Questoin about stewardship.

The aim of my coursework is to discuss whether Christians should be more environmentally caring than other religions, and I've been advised to incorporate the idea of Christian stewardship. However, I've looked it up and it seems to me that it is merely the Christian way of educating others and spreading God's word. Does this have anything to do with the environment, or am I just getting the wrong end of the stick?

Reply 1

brown

I think you are on the right lines. What the concept of stewardship effectively says is that God is the rightful owner of the world, but he has delegated control over it to humankind. Man has authority and dominion over animals and the environment. His task/duty is to preserve the beauty and order of the world.

Hope that's helped :smile:

Reply 2

AlphaWulf

Thanks, that should be really helpful. Guess I understand it roughly now. :wink:

Reply 3

lily_of_the_valley

oh, we did this for Religion and Ethics. Stewardship is where God gave humans the earth for their own, but we don't have dominion of it, we are simply here to look after it for God. So relating that to the environment, you could say that because we are stewards then we don't have the right to exploit all the earth's resources, because it is not our dominion. I dunno if this made any sense, but hope it has helped a bit!

Reply 4

philjw

Try http://evaneco.org/ for an 'environmentla evangelical' stance.
http://metalofheaven.blogspot.com/2007/03/stewardship.html is another evangelical blog piece but presents a view of Christian Stewardship which is more about 'optimisation' of the environment than the traditional 'preservation' of the mainstream environmental movement.

John Stott also argues the issue at length in "Issues Facing Christians Today" (London, 1984), specifically chapter 6. His main points are:

Spoiler

The only think I think Stott fails to consider is the eschatological aspect of Christian thought. That is, the earth is not going to last forever - Christians believe that followng Christ's return it will be destroyed and replaced with a new heaven and a new earth (Isaiah 65, Revelation 21) which will not be subject to decay or any environmental damage. Hence, environmental conservation ought not to be a priority above the church's main task of proclaiming the gospel to the world.