Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84Plough Quarterly • Autumn 2016 59 I’ve seen environmentalists hold the Bible aloft to blame it for every polluted stream and destroyed landscape. Likewise, I’ve heard Christians ridicule environmentalists as anti- capitalist, un-American, earth-worshipping whackos. Just a week ago, I listened to a prominent preacher say he was an avid earth- firster: log the earth first, then log the other planets. The Christian crowd, laughing and clapping, thought it was a great broadside against the pagans. When progressive environmentalists advo- cate abortion while simultaneously risking life and limb to protect trees and whales, the Christian community indignantly calls out the unspeakable hypocrisy. Rightly so: after all, we’re talking about ripping a thinking, feeling, hearing, reponding baby from the womb. But the charge of hypocrisy cuts both ways. Why are we Christians eating Happy Meals that come from chickens raised in despicable CAFOs (confinement animal feeding opera- tions) on our way to the sanctity-of-life rally? Dr. Francis Schaeffer, the great Christian philosopher, famously asked: “How shall we then live?” If Christians actually embraced an ethic of creation stewardship, we would own the moral high ground. Our testimony to the gospel of life would become far more credible once our actions began to bear out what we say we believe. However, when Christians cavalierly embrace the mechanistic view of life instead of seeing it as the sacred handiwork of the Creator, we lower ourselves to the ­ ego­ centricity of a godless culture. The result of this failure is that environmen- talists are the pioneers in earth stewardship while the Christian community has earned the dubious distinction of conquistador, pillager, rapist, and earth destroyer. This segregated and hypocritical thinking does not serve the gospel. Christians have latched onto a ­ misunder­ stood version of the “dominion” mandate of Genesis 1, failing to realize that this scripture is really a caretaking mandate. If “the earth is the Lord’s” (Psalm 24:1), surely he doesn’t consider it a good return on investment to be presented Joel Salatin and his family run Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia. His newest book, his twelfth, is The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs: Respecting and Caring for All God’s Creation (HarperOne, 2016).