How exactly should we envision and describe our relation, as human beings, to other creatures and the larger world we inhabit? And what distinctive contribution might Christianity and other faith traditions contribute to that endeavor? No words available to us qualify as totally adequate to capture the reality of our relationship to God and all of creation.
How we address such questions in our own age depends crucially on the terms, metaphors, and thought-patterns we choose to adopt. It’s worth asking what strengths and liabilities the various eco-spiritual terms we might invoke along the way bring to our understanding of these relationships.
In this Deep Green Faith webinar from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Sept. 24, the second of a series offered by the Center for Religion and Environment of the University of the South (Sewanee), John Gatta, PhD, professor of English emeritus, will help us to look both critically and appreciatively at terms like “stewardship,” now a favored idiom for Christian faith-communities to express our ideal response to God’s Creation. What competing descriptive language also warrants our use and attention? Might other terms prove more helpful?
During the session we’ll look to draw inspiration for this inquiry not only from theologians and biblical texts, but also and especially from the imaginative works of noted American environmental writers.
Participants will be able to address these questions:
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How, from the standpoint of Christian faith, how might we best understand and describe our relation as humans to the natural environment we inhabit?
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What scriptural and other texts might help to inspire that understanding?
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In naming our place in Nature as Creation, what particular value—or limitation—might we find in language such as “stewardship of creation, “care for creation,” “membership in the community of creation,” “nonhumans as neighbors,” “the transfiguration of the world,””dominion,” and “the sacramentality of earth”?