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.
These words occur in the Cape Town Commitment, published in 2011 by the Lausanne Movement. They were read at a plenary session of the Lausanne Congress in Seoul in 2024, by theologian Christopher J.H. Wright. These words clearly contain much truth, but the phrase ‘creation care is thus a gospel issue’ provoked some discussion at the Congress.
Soon after the Congress, four majority-world theologians published an open letter to the Lausanne leadership asking for ‘a correction, amendment, or a clarification of this ambiguous statement’. They were concerned that ‘there is a serious risk that the gospel is being undermined’, because ‘an essential element of the gospel is that God has saved us by His grace through faith and not a result of works’.
