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Chapter 25
Stewardship, Integrity of Creation
and Climate Justice: Religious Ethics Insights
Guillermo Kerber
Abstract
In religious ethics, Earth stewardship (ES) relates to the care for creation
and climate justice. This chapter analyses as a case study the work done by the
World Council of Churches over the last decades on environment and climate
change and relates it to other faith initiatives. It takes into account the two different
stories of creation in the Bible and their consequences in Christian thought. Listening
both to the cry of the Earth and the cry of vulnerable people and trying to respond
to them, constitute the rationale for developing actions addressed to individuals as
well as to institutions at national and international levels. Ethical and spiritual values
are presented as countercultural attitudes to confront the present development para-
digm which destroys peoples and Earth.
Keywords
Climate change Ethics Justice Religion Spirituality
The concept of Earth stewardship is at the core of religious messages. For Christians,
for instance, human beings have been put on Earth to take care of it and to look after
it as we read in the fi rst topic of the Bible, Genesis, chapter 2 verse 15. This affi rma-
tion is shared by Jewish and Muslim traditions. For these three so called Abrahamic
religions, God created the Earth (and the whole universe) and put human beings on
it to take care of it. Earth stewardship is based on this basic understanding.
But the Bible also has another creation story in chapter 1 of the topic of Genesis.
In this story, human beings are depicted as the ones who rule, control, and dominate
the Earth (Genesis 1, 26-29). This anthropocentric approach has received numerous
critiques, also from within the Christian community.
Two different views of humankind are, therefore, presented at the beginning of
the Bible. In the fi rst chapter human beings are placed on top of creation to dominate
it. In the second one, human beings are placed in creation to take care of it. Earth
stewardship, from a Christian perspective, should be understood taking into account
this tension. Though dominion, as understood in the Bible, has a different meaning
from how we understand this concept today, it needs to be recognized that in some
periods of history, the “dominion” perspective prevailed, thereby contributing to the
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