Every April, Earth Day returns with its familiar calls to activism, awareness, and urgency. For many Christians, the question arises: should we participate, ignore it, or critique it? The answer is clearer than we might think.
Recently, during an overnight black bear hunt, some brothers and I discussed the doctrine of dominion as Christian creation-care. For so many Christians, there are two major ditches related to creation-care: reject it outright as something only progressives care about or embrace it and its assumptions uncritically.
Earth Day, as it is commonly observed, is not a neutral celebration of creation. It is rooted in a worldview that often denies God, elevates nature, and misdiagnoses humanity’s fundamental problem, often redefining human existence as Earth’s biggest problem. For those reasons, Christians should not attempt to “baptize” Earth Day or join it uncritically. But neither should we abandon the field altogether. The Bible simply will not allow us to abandon creation to the enviro-pagans.
I argue that, instead of adopting Earth Day, Christians should reject its framework and recover something better, a distinctly biblical vision we might call Dominion Day.
Why Earth Day Falls Short
Progressive Environmentalism and its flagship holiday are not simply incomplete. They are built on a faulty foundation that inevitably leans toward idolatry. It begins in the wrong place and therefore ends in the wrong place. When you detach creation from its Creator, you don’t get a purer concern for the world; you get a distorted one.
This is the exchange Scripture explicitly condemns: serving the creature rather than the Creator (Romans 1). And that is not theoretical, it shows up in how the earth is spoken of and treated. Instead of being honored as the workmanship of God for the glory of God, it is subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) treated as sacred in itself. What should be received as a gift is recast as an ultimate good.
Once that shift happens, everything else follows. Sin is redefined. No longer is it rebellion against a holy God; it becomes a matter of environmental impact, your footprint, your consumption, your emissions, the number of cow farts you allow, and so on. And redemption? That is no longer found in Christ, but in regulation, activism, and collective restraint. Not to mention, the rejection of the sovereignty of God over the course of the universe within the ideology of the modern climate change movement. In all of this, the language may sound moral, but it has been severed from the gospel.
And because the diagnosis is wrong, the solutions are too. The deepest problem is not mismanaged resources; it is sinful man. Greed, pride, and short-sightedness cannot be legislated away. Yet a framework that refuses to acknowledge sin will inevitably chase surface-level fixes while ignoring the root.
The result is predictable: a culture driven by anxiety, sustained by guilt, and offering solutions that never quite deliver. In short, this is not a minor theological misstep; it is an entirely different religion, complete with its own version of fall, judgment, and salvation.
So the question for Christians is not whether the earth matters. Of course it does, as Psalm 24:1 says, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof…” The question is whether we will think about it rightly, starting with God, submitting to His Word, and refusing to borrow a worldview that gets the foundation wrong.
Created for Dominion
Over and against the progressive mandate to limit climate change and pursue preservation as an ultimate good through environmentalism, the Bible gives us a clear and unapologetic mandate to steward the Earth by taking dominion over it to the glory of God.
Humanity is created in the image of God and commanded to exercise dominion over the earth. We are to subdue it, cultivate it, and bring it into ordered productivity. In Genesis, Adam is placed in the garden to work and keep it. The task is active, not passive. The world is not meant to remain in a static, untouched state. It is meant to be developed, preserved, and subdued to the glory of God.
Where environmentalists urge us to leave as little impact as possible and to reduce population, the Bible tells us to “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Dominion does not mean reckless exploitation, but neither does it mean hands-off preservation. It means responsible rule under God, cultivating and extending the order He has already built into creation in ways that reflect His wisdom. We are called not only to subdue but to keep, to exercise authority that is accountable to the Creator.
This includes bringing creation into forms that serve human flourishing and multiplication under God’s law. We subdue creatures like grizzly bears and wolves where necessary, not as an act of arbitrary domination, but as ordered responsibility within God’s world. We are not seeking to eradicate, but to govern wisely.
We cultivate the land and produce things in ways that are healthy and regenerative rather than endlessly raping the land. The goal is not to throw up shoddy housing developments where beauty once stood, but to build to the glory of God using the earth and animals He gave us to do just that. These are resources to be used to the glory of God, not ends that must be preserved in an untouched state forever.
The two ideologies conflict at nearly every level. Where Earth Day promotes pursuing an untouched vision of the earth, Scripture calls for creation to be shaped by the hands of God-glorifying men who take dominion over the earth and subdue it to the glory of God. It calls for us to take dominion, to fill the earth, to subdue its creatures, to use all of this for God’s glory.
A Redeemed Vision: Dominion Day
Rather than attempting to reform Earth Day, Christians would do better to replace it. Call it Dominion Day, a day when we remember the dominion mandate and the God who gave it.
Dominion Day would celebrate truths that Earth Day obscures or outright denies:
- The earth belongs to the Lord.
- Humanity is uniquely tasked with ruling and cultivating it.
- Creation’s value is grounded in God, not itself.
- Stewardship is an act of obedience, not ideological conformity.
My goal here is not to add a new holy day to the calendar. My point is simply that Earth Day’s assertions are incompatible with fundamental biblical truths about Creation. Rather than simply celebrating a day, we need a real Christian response and a real embrace of dominion.
Hope That Builds, Not Despairs
A Christian approach to the earth is not driven by fear of imminent collapse, but by confidence in Christ’s reign. History is the story of the gospel advancing into every area of life. Christ’s authority extends over all creation, and His kingdom grows over time. That includes how societies understand and steward the natural world.
This produces a long-term vision. Christians are not merely trying to slow decay; we are called to build, cultivate, and improve. We plant trees whose shade we may never sit under. We develop land, institutions, and cultures with the expectation that Christ’s lordship will increasingly be recognized. That kind of hope stands in stark contrast to the pessimism that often defines modern environmental rhetoric, which asserts we are only a few years away from extinction.
Practicing Faithful Stewardship
What does this look like in everyday life? It is neither performative activism nor careless consumption. It looks like using resources wisely, avoiding needless waste, and taking responsibility for what God has placed under your care. It means cultivating land wisely and beautifully when you have it, maintaining what you own, producing things of value, and contributing to systems that reflect order, foresight, and an embrace of God’s good design.
It also means rejecting the pressure to signal virtue according to shifting cultural standards. Christian stewardship is measured by faithfulness to God, not approval from the world.
Conclusion: Reject and Rebuild
Earth Day, as it stands, is built on a flawed foundation. It cannot simply be tweaked or lightly adapted. It must be rejected as a guiding framework. But rejection is not the end goal.
Christians are called to rebuild, to recover a biblical doctrine of dominion and to live it out with clarity and conviction. A “Dominion Day” is not about creating another holiday for its own sake, but about reclaiming a truth that has always been ours and articulating a Biblical response to the nature of the world.
The earth is not our mother, but God is our Father, and He has called us to take dominion. The earth is the Lord’s. And He has commanded us, not to retreat from it, but to rule it well under Christ to the glory of Christ. Happy Dominion Day!
Colt Hudson 