You might have noticed that the Senior Editors here at the EcoTheo Review have a lot in common.
We are all, of course, interested in the intersection of faith, ecology, and culture. We all go to Princeton Theological Seminary. Three of the four editors have facial hair, and the fourth one wishes he did. And there is that small fact that we are all young, middle class, protestant white dudes. A pretty homogenous lot, all in all.
Which brings us to an important point:
We are aware of our current lack of diversity and we do not want it to stay that way.
We want to make sure our readers know that the predominance of white male middle class Protestants represented at ETR is not by any design or intent, but by the simple fact that in our early stages these are the voices to which we have had ready access.
True, this is not a problem unique to ETR. We recently went to hear a panel discussion on the climate crisis consisting solely of wealthy, white, middle-aged males, and indeed these have often been the most visible faces of the environmental movement. This is by no means a slam on them or rooted in an attempt to undermine their good work. We simply want to acknowledge the fact that, while many of our heroes do look like us (indeed, Jeff wishes Wendell Berry was his grandfather), there are heroic voices from all nations, creeds, religions, classes, genders, that are doing amazing work on this issue.
So what’s the point of our writing this?
We aren’t looking to make excuses. We just wanted to let our readers know that we aim to do better in the future, for a homogeneous voice can’t adequately solve a problem that is so complex. A grist.org article brings home the importance of diversity within the environmental movement:
“A 2009 survey… shows that 61 percent of African Americans consider climate change a serious problem, while only 39 percent of whites feel the same. And yet, at the National Wildlife Federation, the country’s largest nonprofit conservation organization, the management is 93 percent white.” [ref]Erik, Hoffner, “The movement’s greatest challenge is it’s own lack of diversity”[/ref]
We could use your help.
If you want offer your voice to the discussion, we’d love to hear from you. If you know of someone whose voice needs to be heard, please tell them about us. Because that is what ETR is all about. We are committed to offering as many diverse voices on our site as possible, all united around the common goal of being better stewards of creation.
Thanks for stopping by,
The Editors of ETR
