All God's Creatures

The predominant “stewardship model” of creation is the result of an intentional effort to correct approaches that reinforce human sovereignty and the resulting environmental degradation. However, as the first part of this book argues, the stewardship model actually operates under many of the same problematic presuppositions and therefore does not offer a correction but rather reinscribes the very same pitfalls. After close analysis of the stewardship model, this book identifies scriptural, theological, and philosophical sources to support the adoption of a “kinship” or “community of creation” model. This book then proposes the concept of “planetarity” as a framework for conceiving the relationship between human and nonhuman creation, and the Creator, in a new way. This theoretical framework is grounded by a retrieval of the medieval Franciscan tradition. Several distinctive characteristics of the Franciscan tradition offer key constructive contributions, among these are the foundational sense of the interrelatedness, mutuality, and intended harmony of creation within the early spiritual texts and later Franciscan theological and philosophical writings. The result is what can be called a postcolonial Franciscan theology of creation imagined in terms of planetarity and reconceived in a constructive and nonanthropocentric response to the need for a new conceptualization of the doctrine of creation.