from consumerism to stewardship - santmire

7/27/2019 From Consumerism to Stewardship - Santmire

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332 Dialog: A Journal of Theology Volume 49, Number 4 Winter 2010 December

From Consumerism to Stewardship:

The Troublesome Ambiguitiesof an Attractive Option1

By H. Paul Santmire

Abstract: Problems with consumerism may lead Christians to project the idea of responsible stewardshipas an alternative. But this would be highly problematic. Although a part of many American Christiansexperience, and apparently bolstered by the authority of Jesus himself, the construct resists normativetheological definition. It is too closely allied in our culture with the spirit of capitalism and tends

to re-enforce secular understandings of private property. The construct stewardship, therefore, should beused sparingly, if at all, in church circles.

Key Terms: Stewardship, spirit of capitalism, consumerism, caring for creation, parable of the talents,parable of the unjust steward

The End of Nature

Arguably, consumerism is driving us to destruction.The BP drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico

appears to be a dramatic case in point. This isthe logic behind it: We must find the energy re-sources we think we need in order to sustain ourconsumer economy, and if that means undertakingincreasingly dangerous interventions into the earthsecosystems, so be it. The same logic, of course, alsodrives the global-warming crisis. Why not bring an-other coal-fired energy plant on line every month,if the health of the global consumer economy re-quires such energy production? Why not, likewise,keep eating high off the hog, as consumers in

developed nations regularly do, even though theproduction of meat and dairy products accountsfor 70 percent of global freshwater consumption,38 percent of total land use, and 17 percent

H. Paul Santmire is a retired ELCA pastor and theologian who helped write the ELCAs 1993 statement on the environment. His most recentbook is Ritualizing Nature: Renewing Christian Liturgy in a Time of Crisis (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008). A complete bibliography is availableon his web site: www.hpaulsantmire.net.

of the worlds greenhouse emissions?2 Where con-sumerism rules, the health of many creatures of theearth, of humankind and otherkind, apparently is atrisk.3

Those who are in the grip of such logicsome

economists, politicians, and theologians, many busi-ness leaders, and a variety of defenders of the

American way of liferarely consider its cost.Consumerism means nothing less than the threat-ened End of Nature,4 and, with that prospect,untold human dislocations and sufferings and thedestruction of many other species, as well. In thisrespect, the BP Gulf drilling disaster may be onlythe bitter foretaste of ever-greater ecological and so-cial disruptions yet to come, that is, if global con-sumerist trends are not changed dramatically and

without delay.5As a matter of course, therefore, thoughtful

Christians and many other persons of good willare seeking a better way. Enter stewardship. This is

C 2010 Wiley Periodicals and Dialog, Inc.


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From Consumerism to Stewardship H. Paul Santmire 333

the logic of that construct in its current culturalexpressions: We must manage the natural resourcesof our planet much more wisely than has beenour wont. We must urgently work for a sustainable

global society, which veers away from consumeristplundering and poisoning of the earth and thepoor of the earth. Are not we American Christians,in particular, providentially positioned, precisely inthis respect, in view of our longstanding experience

with the construct of stewardship, to make a criticaland creative contribution to our global society incrisis?

It would seem so. Give me wise stewardship in-stead of mindless consumerism any day. But I wantto utter some sober words of caution about anyrush to make stewardship the ideology of choicein our time. In doing so, I am well aware thatstewardship is one of the most sacrosanct con-structs of American church life, surely for Protes-tants. But, notwithstanding its attractiveness overconsumerism, and notwithstanding its popularity inour churches, stewardship has its own troublesomeambiguities, which we neglect at our own theolog-ical peril.

