Abstract

Christian environmental ethics, and the philosophy of Deep, Ecology are assumed by many of their respective adherents to be incompatible, primarily because they reflect different anthropologies. Deep Ecology posits an "ecological self," whose foremost characteristic is nonanthropocentlism, a refusal to place the human at the apex of a hierarchically structured creation. Deep Ecology does not grant an automatically privileged place to the human when it comes to making ecological decisions. However, displacing the human, to whatever degree, am be problematic for Christians. It is possible, however, to demonstrate how a rapprochement between particular strands, of Christian ethics and Deep Ecology might be realized by attending to the ecological and liturgical practices of an indigenous Christian people in northern British Columbia. The Nisga'a Nation is a culture which exemplifies both Christian and Deep Ecological perspectives and conduct. In an imaginal way, the Nisga'a combine their millennia-old ecologically conscientious lifestyle with Christian belief by expanding their liturgy to encompass their environment and redesignating their ecological conduct to their Christianity. The lenses through which Nisga'a culture is explored to reach this conclusion are environmental virtue ethics, liturgical theology and semiotics as expressed in American pragmatism