This essay enters and responds to a live and ongoing debate in global politics regarding the climate crisis—namely, between ecomodernism and degrowth theory. Ecomodernism, summarized, is an ideology and political approach to climate change that emphasizes neoliberal economic ideals with a “green” twist. Ecomodernists believe that through continued scientific and technological development, controlled by the market, humanity will mitigate climate change. Free-market capitalism will bring about innovative solutions to climate change, such as geo-engineering. Furthermore, the market, with the help of technology, will successfully decouple economic growth from carbon emissions and alleviate global poverty, so capitalism can continue on forever and bring economic prosperity to all.[i] Degrowth theory, alternatively, is a post-capitalist approach to climate change. Degrowth emphasizes the power of slowing down the global economy and instead focuses on human flourishing itself. Rather than relying on the market, degrowth theorists emphasize the role of local democratic forms of development such as investing in school systems, public resources, and local healthcare systems. As the economy shifts its focus away from growth, rampant energy extraction will no longer be necessary to sustain local communities and this, in turn, will mitigate the climate crisis.[ii] In this essay, I enter this debate using Sabbath as a theological lens. Ultimately, I partner Sabbath with degrowth theory in an effort to mutually illuminate and build upon both. I begin by developing Sabbath as a theological and political lens. In particular, I emphasize Sabbath as spatial politics. With the help of the Marxist geographer Doreen Massey, the first half of this essay challenges Abraham Joshua Heschel’s notion that Sabbath is a purely temporal practice. Instead, I highlight Sabbath as a spatial practice, in what I call, a spatial Sabbath. By centering space, spatial Sabbath enables a reorientation of Sabbath as both a spiritual and political project. This leads to the second half of the essay, where I use Sabbath’s spatial politics in combination with degrowth theory to build a collaborative vision of post-capitalist economics from a theological perspective. I conclude by offering one modern concrete example of spatial Sabbath in highlighting Agrarian Trust and the FaithLands project.
Abraham Joshua Heschel, in his classic text The Sabbath, locates the sanctity of Sabbath in the temporal realm. Sabbath, for Heschel, is a temporal practice that brings all of creation into union with God.[iii] Sabbath is how God’s eternity breaks into creation and perfects it. Accordingly, Heschel states, “Time is the presence of God in the world of space...”[iv]Time is holy, it makes life possible. The Sabbath task, then, is to “conquer space and sanctify time.”[v] Space and time are separate and distinct for Heschel. On the one hand, time is the realm of possibility, creativity, transcendence, and everlasting fulfillment. Time without space is eternity; its divine. Space, on the other hand, is the realm of repetitive labor. It’s the material construct that has temporarily bound time to a fixed, finite, and stagnant world. Space without time is dead or inert; it is plastic. It is this binary definition of space and time that leads Heschel to disregard space, and instead emphasize Sabbath as a temporal practice. Heschel is not alone in this. In fact, most theological writings on the Sabbath focus on the idea of temporal rest.[vi] Sabbath is a time to slow down, remember, and reflect on God’s gifts of love. Sabbath is, after all, the holy seventh day (Genesis 2:3); it is precisely marked by time. To be sure, Sabbath should be a temporal practice—especially since we live in a time of ‘social acceleration.’[vii] However, Sabbath is not simply a temporal practice, it’s also a spatial practice.
In order to reimagine Sabbath as a spatial practice, we must also reimagine space and time—one that gets beyond binary dualisms. Doreen Massey is helpful here. In Massey’s spatial and temporal imagination, she turns to modern physics where “the identity of things is constituted through interactions.”[viii] Like in modern physics, “space and time are inextricably interwoven.”[ix] Space and time are intrinsically linked for Massey—always in the process of co-becoming. They are the product of their ongoing relations. In other words, while space and time remain distinct, they should not be defined in absence of one another. “It is not that the inter-relations between objects occur in space and time; it is these relationships themselves which create/define space and time.”[x] That is to say, for Massey, space and time are not abstract philosophical concepts. They are, rather, the ongoing products of real embodied relations.
Massey’s understanding of space as the product of relations provides a path for reimaging Sabbath as not just a temporal practice, but a spatial one as well. The spatial Sabbath, therefore, treats Sabbath as a spatial project. This opening up of Sabbath to include spatial production illuminates how Sabbath has operated spatially throughout most of Judeo-Christian history. Indeed, throughout the Hebrew bible, the history of Jewish practices, and the New Testament, Sabbath is always described with spatial rhetoric alongside spatial practices. Furthermore, even though it may not always be explicitly stated, the spatial realities of these Sabbath practices always function politically. By examining the Sabbath and its spatial realities, this essay opens up the overlapping spaces of consensus between the politics of Sabbath and modern degrowth theory.
[i] John Asafu-Adjaye, et al., “An Ecomodernist Manifesto” ecomodernism.org, (April 2015). www.ecomodernism.org
[ii] Jason Hickel, Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World. (London: Windmill Books, 2021).
[iii] Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath, (New York: Farrsar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), 32.
[iv] Ibid., 100.
[v] Ibid., 101.
[vi] There are, indeed, too many writings on Sabbath as a temporal practice to recount here. However, a prime example of how Sabbath is often seen temporally (other than Heschel) can be seen in Judith Shulevitz’s text, The Sabbath World. Judith Shulevitz, The Sabbath World: Glimpses of Different Order of Time, (New York: Random House, 2010).
[vii] Hartmut Rosa, “Introduction” Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity, Trans. Johnathan Trejo-Mathys, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 9.
[viii] Emphasis hers. Doreen Massey, “Politics and Space/Time (1992)” The Doreen Massey Reader. Ed. Brett Christophers, et al. (Newcastle: Agenda Publishing, 2018), 271.
[ix] Ibid., 271.
[x] Ibid., 273.
This essay enters and responds to a live and ongoing debate in global politics regarding the climate crisis—namely, between ecomodernism and degrowth theory—using Sabbath as a theological lens. I begin by developing Sabbath as a theological and political lens. In particular, I emphasize Sabbath as a spatial politic. With the help of the Marxist geographer Doreen Massey, the first half of this essay challenges Abraham Joshua Heschel’s notion that Sabbath is a purely temporal practice. Instead, I highlight Sabbath as a spatial project. A spatial Sabbath, then, enables a reorientation of Sabbath as both a spiritual and political project. This leads to the second half of the essay, where I use the spatial politics of Sabbath in combination with degrowth theory to build a collaborative vision of post-capitalist economics from a theological perspective. I conclude by offering one modern concrete example of spatial Sabbath in highlighting Agrarian Trust and the FaithLands project.