- Friday, September 28, 2018
- 1:30 PM–2:20 PM
- Science Building Lecture Hall 010
From Stewardship to Earthkeeping: Why We Should Move Beyond Stewardship
Steve Bouma-Prediger, Hope College
Contaminated water, polluted air, disappearing soil, vanishing species, climate change. The litany of ecological woe, sadly, is all too long. Much of this is made possible by faulty ways of seeing the world: we see ourselves as separate from the rest of the natural world, we assume animals and plants and land have value only because of their usefulness to us, we view stewardship as having to do only with managing money. Although the idea of stewardship has been helpful in the past few decades, the concept of earthkeeping provides a better description of the biblical vision of who we as humans are and what our relationship to the natural world ought to be. In short, earthkeeping offers a richer image for explaining why people ought to care about our home planet.
