By Tom Rowley, A Rocha USA Executive Director On the heels of an Earth Day observed with growing gloom and corporate cooptation, reasons for hope abound. In recent weeks, I’ve had a slew of conversations with people caring for God’s creation right where they live. The efforts may be small, but …
Tom Rowley
Plastic Christianity
by Tom Rowley, A Rocha USA Executive Director From drink bottles to styrofoam cups to those clamshells that ironically protect organic fruits at Costco, plastic—the material so famously and presciently proclaimed as the “future” to Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate—is taking over. Consider the …
An Ethical Framework
By Tom Rowley, A Rocha USA Executive Director If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re sure to get there. When it comes to environmental conservation, that’s exactly where the world is: huge seemingly intractable problems and little consensus on how (and even whether) to address them. More …
Raising the Blinds (with thanks to Eugene Peterson)!
By Tom Rowley, A Rocha USA Executive Director If we are to motivate people to care for the creation, it will take something more than, something different from the standard pleas of the past. “Because God said so” and “because people and planet both need it”—true as those statements are—haven’t …
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Stewardship Includes Cultivation
Last week’s look at the problems of a strict utilitarian approach to protecting creation (seeing nature merely as a resource base for humans) prompted this insightful response from my friend, Pastor Pete Santucci, which clarifies and furthers what I wrote. “I think it’s interesting that you can’t …
The Value of Nature
By Tom Rowley, A Rocha USA Executive Director The big idea behind PBS’ wonderful new series EARTH: A New Wild is that nature is lovely AND valuable. And that the key to protecting nature lies in its value. In the words of series host Dr. M. Sanjayan, the conservation movement must embrace “the …
Be Fruitful and Multiply–Everybody
By Tom Rowley, A Rocha USA Executive Director Last Wednesday, PBS launched a terrific new television series: EARTH A New Wild. Done in collaboration with Conservation International and Nature Conservancy (both of whom have partnered with A Rocha in the USA and abroad), the show focuses on the …
Tears for Trout
By Tom Rowley, A Rocha USA Executive Director Embarrassing as it is to admit: I cry a lot. Raised in Texas in a time and culture where men did not shed tears, not publicly, I nonetheless find myself shedding more and more of them. Some are tears of joy. Those welling up now as I listen to …
Hopey New Year
By Tom Rowley, A Rocha USA Executive Director As new year resolve fades and resolutions fail, I offer a more hope-filled alternative: keep your eyes on Jesus. In a world where people are dying, the climate is changing and species are going extinct—a world that is in biblical terms utterly …
Christmas: The End of Scorekeeping
by Tom Rowley, A Rocha USA Executive Director If you’ve never read “The Snake” by Anne Herbert, you should. In this humorous yet poignant revisit of Eden, Herbert likens original sin to keeping score. “At first we did have fun just like [God] expected. We played all the time. We rolled down …