Creation Care Discipleship
Why Earthkeeping Is an Essential Christian Practice
About
Although our planet faces numerous ecological crises, including climate change, many Christians continue to view their faith as primarily a "spiritual" matter that has little relationship to the world in which we live. But Steven Bouma-Prediger contends that protecting and restoring our planet is part and parcel of what it means to be a Christian.
Making his case from Scripture, theology, and ethics and including insights from the global church, Bouma-Prediger explains why Christians must acknowledge their identity as earthkeepers and therefore embrace their calling to serve and protect their home planet and fellow creatures. To help readers put an "earthkeeping faith" into practice, he also suggests numerous practical steps that concerned believers can take to care for the planet.
Bouma-Prediger unfolds a biblical vision of earthkeeping and challenges Christians to view care for the earth as an integral part of Christian discipleship.
1. Overture: Why Read This Book
Biblical Meditation: Water, Water Everywhere
2. Beginning and Ending with Rivers and Trees: The Biblical Vision of Earthkeeping
Biblical Meditation: God Remembers and the Earth Re-membered
3. Humble Humans in a Holy World: Learning from Theology and Ethics
Biblical Meditation: Lightning and Wind, Hawk and Vulture, Behemoth and Leviathan
4. Ecumenical Insights: Wisdom from the Global Church
Biblical Meditation: I Am the Good Shepherd
5. Christian Faith in Action: Living What We Believe
Biblical Meditation: Peace Be with You
6. Yearning for Shalom: Becoming Aching Visionaries
Indexes
Endorsements
"Over many years, Steven Bouma-Prediger has been a leading voice charting the way for earthkeeping as an essential Christian practice. Now in his latest wide-ranging book, Creation Care Discipleship, we are treated to a distillation of the wisdom he has acquired along the way. Read it and let it inspire you to love the world that God loves and has chosen to make his abiding home."
Norman Wirzba, Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Theology, senior fellow, Kenan Institute for Ethics, Duke Divinity School
"I was twenty-one years old when I read my first Steven Bouma-Prediger book. I remember the moment as if it were yesterday. For the first time in my life, I was seeing someone connect the dots between loving Jesus and caring for creation. I had no idea they could go together. From that moment on--from doing a PhD on the topic to writing three books to founding an urban farm on our property--my life has been a sequence of events reverberating from reading this brilliant thinker. This book will have the same effect on a whole new generation. I can't commend it enough. Indeed, caring for the earth isn't merely part of discipleship. Caring for the earth is discipleship."
A. J. Swoboda, associate professor of Bible, theology, and world Christianity; Bushnell University; author of After Doubt
The Author
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© Hope College Steven Bouma-Prediger
Steven Bouma-Prediger (PhD, University of Chicago) is the Leonard and Marjorie Maas Professor of Reformed Theology at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. He also oversees the Environmental Studies minor and cochairs the Campus Sustainability Advisory Committee....
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