Rachel and I and some friends from my church attended Christian Ecology Link's conference in London on Saturday. The main speaker was Peter Owen Jones and in the afternoon there were sessions on Shopping as if the World Mattered, Greening your Church and on Green Economics - I attended the latter which was by Tim Cooper, Professor of Sustainable Design and Consumption at Nottingham Trent University: excellent, interesting and accessible - the notes are on the
CEL website, as are those on Greening your Church and now the text of Peter Owen Jones's talk too, below is a summary of the latter:
According to my erratic notes, Peter Owen Jones began by asking if we'd seen a butterfly yet this year: we are not natural predators of the butterfly but we are responsible for the decimation of their kind. He talked of the progress of the green movement (Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth), gaining credibility as they moved from the emotional to the empirical. But this can lead to the danger of expecting science to find the answers: the idea that science can save us is as flawed as the idea that theology can save us! Another dreadful truth is that Christianity has been responsible for much of the character of our propulsion towards 'progress', if you can call it that.Christianity is ruthlessly anthropocentric and as long as Christianity is offering salvation of self, separate from the natural world, humanity in the west will remain dangerously self-centred. In calling ourselves 'stewards' we place humans above Creation. It is a term so dry and without love - would you call God our steward or Jesus steward of the disciples? It is in
communion with the natural world that we will realise our most dazzling future. Christianity began in urban enclaves and in 1900 years not a lot has changed.
He read out his ordination vows and asked, Did you hear a robin in there? the sound of the waves? the seals calling on the north Norfolk sands? It is not that we do not care, but we simply do not know where to put it. Our struggle is that we do not know where to put this love.
He then read out statements from the World Council of Churches:
”The drive to have “mastery” over creation has resulted in the senseless exploitation of natural resources, the alienation of the land from people and the destruction of indigenous cultures ... Creation came into being by the will and love of the Triune God, and as such it possesses an inner cohesion and goodness. Though human eyes may not always discern it, every creature and the whole creation in chorus bear witness to the glorious unity and harmony with which creation is endowed. And when our human eyes are opened and our tongues unloosed, we too learn to praise and participate in the life, love, power and freedom that is God’s continuing gift and grace”.
written in 1988 and similar sentiments from a declaration in 1990 that the churches would 'resist species destruction', but what has happened?
We need a new language, new festivals that do not separate us but include the environment, synchronise with the life of the planet. There has been a marked decline in the relevance of our festivals. Lent is one of the most important counter-cultural festivals in a world where materialism is so rampant. We cannot have a church that is so defined by its need for money that it is mortally compromised.
The church does not have the heritage to draw on or the language to speak on the environment. Over the last thirty years we've had some incredible theology but it has not reached the pews and the light of it has not reached the house of bishops. We need confidently to dream a new church beginning in communtion with the natural world (not stewardship). Yet he cannot see any substantial opening. Christian Ecology Link has dropped a pill into the establishment water but it does not appear to have dissolved. Since the first Christian woodland burial site was set up ten years ago no diocese has started their own. It is time now to move beyond words. Abbey Well gardens in Glastonbury, Iona, Lindisfarne have much of this right relationship. The ground has been laid and we need to start living on it boldly, beautifully and confidently. We are not 'making an issue of it': it is the greatest issue of our age. Great changes always start with very small groups of people.
