Beyond Stewardship

Beyond Stewardship: New Approaches to Creation Care, edited by David Paul Warners and Matthew Kuperus Heun. Calvin Press (ISBN: 9781937555382) 2019.

Summary: Essays exploring alternative ways to define the relationship with the non-human creation beyond stewardship.

Words matter. For the Christian environmental movement, “stewardship” has been the term Christian environmentalists use to describe the human relationship with the non-human creation. More recently, questions have been raised by a newer generation of Christian environmentalists as to whether this is the best way to understand this relationship. It doesn’t reflect the full scope of biblical teaching. Stewardship implies separation from both creation and God. Also, it implies an instrumental relationship of creation existing for human use. Then the association of this term with finances implies resources owned by another, and this is too limiting of God’s relationship to creation. Finally, stewardship tends to be individualistic when the scope of challenges require acting in concert.

The editors of this essay collection lay out this argument in their introduction. The essays that follow explore how then we might think about our relation to the non-human creation. Given this enlarged understanding, what wise actions are then implied? The book is organized in three parts.

Part One: RETHINKING: Expanding Awareness

Matthew Kuperus Heun, in “Smashing Prototypes,” likens what we’ve done to creation to what it would be like as a professor to take a chainsaw or sledgehammer to his students’ engineering prototypes. We need to recognize our complicity in the damage done creation, lament, and determine to act differently. Following this, Kathi Groenendyk cautions that not only do our words matter but so does our audience. She observes that while stewardship is helpful with some audiences, like farmers and ranchers, other terms like creation-care or earthkeeping will relate better to others. Therefore, know thy audience!

Part Two: REIMAGINING: How Things Could Be

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap opens this section proposing that the idea of kinship overcomes the gap between humans and the rest of creation Jesus, in the incarnation became kin with us. kinship changes how we view things like species loss. Then Clarence W. Joldersma proposes seeing ourselves as earthlings. We are earthy beings, sharing much in common, charging us with a vast responsibility while also giving an independent moral standing to the non-human creation. Not only do we have much in common with the rest of creation, we exist in a symbiotic relationship with it according to Aminah al-Attas Bradford. Consider the microbes in our gut that aid in crucial ways in digesting food, or even mitochondria as an independent organism in every human cell.

Steven Bouma Prediger reiterates the critique of stewardship from the Introduction as both limited in scope and confusing. He makes the case for the term “earthkeeping.” He argues for it as a better reflection of the biblical charge to tend and keep in Genesis 2. Finally in this section, James R. Skillen, argues that stewardship paradigms often overlook human finiteness and fallenness, engaging in hubristic activity. Rather, he advocates the humble posture of those seeking God’s kingdom.

Part Three: REORIENTING: Hopeful Ways Forward

Debra Reinstra argues that creation care begins with knowing the names of species or inorganic things. Then we proceed to understanding their basic ecologies and enter into delight, care, and suffering with those whose names we’ve learned. Matthew C. Halteman and Megan Halteman Zwart apply the idea of kinship to human-animal relationships, especially farm animals, and how this challenged a particular student’s thinking about using animals for food. However, this new perspective also implies a new worldview of whole systems. Neglect of this combined with human arrogance contribute to environmental disasters like the Dustbowl.

Racial injustice manifests in caring for creation as well. When certain groups are disenfranchised from environmental decisions, racism flourishes and the environment does not, especially in urban spaces. Dietrich Bouma reinforces this idea, arguing against barriers that prevent some people from having their voices heard. Then Mark D. Bjelland adds urban spaces, cities, and their watersheds to what counts as creation care. He calls for placemaking and placekeeping. Finally, David Paul Warners commends the idea of recognizing that we walk through a world of gifts. He calls us to respond with reciprocity, restraint, relationship-building, and remembrance.

Conclusion

This book harks back to a similar essay collection, Earthkeeping, from the 1970’s. This book concludes with an afterword from three of the original contributors: Loren Wilkinson, Eugene Dykema, and Calvin DeWitt. It’s a wonderful generational handoff and blessing of these younger scholars’ efforts. This is followed with a rendering of several pages of No More Room, a children’s book written by three students in one of David Paul Warners’ classes. A discussion guide for each of the chapters in this book is also included in “Additional Resources.”

Robin Wall Kimmerer is an ecologist from the Native American Indigenous Peoples and has mined that worldview for its wisdom. She has captivated the imagination of many with her sense of our kinship with other creatures and plants and the sense of our interdependent mutual relationship with it. The fact that she has captured the attention of many Christians reveals the shortcomings of our own theology of creation and our relationship with it. The ideas here reflect a similarly rich way of seeing without the latent animism in Kimmerer’s writing. One hopes that the contemporary disregard for environmental matters in the American church will be a temporary lapse into environmental unconsciousness. One hopes for revival that will wake us to be on the forefront of caring for God’s creation. For now, this work offers rich resources for those who will teach and disciple when people have “ears to hear.”