I’d love green church life to be everyday church life. And caring for the earth would be an inherent part of who we are. It’ll take bold action from the Church, because of the enormity of threats to the future of all God’s creation.
Eco Church (EC) encourages churches to care for creation as an everyday aspect of their life and mission — as normal as taking social action to care for the poor, or welcome refugees. These things are not unrelated. It’s about a holistic mission in which we’re reconciled with God, each other, and creation.
In practical terms, EC’s an award scheme to enable churches to take action across five areas of church life: worship and teaching, which is foundational; caring for buildings; land; community and global engagement; and encouraging more sustainable lifestyles. Churches take action prompted by a survey of questions, earning them points toward bronze, silver, and gold awards.
It started in 2016, and was built on its forerunner, Eco Congregation, which still runs in Scotland and Ireland, originated and funded by Churches Together in Britain and Ireland. We’ve received additional support from Allchurches Trust in particular, but we increasingly rely on funding from local churches and individuals.
We’re part of A Rocha UK, which is a Christian charity working to protect and restore the natural world. It’s the main way A Rocha UK equips churches to care for the natural world.
The Church of England asked us to develop a denominational award for dioceses, to green the structure, policies, and workings of the C of E itself, as well as grassroots parish efforts.
All 42 of the Church of England dioceses, and the six of the Church in Wales, have registered as Eco Dioceses, with a commitment to working towards bronze, silver, and gold awards. That means, as well as encouraging dioceses to promote Eco Church in parishes, it also requires them to put their own houses in order. This includes having an environment policy agreed by the bishop’s council, and including environmental issues in clergy training and managing diocesan investments ethically.
More than half of Eco Churches are Anglican, and they have the largest number of gold-awarded churches. Anglican churches have enormous potential for environmental impact by their sheer number, and also as significant landowners in the UK and overseas. I don’t know if there’s competition between the denominations, but there certainly was between dioceses as to which one would be the first to get bronze.
I was involved for many years in the telecoms industry, but I was working for the vicar of my home church, and, over several years, I’d tried various ways to encourage our church to take positive action for the environment. A curate passionate about environmental issues arrived, and we got started on Eco Church, and he flagged this job’s advert to me.
I don’t ever remember a time when I wasn’t interested in the environment. I grew up in Swansea, on the edge of Dylan Thomas’s “lovely ugly town” and the first designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty of the Gower peninsula to the west. I had an inbuilt passion for nature. I became involved with the World Wildlife Fund after a talk at our primary school, and held a garden fête to raise money for wildlife. I became involved with other local environmental projects, including standing in the Swansea canal to clean out old dipper nests.
I don’t know that I think of myself as teaching others about living well in their environment. I’ve much to learn myself. We all have different things to bring to the enormity of the crises we face.
If there’s one learning message I’d love to share, it’s that there’s something every one of us can do to help change the course that we’re on. And it needs every one of us to do something. The Church hasn’t led early enough or consistently enough on this, though many people were trying to influence it for years, and it’s changing. If we want to grow future generations in our churches, then the environment is one of the biggest priorities on which they want us to take action.
Hearing stories of churches that were nowhere on environmental care but now have got somewhere is great — be it a bronze award, or writing creation care into the church profile for a new prospective church leader, or people who were on the fringes or uninterested in the church, seeing it with new eyes. We’ve recently passed the point of 5000 registered churches and almost 2000 awarded churches. This moves Eco Church from being a programme to a movement for change.
Caring for the environment is as much a tenet of faith as caring for the poor.
It’s very likely that many churches this winter will be offering warm spaces for those struggling with high energy bills — which, of course, churches are facing, too. The challenge is to get the per-person footprint down, and churches are looking at different creative ways to do this, like Christ Church, Toxteth Park, meeting in a marquee in a church.
Britain is a very car-dependent society. Until we have more reliable public transport, and one that prioritises bikes and pedestrians as much as vehicles, that’ll be hard to shift. We’ve recently made the decision to go to our local parish church instead of one 20 minutes away. I think there’s something about strengthening the local church approach. That, and providing bike racks: I’ve seen them newly installed at two local churches recently. And maybe offering clergy bike-to-work schemes — I’m sure they exist already.
We’re seeing more ways of “being church” which are less carbon-based, such as the Hazelnut Community Farm, in Bristol: a church-plant that meets in a garden, where the whole ethos is about nurturing the environment and people (Features, 5 November 2021).
My ’70s childhood was very different from childhood today. No screens, although I did watch TV. I was fortunate to have space and safety to race down the street on my bike, play in the woods not far from my house — now built over — and spend time at the beach, mostly in winter.
As a young child of four, one night I had an awareness of what I now believe to be God’s presence, not long after losing my younger sister. A few years later, I remember a dream of meeting Jesus in a beautiful garden.
We attended a fairly high church in Wales. By 11, I had a firm belief in God, experienced most through nature. My faith became more Bible-based as I got involved in the Christian Union at university. I experienced God in different ways again, during times in Kenya and other countries. Now, I find God in the reality of day-to-day life, in the mundane rather than mountain-top experiences.
I’ve always loved being in high places: the Brecon Beacons, and on the Gower. I’ve been up Snowdon a few times, and had the joy of climbing Mount Kenya and Kilimanjaro. Kilimanjaro’s summit at sunrise, its snows and glacier, is amazing, but, even there . . . local people say it’s decreasing now, and it’s their key water-supply.
Injustice and unfairness make me angry. Also litter and fly-tipping!
A hot cup of tea makes me happy, or a conversation with a good friend, climbing a mountain, or spending time with my family.
The sea is my best sound — if not always the most reassuring from the coastal path above Rotherslade Bay during the February storm. It’s a clear reminder that we’re not in control.
I have ultimate hope that the earth will one day be renewed and restored, but day-to-day hope is admittedly harder to find, except in the thousands of actions that individuals and organisations take daily to protect and restore their environments.
I’m currently praying most for the end of the war in Ukraine; the healing of a friend; children, including my own; and that all will be well.
I’d choose to be locked in a church with St Francis. Perhaps he was a bit like Sir David Attenborough, in his day.
Helen Stephens was talking to Terence Handley MacMath.
ecochurch.arocha.org.uk