This is the email that started it all...
Hey, friends who I have told about my "Home Stewardship" book idea...
I need to externally process a new idea I just had. I was reading some great articles on Christians stewarding the land on the Evangelical Environmental Network, and one ended up being a rather heady one on ethics. I hadn't associated that word yet with my ideas and then I started thinking about combining "ethics" with "economics" (from "Home Economics") and came up with "Ethinomics." I promptly googled it and someone beat me to the punch last year and started
www.ethonomics.org (with a slightly different spelling). There's even been an article on it in
Fast Company (a popular business magazine.)
But then I googled "Home Ethonomics" and nothing came up! I may be coining a term here and I feel really excited in my spirit about it! So I think that's my new working title. And the subtitle will be something like "Creating More and Consuming Less" or "Creative Ideas for Home Stewardship." I'm kind of tempted to throw the word "handbook" in there somewhere.
I still feel like I want to write it to a Christian audience (because for some reason, "Christians-at-large" seem to - puzzlingly- question environmental stewardship/sustainability and I feel that they need Biblically based arguments to change their thinking.) But I think the title has potential for mainstream. Perhaps I can unapologetically disclaim my Judeo-Christian background as my moral compass and encourage others to make choices according to there's? Does that sound lame and lukewarm?
I don't know if there is a way to copyright this term, but I'm going to register the blog name on blogger/blogspot right now.
Anyway, would love your thoughts. Thanks for listening/caring...
--
=), melanie
In our cold commodity culture, we desperately need a Christian land ethic, or better a Christian earth ethic. We need an ethic that inspires a vision of shalom, of the flourishing of all creation, and that fosters in us virtues like self-restraint and frugality, humility and honesty, wisdom and hope.The embodiment of such a vision, far beyond any words we could speak, might be just what this world is longing for. Imagine a world in which we Christians were aching visionaries--aching for God's good future of earthly redemption and living out such a vision in our everyday lives. May God grant us the grace so to live.
Editor's Note: Steve Bouma-Prediger is a professor at Hope College in Michigan. He is the author of For the Beauty of the Earth, available from Baker publishing.
