Christian pandevotionalism - Cover Story

Nature Religions that present the material world as a wellspring of spirituality (not just its passive recipient) have been targets of Christian suppression and persecution for 2,000 years. Even so, a strong current of Nature Religion runs unacknowledged through the heart of the Christian tradition - in the Bible, in books of prayer, in church hymns, and in literary works written by the faithful.

Is it paganism? Some might say so. But it's not pantheism. It's not process theology. It's not Teilhardianism. It's what I call Pandevotionalism.

For centuries the prevailing Christian view on Nature, God, and Humanity was that God gave humans "dominion" - lordship - over Nature. Lately, in the wake of human abuse of that dominion, the term "stewardship" has gained popularity. And now a number of Christians prefer to see themselves as "co-creators" with God.

Pandevotionalism flows from a different source. It asks us to join Nature's worship of God. Humans are part of Nature, Nature is part of God, and the part worships the whole. The implication: human life is best when we live within Nature's design and stop trying to improve on it.

The most vivid scriptural reference to this approach is Psalm 148. Other psalms, and other books in the Bible, contain Pandevotional passages. But Psalm 148 gives the fullest treatment. The following excerpt is from the New Jerusalem Bible (Doubleday, 1985), where the song is called "The Cosmic Hymn of Praise."

Praise Yahweh from the heavens, praise him in the heights. praise him, all his angels, praise him, all his host!

Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all shining stars, praise him, highest heavens, praise him, waters above the heavens.

Let them praise the name of Yahweh at whose command they were made; he established them for ever and ever by an unchanging decree.

Praise Yahweh from the earth, sea-monsters and all the depths, fire and hail, snow and mist, storm-winds that obey his word,

mountains and every hill, orchards and every cedar, wild animals and all cattle, reptiles and winged birds,

kings of the earth and all nations, princes and all judges on earth, young men and girls, old people and children together.

Let them praise the name of Yahweh, for his name alone is sublime, his splendor transcends earth and heaven. For he heightens the strength of his people, to the praise of all his faithful, the children of Israel, the people close to him.

The psalmist - probably King David - was rallying the entire universe to worship. The psychology behind this rhetorical device may not be something we feel comfortable with. But he may not really have considered himself the choirmaster of the creation. On the other hand, did he think of snow and seraphim as equals?

Apparently the poet saw animals, plants, and minerals as possessing at least the potential for faith. He sang of "storm-winds that obey his word." That is, Nature does the bidding of God. In that sense, cedars and sea-monsters are as good as angels. For the psalmist, Nature is always praising the name of Yahweh.

Since humans are part of Nature, such praise is also generic to us. Perhaps it's difficult to understand how all humanity is worshipping the divine. But to the psalmist, every creature was a fellow worshipper. That was meant to be taken literally. The psalm is simple and direct.

Commentators through the centuries have had little trouble, it seems, in assimilating this Pandevotionalism. John Peter Lange[1] remarked on "the universal obligation to praise God, which lies naturally upon every creature, after its kind and according to the manner of its special sphere of life."

He went on to say: "Unreasoning creatures praise God by their being, upon which the law of Divine will is impressed; what they do unconsciously, we are to do intelligently and voluntarily."

Implicit in this latter observation rests a deep respect for apparently "unreasoning creatures." Their devotion may be unconscious, but it is constant. Humanity wavers in its devotion. Thus Lange asserted that we would do well to accept Nature as a teacher of religious life.

I doubt that Lange would qualify as a deep ecologist. But he touched on a current that runs as deep as any in contemporary eco-spiritual thought. Because if we humans can consider that the rest of Nature is in some way more in tune with God's law, then we might improve ourselves by living more in harmony with Nature. That is the hidden purport of Psalm 148.

An echo of the psalm is heard in the Apocrypha, in the exaltation added to the book of Daniel called "The Song of the Three Young Men." This hymn reproduces the former litany, with some additions (rain and dew, scorching blast and bitter cold, nights and days, lightning and clouds) and some omissions. The Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Episcopal churches use it in their services to the present day.

