Stewardship Symposium

Symposium Call for Papers

“On Becoming Disciple-Stewards: The Restored Gospel and God’s Creation”

Sponsored by Global Environmental Studies and the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies held at Brigham Young University, November 14-15, 2025

2025 marks twenty years since the publication of Stewardship and the Creation: LDS Perspectives on the Environment, published at BYU by the Religious Studies Center and edited by George Handley, Terry Ball, and Steve Peck. The collection of scholarly essays, the first of its kind, covered a wide range of topics, from wildlife management to business ethics to LDS church history, and other topics in light of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.

Much has happened since that time. We are both at a more precarious time ecologically and at a hopeful time of renewed attention to the doctrines of environmental stewardship in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 2013, Elder Marcus B. Nash gave a landmark address, “Righteous Dominion and Compassion for the Earth,” at the Quinney Law School Stegner Symposium at the University of Utah. At the time, it was the first ever talk by a General Authority dedicated exclusively to developing the doctrinal grounds for environmental stewardship. Presiding Bishop Gerard Causse followed in 2022 with a talk in General Conference, “Our Earthly Stewardship,” concurrent with developing efforts from his office to enhance and advance the Church’s efforts in sustainability. Shortly afterwards, his counselors elaborated on church priorities, including Bishop L. Todd Budge’s address that same month at Utah Valley University, highlighting the relationship between the Restored Gospel and the United Nations Sustainability goals and, a few months later, Bishop W. Christopher Waddell at the 2023 Quinney Law School Stegner Symposium on the Great Salt Lake. In 2020, Brigham Young University demonstrated its commitment to better stewardship with the commission from President Kevin Worthen to give special attention to sustainability on the campus, including the creation of a Sustainability Office. More recently, the university created the Global Environmental Studies program and the Stewardship Lab, to improve interdisciplinary and gospel-centered research and teaching on stewardship and to help students expand their capacity to do good in the world.

The Kennedy Center for International Studies, the Global Environmental Studies program, and the Stewardship Lab, together with campus partners, will host a symposium in the Fall of 2025 to mark the 20th anniversary of the publication of Stewardship and the Creation. We hope to reflect on these last twenty years, to explore further a Gospel-centered approach to stewardship and sustainability to meet the challenges of the future. At its core, we believe a Gospel-centered approach is the only way to address the stewardship we have for creation. This perspective informs, deepens, and broadens the fully disciplinary approaches that can engage the interconnected social, natural, built and spiritual responsibilities that we maintain are reflected in the Restored Gospel. We call for papers that will explore any aspect(s) of stewardship, as articulated in the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, particularly from the vantage point of a broad range of disciplines, including business, law, engineering, the life sciences, the social sciences, church history and doctrine, and the humanities and arts. We seek papers and creative works grounded in sound doctrine–including the scriptures and the teachings of prophets, seers, and revelators in the latter-days–that push the boundaries of academic disciplinary norms and show innovative, and where useful, interdisciplinary versatility in order to meet the challenges of increasingly scarce natural resources, water and air pollution, the biodiversity crisis, and climate change. Papers that explore comparative dimensions of stewardship in the Restored Gospel with other faith traditions and environmental thought are also welcomed. We look for papers and creative works that will illuminate dimensions of and the relationship between our social, natural, spiritual, and built environments as understood through the Restored Gospel. Our goal is to highlight possible gospel methodologies for defining, teaching, and acting on principles of a multi- dimensional stewardship and sustainability for Latter-day Saints that motivate the faithful to live more sustainably and also builds bridges and partnerships with others of faith and of goodwill.

For paper proposals, please send an abstract of 300-500 words to AllieAsay@byu.edu, along with a copy of your CV by July 1. For full panel proposals or creative projects, please provide a 500 word description and CVs of relevant presenters. Paper presentations will be no more than 20 minutes. Following the conference, at a date to be determined, submissions of longer versions of the papers will be considered for publication in a collected volume of essays.

Student papers will also be welcomed, either in short presentation mode (5 minutes) or in poster format.