A Vocational Disclaimer

First, a vocational disclaimer. Throughout my forty-five years in the ministry, many as a parish pastor,I presided over numerous stewardship campaigns,during which I preached about grace and gratitude,mission and money. I once even ran a major capitalcampaign for a large metropolitan congregation. Iam not unaware of the realities of parish life in

America.On the other hand, during the same years I also

was struggling to champion a biblical theology ofnature, not only by producing several books andmany articles, but also by being on the circuit ina variety of church and academic settings.6 Withthat hat on, I argued that Christianity is not eco-logically bankrupt, as many critics assert. On thecontrary, in some significant respectsalthough notall, by any meansChristianity is ecologically rich.This trajectory of my calling, in contrast to my

parish leadership responsibilities, drove me to takea critical look at the concept of stewardship. Alongthe way, I grew increasingly concerned about whatappeared to be some serious dysfunctionality on the

part of the stewardship construct in the arena ofecological theology and environmental ethics.I raise this concern, I want to stress, not because

I think that stewardship of creation is a bad ideain every respect. I believe that the widespread useof that expression in the American church today isa gain, certainly compared to ideas formerly em-ployed that either did not address, or even cele-brated, the mindless exploitation of nature, often

justified in the name of consumerism. But I thinkthat the construct stewardship brings with it anumber of liabilities. I also believe that we cando better than stewardship of creation, biblicallyspeaking.

Reservations aboutStewardship

These are my reservations, as I see the situationnow. The problem seems to be that in the United

States, the term stewardship itself has such a widelyestablished usage, both in the general culture andespecially in the life of grassroots Christian congre-gations, that it resists normative theological definition.7

This is not to say that serious theologians have notwritten thoughtfully on the theme of stewardshipthey have.8 The problem is what is happening onthe ground, both in our popular culture and inthe life of grassroots Christian communities, whichoften, in this respect, are very much in tune withthe popular culture.

ExxonMobil, for example, to cite but one ofmany examples, regularly uses the language of stew-ardship in its promotional materials, which seek toexplain how that corporation is wisely using theplanets resources. That ExxonMobil also has beenthe prime funder of an anti-global-warming pro-paganda campaign in recent years, and that, asa result, the corporation was called by New YorkTimes columnist Paul Krugman an enemy of the


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planet,9 will perhaps show how elastic the conceptof stewardship is in the public domain.

This kind of public-relations material helps todefine how the language of stewardship is heard

in grassroots Christian communities in the UnitedStates and perhaps even in some scholarly circles.True, theologians and biblical scholars and preach-ers can and do point to texts like 1 Corinthians4:1, stewards of the mysteries of God, and 1 Pe-ter 4:10, Like good stewards of the manifold giftsof grace, with the intent to shape the usage of theconstruct by a theocentric theology of grace. How-ever, as I see it, sociological forces like the Exxon-Mobil propaganda keep dragging the stewardshiptheme back to human-centered (anthropocentric)and secular default meanings in general culturalusage.10

Popular discussions in church circles more of-ten than not affirm such tendencies, consciously orunconsciously. I would not want to say for surethat I have never, after more than forty-five yearsof active engagement with these matters, read any-thingcritical about the idea of stewardship in mate-rials from denominational publishing housesbutthat is my recollection. This is sobering, since per-ceptive thinkers from Aristotle to Karl Barth havemaintained that in order to say yes, one must also

say no. To affirm something, one must deny some-thing. Scores of books on stewardship by theolog-ically trained writers show signs of this yes-onlyfallacy. Often, it appears, when professors at de-nominational schools or pastors of large successfulcongregations are asked by church publishers or de-nominational stewardship offices to write books onthe subject, they dutifully do so, usually with en-thusiasm, rarely raising questions about whether thestewardship idea has any downside.11

This is not to say that there are no pub-

lic controversies hovering around the theme. Butapart from some notable exceptions (more on thispresently), such disputes tend to be about howstewardship should be applied politically, not aboutthe validity of the construct itself. It often comesdown to this: Whether church members shouldsupport wise use of the environment for the sakeof sustaining the current economic system and per-haps streamlining its functioning in a way that is

more attentive to environmental issues (the prefer-ence of the theological right), or wise use of theenvironment for the sake of addressing the needs ofthe poor around the world and preserving the earth

for the sake of all (the preference of the theologicalleft).Wise use, of course, is language that corpo-

rate interests love to employ. To be sure, no onecan rightly contest this conceptuality in the ab-stract, but from a theological perspective, that con-struct surely must be effectively shaped and cor-rected where necessary, by the full range of biblicalteachings about nature, to say nothing of biblicalconcerns for social justice.

