Humanity's Role In The Black Death And Religion

Around three thousand years ago, a story about the creation of the universe came into existence. This story, overtime became the agreed-upon functioning story for Western society. A shared and fixed understanding of creation unified people, despite turbulent times. However in response to the destruction of the Black Death, people began to think of the world in one of two different ways. The first was “towards a religious redemption out of a tragic world,” and the other was, “towards a greater control of the physical world” (Berry 125). This division created two groups of people: one which followed a form of Christianity that focused heavily on redemption and neglected the natural world, and another that emphasized scientific processes as a means to manipulate and control their surroundings. In terms of creation, people lacked a cohesive narrative and thus lost the ability to properly identify themselves in the larger scheme of life. In time, this has led to an overwhelming neglect and …show more content…
In order to correct this, we must adopt a unifying story that highlights humanity’s role in the natural world. Specifically how “we fulfill our role in the earth process...as the way now is the way of intimate communion with the larger human community and with the universe itself” (Ibid 137). Instead of emphasizing a human differentiation from the universe, we must promote unity. By spreading this message, we could potentially mark the entrance into a new geological era called “The Ecozoic Era.” In this time period the universe is a community of living things as opposed to a collection of objects, meaning that “every being has its own place and its own proper role in the functioning of the planet…” (Berry). However, after reading Thomas Berry’s proposition one may wonder, how is it possible to effectively communicate a new approach to