- Friday, November 30, 2018
- 1:30 PM–2:20 PM
- Science Building Lecture Hall 010
Kyle Meyaard-Schaap, National Organizer for Young Evangelicals for Climate Action (YECA)
Practices like mountaintop removal coal mining and hydraulic fracturing are finding ever more inventive ways of supplying global energy markets with cheap fossil fuels at a time when global climate change demands that the world keep as many fossil fuel reserves in the ground as possible. At the same time, these practices are forever scarring ancient landscapes, decimating jobs, and poisoning local residents.
The church in the U.S. has largely embraced the Environmental Stewardship Model of care and concern for the created world, but this has so far failed to envision--must less enact--alternatives to these practices that protect the nonhuman creation, ensure a stable climate for current and future generations, and honor the dignity of all God’s image bearers. This may be because the stewardship model does not go far enough. Scripture appears to call us further than the mere management of the nonhuman creation and into a relationship of radical kinship with it. An orientation of kinship could unlock the church's potential for effective advocacy on behalf of the nonhuman creation. When the church sees the rest of creation as family rather than as resources, it will take radical action to protect it.