This is not the place for a lengthy review ofthe biblical vision of the human relationship to na-ture.12 But this much needs to be said to set someparameters here. The construct stewardship of cre-ation, as the wise use discussion just indicated, ispredicated on assumptions that are inherently an-thropocentric and managerial in character, and fre-quently seem to betray little concern for nature initself. This kind of usage surely does not reflect themandate of Genesis 2, that we are to serve and pro-tect the earth (Gen 2:15) as an end in itself. Nordoes it reflect the vision of Isaiah in the temple,

when he saw that the whole earth is full of Gods

glory (Isa 6:3), that is, a world of creatures with itsown integrity in Gods eyes. The themes of servingnature as an end in itself and wondering at nature,also as an end in itself, are simply bypassed, if notexcluded, by the kind of anthropocentrism that theidea of stewardship of creation typically takes forgranted. Thus the chief concern on both sides ofthe wise use debate is how best to manipulate orexploit nature for the sake of human well-being.

Stewardship and the Authorityof Jesus

This wiseuse kind of thinking seems to have be-come a dominant fixture in the popular mind ofthe church through the influence of no less anauthority than Jesus himself (!!!). Two of Jesus


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parables regularly have been understood in thepews, if not in the pulpit, as advocating a predom-inantly managerial, exploitative approach to nature:the parable of the talents in Matthew 25, and the

parable of the unjust steward in Luke 16.In the former, the man of means hands overthe five, the two, and the one talents to his slaves,

who, in the default, popular reading, are the stew-ards. He then goes away. This easily can be readas pointing to an absent God who has given richesto his stewards to manage productively on theirown, an absent God who has harsh expectations.13

The parable then narrates how the man of meanscomes back and rejects the one-talent steward whodid not invest his money for the sake of growth:You ought to have invested my money with thebankers, and on my return I would have received

what is my own with interest (Mt 25:27).In the popular mind of American churches, this

parable then resonates with the parable of the un-just steward in Luke 16. The rich man in thisparable, suspecting financial mismanagement on thepart of the steward to whom he had delegated themanagement of his estate, asks the steward to turnin an account of your stewardship (16:2). Thesteward, according to the story, schemes with thetenantscooks the books, as we have learned to

sayand then is praised by the owner for beingso shrewd (16:8)! With these particular parables of

Jesus read in such a fashion, this becomes the de-fault meaning of stewardship in the popular mindof the church, baptized, as it were, with the au-thority of Jesus: We are called do whatever it takes tomanage the absent owners resources as productively aswe can.

That Jesus himself said many other things aboutmoney than we encounter in these two parables;that, as many interpreters have observed, more fo-

cus is given specifically to money than to any othersubject in Jesus teaching; and that, indeed, muchof Jesus teaching about money focuses on the dan-

gers of having too much of it are matters that rarelyappear in any substantive way in general cultural orspecifically theological discussions of stewardship.14

That is because, I imagine, stewardships defaultmeaning is how best to manage the wealth that youdo have, presumably for the good, not whether that

wealth might have been ill-gotten, or whether itmight somehow otherwise be a danger to you nowthat youve got it. Hence the parables of the talentsand the unjust steward as a matter of course shape

much church-stewardship thinking, rather than, say,the parable of the poor man Lazarus, in heaven,and the rich man Dives, in Hades. Stewardshipis generally about the management and the op-portunities of wealth, not about the problems of

wealth itself.

Stewardship and the Churchs Finances

All this is not unrelated to the fact that in mostAmerican congregations the time of the year whenstewardship is most extensively discussed is whenthe budget is at issue. Granted, the messages pre-sented by denominationally produced materials andby hard-pressed parish pastors often are shaped bya theocentric theology of grace: since God gives usso much, above all in Jesus Christ, but also in theblessings of creation, we cannot help but respondby giving our entire lives to God in gratitude bybeing good stewards of all the gifts we have beengiven. In recent years, such materials and relatedsermons also have been broadened to include ob-servations about the stewardship of creation.15 Buthowever nuanced the theological materials and pre-sentations might be, the people in the pews getthe message: stewardship chiefly has to do withfundraising; that is, with the economy of money,good planning, wise management, productivity, andgrowth.

