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Stewardship, religious and secular, its critics and UNESCO

Stewardship, religious and secular, its critics and UNESCO. by Robin Attfield presented by Johan Hattingh. Central concepts. We are members of a transgenerational community of moral agents, inheriting both benefits and burdens from our predecessors and passing them on to our successors

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Stewardship, religious and secular, its critics and UNESCO

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  1. Stewardship, religious and secular, its critics and UNESCO by Robin Attfield presented by Johan Hattingh

  2. Central concepts • We are members of a transgenerational community of moral agents, inheriting both benefits and burdens from our predecessors and passing them on to our successors • We are entrusted by our ancestors with the care of the planet and its systems • We share this task with our successors – who will benefit if we play our task with integrity

  3. Religious stewardship • Judaism, Christianity, Islam • Critics: Matthew Fox and Clare Palmer • Anthropocentric, managerial, aloof from nature, not useful to guide environmental ethics • Defend stewardship by giving a fuller statement of it (p 6-7)

  4. History of stewardship in Christianity • Biblical Old Testament (Genesis; Leviticus) • To dress and keep the garden • Land not owned by humanity; rather a leasehold • Biblical New Testament • Teachings of Jesus • Lilies, birds, domestic animals have independent value and moral standing • Parables of stewardship and accountability also extend to use of resources

  5. Stewardship: caring management • Alternative tradition: ‘to perfect nature’ • Both traditions combined in • Benedictine monasteries (6th – 12th Century) • Basil the Great (4th Century founder of Orthodox Monasticism)

  6. A conflicting view: • Lynn White Jr • “The historic roots of our ecological crisis” 1967 • Christianity a source of dominance and despotism • A misinterpretation?

  7. Secular stewardship • Stewardship without God? • To whom are secular stewards answerable? • Future generations? • Karl Marx – a transgenerational community of humanity • All predecessors, contemporaries and successors who, as moral agents, care for the earth

  8. And UNESCO? • Introduction of UNESCOs book on environmental ethics: Environmental Ethics and International Policy (2006) characterize stewardship as anthropocentric • Attfield takes issue with this

  9. Conclusion Indeed stewardship remains not just a coherent position but also a motivationally self-sustaining one, arising historically at it does from our great theistic traditions. Whether it is held in a religious or a secular form, this already widespread stance promises to become a vehicle for environmentalism and for its serious application to policy. UNESCO would be sadly and seriously mistaken to say otherwise, and both Russia and the rest of the world would be worse off if stewardship were to be abandoned. • Attfield, p 31

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