Faced with the huge, daunting ecological challenges our technological society has created, what is an appropriate Christian response?  More specifically, do the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg justify developing an intimate relationship with the land that supports us a la “The Land Ethic” so eloquently envisioned by Aldo Leopold? Is a land ethic compatible with New Church doctrine? The short answer is yes, but the reasons for acting, the motives one brings into play, must be different than those proposed by Leopold. Where Leopold saw humans as a product of evolution we should see God’s providence. Leopold would have us love nature because we are part of it, but as I read the Writings we should love nature for its uses and for the fact that God created it. Swedenborg writes that nature does not exist in its own right. “All this shows how sensually people are thinking when they say that nature exists in its own right, how reliant they are on their physical sense and their darkness in matters of spirit.” (DLW #46) The gentle determinism and view of man as ‘merely’ a citizen in a much bigger world is incompatible with the Writings of the New Church. Two numbers make this point quite clear,