It is not without significance, moreover, that thepopular church-stewardship literature and other me-dia, which is almost universally concerned withmoney, is enormous. Virtually all major reli-

gious publishing houses have their own steward-ship books, films, study guides, or web sites, as domany denominational and ecumenical centers. Atleast since the middle of the last century, more-over, most denominations have sponsored regularnational and regional conferences on the matter,and made available stewardship experts to meet

with individual congregations and their leaders. In-dependent firms, which help churches raise money,


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frequently have their own literature and other me-dia on stewardship that they provide pastors andcongregations. Sunday school materials that I haveseen over the years also have found ways to push

the stewardship-as-financial-giving theme.In church practice, then, this heavy weight isconstantly attached to the stewardship theme: man-aging money and donating money. Whatever othermeanings church teachers and preachers may try toattach to the term, that weight is felt heavily bymost church members.

Stewardship and WesternCulture

Such popular church trends, in my view, are in-tricately and inseparably related to that culturalphenomenon of the modern Western world thatMax Weber called the spirit of capitalism.16 TheWeber thesis has been contested by some schol-ars regarding particular details. But it still has itsown general suggestive power.17 Weber showed howsome of the most fundamental theological assump-tions of Calvinismthemes such as election andvocationset the stage for the rise of capitalism.18

Simplified, this was Webers thesis: The elect ofGod consciously or unconsciously seek to demon-strate to themselves or to others that they are in-deed among the elect by producing the fruits ofrighteousness, in particular the fruits of economicsuccess, by being productive and amassing wealth,all in order to glorify God. This, as a matter ofcourse, in Webers view, led to the disenchant-ment of nature, since nature had become merelythe means of production. This was the legacy of

the Protestant ethic, according to Weber.The default meaning of stewardship in America,

it seems to me, is inextricably bound up with suchcultural assumptionsabove all, the drive to amass

wealth by being wise stewards of the bounties ofGod. In this sense, the stewardship of creationhas triumphed in America, and nature has lostit has been disenchanted, objectified, made into a

world that chiefly is to be exploited for human

endsnotwithstanding the fact that the constructstewardship sounds so respectful and so affirma-tive of nature.19

A glance at the modern history of the term it-

self corroborates this kind of analysis.

20

Steward-ship emerged as a construct of import in the earlymodern era, when the English crown was appro-priating rich monastic properties and then deputiz-ing lay managers for those properties. This line ofthought, Kelly S. Johnson explains, then identifiedthe normative ethical agent a layperson who ownsdisposable wealth and [who] most likely is engagedin profitable business; which grounds the right useof money in the fundamental presupposition thatall things belong to God, but must be administeredby individual humans to honor God . . . And, fre-quently associated with these principles is the ex-pectation that the person who uses wealth in accord

with Gods intentions will be rewarded with an in-crease in wealth.21 John Wesley then gave this kindof thinking a singular focusmoney management.He called money that precious talent which con-tains all the rest.22 Wesley himself was profoundlydedicated to ministering to the poor, especially bythe sharing of wealth. But that profound dedication

was not always appropriated by his theological andcultural heirs.23

These are some of the strong historical currentsthat continue to shape usage of the term steward-ship in our era. On the one hand, many inter-preters emphasize that everything belongs to God,that is, the whole creation. On the other hand,in practice, the popular and ecclesial hearers ofsuch teaching, especially among the laity, take itfor granted that God has indeed given them theassets they now own and the wisdom to know howto use, profit from, and in some measure, share

what is rightfully theirs. The recurring motif that

God is a kind of absent landlord only strength-ens the notion in the popular mind that what hasbeen given to them by God is theirs. The standardemphasis on tithing, giving 10 percent of your in-come to God, seems to have had the same ef-fect, with only a slightly different calculus. In thisinstance, the assumption on the ground seems tohave been: 90 percent of what God gives me ismine.


