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Faith in Stewardship: Examples of the Possibilities

Owen Williams, Carolinian Canada Director and Secretary

A regional scale opportunity

In recent years, Muslims have reviewed their faith direction to assess its guidance related to environmental stewardship – and found a wealth of support. Rather than try to rephrase it, it is best just to explore the following links to see the cohesion from high level spiritual advice down to regional and community level stewardship action.

See the excellent work of Khaleafa.com – a Muslim organization designed to “to reignite the discourse surrounding the Islamic approach to environmentalism and to draw upon the essence of these teachings, emphasizing the movement from a Canadian perspective.”

…and of Green Ummah (based in Toronto)
They recently hosted the first ever Canadian Muslim Conference on Environmental Stewardship.

A community scale example

In 2015 Pope Francis provided his environmental encyclical, Laudato Si, which appealed to people around the world to work together to address the environmental and social justice issues. It gives inspiring guidance for tangible actions. Most parishes throughout the Catholic network have working groups of various kinds that do community work. One of those generic groups is the Catholic Women’s League. The following is a list of the recent environmental stewardship initiatives of one parish’s CWL. This is a classic illustration of what the United Nations Faith in Earth programme has identified as the motivation for collaboration between conservation organizations and Faith Based Organizations – there is a highly credible leadership and a well-orchestrated and time-perfected communication network from global to community level action.

Here are a couple of links to the higher level stewardship guidance:

St. John the Divine Catholic Women’s League Activities 2019-2021