Category: Climate Change

The Alliance and the Bishop of Oxford

by Canon Dr Phil Groves, a parish priest and convenor of the Anglican Peace and Justice Network. His PhD is on Anglican Missional Ecclesiology and he was the Facilitator for the Listening Process in the Anglican Communion and Director of Continuing Indaba.

‘The Alliance’ has written another letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury and once again the tone portrays them as the arbiters of orthodoxy. In this letter they make it clear that they will remain within the Anglican Communion while effectively becoming a separate church – a new province – in England.

They give the impression that it is the Church of England which will be isolated from the theologically uniform Global South, and so from the Anglican Communion itself, while they will be welcomed with open arms. They accuse the Archbishops of Canterbury and York of ‘Western elitism’ in ignoring the views of the Global South and claim they are the ones striving for unity.

My own bishop – the Bishop of Oxford – has written a response. In it he refers to the consensus at Lambeth 2022 which was to accept different views on sexuality and to walk together. He criticises the Alliance for not mentioning the persecution of LGBTIQ+ people in parts of the world where the [Anglican] church has given its support.

Replying to Bishop Steven, the Alliance has emphasised its opposition to the persecution of LGBTQIA+ people, but they also make clear their commitment to be in full communion with Provinces at the heart of GAFCON and the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans (GSFA) – including provinces such as Nigeria and Uganda which have promoted and rejoiced in laws that have deepened the criminalisation of LGBTQIA+ people and their allies. The members of the Alliance feel compelled to break with those who bless the union of people of the same sex, but not to break communion with those who rejoice that freedom of speech and freedom of association have been removed from those seeking to defend some of the most vulnerable people in their societies. The Alliance says it is ‘deeply concerned about the persecution of LGBTQIA+ people’ and they emphasise that their affirmation of Lambeth I.10 includes a clear repudiation of all homophobia. I don’t doubt their sentiment, but they are still aligning with church leaders who have praised laws that potentially imprison people for even being suspected of being gay.

The letters from the Alliance frequently talk about the ‘Global South’ representing 75% of Anglicanism. This is an extremely misleading claim. It may be that 75% of Anglicans live in the Global South, but even in one diocese, let alone one parish, there is always diversity. When the Alliance talks about ‘the Global South’ they seem to mean an organisation, GSFA, that according to its leader is defined by doctrine not geography. The GSFA has 8 Anglican member Provinces from a total of 31 provinces with Global South Anglicans. The GSFA has excluded or alienated most of the Global South provinces, and has been a cause of division.

The Bishop of Oxford is right to point out that, if the Alliance is in partnership with 75% of Anglicans in the socio-economic Global South, then that includes being in partnership with Anglicans who have steadfastly opposed GAFCON and GSFA and with those who are deliberating change. In the terms set by the Alliance, many of them are not ‘orthodox’. The Bishop of Oxford is aware of this because the Diocese of Oxford has a partnership with the Diocese of Kimberley and Kuruman in South Africa, where prayers for those in same sex unions have recently been approved.

And a further new partnership challenges the charge that the Church of England is failing to listen to Anglicans in the Global South. This week, the Bishop of Oxford announced the launch of a new link with the Diocese of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.

Archbishop Howard Gregory – the Diocesan Bishop of Jamaica and the Archbishop of the West Indies – entered the partnership well aware of the progressive stance of our Bishop and of many in our Diocese. The partnership is for all in both dioceses, not just with those who self-proclaim themselves to be ‘orthodox’. His diocese also has theological diversity and we will find common ground and real challenges. He has chosen to partner his complex diocese with our complex diocese, fully aware of the range of views we have here and the direction of travel under the leadership of our bishop.

In contrast with the Archbishops of Nigeria and Uganda, Archbishop Howard has followed on from his predecessor – Archbishop John Holder of Barbados – and bravely squared up to the homophobia in West Indian culture and law. Far from being in thrall to ‘Western elites’, the Archbishop is seeking the repeal of the British colonial penal code.

The place of the West Indies in the story of GSFA is illustrative of power struggles across the Communion. The South to South encounters of the 1990s were intended to enable a post-colonial Anglican voice to emerge, but in the late 1990s some of the leadership partnered with Western conservatives who were seeking support for their opposition to women bishops and a clear stance on human sexuality. Following the 1998 Lambeth Conference, and up to his retirement in 2009, the Archbishop of the West Indies, Drexel Gomez, was at the heart of these partnerships. However, his lead role in that organisation alienated him from the bishops in his province. They had their own partnerships with dioceses around the world, including TEC, and they did not necessarily support his views. He was spoken of as ‘representing’ them, but he had no mandate to do so.

His retirement coincided with the meeting of the ACC in Jamaica in 2009. I was privileged to meet all the bishops from West Indies that week and several of them told me that they had been lobbied by Western conservatives (including one from the Diocese of Oxford) telling them who to elect as their Archbishop so they could preserve continuity with the Global South. By a huge majority they ignored the advice and elected a radical alternative – Bishop John Holder.

