Creation Care(s): How the Earth Keeps Us in Our Earthkeeping

Typical approaches to Christian creation care focus on humanity’s role as earthkeepers. While human earthkeeping is a sacred and urgent responsibility, our relationship with the earth is more dynamic, responsive, and reciprocal than this responsibility often implies. In reality, we are entangled with the earth and other-than-humans creatures in ways that can tend or hurt our lives just as much as we can tend or hurt other creatures and our shared home. A more robust vision of earthkeeping and creation care, therefore, includes the various ways in which creation cares for us as we embrace our role and place within the whole community of heaven and earth.

Kinship Plot is hosting this webinar series in keeping with our mission to imagine and embody resonant relationships of every kind, including our relationship with the earth. Each webinar includes an introductory lectures by Kinship Plot co-founder Dr. Wes Vander Lugt, interactions with special guests Steve Bouma-Prediger, Edith Woodley, and Emmanuel Katongole, opportunities for interaction and questions, and practical suggestions for receiving earthcare and persevering in our earthkeeping efforts.

These webinars take place on the second Monday evening of February, March, and April (Feb 12, Mar 11, Apr 8), and you can register for individual webinars or for all three webinars together for a discount. Once you register, a Zoom link will be emailed to you prior to the event. See more information on the schedule and each special guest below, and feel free to reach out to kinshipplot@gmail.com if you have any questions.

February 12, 730-900pm EST / with special guest Steve Bouma-Prediger

Dr. Bouma-Prediger is Professor of Religion at Hope College, oversees the Environmental Studies minor, and chairs the Campus Sustainability Advisory Committee, otherwise known as The Green Team. He is also adjunct professor at Western Theological Seminary and teaches in Belize and New Zealand for the Creation Care Study Program. His books include For the Beauty of the Earth: A Christian Vision for Creation Care (2010), Earthkeeping and Character: Exploring a Christian Ecological Virtue Ethic (2019), and Creation Care Discipleship: Why Earthkeeping is an Essential Christian Practice (2023).

March 11, 730-900pm EST / with special guest Edith Woodley

Edith Woodley is a mentor and speaker on issues concerning creation and indigenous spirituality, and co-founder, along with her husband Randy, of Eloheh Indigenous Center for Earth Justice and Eloheh Farm & Seeds, a non-profit organization that seeks to foster equity and justice between Indigenous peoples and the wider society. A full-time mother, grandmother, and farmer, she has developed a unique relationship with the land and insights concerning how to raise a family on a small farm. Edith is an Eastern Shoshone tribal member raised on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming.

April 8, 730-900pm EST / with special guest Emmanuel Katongole

Dr. Katongole is Professor of Theology and Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He holds a joint appointment with the Keough School of Global Affairs, where he serves as faculty of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Fr. Emmanuel is also a Catholic priest of the Kampala Archdiocese in Uganda and the co-founder and president of Bethany Land Institute, which provides Uganda's rural poor with an integrated education program in sustainable land use, economic entrepreneurship, and spiritual formation. His books include Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace, and Healing (2009), The Journey of Reconciliation: Groaning for a New Creation in Africa (2017), and Who Are My People? Love, Violence, and Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa (2022).