Reconnecting with God and Land
May 7, 2024
An Interview with Graduating Student Praveen Raj
Climate change is too often discussed as an existential crisis instead of a particular threat, until the moment it becomes acutely personal. Growing up in Kerala, a state in South India, Praveen Raj reports that he used to think about ecological disaster in more general terms. “Kerala is a beautiful place,” he tells me. “Whenever people talked about global warming, I always thought about it as something happening somewhere else, not connected with us and our land.” Without warning, notions of a formless danger dramatically ended. “In 2017, ’18, and ’19, Kerala was hit by heavy floods from Monsoon change,” Raj says. “My parents’ house is in a rural area surrounded by hills, and was damaged by a landslide.” Suddenly, what was once theoretical caused profound and concrete harm. “On the other side of the house, they were constructing unapproved real estate, which contributed to the landslide,” he explains. “In that moment I realized, it’s not happening somewhere else, it’s here, and my theology must respond to the ongoing ecological disaster.”
When he matriculated in the Masters of Arts in Public Ministry program—from which he graduates this year—he had a different relationship to climate catastrophe, but he didn’t yet possess the analytical tools to make full sense of what he and his family suffered. “I had heard about systems of domination and capitalism, but I was not able to name those issues in particular,” Raj confesses. “Dr. Eberhart and his mentorship helped me identify structurally what is happening, and discover hope in theology. It gave me a lens to look at these issues, how they manifest in the U.S., and connect them to what is happening in India.” He became especially focused on the way climate change disproportionately affects the people who are already most vulnerable. “The courses helped connect theory and theologies of public social justice to methods and models for social change,” he says. “Once I better understood environmental racism, I was able to ask, ‘Where are they developing and at whose cost? How does this harm poor people? Who is in pain?”
By way of example, he offers a story that reveals intersecting injustices. “In one of the largest landslides, 30 to 40 people died,” Raj shares. “It was people who cannot afford housing in the city area, so poor people live on hilly terrain, working agricultural jobs, essentially bound to the land.” Because of economic desperation and precarity, the answer to this crisis cannot simply be to move somewhere else. “They have to be there,” he says. “But this is where the landslides are happening.”
In response, Raj is working with a coalition of churches to ameliorate harm, while pushing for more systemic change. The project attempts to envision a climate-resilient community-building project in Amboori, Kerala, India to facilitate an anticipatory community in the context of natural disasters, especially landslides “Even if we can’t prevent landslides on a larger scale, at least we can create a network of churches to try to stop these kinds of environmental disasters through bioengineering, vegetable gardening and permaculture,” he explains. “And when landslides do happen, the churches can give honorarium to help people survive for the time being, and to rebuild in a more sustainable way.”
The project draws inspiration from a theological framework, primarily emphasizing the theme of being ‘born-again,’ which advocates for the transformative rebirth and renewal of the community towards environmental sustainability and resilience. Central to this effort is the role of the local Church, envisioned as a pivotal agent in nurturing an anticipatory community mindset and facilitating sustainable living practices. Through this project, the Pantha community is expected to transform into a vibrant, resilient, and anticipatory community, capable of facing environmental challenges with innovative and sustainable strategies.
While the project is quite practical in nature, Raj also connects this pragmatic approach to a deeper theological need to reorient relationship with nature. “My people were introduced to Eurocentric Christianity around 200 and years ago, eliminating and classifying my ancestors’ indigenous earth-based spirituality as ‘profane.’ Before that, we were Hindus and nature was so close,” he mourns. “For them natural worship was part of that tradition. But once we were introduced to Western Christianity we were told to forget that.” Redressing ecological harm is essentially tied to work that cultivates a different spiritual life. “The present generation is now looking back to our ancestors’ worship and Earthbound spiritual practices. We need to go back to those practices to an understanding that plants and animals were part of them, given spiritual value,” Raj says. “To tackle the current ecological crisis, we need to reorient congregations and local communities toward that spiritual reconnection.”
This is where political theories of decolonization meet theologies that fuel change. “We are healing the land and, in a way, healing from what colonial people tried to teach us: that nature is not part of you, that—if you want to be Christian—you must tear yourself away from the Earth and connect with the other rituals,” Raj laments. “I have an ecomemory because my ancestors lived a life with the land. Now we need to cultivate that ecomemory which connects us to the soil in the same way that Christ called the fisher folk.”
This calling, and the way Raj’s work has flourished at Garrett, has led him to stay here and begin a Ph.D. program, so he can deepen his understanding and develop more tools to bring back to his work in India. “My stories of ancestral struggles and liberation tales are tied to ecomemory. In my doctoral work, I plan to connect my ecomemory with the ecomemory of Christ,” Raj concludes. “Jesus’ deep incarnation united him with the entire biological world, revealing his symbiotic life with the land and the whole creation. Through this work, my research seeks to envision an intersectional eco-Christology, to place my ancestors and their earth-based struggles and religious practices in continuity with Christian tradition.” Garrett is equally elated to retain the brilliance he brings our community, as he begins this holy work.