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Call this the ambiguity of theory and practice.The theory is that everything is Gods. The practiceis that everything I ownor at least 90 percent ofitis my property to use as I see fit. Which will it

be then, God or mammon? The term stewardshipseems to encompass both allegiances, in practice, ifnot in theory. In this respect, the churchs publicdiscourse on stewardship at the present seems tohave very little, if any, countercultural substance.On the contrary, more often than not the churchsdiscourse appears to reinforce popular culturalvalues.

Conclusion: Restricting the Use

of Stewardship

All of which is to say that the construct steward-ship is indeed fraught with troublesome ambigui-ties. We still await a major critical historical studyof the subject.24 In the absence of such a study, Ibelieve that we are probably best advised to avoiduse of the term altogether, insofar as that is possi-ble, when it comes to constructively discussing thetheology of nature and ecojustice issues.25 It seemsprudent for anyone who writes or speaks aboutecology and ecojustice issues not to use the term atall, insofar as that is humanly possible in a world

where that construct is so dearly treasured.I would advise parish pastors, in particular, to do

the same, perhaps restricting the word stewardshipfor use in church financial contexts only, and invok-ing terms like earthcare and wonder and ecojustice indiscussions of nature and the environmental crisis.26

I would also recommend to all concerned to giveserious consideration to employing the construct

partnership with nature, which I have proposedin various contexts, rather than stewardship.27 Part-nership, I believe, reflects biblical thinking aboutsuch matters, including the biblical approach tohuman dominion, much more adequately thanstewardship does.

Above all, I think we should resist the temp-tation to seize on stewardship as a way to ad-dress the problems bequeathed to us by the rav-

ages of contemporary consumerism. That would betoo quick a fix. Indeed, stewardship, at least asfar as its general usage is concerned, seems to bevery much at home in the culture of consumerism.

Who doesnt want to manage his or her own wealthwisely? That way one can continue to buy things asoften and as much as one wishes, as well as shareones wealth as generously as one might want todo, from time to time.

The time may come, to be sure, the right time,a historic kairos for the church, when the teachersand preachers and other leaders of the church maysimply have to decide to say no across the board:to argue theologically at the grass roots level thatstewardship has totally lost its usefulness, that it isunambiguously a sign of the churchs cultural cap-tivity, and that it should therefore be publicly re-

jected and abandoned, even in the arena of churchfundraising. That would be a challenging under-taking, given the fact that stewardship has becomesuch a major theological industry in virtually alldenominations.28 So I am arguing that, for imme-diate purposes, we should restrict the use of theconstruct, not abandon it altogether.

That I am in this respect suggesting that congre-gations may, for the time being, choose for prag-matic reasons to continue to run their stewardship

campaigns could sound like special pleading by anold parish pastor. Perhaps it is. But, in my own ex-perience, I have found it possible to live with thatcontradiction: on the one hand, to teach Chris-tians how the Bible wants us to join in the praiseof all creation and to care for all the creatures ofthe earth, especially for the voiceless; and, on theother hand, to support congregational fundraisingcampaigns every fall, using the language of stew-ardship, in order to support the mission of thechurch and its vision of hope and justice for all

creatures.

Endnotes

1. Some of the materials in this essay appeared in a different form inmy book, Ritualizing Nature: Renewing Christian Liturgy in a Time of Crisis(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008), 251-258.


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2. According to a 2010 UN report. See Christian Century 127:13(June 29, 2010): 9.

3. I think that this statement can stand for itself, even if a more de-tailed analysis of consumerism would surely have to address the dynamicsof globalization, and the arguments by many of its advocates that con-sumer demand in the U.S. has the effect of creating jobs for the poor

in developing nations. To bend a phrase, if consumerism floats all boats,that doesnt really help when all the water is drying up. On globalization,see Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda, Healing a Broken World: Globalization andGod (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002).