Whether the stream of Pandevotionalism that runs through Christian song and poetry is scriptural or spontaneous, the tradition is strong.

Early in the Christian era, Tertullian wrote, "The birds rising out of the nest raise themselves up and, instead of hands, extend the cross of their wings, and say something like prayer." Saint Ambrose also celebrated the flight and song of birds as devotional expression.

Around 600 A.D., Venantius Honorius Fortunatus composed hymns for Whitsunday, Easter, and Ascension; each proclaimed, "All things created on earth sing to the glory of God." In the eighth century, Saint John of Damascus wrote the same words. Irish invocatory prayers of the period engaged those wild forces of Nature so resonant in the old Celtic background. A tenth-century Swabian canticle urged the rolling waves and the beasts of the field to sing Alleluia. From the Welsh Black Book of Carmathen, set down in the 1100s, we have a poem where not only is "bee-song" called upon to bless the Lord, but also "fine silk." (It's unusual for a manufactured product to be included in the company of the elect. Perhaps not until Hart Crane's "The Bridge" do we come across this again.)

Saint Francis of Assisi, that rhapsodic mystic, dared to say, "Our sisters the birds are praising their Creator. Let us go among them and sing unto the Lord praises and Canonical Hours." Francis not only composed a Pandevotional hymn ("The Canticle of the Sun") but also lived a Pandevotional life to the utmost.

Edward A. Armstrong[2] described the Franciscan lifestyle:

So assimilated to their woodland haunts did Francis and his companions appear that women fled from them and folk spoke of them as if they were more like indigenous denizens of the forest than fully human beings.... Those who visited the friars described their sleeping places as like the lairs of wild beasts ... we hear of them praying in the woods three times as often as in churches.

Francis sang with birds. His "conversion" of a wolf has become a popular legend. For Francis, "All created things pointed beyond themselves to their Creator." This consciousness Armstrong called "sacramentalism."

With Saint Francis we reach an apex of Pandevotionalism, a rare convergence of theory and practice. But I don't mean to discredit other Medieval or Renaissance contemplatives - Hildegard of Bingen, Mechtild of Magdeburg, Meister Eckhart. Even Shakespeare, in The Merchant of Venice, had Lorenzo proclaim, "There's not the smallest orb which thou beholds't / But in his motion like an angel sings".

As Christian cultures grew more complex, the simple life became more difficult to attain. Still, Pandevotionalism took root in literature both sacred and secular.

In Paradise Lost, Milton placed on the lips of Adam and Eve an exquisite sunrise version of Psalm 148, and of Lorenzo's music of the spheres:

Moon, that now meets the orient Sun, now flis't With the fixt stars, fixt in their orb that flies, And yee five other wandering Fires that move In mystic Dance not without Song, resound His praise, who out of Darkness calld up Light.

His praise ye Winds, that from four quarters blow,

Breathe soft or loud; and wave your tops, ye Pines,

With every plant, in sign of Worship wave.

Protestantism stimulated a vast output of new prayers, poems, and hymns. Bishop Thomas Ken wrote the Doxology that's been sung for 200 years - a Pandevotional lyric:

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow, Praise Him, all creatures here below; Praise Him above, ye heavenly host; Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Worship by "all creatures" formed a constant theme of the greatest eighteenth century hymnist, Isaac Watts. "Nature in every dress," he wrote, "Her humble homage pays / And finds a thousand ways t'express / Thine undissembled praise." Also:

Ye tribes of Adam join, With heaven, and earth, and seas, And offer notes divine To your Creator's praise.

The Augustan poet Christopher Smart took as the central point of his work the creation's adoration of God. Early in his career he wrote:

List ye! how Nature with ten thousand tongues Begins the grand thanksgiving, Hail, all hail, Ye tenants of the forest and the field! My fellow subjects of th'eternal King, I gladly join your Mattins, and with you Confess his presence and report his praise.

