Living Legacies
Rights of Nature, Buen Vivir, and a Birthday Blessing
Eyes on Christ | Vol. 18, Issue 30 | July 9, 2025 | Ordinary Time (After Pentecost)
God is the goal… "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, my thoughts higher than your thoughts" (Is 55:9).
With God, we are never finished; we never reach Him. We are always on the journey, always searching for Him. But it is precisely this walking toward God that gives us the exhilarating certainty that He awaits us to give us His consolation and His grace. - Pope Francis
In this spirit of faithful journeying, toward God and toward one another, I share two introductions. One begins with our planet: the global movement for the rights of nature and the Andean vision of buen vivir, or good living. The other begins with a person: a beloved friend and living legend who continues to reveal what faithful discipleship looks like, not just in ideas, but in the embodied grace of his everyday choices.
Over the July 4th holiday weekend, my study group discussed Water Justice, Lesson 4 of the 2024-2025 PW Horizons Bible Study Let Justice Roll Down. It closed with some of the historic wins in the global Rights of Nature movement and it mentioned the 2010 Citizens United ruling by the US Supreme Court.
Afterward, I decided to dig deeper. I was curious. How was Citizens United related to the Rights of Nature (RON) movement? What’s the Christian case for this movement?
The 2010 Citizens United ruling by the US Supreme Court eliminated campaign finance limits by arguing that putting limits on it, a form of political speech, violated the First Amendment rights of all persons, including corporations. This concept of corporate personhood, a legal status, has been enshrined in US law since the 19th century. It is legal personhood that allows corporations to enter into contracts, own property, sue and be sued, and claim some constitutional protections. That concept is now being applied to features of nature such as rivers and mountains.
Legal personhood is a tool, an architecture, a powerful way to empower nature in legal systems that already recognize non-human entities as persons. The legal wins and failures of the RON movement are fascinating. However, the roots of personhood for nature go as far back as the creation stories of the ancient Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Maoris, and their links to the Christian Bible’s origin stories in Genesis.
The rights of nature movement is best described as a synthesis of indigenous wisdom and eco-jurisprudence, with additional support from multifaith spiritual traditions.
Why should Christians care about the Rights of Nature?
The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. Genesis 2:15
Genesis 2:15 verse establishes humanity’s role as stewards of creation, responsible not for exploitation but for the care, protection, and flourishing of the earth. Stewardship aligns with the rights of nature movement and the Buen Vivir philosophy, both of which emphasize living in harmony with the environment and ensuring the well-being of all creation.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be reflecting on our creation stories, culminating in a vision of flourishing rooted in our discipleship to Jesus. But today, I’m taking a brief detour.
In The Perfect Gentlemen: Legacies of Selfless Love and the Resurrection, I shared an update about the book I’m writing and mentioned an “honorably retired 90-year old pastor” who will be featured in it. I want to take the occasion of his recent 92nd birthday to introduce this inspiring follower of Jesus.
Now is a fitting moment to do so, not only because of his age, but because of something meaningful he did nearly a decade ago, after the passing of his beloved wife of 57 years. In her honor, he commissioned a pocket-sized pamphlet about the Thornton Creek Water Quality Channel, the 2.7 acre natural area just outside the building where he lives and that acts, in the pamphlet’s words, as a “human-designed and engineered substitute” for the real creek and wetlands that disappeared deep underground when a nearby mall was constructed back in 1948.
The Perfect Gentleman Pastor
A salutation this pastor often uses for me is: “You’re a gift, to us and to me, from the Church of South India.” So, in that same spirit, I begin mine for him:
To a dear friend, God’s most timely gift to me and us from the Presbyterian Church USA