Loving the Earth
We have located our "Loving the Earth" information under "Love Our Neighbor," but it could easily go in the other categories, too. By placing it here, we acknowledge that the creation is our neighbor, as well as our host. Loving the environment and protecting it is central to our calling as Christians, as are stewarding the creation and examining our behaviors toward it. We take from the land for food and sustainability, but we also need to be good stewards, not exploiting God's creation. The present moment is a critical and urgent one, filled with both challenge and opportunity to act as individuals, citizens, leaders and communities of faith in solidarity with God's good creation and in hope for our shared future.
Read ELCA Presiding Bishop Elizabeth A. Eaton's pastoral statement on creation care and climate solutions to ensure a viable, livable world.
This "God's work. Our hands." video, produced in collaboration with ecoAmerica, shows how the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is making a difference on climate solutions, and why we should all work to care for Creation.
ecoAmerica’s Blessed Tomorrow program is a faith community initiative that empowers climate action and advocacy. The ELCA has collaborated on this program by people of faith, for people of faith, offering ideas, tools, and language that are familiar, compelling and effective in addressing climate change. It provides resources that put us on a path to a positive future while maintaining the distinct voice of the ELCA.
Lutherans Restoring Creation is a grassroots movement promoting care for creation in the ELCA.
Caring for Creation is a social statement explaining the ELCA’s teachings on ecology and the environment, grounded in a biblical vision of God's intention for the healing and wholeness of creation. This statement provides a Christian understanding of the human role to serve in creation, and a hope rooted in God’s faithfulness to the creation from which humans emerge and depend upon for sustaining life. It provides a framework for understanding the human role in creation, the problem of sin and the current environmental crisis. Caring for Creation expresses a call to pursue justice for creation through active participation, solidarity, sufficiency and sustainability, and states the commitments of the ELCA for pursuing wholeness for creation — commitments expressed through individual and community action, worship, learning, moral deliberation and advocacy. You can read or download the full social statement Caring for Creation: Vision, Hope and Justice here: SOCIAL STATEMENT (EN)
Learn more about the ELCA's environmental commitment from our advocacy resources.