmerer writes, have been here longer than we have. What might we learn from the wildflowers—about worry, and about life in general? What might we learn about healthy relationships, about connectedness, about mutuality? About freedom from all sorts of hierarchies, all sorts of systems of domination and oppression?
The urgent impatience of our white supremacist patriarchal society has gotten us into the many messes we’re in. But the birds and the wildflowers—and the people, often Indigenous people, who have been listening to them much longer and more deeply than I have—are pointing toward a better way.
Maybe building a new kind of world involves paying more attention to this world that we have been given—a world that we have not taken good care of, but still could. And maybe, as we seek the restoration and healing of the land, we’ll find our own restoration and healing, too—as individuals, as communities, as the whole of humanity.
Notes
[1] Genesis 1:28.
[2] Genesis 1:4,10,12, 18, 21, 25, 31.
[3] Kaitlin B Curtice, Native: Identity, Belonging, and Rediscovering God (Ada: Brazos Press, 2020), 105.
[4] Genesis 1:31.
[5] Genesis 1:29-30.
[6] Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2015), 9.
[7] See Mark 4:35-41.
[8] Matt. 15:28.
[9] Matt. 6:28.
[10] Matt. 6:26.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Liz Cooledge Jenkins is a writer, preacher, former college campus minister, and the author of Nice Churchy Patriarchy: Reclaiming Women’s Humanity from Evangelicalism. She writes at the intersections of faith, feminism, and social justice, and her work can be found at places like Sojourners and The Christian Century, as well as lizcooledgejenkins.com and @lizcoolj (Instagram). Liz lives in the Seattle area with her husband and their black cat Athena.
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