What does your faith say about the environment? The world's faith traditions celebrate the goodness of creation and acknowledge the special position of responsibility that the Creator has established for humankind.
Many American communities of faith have issued statements, resolutions, and articles contemplating what specific actions we as people should take to care for the rest of creation.
Environmental Liturgy from Texas ELCA Tri-Synodical Conference, January 2009 (ppt)
Faith and Creation: Articles, Essays, and Poems
Verses on Creation Care
"The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it." (Genesis 2:15)
"You must keep my decrees and my laws.... And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you." (Leviticus 18:26, 28)
"You shall not pollute the land in which you live.... You shall not defile the land in which you live, in which I also dwell; for I the LORD dwell among the Israelites." (Numbers 35:33-34)
"The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants. Throughout the land that you hold, you shall provide for the redemption of the land." (Leviticus 25:23-24)
"The earth dries up and withers, the world languishes and withers, the heavens languish together with the earth. The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse devours the earth; its inhabitants suffer for their guilt." (Isaiah 24:4-6)
"Ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind." (Job 12:7-10)
For more verses on creation care click here! top of page
Faith and the Creation: Articles
"Christianity and the Survival of Creation" by Wendell Berry.
Wendell Berry is a well known poet, essayist, and farmer. This essay is taken from, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, which was published by Pantheon Books in 1993 by Wendell Berry.
Here is an excerpt from Christianity and the Survival of Creation :
"I don't think it is enough appreciated how much an outdoor book the Bible is. It is a hypaethral book, such as Thoreau talked about--a book open to the sky. It is best read and understood outdoors, and the farther outdoors the better. Or that has been my experience of it. Passages that within walls seem improbable or incredible, outdoors seem merely natural. That is because outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary, but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air, and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances, will hardly balk at the fuming of water into wine--which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is fumed into grapes."
"Will Christians Save the Planet?" by J. Matthew Sleeth, MD.
J. Matthew Sleeth, MD, is a former emergency room physician and evangelical environmental activist. Dr. Sleeth resigned from his position as chief of the medical staff and director of the ER to lecture, write, and preach about creation care and the environment. His book, Serve God, Save the Planet: A Christian Call to Action, was released by Chelsea Green Publishing (Green Gospel Books) in May 2006.
Here is an excerpt from his article "Will Christians Save the Planet?":
“When a person puts the needs of others ahead of his own, and when his words align with his actions, we call that person a moral leader. When a group of these people act in concert, without regard to personal gain, there is the promise of a movement. The force of a movement eventually leads to societal change. The members of the Evangelical Climate Initiative have begun a moral movement. For their movement to succeed, they and their organizations must take real steps to lower their environmental impact. They must hold themselves personally accountable to the world and to God.”
"Idée Fixe" by Pattiann Rogers.
Pattiann Rogers has published eleven books, most recently Firekeeper, Expanded and Revised Edition (Milkweed, 2005). Her poems have appeared in Best Spiritual Writing in 1999, 2000, 2001, and in many anthologies and textbooks. She has received two NEA Grants, A Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2005 Lannan Literary Award in Poetry, and a 1993 Lannan Poetry Fellowship, among other awards.
Here is an excerpt from the poem "Idee Fixe":
"But what I wish is that the creeping
clover, in the integrity of its own pod
and purple peas and trailing stems,
actually contained something of me.
I wish the blooming chicory held
a silent, desert-consistent assent
to my presence right in the crown
and ovary of its blue-ray blossom,
that somewhere in the sizz and chimmer
of the great crested grasshopper's paper
cymbals there were the timbre of my own voice imitating the hot,
summer nettles and mallows too."
"Are We Lagging Behind On Green Issues?" by Rabbi Yossi Ives.
Rabbi Ives is the rabbi of Richmond United Synagogue. This article was published in full on www.canfeinesharim.org in January 2004. An abridged version appeared in the Jewish Chronicle in 2004.
Here is an excerpt from "Are We Lagging Behind On Green Issues?":
"As a boy of six I was walking to shul with my father one morning and I unthinkingly tore some leaves off the hedge we were passing. In disapproval my father told me the Chassidic tale (Sefer Hatoldot-Chabad Vol XIII) of how Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak of Lubavitch as a young boy carelessly ripped a leaf of a tree and was told by his father, Rabbi Sholom Dovber, that God had his intention for that leaf and he was not to damage it unnecessarily. An almost identical story is told by Aryeh Levine about Rav Kook: "As we were walking I plucked some flower or plant: he trembled, and quietly told me that he always took great care not to pluck, unless it were for some benefit…" (Lachai Ro'i p. 15)."