Increasingly the church is aware of its need to respond to the climate emergency. Christians join the Psalmist in proclaiming the Earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it. (Psalms 24:1)
The Season of Creation is an annual international ecumenical initiative. It starts on 1 September, the Day of Prayer for Creation, and ends 4 October, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of ecology. Find out more about the 2021 theme – A home for all? Renewing the Oikos of God – on the Season of Creation website.
During the Season of Creation there are a number of ways in which the church can intentionally renew its commitment to live and act in ways which take that more seriously.
Here are a number of ideas you might try…
- Making Sundays in Creation Season ‘walk to church’ days, leaving your car at home.
- Creating an insect-friendly church garden or graveyard.
- Taking the decision to produce solar or wind-powered electricity.
- Talking to the Local Government environmental group about ways to support their work.
- Aiming to become a plastic-free congregation and sign up to a plastic-free community.
- Deciding to replace old, inefficient boilers with more efficient ones.
- Committing to finding out more about the climate emergency by reading through Hannah Malcolm’s Word’s from a Dying World: Stories of Grief and Courage from the Global Church – and why not join with Christians from other churches to read this through together
- Making a commitment to become an Eco Church through A Rocha’s award scheme (or doing this as a group of churches through a Churches Together group in your town or village)
- Joining one of the networks and organisations preparing to engage with COP26 in Glasgow this November, such as Make Cop Count and Climate Fringe who have a variety of events to join in the run up to the conference.
Sourced from our Member Churches and partner organisations, here are some further resources that might be useful:
CTBI’s Climate Sunday – an initiative calling on all local churches across Great Britain & Ireland to hold a climate-focused service on any Sunday before COP26.
Climate campaign materials from CAFOD – the international development charity and the official aid agency of the Catholic Church in England and Wales – including a useful resource explaining all about COP26 the Climate Conference in November 2021. You can also join the online Faith in Action Day on Saturday 11 September.
Join with Christian Aid and their ‘Pledge to Pray for COP26’.
Operation Noah – a Christian charity working with the church to inspire action on the climate crisis and a CTE Body in Association.
The Joint Public Issues Team (JPIT) – a partnership between the Baptist Union of Great Britain, the Methodist Church, and the United Reformed Church- have suggestions for creationtide prayers, videos, all age activities and more.
Transformation Cornwall has put together a Creation Justice Toolkit for local churches.
Tearfund’s guide to talking about climate change at church. This is part of the Reboot campaign to take action on the climate crisis.
Christian Climate Action describes itself as a ‘community of Christians supporting each other to take meaningful action in the face of imminent and catastrophic anthropogenic climate breakdown. Inspired by Jesus Christ, and social justice movements of the past, we carry out acts of non-violent direct action to urge those in power to make the change needed.’ They held a Christian Climate pilgrimage ahead of G7 Summit.
Green Christian is another movement started in the early 1980s which has the tag line ‘ordinary Christians, extraordinary times’. They have excellent resources on developing a Green Christian way of life, which includes four disciplines including prayer and devotions, living gently, public witness and encouragement.
The John Ray Initiative – an educational charity with a vision to bring together scientific and Christian understandings of the environment.
Young Christian Climate Network – established in 2020, they are an action-focused community of young Christians in the UK aged 18-30, choosing to follow Jesus in the pursuit of climate justice. They are coordinating the countrywide #RiseToTheMoment climate relay.
