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Beyond Stewardship: New Approaches to Creation Care
Beyond Stewardship is intended to equip Christians to live better in this world by helping us all think more intentionally about the relationship we have with the nonhuman creation in which we are necessarily and thoroughly embedded. It responds to these "What if God didn't place humans on earth to be stewards of creation, but something else?" and "if not stewards, then what?" The chapters in Beyond Stewardship are written by scholars from diverse disciplines who share a deep passion for a flourishing creation. Each chapter begins with a compelling story that draws the reader into new ways of thinking. Each author then looks beyond stewardship from the context of her or his own discipline and experiences. Some reimagine creation care by expanding on the traditional notion of stewardship. Others set aside the stewardship model and offer alternative ways to understand our presence within the broader creation. The chapters mark out ways to live better in the places we inhabit as individuals, communities, and institutions. Collectively, the essays in Beyond Stewardship offer an expanded and enlivened understanding of the place of humans in the context of God's creation.
252 pages, Paperback
Published July 12, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 19, 2025
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.”
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.”
March 20, 2022
I think this essay collection on the topic of refining and nuancing the Christian environmental stewardship paradigm offers something for everyone. What the authors set out to accomplish, they do successfully IMO. Much emphasis is placed upon language: are we using the proper terminology to adequately express the Biblical understanding of our relationship to the non-human creation? Have we considered what it really means to "act as stewards" or "have dominion over the earth?" Do we understand what creation care can look like? Hopeful ways forward include simply cultivating an awareness of and being able to name natural plants and animals, natural phenomena, etc.; opening our eyes to the suffering and injustice--the "groanings"--of God's creation; lamenting the reality of a broken, imperfect world; and seeking to do better (imperfectly) by continuing to learn, by understanding our role as changemakers, by recognizing and celebrating the gifts we've been given, and by advocating for the planet in our liturgies, devotions, prayers and conversations and with our time, votes, purchases, and admirations.
Read
May 15, 2022Read it for school. I liked some of the essays.
November 8, 2019
In this multi-authored volume the authors rethink, re-imagine and reorientate on the appropriate way for Christians to conceptualise their relationship to creation. Critically responding to the concept of Christian environmental stewardship, as generally accepted in the Reformed Christian theology and as documented by Prof Loren Wilkenson and others in the 1980s, this book wants to pursue the question whether God has placed humans on earth not as stewards but as something else, and what this would look like.
An impressive line-up of contributors tell their wonderful stories, introducing concepts like lament, kinship, justice, earth-keeping and symbiosis to describe humanity's much more intrinsic and delicate relation to creation as what the term stewardship would allow for. Humans are not over and above creation, like a subject standing over and against an object, but we are in it, as 'natural' as can be as we ourselves are natural. We care for and thus suffer with all of creation. Once we see ourselves as being open to the groaning in creation, we can start reimagining our relation to animals and the rest of creation. Humans and the rest of creation are interdependent with massive implications on how we view the opportunities and limitations of the landscape. We must rather become interpreters of the land and its ecology and not just foolish masters driven by our own egos, needs and greeds. Human well-being depends on creational well-being, and that includes all humans made in God's image, regardless of race or class. The behaviour and actions of richer up-streamers do have implications for the poorer down-streamers; it is un-Christian not to think this through and act on it. Environmental injustice calls for lament and acknowledgement of brokenness in ourselves and in the systems we are living in. Some people do not even have any agency left to care for creation; all has been taken away from them.
Contrary to the Romantic ideas of wilderness without people, caring for creation in all areas of life matters; including cities that can produce surprising high levels of biodiversity and completely build-up areas that one can come love. Place-making matters regardless where that place is. Humans may respond to God's enormous gifts to us who-ever and where-ever we are.
Christian environmental stewardship, when exaggerated as human knowledge, wisdom and power, is a term that has had its day. There is too much human in it (of the sinful variety): that part that wants to make humans gods in their own right. We have to move beyond stewardship. Humans are powerful with remarkable capacities, yet also sinful with horrible consequences; which needs a humble interpretaton of what stewardship entails. The nature and quality of all our relationships matters; another creature is not just another resource we have to understand and master, but much more importantly a relationship that demand our love and care.
Nothing less than our hearts need to change to come to such a realisation. This is where the book stops where one might have hoped it would have pushed a little bit further. Repentance of our sins onto God's creation is the next Gospel expectation. Some authors (eg Skillen) started pushing into this biblical idea, but it still needs to find a broader and shared voice. Seeking the Kingdom of God includes to care for creation. Creation care is part of mission. Creation care will remain hollow if we do not lament, repent, follow Christ our Lord and King and live a life that reflects his love for all of his creation.
In summary, this is a wonderful book with deeply engaged authors offering their own stories on love and care for God's creation. With this book the debate on creation care in Reformed theology has found another expression that calls for engagement not only with the head, but also with the heart and the hands.
An impressive line-up of contributors tell their wonderful stories, introducing concepts like lament, kinship, justice, earth-keeping and symbiosis to describe humanity's much more intrinsic and delicate relation to creation as what the term stewardship would allow for. Humans are not over and above creation, like a subject standing over and against an object, but we are in it, as 'natural' as can be as we ourselves are natural. We care for and thus suffer with all of creation. Once we see ourselves as being open to the groaning in creation, we can start reimagining our relation to animals and the rest of creation. Humans and the rest of creation are interdependent with massive implications on how we view the opportunities and limitations of the landscape. We must rather become interpreters of the land and its ecology and not just foolish masters driven by our own egos, needs and greeds. Human well-being depends on creational well-being, and that includes all humans made in God's image, regardless of race or class. The behaviour and actions of richer up-streamers do have implications for the poorer down-streamers; it is un-Christian not to think this through and act on it. Environmental injustice calls for lament and acknowledgement of brokenness in ourselves and in the systems we are living in. Some people do not even have any agency left to care for creation; all has been taken away from them.
Contrary to the Romantic ideas of wilderness without people, caring for creation in all areas of life matters; including cities that can produce surprising high levels of biodiversity and completely build-up areas that one can come love. Place-making matters regardless where that place is. Humans may respond to God's enormous gifts to us who-ever and where-ever we are.
Christian environmental stewardship, when exaggerated as human knowledge, wisdom and power, is a term that has had its day. There is too much human in it (of the sinful variety): that part that wants to make humans gods in their own right. We have to move beyond stewardship. Humans are powerful with remarkable capacities, yet also sinful with horrible consequences; which needs a humble interpretaton of what stewardship entails. The nature and quality of all our relationships matters; another creature is not just another resource we have to understand and master, but much more importantly a relationship that demand our love and care.
Nothing less than our hearts need to change to come to such a realisation. This is where the book stops where one might have hoped it would have pushed a little bit further. Repentance of our sins onto God's creation is the next Gospel expectation. Some authors (eg Skillen) started pushing into this biblical idea, but it still needs to find a broader and shared voice. Seeking the Kingdom of God includes to care for creation. Creation care is part of mission. Creation care will remain hollow if we do not lament, repent, follow Christ our Lord and King and live a life that reflects his love for all of his creation.
In summary, this is a wonderful book with deeply engaged authors offering their own stories on love and care for God's creation. With this book the debate on creation care in Reformed theology has found another expression that calls for engagement not only with the head, but also with the heart and the hands.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews