Christian Stewardship as a Worldview and a Whole-Person Way of Life

      Important ideas, spanning a wide range of life experiences, are summarized by Keith Miller — who "views stewardship as a comprehensive concept including all aspects of practical living and the life of the mind" — in his overview of Christian Stewardship as a Worldview.
      This is a website for whole-person education, and a whole person lives in a way that effectively integrates all aspects of life.  How?  Cal DeWitt explains the mutual interactions between scientia (How does the world work?), ethics (What ought to be?), and praxis (Then what must we do?) in The Professor and the Pupil: Addressing Secularization and Disciplinary Fragmentation in Academia.  (brief summary plus full article)
      The homepage about WORLDVIEW EDUCATION FOR CHRISTIAN LIVING ends by stating that "fully living a Christian worldview involves a CHRISTIAN STEWARDSHIP of everything in life, including time, opportunities, relationships, knowledge, money, abilities, resources, environment,..."  Each of these aspects of life — our time,..., environment,... — are explored below, in our stewardshipS of OPPORTUNITIES and THE CREATION.
 
 

• Christian Stewardship of OPPORTUNITIES

      When it's developed more thoroughly (probably in late 2008) this "opportunities" section will be an extension of Worldview Education for Christian Living, and will include:
      TIME — "do not squander time, for it's the stuff life is made of," said Ben Franklin;  general principles and practical strategies are in Using Your Time Effectively plus applications for Christians including & leisure time & [more links will be here later];
      KNOWLEDGE — improving our understanding of the world, which we believe (based on Judeo-Christian scriptures) was designed and created by God, can be a valuable ministry for Jews and Christians (*);  we'll look at scholarship (in all areas, including science and technology) as a religious vocation, and ethics (in our vocations and our overall use of knowledge);  CHRISTIANS IN SCIENCE   {* Due to our shared foundation of Judeo-Christian scriptures and beliefs, Jews and Christians have many similarities in our worldviews, but this area is about Christian stewardship so that will be our focus. }
      MONEY — financial resources can be useful in achieving practical goals, and economic considerations are usually an important part of deciding what to do and how, in our efforts to be better stewards;
      RELATIONSHIPS — according to Jesus, the second greatest commandment is to "love your neighbor as you love yourself."  One way to love people is to "go and make disciples of all nations."  Another is to love people by serving them, by helping them meet their practical needs, as in SERVING THE POOR BY USING SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY.   { What is the greatest commandment? }
 
 

• Christian Stewardship of THE CREATION

      God's Creation includes people (the focus in "relationships" above) and our environment (the focus below).
      What can we do to improve the quality of our environment, now and in the future? (to lessen pollution, lessen our negative impacts on the earth, help the earth be more capable of sustaining us, meet the energy demands of our modern lifestyle, decrease the harmful effects of climate changes, and more)
 

Our Environment — Christian Views & Actions

      In Preparing the Way for Action (1994), Cal DeWitt describes Stumbling Blocks [for Christians] to Creation's Care and Keeping:  "While convicted by environmental degradation and scriptural teachings on environmental stewardship, we may find ourselves hesitating to do what must be done.  Stumbling blocks and pitfalls often prevent Christians from engaging in stewardly care and reconciliation of creation.  Once identified and recognized, these things need no longer stand in our way, and we can proceed to act on our knowledge and beliefs about creation and the environment."  And more recently, two interviews with Cal DeWitt in 2006 — by Buzzsaw Haircut and Gristmill — and a talk (mp3).
      In Cultural Transformation and Conservation (2006), Fred Van Dyke describes Growth, Influence, and Challenges for the Judeo-Christian Stewardship Environmental Ethic:  "In a period of less than thirty years, the Judeo-Christian tradition was transformed from being perceived by scientific and popular culture as the cause of the ecologic crisis to being viewed as a major contributor to its solution.  The increasing attention and respect given to the Judeo-Christian environmental stewardship ethic is in large part a result of careful scholarship and effective activism in environmental ethics and conservation by the Christian community."
      Or you can begin with introductory overviews of THE ENVIRONMENT: CHRISTIAN VIEWS & ACTIONS [this links-page will be developed by mid-August 2008].
 

Our Environment — Reducing Pollution

• {soon, by mid-August 2008, there will be an introductory web-page here, and more resources below}
• At the annual meeting of ASA in 2000, "The second plenary speaker...was Susan Drake Emmerich, a Christian anthropologist who became involved in Tangier Island, a closed island subculture...in the Chesapeake Bay with a population of about eight hundred people.  Susan spoke of the way in which she was able to become accepted by the Tangier fishing community.  The watermen would indiscriminately pollute the bay with trash and oil.  Susan convinced them to enter into a covenant to preserve the bay by changing their waste disposal habits.  She did this by appealing to their already-established beliefs, connecting in their minds their faith in Jesus (their Pilot on the water) with their caring for his creation." (from the ASA Newsletter)  You can learn more about this fascinating story in her own words and from NOAA Coastal Services.
 

Our Environment — Energy Resources

• Alternative Energy Sources (plus Energy Conservation) was the theme of ASA's annual meeting in 2005.  [the meeting-abstracts will soon be available here, by mid-August 2008]
• Kennell Touryan, in his presidential address at ASA's meeting in 2003, emphasized the need for productive action to cope with a variety of problems, including energy balance in a future with increasing demand and decreasing supplies, plus highlights and abstracts from our annual meeting in 2005 which was devoted to energy conservation and alternative energy sources.
 

Our Environment — Climate Change (global warming)

• The Evangelical Climate Initiative has a small website that's easy to explore, with a statement (Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action), FAQ, Resources (with Fact Sheets, a presentation by Sir John Houghton,…), and an Invitation to Take Action (things you can do).
• The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) issued a press release and statement about global warming in January 2007.
• In July 2006, before this bold move, Tamara Hardison criticized the NAE for its "do nothing" policy, and in the evangelical community there is still some opposition to a "do something" approach, as you can see in reports by CNN & Washington Post about the NAE meeting in March 2007.
• ASA does not take an official position on this issue, but I think most of our members agree with the prepared remarks of Randy Isaac (Executive Director of ASA) at the NAE press conference.
 
 

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      ACTIONS OF ASA — when it's more fully developed in mid-August 2008 — will describe papers (in our journal) and talks (in our meetings) and actions (in our lives) about caring for what God has created.

      EDUCATION:  We'll look at a variety of approaches to Stewardship Education.  For example, the creative use of CASE STUDIES can stimulate motivation (if students can see that what they're learning has interesting applications in real life) and encourage critical analytical thinking (when simple answers aren't satisfactory because the situations are complex);  later, this area will include links to strategies for using case studies to bring Christian stewardship into classes for science and engineering.
 

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SOME COMMENTS ABOUT THE FUTURE OF THIS "STEWARDSHIP" AREA OF THE WEBSITE:

      I.O.U.
      Later, all of the sections above will be connected by an introduction describing the general principle that because we love God, we should be loving and serving what God has created, including people and the environment we share;  Christian stewardship is the outworking of this responsibility.
      Each section will offer pages on several levels — with introductory stories (like those you might see in a newspaper), overviews (to provide condensed summaries of important ideas, as in Cliffs Notes), and explorations (for increased depth and breadth) — for a variety of topics.

      A REQUEST FOR HELP
      In order to find high-quality pages at each level for many topics, I (the editor for Whole-Person Education) will need help, and hopefully much of the creative work — in deciding what to do and how, and then finding and selecting high-quality resources — can be done by those who are more expert than myself, who know more about each topic-area, and also know "who is doing what" and who has written good pages about it.