Tenants, not owners
The Earth is alive to us, but not because it is a god. It is alive because it is the work of one — created, sustained, and held in being moment to moment by God, and therefore charged with a worth we did not assign and cannot revoke. We are the stewardship theists, and our posture toward creation is the oldest job description in the book: to till and to keep, as tenants who will be asked how we left the place.
This cuts two ways, and we mean both. Against the pure extractors, it says the Earth is not ours to use up; dominion
was never a license to plunder, and reading it that way was a sin our own tradition committed and must own. Against the deep ecologists, it draws a line: we revere creation, we do not worship it, because reverence aimed at the creature instead of the Creator loses the very ground of the worth it’s trying to defend. Laudato Si’ put it plainly — the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor are one cry.
We stand near the indigenous practitioners on reciprocity, and we’ll grant the technologists their tools — stewardship without competence is just sentiment.
Where we concede ground: Christians spent centuries reading subdue the earth
as permission to wreck it, and we supplied theology for the plunder.
What would change our mind: If a stewardship ethic proved no better for the land than secular management — though for us the obligation would remain regardless.
Read the full synthesis: What changes when you treat the Earth as alive?