Anglican Ecology

Sharing God's Planet is an impressive report by the Church of England on the environment. The recommendations of the report are due to be implemented from Autumn this year.
The publicity that has gone alongside Sharing God's Planet is the kind of publicity that I think the church should be receiving. As reported by the Church Times, the Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Richard Chartres, has said that buying a car or flying on holiday are "selfish choices" and "a symptom of sin".

Interviewed about his comments in BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday, the Bishop said: "Obviously it’s not my business to issue fatwas, just like that, against flying. But it is very important that people should be helped to take responsibility for the decisions they make; and people of faith — Christians, certainly, and others, as well — regard ‘living in sin’ as an idea which has sometimes been presented in rather a small way: living in sin is really living a life that is turned in upon itself."

They were talking about the report on Radio 5 last week and the presenter was arguing that as per usual this was the church acting all high and mighty, telling people how to live their lives, but when it comes to the environment I think the church should speak out, as such things don't just effect individuals that are responsible for these decisions, but (disproportionately) the world's poor and God's planet, of which we are the stewards.

For more information check out www.shrinkingthefootprint.cofe.anglican.org/

Comments

[paul]

hey Phil - good blog, and it opens the can of worms about what we should talk about and what we should be quiet about. My simpleton take on it is that we should be very vocal about poverty and how we treat our planet and shut the fuck up about sexuality etc etc. Bruggemann says we have to be far more cunning and nuanced in this culture if our salt is to have any effect on the meat. I think on many of the issues the church rants on about they should simply shut up and listen...

....but the state of our planet is not one of them