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In response to the \u201cclimate crisis\u201d, Christ Church with St Mary\u2019s (Immanuel URC too, I believe) aspires to become an \u201ceco-congregation\u201d. On 4 January, Christ Church\u2019s Men\u2019s Breakfast group discussed what this might mean and its implications for churches and individuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The breakfast group was established by a former curate, Robert Sanday, in February 1994. For 26 years, it has met on almost every first Saturday of the month for worship (optional Morning Prayer at 07.30), followed from 08.00 by a full cooked breakfast (lighter options available), fellowship and discussion, sometimes led by a speaker, on other occasions (more) informally amongst ourselves. Although breakfast is prepared by men from Christ Church, all are warmly welcome to help consume it, irrespective of gender or denomination. Please do join us. (Contact Mike Palmer<\/a> for further information.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The following piece draws on the group\u2019s recent discussion, but reflects my individual (perhaps naively simplistic) views, not necessarily those of the wider group or Christ Church as a whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eco-Congregation is an ecumenical programme in several countries that links environmental issues with the Christian faith, helping churches and individuals to respond with practical actions in their own and others\u2019 lives. In England and Wales, it is administered as Eco Church by the charity A Rocha UK, which operates an accreditation and award scheme for churches that want to demonstrate the good news of the gospel for God\u2019s Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Important though the environmental impacts of premises and operations are, if a church aspires to be an eco-congregation (of people), as distinct from an eco-church (building), it\u2019s primarily about individual attitudes and actions as an aspect of discipleship. That implies a long-term commitment to meaningful changes in behaviour, not short-term box-ticking to get the \u201cBlue Peter badge\u201d (a danger of any accreditation scheme).<\/p>\n\n\n\n God gave people dominion<\/em> over the Earth and nature: \u201cfill the Earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the Earth\u201d (Genesis 1.28). But dominion<\/em> implies privilege and responsibility – for our careful stewardship and enjoyment of God\u2019s creation for the time being – not its exploitation and degradation by domination<\/em>, at the expense of future generations: \u201cThe Earth is the Lord\u2019s, and everything in it, the world and all who live in it\u201d (Psalm 24.1, Christ Church\u2019s Bible verse for 2020). That is explicit in the Anglican\u2019s Communion\u2019s fifth Mark of Mission \u201cto strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth [surely the Earth?; it\u2019s about the planet, not just the soil, and nobody refers to \u201cmars\u201d or \u201cvenus\u201d!]\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But what should individuals be doing as members of an eco-congregation? In a complex system, actions don\u2019t occur in isolation. Climate change is just one of a set of inter-related issues that have consequences for others. They include population growth; production and consumption of food (too much of it by many, insufficient by others), water and energy; infectious, and lifestyle-related chronic diseases; pollution and degradation of soil, water and air; loss of biodiversity and the \u201cecosystem services\u201d it provides, and depletion of other finite resources and \u201cnatural capital\u201d. In current scientific and policy thinking, those relationships are being drawn together in an emerging concept of \u201cplanetary health\u201d – of the Earth and its people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Changes to one element of a system affect others. \u201cTrade-offs\u201d are inevitable, and there is a danger of unintended consequences. Measures intended to address one problem might cause another elsewhere, and impacts might be shifted from where we see them to other places (and people) where we don\u2019t. The introduction of a 5p charge for single-use plastic bags, for example, increased<\/em> the total quantity of plastic distributed by supermarkets as they were substituted by a smaller number of, individually much heavier, so-called (in principle but not in practice) \u201cbags for life\u201d. Other examples were identified in a report published by the Green Alliance on 9 January 2020.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.christchurchswindon.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/bags.jpg\")
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