Smart was not content to arrange words on paper. Aware of the implications of his chosen theme regarding human action, he adopted a style of public behavior - spontaneous prayer and preaching - that put him sharply at odds with conventional notions of how to live one's daily life. In his eccentric masterpiece Jubilate Agno, he declared, "[T]o worship naked in the Rain is the bravest thing for refreshing and purifying the body." (He yearned for the primitive life, but London held him captive.) Also typical of this poem is the vigorous Pandevotional admonition, "Let man and beast appear before him, and magnify his name together."

The Pandevotional works of Christopher Smart are among the most gifted poetry in our language. In "A Song to David," he gives us these sublime images:

For ADORATION seasons change, And order, truth and beauty range, Adjust, attract, and fill: The grass the polyanthus cheques; And polish'd porphyry reflects, By the descending hill.

Rich almonds colour to the prime For ADORATION; tendrils climb, And fruit-trees pledge their gems; And Ivis with her gorgeous vest Builds for her eggs her cunning nest, And bell-flowers bow their stems.

With vinous syrup cedars spout; From rocks pure honey gushing out, From ADORATION springs: All scenes of painting croud the map Of nature; to the mermaid's pap The scaled infant clings.

The spotted ounce and playsome cubs Run rustling 'mongst the flow'ring shrubs, And lizards feed the moss; For ADORATION beasts embark, While waves upholding halcyon's ark No longer roar and toss.

While Israel sits beneath his fig, With coral root and amber sprig The wean'd advent'rer sports; Where to the palm the jasmin cleaves, For ADORATION 'mongst the leaves The gale his peace reports.

Christopher Smart and the Augustans were followed by the Romantics. Among them, Coleridge, Emerson, Dickinson, and the little-known Jones Very made memorable contributions to the Pandevotional corpus.

Pandevotionalism stresses the active role Nature takes in worshipping God - something that goes on with or without human participation. That's not to be confused with the very human activity of "appreciating" Nature, which might mean advocating the expansion of national parks, or even perceiving Nature as a symbol for a transcendent divinity.

A case in point is the Victorian Jesuit, Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins' natural world turns out to be a place of feeble energies. He looks at the branches of an ash tree and sees "old Earth's groping towards the steep / Heaven whom she childs us by." Even though "The world is charged with the grandeur of God," it's a one-way relationship.

Hopkins' nature is feminine, passive, and bad. His God is masculine, active, and good. The artistic or metaphorical or meaning-making function of the human mind is what Hopkins values. Nature is just dead, raw material for the poet, and the male God, to bring to life.

In the twentieth century, in his essay "Hymns in a Man's Life," D. H. Lawrence got straight to the Pandevotional point: "Plant consciousness, insect consciousness, fish consciousness, animal consciousness, all are related by one permanent element, which we may call the religious element inherent in all life, even in a flea: the sense of wonder."

His younger American contemporary Hart Crane expressed the same admiration for Nature's devotion to God in the 1929 poem, "A Name for All."

I dreamed that all men dropped their names, and sang As only they can praise, who build their days With fin and hoof, with wing and sweetened fang Struck free and holy on one Name always.

One of Carl Sandburg's last poems, "Timesweep," wraps up in a terse statement the profession of the Pandevotionalist:

I meditate with the mud eel on where we came from.

Lawrence, Crane, and Sandburg might not justifiably be counted among the ranks of Christian writers. But it is a virtue of Pandevotionalism that it can motivate both the orthodox and the rebellious.

Many Christians today, disturbed by the human destruction of God's creation, seek a confirmation in their theology for their empathy with the suffering of the Earth. Pandevotionalism suggests an answer. With its Old Testament heritage, its presence in the religious life of the Church Fathers, and its validity as a continuing literary theme, Pandevotionalism can contribute much to the great work of bringing together Humanity, Nature, and God.

[1.] A Commentary on Holy Scriptures (Scribner, Armstrong, 1972). [2.] St. Francis: Nature Mystic (University of California, 1973).

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