I was driving to a different church at a different time today, and happened to hear this wonderful program called "Speaking of Faith" on our NPR station. I almost stayed in the car to listen to the rest, but figured I'd go on in to teach Sunday school as planned.
They interviewed Cal DeWitt, an environmental studies prof (and Christian) at U of Wisconsin as well as Majora Carter, who works to revitalize the South Bronx. I've heard Carter speak before, and she's great, but I hadn't heard of DeWitt. It's worth a listen.
One startling revelation from DeWitt was that the word "environment" came from Chaucer's "environing." He created the word, and it led, for the first time in Western language, to a concept of creation without humans implicit within the creation. This development allowed us to begin to talk about "that environment" rather than "the creation we are a part of." It seems that he prefers the phrase "creation care" to "environmentalism," not because of the negative connotations of the latter in churchy circles, but because it brings back an appropriate doctrine of humans being part of what God created.
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