4. Bill McKibben, The End of Nature (New York: Random House,1989).

5. Consumerism is obviously a much more complex phenomenonthan I am indicating here. Other essays in this edition of Dialog willundoubtedly show this to be the case. One issue that is related to theconcerns expressed in this essay, for example, is the question of hu-man identity in a consumerist society. The problem is not just whatconsumerism does to the world around us, our earthly biosphere, in par-ticular, and to the poor of the earth, although that is critically important.The problem is also what it does to those of us who are caught up inthe dynamics of consuming. Who are we? We are consumers. Thus we

are no longer primarily citizens, patients, or believers; we are now pri-marily consumers of political, medical, or religious goods and servicesIconsume, therefore I am. This, of course, works to lock us into globalconsumerist structures.

6. For a biographical and bibliographical narrative, see my reflections,Ecology, Justice, Liturgy: A Theological Autobiography, Dialog 48:3 (fall2009): 267-278.

7. Although widely used, the term stewardship is difficult to definewith any precision. That a scholarly article on stewardship a few yearsago distinguished between hard, soft, and agricultural stewardship showshow difficult it is make any clear use of the construct (John L. Paterson,Environmental Ethics 25:1 [spring 2003]: 43-58). Likewise for a recentlypublished major compendium of articles on environmental stewardship:

While its twenty-six chapters do not propose twenty-six different defini-tions of the term, the definitions used in this volume are manifold and

sometimes contradictory (J. Berry, ed., Environmental Stewardship: CriticalPerspectives: Past and Present [New York: T & T Clark, 2006]).

8. See, for example, the two sophisticated works by Douglas JohnHall, The Steward: A Biblical Image Come of Age (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,1990) and Imaging God: Dominion as Stewardship (Grand Rapids: Eerd-mans, 1986); and John Reumanns careful biblical study, Stewardship andtheEconomyof God(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992). More recently, in hisbook Ecologies of Grace: Environmental Ethics and Christian Theology (New

York: Oxford, 2008), chap. 4, Willis Jenkins has argued that the wholeof the venerable Karl Barths theology has bequeathed to us a strong ethicof stewardship. In what respect, if at all, such scholarly investigations areshaping grassroots Christian understandings of stewardship is unclear.

9. Paul Krugman, An Enemy of the Planet, New York Times, April17, 2006.

10. Such meanings are taken for granted, strikingly, even in the

hallowed halls of professional sports, and this is revealing in its own way.Thus a businessman from California, who presided over the $450-millionpurchase of the Golden States Warriors basketball team told a reporter: Iam incredibly excited to have the opportunity to be the next steward ofthis storied NBA franchise. This is my dream come true. ( Boston Globe,

July 16, 2010, p. C3). It seems that everybody knows what stewardshipmeans and everybody, or almost everybody, wants to be a good steward,especially when it comes to success and profitability.

11. This is even true of one of the most theologically sophisticatedcollections of essays on the subject available, Contemporary Perspec-tives on Stewardship and Tithing, Currents in Theology and Mission 36:5(October 2009). All the essayists in this volume take it as a given that

the construct stewardship is a very good idea, and they reason fromthat point, in different directions. Likewise for the moving address by thepresident of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, Pennsyl-vania, Michael L. Cooper-White, Christian Stewardship in Light of theTheology of the Cross, Dialog 48:2 (summer 2009): 202-206, whichties stewardship not only to the theology of the cross, but even to liber-

ation theology! My worry is that the construct is so freighted with othermeanings that it will not float, even when it is buoyed up with suchother uplifting theological constructs.

12. I have discussed this in a number of writings over the years. See,most recently, Ritualizing Nature, chapters 9 and 10, and the literaturecited there.

13. One of the better, popular introductions to stewardship isthe prospectus produced by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in

America, Make It Simple: Stewardship 101 (http://www2.elca.org/stewardship/makeitsimple/). This prospectus explains that in the first cen-tury the steward, the economos, was entrusted with the day-to-day affairsfor the entire estate, and that this became important when the owner

was absent (p. 2). This is precisely part of the problem with the idea ofstewardship, from the first century onward: the idea of an absent owner.

14. See the discussion by Klyne Snodgrass, Jesus and MoneyNo

Place to Hide and No Easy Answers, Word and World 30:2 (spring 2010):135-143.

15. Thus the theme of stewardship of creation is addressed through-out the essays in the aforementioned collection, Contemporary Perspec-tives on Stewardship and Tithing, Currents in Theology and Mission 36:5(October 2009).

16. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (NewYork: Scriber, 1958).

17. To pursue this discussion, see Jere Cohen, Protestantism and Cap-italism: the Mechanisms of Influence (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2002).

18. Regarding Calvins theology, as the fountainhead of these tenden-cies, cf. the illuminating commentary of Susan E. Schreiner, The Theatreof His Glory: Nature and the Natural Order in the Thought of John Calvin(Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1991), 111: In the Reformers thought

there is a release of energy. Calvins doctrine of predestination, the cer-tainty of salvation, spiritual combat, and sanctification directed Christiansoutward toward the world. The elect are turned toward creation for thegood of the neighbour, the upbuilding of the church, and the restorationof society. Concepts of order, stewardship, service, charity, equity, and

justice governed Calvins ethic and demonstrate the high evaluation heplaces on the active, ordered, and sanctified activity of the Christian life.

19. American attitudes to nature have been much more complexthan I can discuss here. On the one hand, many Americans have beenpassionately dedicated to the manipulation and exploitation of the natural

world, for the sake of progress. On the other hand, and in significantmeasure in response to the first trend, some Americans have continuallytried to find ways to try to escape from the ways of civilization, thusunderstood, particularly from the alleged impurity and stultification ofmodern urban life and its technologies, in order to get back to thealleged purities and renewing powers of the natural world, particularly the

wilderness. (See my discussion in Brother Earth: Nature, God, and Ecologyin a Time of Crisis [New York: Thomas Nelson, 1970], chaps. 1 and 2.)Stewardship discourse in America has, as a matter of course, found itshome in the cultural milieu that has been shaped mainly by the firsttrend. The second trend has eschewed intervention in the natural worldof any kind and has celebrated contemplation of nature, particularly wildnature, in the tradition of Henry David Thoreau.

20. For this material, see Kelly S. Johnson, The Fear of Beggars: Stew-ardship and Poverty in Christian Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007),especially chapter 3.

21. Ibid., 84.


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22. Ibid., 84f.

23. A Methodist business executive I once knew had a three-by-fivecard under the glass cover of his desk with these bolded printed wordsfrom Wesleys famous Sermon 50, on the uses of money: Make all youcan. Save all you can. Give all you can. For the affluent, what dosuch sentiments actually mean in practice? The cost of discipleship?

Or perhaps something more akin to what has come to be called TheProsperity Gospel?

24. The promise of such historical study of stewardship has alreadybeen shown, in a preliminary way, by Kelly S. Johnsons aforementioned

work. See also the instructive brief analysis by Larry Rasmussen, EarthCommunity/Earth Ethics (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1997), 230-236.

25. I am instructed here by the practice of Paul Tillich, when hediscussed the theology of sin, especially in his preaching. Tillich recom-mended that, since the construct sin is so convoluted and misconstruedin our culture, it should best be avoided altogether. (Tillich suggestedthat theologians should use the term estrangement instead of sin.)

26. An exemplary step in this direction was already taken in

the August 28, 1993, social statement of the Evangelical LutheranChurch in America, Caring for Creation: Vision, Hope, and Justice(http://www.elca.org/socialstatements/environment/). In this statement,the language of caring for creation and justice for all creatures has moreor less replaced the discourse of stewardship. That this kind of con-ceptuality has found some kind of a home in the churchs institutional

life is further indicated by the thoughtful and thought-provoking June28, 2010, pastoral letter on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill by the ELCAspresiding bishop, Mark S. Hanson (http:www.elca.org/Who-We-Are/Our-Three-Expressions/Churchwide-Organization/Office-of-the-Presiding-Bishop/Messages-and-Statements.aspx). Hanson avoids the stewardshipconceptuality altogether.

27. Most recently in my book Ritualizing Nature, chap. 10.

28. Soberingly, the American Catholic Churchat the grass roots,although not so much at the level of the bishopsis now ap-parently trying to catch up to long-established Protestant stew-ardship fundraising practices and exploring the theological rationalefor those practices. For this, see Johnson, The Fear of Beggars,145-51.


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