The Earth is Awesome

Creation Care and Ecological Stewardship -- how long have you heard those terms?

My guess is not long, at least in terms of years. But as the fragility of our world becomes more and more apparent, it seems like Christians are finally waking up to our need to be good caretakers of God's creation.

I have a colleague in the Th.D program here at Duke named Presian Burroughs. Presian is interested in the intersection of theology and ecology, and at my suggestion she recently wrote a guest column in the United Methodist Reporter looking at the way the economy and the environment have an impact on one another.

Specifically, Presian is calling for Christians to look at how our levels of consumption impact the world around us. In the article, she asks, "How can the nation promote human justice and health as well ecological justice and health? And the question facing Christians is: How are we to hold in tension the love of neighbor and the command to till and keep the earth, assuring its flourishing (Gen 2:15)?"

As Presian notes, rightly I think, these are crucial questions to consider at a time when the Obama administration is doing everything it can to repair our damaged economy. As we do so, it is necessary to ask how our consumer capitalistic lifestyles use (and abuse) the earth's resources.

I think what Presian has done in this article is significant. People of our generation see stewardship of the earth as a Christian issue in a way that previous generations did not (mostly because they simply didn't have to). But there is a certain lag in the way that commitment is getting expressed in the popular Christian press. I'm glad to see Presian's voice in the Reporter and hope it is the beginning of a trend.