Liberating the Creation: The Earthiness of Hope

This paper examines the Korean ethic of the shared household, salim, read through Christian political theology, process thought, and the ecumenically ecotheological liberation of all beings. It addresses the logic of a modernity empowered by its religious inheritance to create a dissociation of the elite and wealthy from other humans and nonhumans, who are regarded only as resources. This extractivist existence not only fosters a political theology of exceptionalism but also nurtures an illusion of self-sufficiency. Bringing together salim, in its original sense of “care for the household,” reveals a shareable ethic of planetary liberation. This realization fuels “the liberation of all beings” through the decolonizing of creation—of air, soil, waters, animals’, women’s and planetary bodies—through active participation in the spirit of liberation.