Dorothy Stang: Monkeys Cry and the Poor Die, Earth Stewardship as Liberation Ecology - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 402

27.5.1 Moral Community and Alterity

For Christianity, 3 “neighborliness” is the fountain of ethics: Who is my neighbor?
Or, Who merits moral consideration? These are questions of moral community and
alterity. Finally, then, the environmental question is that of alterity: not only how we
humans relate ourselves to other humans, but also to other living beings, their habi-
tats, landscapes and natural elements (González-Álvarez 1991 ). 4 For Christians in
the liberation tradition—although there is much to be developed here--, this is
neighborliness. Earth Stewardship in the theology of liberation will be framed by
alterity. The other nonhuman, and the “face-to-face” relation, as Dussel ( 1988 )
would say, become the deep question for Earth Stewardship and the basis of libera-
tion ecology. The parameters of moral community are widened toward an inclusive
conviviality, in which not only humans receive moral consideration, but nonhumans
also.

27.5.2 Socio-ecological Justice

This suggests that justice is the foundation of Earth Stewardship as liberation ecol-
ogy because justice deals with community and is fundamentally determined by
power relations. This also has been insisted upon by Latin American environmental-
ism, “to speak of socio-ecological justice, as two dimensions of justice” (Ramos-
Regidor 1986 , p. 109). Colombian philosophers Augusto Ángel and Felipe Ángel
( 2002 , p. 19) affi rm:

The principal diffi culty and the principal task for building an environmental society, is the
establishment of a just society. Nature comes to its end when it is undermined by social
injustice. It isn't possible to separate the unjust distribution of wealth from the enjoyment
of earthly satisfactions without producing an impact on the environment. The excessive
consumption of minority sectors on the world level and the poverty that borders on starva-
tion of the majorities, is a social fabric through which the substance of the world
evaporates.
Power, as embodied in capitalist management of science and technology, turns
the Earth into a subaltern. However the same power that reduces the Earth to natural
resources to be managed (wisely or otherwise), also reduces whole sectors of
humanity to a resource to be managed for the benefi t of powerful economic inter-
ests. Indeed this is the history of Latin America. The colonial power relationships

3 In truth there is no such thing as “Christianity.” Rather, there are many Christianities as expressed
through time and space. They all affi rm, in different ways, certain common themes, but fi nally vast
differences exist among them as to what such themes mean and how they should be understood and
lived out. My own Christian background is that of progressive Protestantism shaped by liberation
theology.
4 There is signifi cant and growing Christian literature regarding animals as part of Christian moral
community. Perhaps most notably is Linzey 1995 ; see also Bauckham 2011 .