Creation Care Discipleship
Why Earthkeeping Is an Essential Christian Practice
By Steven Bouma-Prediger
Baker Academic, 244 pages, $25.99
As an Episcopal priest with a call to ministry that included care for God’s creation, I often had members of my flock approach me quizzically about caring for God’s creation as part of the Church’s mission. “Isn’t that the work of groups like the Sierra Club?” they would ask. “Why would this have anything to do with the Church?”
If you were to ask a hundred Christians in America today whether caring for the earth had anything to do with Christianity, I bet you’d be lucky to find one who answered in the affirmative. It hasn’t been part of most churchgoers’ experience, and is very rarely preached. But thanks to a cadre of spiritual leaders, eco-theologians, teachers, and ordinary faithful Christians, caring for creation is gaining a foothold as an essential part of leading a Christian life. Educator and author Steven Bouma-Prediger is one of those promoting this practice, and in Creation Care Discipleship he seeks to move creation care — or what he asserts should more properly be called “earthkeeping” — into the Christian mainstream and into the hearts and lives of followers of Christ.
Bouma-Prediger carefully crafts his case for earthkeeping as an inherent — albeit somewhat forgotten — element of Christian doctrine and praxis, grounding it in Scripture, Christian theology, and ethics, and ecumenical insights from global Christian leaders and the broader social-justice movement within the Church. Central to his thesis is the idea of shalom, which he defines as “the creation-wide realization of God’s intentions that all things flourish.” As Christians, he contends, our calling includes being a part of ushering this realization into being for all of God’s creation — human and nonhuman. And we do this through action, by living what we believe.
For Bouma-Prediger, virtue ethics factor prominently into earthkeeping as a Christian practice. Anyone who has read his books Earthkeeping and Character or For the Beauty of the Earth is familiar with Bouma-Prediger’s affinity for this branch of ethics as it relates to earthkeeping. “We need to emphasize character rather than conduct,” he declares in Creation Care Discipleship, maintaining that our character then shapes our actions. Commendable character traits, or virtues, are shaped by practices, he says. And so for Bouma-Prediger, the practices we engage in matter. In answering our call to make shalom real, developing the virtues of justice, love, and hope are of primary importance, and thus the practice of earthkeeping is essential.
But what constitutes this practice of earthkeeping? Bouma-Prediger points to the multitude of places in Scripture that give us clues, but also taps into Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato sí, the vision of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, spiritual leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the works of Lutheran theologian H. Paul Santmire, Christian feminist theologian Rosemary Redford Ruether, and indigenous theologian Randy Woodley. He advocates living simply, working toward environmental justice, educating for ecological literacy, and forming people to be inhabitants, or “homemakers,” of the earth instead of transitory residents.Quoting thinkers such as the poet Wendell Berry; African American theologian James Cone; environmental studies pioneer David Orr; biologist, author, and Potawatomi Nation citizen Robin Wall Kimmerer; denominational leader and author Jim Antal and others, he weaves together everything from ways of being to policies for transforming modern culture, to educational approaches, to practical actions to create a vision of earthkeeping that can bring Christians and Christianity in line with the flourishing of all of God’s creation.
While Creation Care Discipleship makes the case for creation care as an essential Christian practice, it seems to have missed the opportunity to do so in a truly compelling way, however. Bouma-Prediger too often lets others speak for him, quoting extensively from theologians, experts, and authors in a way that can leave the reader feeling that perhaps he doesn’t have confidence in his own thoughts or voice. The result is that the flow of the book is sometimes choppy, reading sometimes more like a heavily annotated bibliography than a book-length treatise.
Furthermore, one gets the feeling that Bouma-Prediger cannot decide whether he’s making his case to individual Christians as disciples of Jesus or to Christianity and the Church in general — in other words, whether he’s advocating for a transformation in praxis on the individual level or seeking a shift in doctrine. It’s possible to do both, and it appears that Bouma-Prediger is attempting to do both. But he doesn’t really make that clear, which muddies his points at times. Had he more clearly addressed the role of earthkeeping for the individual Christian, versus its role for Christianity writ large, Bouma-Prediger perhaps could have created more inspiring reading.
In the end, however, Creation Care Discipleship has an important role to play in transforming those who may be unaware of or skeptical of creation care as an inherent element of Christianity into true believers and practitioners of earthkeeping. Bouma-Prediger has assiduously made the case for this essential Christian practice, leaving no doubt that we as humans and as Christians have a role to play in ensuring the flourishing of all of God’s creation — “living,” he says, “as humble humans in a sacred world.”
