Leigh Edwards, The Living Church’s first junior fellow, is in Canterbury attending a two-week conference for young seminarians and clergy. This is one of her posts on what she is experiencing and learning. Follow her regular posts at Reviving Hope.

Beside worship, prayer and meals, the “main activity” for this conference is hour-long classes or discussions scattered three or four throughout the day. I hope to write more about our courses to encourage discussion on your part as well as to sift through my own thoughts. There is a chosen topic for our talks for this two week that certainly took me aback. The topic is care of creation.

Father Ed introduced the topic with the five marks of mission for the Anglican Communion:

1. To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom.
2. To teach, baptize and nurture new believers.
3. To respond to human need by loving service.
4. To seek to transform unjust structures of society.
5. To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth.

The first question asked about the marks of mission list was: Is there priority of one of these marks over the other? Father Ed smiled and responded that such a question was part of the controversy and discussion over the marks. In my mind, there certainly was some sort of primacy. It seemed like the first mark necessitated the rest of them, most likely in the order of appearance. The latter four seem like corollaries of the first, albeit absolutely necessary corollaries. Let me share some of my own background regarding this topic.

I spent a summer in college working with migrant farmworkers in North Carolina. The experience began to open my eyes that caring for people was very much a relational issue as well as a societal issue. Many of the reasons for the current situation of the men I encountered had to do with the way others transformed the land they came from as well as the way an expectation of abundant, underpriced food transformed the land and work in the United States. In other words, I learned that the state of the earth has everything to do with “loving one’s neighbor,” the mandate given to us as Christians. However, I also left the experience with a bittersweet taste in my mouth, questioning the tactics and lengths that some of the people I encountered went to prove one “side” right or wrong. Somewhere along the way, the ministry portion was lost.

I spent my first semester in divinity school doing work for a young law professor on why some Christians had strong hesitations concerning the environmental movement (cf. the religious Acton Institute). I found reasons based on strong theology as well as weak theology: concerns about the place of people in creation care and about the idolization of creation reigned. What struck me the most was how much of the environmental literature reflected the language of mission and hope of salvation found in the Church. Both experiences led me to consider that proper creation care must also have everything to do with “loving God.” What this looks like and how far it goes are the questions we are discussing this week.

The problem with creation care is that issues such as these have been transformed into political polemics. This was the hesitation with the list from most involved. Certainly, you could take away all four marks and the first would stand alone. However, I was completely hesitant to say that the last four could stand alone. The question that we are being pressed on, though, is: Can the Good News of Jesus be proclaimed without responsible care for the earth? Or does recent emphasis on creation care distract from proclaiming the Gospel?

Those who spoke up were from around the world. A couple of priests from African nations spoke up with the same concerns those of us from Australia and the United States had: far too often we have seen issues of creation care, or justice, separated from the worship of God and used as political tools. Moreover, two asked, is environmental concern not just a “Western” concern? People in many places are desperate for jobs, food and water, not for concern about an inanimate mountain or an animal species. A profound skepticism was first introduced into the room, myself among the skeptics. The Episcopal Church itself, of course, is no stranger to the problem of a “justice gospel” or “environmental gospel” in which the language of Eden, sin, apocalypse and salvation rest in human hands rather than in the story of God.

I will fill you in on later talks we have had, but will first offer a few observations on the topic and its relevance and appropriateness to a conference such as this. Though I was concerned at first about the topic choice, I have to come to appreciate it. First, exploring creation theology addresses many of the rifts that the Communion experiences, including sexual ethics. (Also, see my interview with David Taylor about art and creation.)

Moreover, Christians simply cannot understand Jesus, our salvation or God’s work in the world without going deep into creation theology. Again, a temptation is to understand the gospel as otherworldly, but our God is about as materialistic as it gets: he himself became incarnate and creature not to save us from materiality but to redeem it. Watered down versions of gnosticism still run strong in the Church. A proper understanding of humanity, Jesus and God’s chosen gift of creation is absolutely fundamental to Christianity. Finally, creation theology, because of its polemics, is often avoided in study of Gospel and theology. To use it as an entryway into the good news is refreshing and allows me to explore the gospel from a perspective I have yet to explore. I am quite excited to share more with you about where our discussions have gone.