Catholic theologian Denis Edwards’ Ecology at the Heart of Faith provides a good model of engaging environmental issues using the classic Christian theological tradition.

In chapter 2 he discusses the controverted issue of the image of God and dominion over nature. He argues that the imago is best understood as the human capacity for interpersonal love and relationship: with God, each other, and the rest of creation.

[W]hat is specific to the human can be seen as the personal, the capacity to go out from oneself to the other in interpersonal love. Precisely this personal dimension of the human involves the human in relationship not only with that radical other who is God, and not only with other human beings, but with the others who are our fellow creatures. Precisely because human beings are made in the image of God, they are called like God to care for every sparrow that falls to the ground. (p. 16)

Edwards then goes on to consider the topic of human dominion over nature. Rejecting a sheerly exploitative understanding of dominion and an ecological egalitarianism that gives no special preference to human interests, Edwards opts for a view that emphasizes kinship with other creatures and care and cultivation of the earth. As he puts it, this combines the “Franciscan” focus on other creatures as our brothers and sisters with a “Benedictine” call to cultivate the earth in work, gardening, and building and to creative contemplation of the world in learning and study:

Theologically, I would propose that this kinship brings into play what I have identified as the image of God in the human, the personal. It involves humans as persons, personally connecting with other creatures, respecting and loving them in all their differences from ourselves. (pp. 23-4)

[…]

The language of cultivating and caring for creation can include the many ways in which human creativity is used for the good of the community of life on Earth. It includes not only farming with best land-care practice, but also cooking, gardening, building, painting, doing science, teaching, planning, taking political action and many other creative actions. (pp. 25-6)

Edwards here is trying to balance an appreciation and respect for the otherness of the non-human creation with a sense of the importance of human culture and our unique role on earth. “What is crucial is that cultivating and caring for creation are based on the conversion implied in the model of kinship, a conversion in which human beings come to see themselves as interrelated in a community of life with other creatures, a community in which each creature has its own unique value before God” (p. 26). He rejects the metaphor of stewardship, which has become popular in some Christian circles, because it “can run the risk of suggesting an inflated view of the human as a necessary intermediary between God and other creatures” (p. 25). The non-human world has its own relationship with God apart from us. Cultivation of and caring for creation, founded on a recognition of kinship, implies both a creativity and a self-limitation on the part of human beings.