ELCA Social Statement: Caring for Creation

The Caring for Creation: Vision, Hope, and Justice social statement explains the ELCA’s teachings on ecology and the environment, grounded in a biblical vision of God's intention for the healing and wholeness of creation. This statement provides a Christian understanding of the human role to serve in creation, and a hope rooted in God’s faithfulness to the creation from which humans emerge and depend upon for sustaining life. It provides a framework for understanding the human role in creation, the problem of sin and the current environmental crisis.

Caring for Creation expresses a call to pursue justice for creation through active participation, solidarity, sufficiency and sustainability, and states the commitments of the ELCA for pursuing wholeness for creation — commitments expressed through individual and community action, worship, learning, moral deliberation and advocacy.

You can read or download the full social statement Caring for Creation: Vision, Hope and Justice in English or en español. This statement was adopted in 1993 by the ELCA Churchwide Assembly.

Follow these links to find resources for understanding this social statement:

• Engage with the study guide | Download

• Read an introduction | Download

• Read a brief summary | Download

• Social statement | Order

Social messages are teaching documents of the ELCA focused on particular social topics. They are intended to focus attention and urge action on timely, pressing matters of social concern to church and society. ELCA social statements are more comprehensive documents developed via a five-year process led by a task force and adopted at churchwide assemblies. To read more about the upcoming work toward a social statement on church and state, click here.