A Network for Ecology campaign
Creation Care
Many traditions. A living Earth. Continuing care.
What can our deepest teachings—and our own encounters with the living world—teach us about how to care?
Creation Care brings spiritual teachings, ethical reasoning, and ecological understanding into conversation with the everyday work of caring for land, water, animals, and one another.
Through stories of people, places, and ideas, we explore what inspires us to care for the living world—and how that inspiration becomes something we practice, together and over time.
Whether your connection begins in faith, philosophy, community, or a sense of wonder in nature, there is a place for you here.
Discover a perspective that deepens your understanding. Find work that inspires you. Let what matters to you become care you carry forward.
Explore teachings and traditionsOur vision
A living world. A shared responsibility.
We envision communities where care for the living world is part of everyday life—a responsibility we share, not a task we leave to someone else.
Where a river matters not only for the water it provides, but for the lives it sustains. Where animals’ needs shape our decisions. Where caring for land means looking beyond what we can take from it to what we can help flourish.
Different teachings and experiences can lead us toward that responsibility. Creation Care brings those starting points into conversation, connecting what people value with what they can do together.
Our flagship collection
Many Traditions, One Living Earth
What can different ways of understanding the living world teach us about care?
Explore spiritual teachings, philosophical ideas, ecological understanding, and lived experience—from voices throughout history to people carrying responsibilities today.
Discover a perspective
Encounter people and teachings that ask why other lives matter—and what we owe them.
Consider a connection
Explore where perspectives meet and where they differ, without expecting them to give the same answers.
Bring it into life
Consider how understanding can shape a decision, change a habit, or deepen care for a place.
People, homelands, and living knowledge
Living teachings, continuing responsibilities
Indigenous perspectives belong at the heart of this exploration.
We seek to learn through accounts shared by particular Indigenous peoples, in their own voices and with their guidance about interpretation and publication. These accounts may explore relationships with homelands, waters, animals, ancestors, and generations still to come, alongside sovereignty, language, livelihood, and present responsibilities.
No person or community speaks for all Indigenous peoples. As this work develops, we will seek Indigenous-led authorship or source authority, respect what contributors consider appropriate to share, and avoid turning living teachings into instructions for imitation. Communities need not describe their work as Creation Care to take part.
Values becoming action
When a commitment becomes care
What changes when people act on what they believe?
People may help an animal, change how they grow food, reconsider their use of water, or begin caring for a shared place. Behind each decision are questions about needs, responsibilities, resources, and who should have a say.
Good intentions do not settle every choice or guarantee a result. We want to understand what people attempt, what they learn, what they reconsider, and who keeps the work going. Our stories will distinguish plans and completed work from evidence of lasting benefit.
Care as a moral responsibility
What does care ask of us when choices are difficult?
Caring for Earth asks us to consider how we live, what we take, what we harm, and what we owe to lives beyond our own. Affection, compassion, faith, gratitude, and ecological understanding can bring us to these questions without giving us identical answers.
What happens when helping one being may harm another? When protecting a place affects a livelihood? When the people expected to maintain a project lack time, resources, or a voice in its decisions?
We will examine how people reason through competing responsibilities: whose needs they consider, whose knowledge they seek, what evidence they use, and what they are prepared to change. Care includes restraint and repair, but also listening, revisiting decisions, and acknowledging uncertainty.
Your next step
Let understanding change how you live.
Begin with something close to you: a place you know, an animal whose needs you notice, or a question about how your choices affect other lives. You do not need a large project to take a responsibility seriously.
Look more closely
What lives around you? What sustains those lives, and what puts them at risk? Make time to notice—and learn from people who know and care for the place.
Consider what care asks of you
How do your habits and decisions affect the living world? Consider what you might protect, what harm you could avoid, and what you may need to do differently.
Make a meaningful change
Choose a response that fits the need. It might mean changing a habit, helping an animal, supporting people protecting land or water, or joining work already underway.
Return and reflect
Pay attention to what happens next. Has your response helped? What have you learned? Let experience deepen your understanding and guide what you do next.
Care begins with taking other lives seriously—and allowing that understanding to shape our own.
Stories worth discovering
Many Traditions, One Living Earth
Our opening article will introduce the wider inquiry through a focused exploration of a biblical garden passage, a yogic teaching, and a public Onondaga account of giving thanks. We will consider each in its own context, asking what it can—and cannot—tell us about responsibility toward the living world.
This is a starting point within the collection, not a summary of these traditions or a claim that they teach the same thing.
Follow NFE for new storiesShare a connection
Help bring a meaningful story into view
Do you know a community, teacher, thinker, caretaker, initiative, or place whose experience could deepen this conversation?
We welcome suggestions from across the United States and internationally. Introduce the particular people and place, the questions or work involved, and how we might learn more. Small and less-visible efforts matter alongside established organizations.
Suggestions are research leads, not promises of coverage. We will establish sources, participation, and any necessary permissions before presenting a community’s story.
Suggest a storyHelp understanding become care
Read and share a useful story. Offer relevant knowledge. Join an existing effort. Support people already carrying the work forward.
You can also support NFE’s research, storytelling, education, and outreach, helping us bring these experiences to more readers.
Follow NFE’s campaign storiesWhat matters to you can become something you care for.
A teaching can open a question. A conversation can bring people together. A practical commitment can change how a place is cared for.
Find your starting point—and help the care continue.
Find your next step