Our Father's World: Mobilizing the Church to Care for Creation Book

With fewer than 200 pages, Our Father's World is a handbook individuals, groups, classes, or committees could study to increase their own awareness and participation in caring for all creation as well as helping create opportunities for others around them to do so. Ed Brown cautions us the environmental crisis is a crisis of population, of prosperity, of poverty, and of spirituality. He essentially writes from and to a North American context, yet clearly describes an interdependent world where contentment with micro living space in one city effectively may degrade waters and forests in another country some distance away. Although he does not propose a one-size-fits-all creation care and environmental stewardship solution, the author wisely says we need to get beyond apparent symptoms. He describes creation as "sacred" rather than divine [page 49], creation itself as sacred worship space--a theme presented at several points in the book. I especially enjoyed chapter 8 on "Creation-Caring Worship," with suggestions as to how we can sing and pray alongside creation.

The book is in two basic sections: The Message, "Why the Church Must Care for Creation"; and The Mission, "Mobilizing the Church to Care for Creation," and without a doubt, we need to do this together. I love his words at the end of chapter 6, Ambassadors of Redemption: "It's this very hybrid character of the church that allows it to bring something unique to the real problems of the environmental crisis. The church can deliver spiritual power to practical problems."

Brown comes from a relatively conservative evangelical background rather than a fundamentalist or mainline one, but I cannot imagine any person of any or no faith tradition not appreciating his analysis and his ideas for helping solve the crisis. This is a book for all generations!