IN OCTOBER, The New York Times published an article that, despite its dire implications, seemed to wash away in the rapid news cycle. It described how, according to the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s population will see major consequences, as early as 2040, from its mistreatment of the planet. More droughts, more wildfires, more poverty, and higher temperatures—in only 22 years. When that time comes, when nature begins to resemble Hell, how will we have to live?
Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker David Conover has been thinking about this question for 12 years. “I was a parent of two young kids,” Conover told me about the moment when he began to ruminate on creation care, “and was trying to understand the world they were growing into: pollution, severe weather with fires, flooding, droughts, struggles with realities that weren’t that apparent even a generation ago.
“There have been many films made about those things, how we know that they’re happening, what’s causing them, and so on. But there haven’t been any films about people and their experience of exploring the very tough question of how to live right today in this climate.”
Conover’s wrestling with how to live a moral life during a time of environmental hardship has culminated in the production and release of his newest documentary, Behold the Earth, which explores contemporary Christianity’s relationship with creation care.
Far from inactive
Behold the Earth is a surprise. Often, films about environmental advocacy solely center the wisdom of middle-age and older white males and forget the voices of women, people of color, and younger generations. But Conover fashioned his film against this norm, interviewing Ben Lowe, founder of Young Evangelicals for Climate Action and a biracial man of Asian-American descent, and Corina Newsome, an African-American biologist and animal keeper at the Nashville Zoo.
“They brought a justice angle to the film,” said Conover about Lowe and Newsome. “Because they belong to marginalized communities, they really understand the difficulties of places that have been compromised by environmental threats and the difficulties of the lives of inhabitants of those places.”
In Behold the Earth, Newsome teams up with her cousin, who pastors an African-American church, to introduce his congregation to wildlife and creation care. Newsome speaks powerfully about how she had limited wildlife and greenery around her when she was growing up in Philadelphia’s inner city.
Conover was also strongly impacted by Lowe mentioning that he had never heard a sermon preached on caring for creation and that some Christians in his generation left the church because they didn’t think the church cared about concerns God had placed on their hearts, such as the health of the environment.
“It was really important to get Ben and Corina’s perspectives in the film,” said Conover. “Without them, the film would have been much less.” Their appearances in Behold the Earth—paired alongside those of Cal DeWitt, Katharine Hayhoe, the late Theo Colborn, and two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner E.O. Wilson—form a modern evaluation of creation care that’s much needed in an era of catastrophic hurricanes and a sitting U.S. president who has pulled the nation out of a global agreement to lower fossil fuel emissions.
“I think the film could engage people who are distrustful of science and have been led to believe that their faith is at odds with the science of the day,” said Conover, who grew up in a Congregationalist church tradition. “When I decided to make the film, I knew there were people out there who were living lives of faith and were also scientists contributing to society.”
To fund the production of Behold the Earth, Conover managed to raise money from people who belong to faith communities and people who don’t—showing that the religious movement for Earth’s preservation is far from inactive.
“I’m hoping this film will be part of a larger reset of how we’re carrying out our responsibility to be stewards,” said Conover. “But even though it’s a reset, we really need to look back at our oldest, most enduring words, images, parables, books, and music.”
The revival of creation care
This is where the folk musicians come in: Tim Eriksen, who contributed to the music of the Oscar-winning film Cold Mountain and pianist Omar Sosa’s Grammy-nominated album Across the Divide; four-time Grammy winner Dirk Powell and his daughters Sophie and Amelia; and Grammy winner Rhiannon Giddens, who was awarded a 2017 MacArthur “genius” grant and is a founding member of the string band Carolina Chocolate Drops. Throughout Behold the Earth, all five incredible musicians perform outdoors, singing praises in nature.
“We took some big risks with music,” Conover told me. “In a 60-minute film, at least a third of it is just music. Dirk introduced me to Tim, and Tim said to me, ‘You know there’s this great tradition of singing songs of praise outdoors?’ It was very popular, as part of the revival movements in the Northeast—in particular, in the mid-to-late 1800s—and several thousand people would get together in these big open fields, on a spring or summer weekend, and just sing together songs of praise. So, he told me about American Vocalist, a hymn book, and I hunted it down, and there were a bunch of songs we drew from it, as well as adaptations of classics like ‘Amazing Grace.’ The music adds a huge dimension to the film: It gives it a liturgical structure.
“And the opportunity to make six music videos, at the same time that I was making a documentary, was awesome.”
Part of the wonder and power of great works of art is that they speak the language of emotion, never examining the concepts and theories of our lives without first examining our connections with each other. Watching the performances of Eriksen, the Powells, and Giddens reminded me of an element of creation care that’s often forgotten: When we care for the environment, we also care for each other—one of the Bible’s most poignant and important instructions.
“Waterbound on a stranger’s shore,” Dirk Powell sings as footage of devastating flooding appears onscreen. “River rising to my door. Carried my home to the field below. I’m waterbound, nowhere to go.”
Conover is waterbound, too. His next project—now that Behold the Earth has been screened at film festivals and is available online—is an art installation about seashells.
“The ocean has always really spoken to me,” he said, “and the installation is an opportunity to take something simple—a shell—and really look at it. So we’re going to be filming seashells and showing them on four screens to examine the beauty of their form.”
The world is busy and often chaotic, but somehow Conover has found time to take the instruction of the title of his latest film to heart. It’s time for all of us to do the same.
Da’Shawn Mosley (dashawn-mosley.com) is a former Sojourners associate editor and lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
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