Background

In November of 2012, the Jamaica Call to Action was produced by participants at the Lausanne Consultation on Creation Care and the Gospel held in Montego Bay, Jamaica. The summary document quickly became the guiding manifesto for evangelical Christians engaged in creation care, and led to the formation of the Lausanne/WEA Creation Care Network, a group that now has members in more than 140 countries. 

It has been 12 years and the world has changed in unimaginable ways. This year, we have experienced a global pandemic, which has spread to more than 40 million people worldwide and killed over 1.1 million people. This year, we have also seen some of the worst floods in over 50 years displace hundreds of millions of people in Bangladesh, China and India and other parts of Asia. East Africa yet again faces dire food insecurity due to a long-standing drought that will continue into next year due to climate change. We have watched 4 million acres of forests burn in California alone. We know the cumulative costs of environmental and climate breakdown has been enormous. ​Counting The Cost 2019: A Year Of Climate Breakdown, a report by Christian Aid, concluded that climate change related disasters killed thousands of people and cost almost $150 billion in 2019 alone. Adding to this crisis, a 2019 study by the United Nations Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform On Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services determined that a million plant and animal species are at high risk of extinction and nature’s ability to regenerate its services are now severely compromised due to human behavior. 

Scientific understanding is in many cases clearer, as are the consequences of human actions and inaction. The church globally is generally more aware of the issue, but with some significant exceptions and obstacles to taking a moral stand on the issue of creation care. We are at a crossroads and it requires that we examine and renew our commitments to care for God’s creation. 

Goal

In that light, the Lausanne/WEA Creation Care Network and the Loka Initiative at UW-Madison are convening three separate consultations to review the original Jamaica Call to Action through the lenses of evangelical theology, environmental science, and creation care practice in order to revitalize creation care as an important pillar for the Church. We believe whole-heartedly that connecting and empowering the next generation of Christian leaders to become stewards and advocates of creation care and climate action is absolutely crucial for turning the tide around. These convenings are designed to contribute to and reinvigorate creation care movements around the world, including the United States. The convenings are guided by the following statement from the Cape Town Commitment: 

“We are also commanded to care for the earth and all its creatures, because the earth belongs to God, not to us. We do this for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ who is the creator, owner, sustainer, redeemer and heir of all creation… If Jesus is Lord of all the earth, we cannot separate our relationship to Christ from how we act in relation to the earth. For to proclaim the gospel that says ‘Jesus is Lord’ is to proclaim the gospel that includes the earth, since Christ’s Lordship is over all creation. Creation care is thus a gospel issue within the Lordship of Christ. The Cape Town Commitment II-B-6, I-7