Track Leadership

Lowell “Rusty” Pritchard, Chair

Dr. Pritchard is a resource economist, and since 2006 he has been the National Director of Outreach for the Evangelical Environmental Network and the editor of its Creation Care magazine, a Christian environmental quarterly. Prior to coming to EEN he was a full-time faculty member at Emory University in Environmental Studies, a program he helped create in 1999, where he maintains an adjunct affiliation. Pritchard has worked with hunter/angler and forestry organizations on developing voluntary, market-based programs for conservation on private agriculture and forestry lands. From 1994 to 1999 he was a program officer with an international global-change research program studying the effects of land-use and land-cover changes on the atmospheric system. Dr. Pritchard holds degrees from Duke University (B.S., zoology) and University of Florida (Ph.D., resource economics; M.S., environmental engineering sciences). He lives in inner-city Atlanta with his wife and three children, where they serve in a multi-racial church doing church-planting, neighborhood evangelism, and community development.

Program Summary

Our conference theme is “human flourishing,” and that certainly includes caring for the rest of creation on which human well-being closely depends. Earthkeeping is a noble calling from God central to our identity and to issues of justice, stewardship, community, culture, and even evangelism. This interdisciplinary track gathers academics and professionals active across a range of fields and issues — architecture to zoology, conservation to climate change, and everything in between. We’ll mix teaching and discussion with field reports from people working at the growing edge of creation care, environmentalism, and sustainability. Our objective is to deepen an integrated biblical, scholarly, and practical approach to the challenges and opportunities facing humankind and the rest of creation in our urgent need to live as sanctified citizens in God’s green kingdom.