“Faith and ecological thinking can nourish each other”

In a few weeks, you will support the political science thesis on which you have been working for several years. What is the subject?

I work on those called “climate activists”, that is to say those committed, with more or less radical, for the protection of the planet and the living, in the context which is ours: a large-scale climatic disaster which possibly implies, in the medium term, the death of many humans and non-human (animals, plants). It is even specifically the relationship to death and the extinction of species in the ecological movement that I wonder.

This brings us on one level into a serious subject …

Yes, so serious that we prefer to hide it. In our society, death is envisaged in a very individual way, relegated to the end of life, in places away. Ecological thought upsets this relationship to death by putting it at the center of reflection and life. This is what makes the speech of these activists difficult to hear, but also essential. To think that the other is vulnerable and fragile, would it not be a first step to love him?

There is something Christian in there …

Yes, I believe that there are bridges between ecological thought and the Gospel. Bridges that I also borrowed, since it was in the context of my work that I experienced a conversion, which led me to be baptized last year.

Can you tell us about it?

I did not have a vision, no voice … It was done very gradually. I grew up in an atheist family, anchored on the left, in values ​​of solidarity and sharing that deeply marked me. During my philosophy studies, the question of atheism interested me a lot. On the one hand, it is the base on which all modern science has developed and therefore appears to us to be something obvious.

But from another, it is quite recent historically, and confined to certain parts of the world – roughly the West; Elsewhere, it is rather seen as a curiosity. By digging a little, I discovered that contrary to what one could think, atheism was not necessarily quite the opposite of faith.

The philosopher Simone Weil even evokes a “purifying atheism”, which would be a necessary moment to abandon a set of false beliefs on God, and access the living heart of Christianity. All this intrigued me, and ended up appearing to me as a solid foundation for the values ​​in which I grew up.

It is therefore a very intellectual path …

There is also another more intimate dimension. At the Student Union of Sciences Po, I met Anaëlle. She had been distant from the religious practice in which she had grown up, but started a way back. I used to accompany him to mass, a little curious.

In the parish of Sainte-Hélène, in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, the community showed me a beautiful face of the church: welcoming, open to the district, committed. It counts of course. And then the Word of God, especially the Gospel, gradually worked on me. I asked myself questions. Not “do I believe it or not?”, But “if it’s true, what does it change?” I entered the catechumenate to deepen this questioning, without being sure to go to the baptism. And then one day, I came to be able to say: “I believe in God”.

To convert is to meet Jesus, but also to enter the church, with its history, its dogmas, its tradition … How did you receive all this?

In the creed, there are complicated points. Thus, I find it difficult to understand the idea of ​​”resurrection of the flesh”. But I do not consider each article as to take or leave. Rather as a mystery to contemplate and deepen.

This somewhat monumental Church faith is an invitation to enter into a personal experience, which is lived in the present: that of a joyful existence, even, paradoxically, in suffering. And this personal faith is constantly reinventing itself. I am not saying it the same today whether it is a month or two.

What has this conversion changed in your work as a sociologist with environmental activists?

I discovered that by many aspects, ecological thought resonated strongly with the Gospel: humility, respect for the living, the relationship as a way of life … I take an example that I like: tears. The philosopher Judith Butler, who works on issues of social justice, developed the concept of “pleurability”, noting that some lives were less mourned than others.

The ecological movement has expanded this area of ​​the “crying” to the whole living. I find it very nice to wonder if we should not cry the disappearance of a kind of coral or butterfly … and I do not forget that Jesus cried the death of his friend Lazarus. It is even, I believe, the shortest verse in the whole Bible: “Jesus cried. »It appeals to me …

Should the Church listen to these ecological speeches? Appropriate them?

Already, perhaps, take them seriously as Pope Francis did with Laudato if ‘ . Not to marry the movement of the world and dilute the Gospel in modernity. It is not a question of opposing “progressive” and “conservatives”. Rather to see what resonates with a certain radicality of the Christian faith, which is found in the words of Jesus and also in the writings of the Fathers of the Church, or in the life of Saint Francis of Assisi.

Is that an important figure for you?

Essential! Saint Francis has expanded fraternity to all of creation, even beyond the living. He showed an irreplaceable face of what religious experience can be. I think we need him. I discovered it through literature, including the magnificent book by Christian Bobin, The very low .

Ideas for sobriety and decrease do not attract everyone. Some criticize environmentalists for being sad, Rabat-Joie.

I believe it is important to distinguish joy from pleasure. Take a concrete case: I am not completely vegetarian. But that does not prevent me from thinking that the pleasure of eating meat is linked to a form of consumption in the strong sense of the term, – which consumes, which devours -, and that far from being lived as openness to the other, this pleasure is centered on me. Joy is lived in the openness and love of the other.

Some environmentalists choose not to have children. Your opinion?

Anaëlle and I are married last summer. We are waiting for a child for this spring. For us, it is an assumed choice, a commitment of hope. A new life is not just a new living in the great whole, a potential that is acting. It is the impossible that emerges, a way of saying something irreplaceable, of making visible a face of God … Some speeches suggest that in the climate disaster that we are going through, it is better not to live. I believe that Christianity has something to say, which is fundamentally good news.

This hope, are you trying to wear it in environmental circles?

I am not trying to convert people and even less to offer them an overhanging and normative speech. But I believe that Christianity can widen the horizon, open paths where today we see dead ends. In the current climatic disaster, I think you can look in front of death and be benchmark without being destroyed. Stay in action and experience something in eternal life.

You live your first Lent as baptized. How do you understand this time?

As an opportunity to live a time of refocusing … make my little me something less important, thinking, in a form of fasting, my relationship to food or screens. While keeping in mind that the essential is not me, that life is in relationships, others and God. Last year, during Lent, I was very worn towards the baptism that I received at Easter. This year, there is the approaching birth. These are strong things, oriented towards life!