Land as God’s common good: Reframing the logic of nation state territoriality with a theology of land as shared ‘creation’.

Is this chapter we question central assumptions about territorial ownership and nation-state sovereignty in the use and exploitation of land as a first step towards doing environmental justice. We do this by challenging the Keneysian-Westphalian concept of land ownership, giving the nation state absolute sovereignty in land exploitation. We turn in support of this to Christian sources prompting fresh thinking about land and human relationship to the natural environment, bringing biblical and patristic thought calling us back to our creaturely connection to the land. We seek, alternatively, rationale for contemporary sustainability-capable frameworks inherent in creation narratives and the religious imagination. In conversation with contemporary Christian environmental justice responses, we then argue for the role of religious understandings of land both as ‘creation’ and as ‘common good’, making our case with reference to the sustainability and ‘integral ecology’ goals in the papal Amazon Synod (2020). Finally, we articulate the makings of an eco-theology and its ramifications, arguing for a normative ethic in which right relationship with God and neighbour demands a compapssionate and just relationship with the 'creation’.

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