Earth care has become a central tenet of reconciliation with creation.
5. Quoted in Allan Effa, “The Greening of Mission,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 32, no. 4 (2008): 171. 6. Quoted in Ibid., 173. 7. See Dana L. Robert, Christian Mission: How Christianity Became a World Religion (Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 110–113; Willis Jenkins, “Missiology in Environmental Context: Tasks for an Ecology of Mission,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 32, no. 4 (2008): 176–84. 8. See Robert Schreiter’s writings on reconciliation, including Schreiter, Reconciliation: Mission and Ministry in a Changing Social Order (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1992), and The Ministry of Reconciliation: Spirituality and Strategies (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1998).
that Jesus died to restore the wholeness of creation. Over the past thirty years, all major branches of Christianity have thought about what it means to extend the saving work of Christ beyond individual human redemption. Pope John Paul II declared the great missionary St. Francis of Assisi the patron saint of ecology in 1979. John Paul II called for laity to draw upon the power of the resurrection “to restore to creation all its original value.”5 In 1989, mainline Protestants and Orthodox, through the World Council of Churches, embraced the ideas of “justice, peace, and the integrity of creation” as intrinsic to the nature of mission. In 2004, evangelical leaders met at Sandy Cove [Ministries in North East, Maryland] and pledged to advance God’s reign by making “creation care a permanent dimension of our Christian discipleship.”6 Recent opinion polls of evangelical Protestants show that Earth care is one of their top five priorities. Across many traditions, Christians in the twenty-first century believe that the wholeness and reconciliation desired by God include creation. Human beings have a special obligation to take care of what God has created. Mission work has always been concerned with the Earth. The “father of Protestant missions,” William Carey, helped found a botanical garden in India along with translating the Bible into Bengali and other languages. Many
generations of agricultural missionaries have focused on sustainable agriculture for the support of the people. Medieval missionaries in Holland built dikes to reclaim land from the sea. In the 1900s, Protestant missionaries collected plant specimens and studied deforestation and conservation of water resources. Mission schools often held annual “arbor days” during which students went out to plant trees. Missionaries have defended local land rights and sustainable land policies, even at the cost of their lives.7 . . . The mission of reconciliation begins with God’s saving work in Jesus Christ. Secure in the knowledge that God is the source of wholeness and unity, followers of Jesus around the world witness to renewed relationships between God and humanity, among human beings, and between humanity and God’s creation. The mission of reconciliation involves hard work and learning many skills, including those of peace-building, conflict transformation, justice-seeking, and Earth care. But as Robert Schreiter points out, reconciliation is more a “spirituality” than a “strategy.”8 To be an “ambassador of Christ” requires first and foremost being a person united with God in prayer. X Excerpted from Joy to the World! Mission in the Age of Global Christianity © 2010 Women’s Division, The General Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church. X Online Extra Read more of Dana Robert’s work on the history—and future—of misson at www.bu.edu/cgcm.
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