I knew Bishop John well. In 2006 I had just been appointed Facilitator for the Listening Process on Human Sexuality in the Anglican Communion and he sent me a copy of his training manual for all clergy in his diocese. He did so because one of the four sessions was aimed at enabling his clergy to face their homophobia, and change. He was not bowing to any Western elite; it was the conclusion of his deep engagement with Scripture and the result of his deep listening to the experience of LGBTIQ+ people (as mandated in Lambeth I.10).

When the Bishops of the West Indies chose him as Primate, they did so in order to break with the organisation that the Alliance calls the ‘Global South’ and to ensure that they were part of an Anglican Communion that included TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada.

This pattern was often repeated across the Communion. I saw it in Ghana, Tanzania, Southern Africa and elsewhere and so when the GSFA tried to divide the Bishops at the 2022 Lambeth Conference by encouraging dissent through the signing of a document demanding universal conformity with Lambeth I.10, only a tiny proportion of bishops from the Global South signed up. Not one bishop from the West Indies signed it.

Calling the GSFA ‘the Global South’ is deliberately confusing. Because it is an organisation that is defined by doctrine not geography, people may be surprised to know that the breakaway Anglican Church in North America is a member! Yet the vast majority of Anglican Provinces in the socio-economic global south are not.

All this does not mean the partnership between Jamaica and the Cayman Islands and the Diocese of Oxford will be easy. Jamaica has been struck by a deadly hurricane almost immediately after the announcement of the link and this calls for us not only to seek money to help but also to ask hard questions about our responsibility for the environmental crisis engulfing the world. We will also be required to examine our place in the horror of chattel slavery. One of the historic patrons of one of my churches was a slave owner – my guess is that slave-trade related patronage runs deep within our diocese. Effective partnership is going to be uncomfortable for all of us.

This new partnership indicates that the Anglican Communion has a healthy future. We will need to face difficult conversations with openness, honesty, and humility, but we will benefit from those as we walk with Christ.

July 6, 2024
Entering Creationtide: The Church and the Climate Emergency

by Revd Ruth Newton, parish priest of St John’s Sharow, tutor at St Hild college, and member of General Synod and the Environmental Working Group. Ruth is undertaking a doctorate into the theological motivations of environmental activists

There is no longer any question that anthropogenic climate change is happening, with an overwhelming scientific consensus that the climate is warming at an alarming rate due to human activity. In 2021, the UN Secretary-General suggested that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change findings were nothing less than “a code red for humanity”, that “the alarm bells are deafening”, and that the evidence is irrefutable. The record-breaking temperatures experienced this summer have hammered home to those of us in this country a message that our brothers and sisters in the global South have been telling us for some time: that climate change is a present reality, not a future threat.

Consensus for action has been growing within the Church too. Striving “to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth” has been recognised as a mark of Anglican Mission for over 30 years. It’s the aspiration of General Synod that the Church be “Carbon Net Zero” by 2030, and this has placed environmental actions firmly on the agenda of PCCs and Diocesan Synods.

In a Church which is divided, not least on human sexuality, environmental mission has the potential to provide the common ground around which we can coalesce and where the Church could give unequivocal moral leadership. The recent “Lambeth Calls” on the environment and sustainable development attracted less publicity than the more controversial one on human dignity, precisely because, as one bishop reportedly said, they were a “no brainer”.

Nevertheless, in a Church recovering from the impact of the Covid lockdowns and facing the immediate challenge of the cost-of-living crisis, I wonder if “the environment” is seen as just another issue to be ticked off an ever-growing to-do list. For too many, environmental mission is still seen as a distraction from the “core business” of being Church – the evangelism, youth and children’s work, pastoral care, social advocacy, and the myriad of other things we need to attend to.

However, “the environment” is not one issue amongst many, or even the issue of our times. I would argue it is not “an issue” at all; it is bigger than that. It is not a distraction from “core business”, but rather the backdrop to it, the horizon against which all our theology, mission and ministry are undertaken. Our apologetics and evangelism will prove ineffective if we present a version of the Gospel which fails to address the pressing questions the ecological crisis is raising. Those engaged in pastoral care will find themselves faced with people who are, with some justification, suffering eco-anxiety. Those who advocate with and for the poor will discover, as so many relief and development agencies have done, that climate change and ecological degradation intersect with and amplify poverty to the extent that one cannot be dealt with without addressing the other. All our theology, mission and ministry will need to be recalibrated to meet the challenges of “the environment”.

Doing this will not be easy, as even finding the appropriate language is a struggle. I wrestle with the idea of stewardship. I find little scriptural warrant for it, apart from a contested interpretation of Genesis 1:28, and, given our track record to date, I have little confidence in the abilities of humans to proactively manage the natural world. I wonder if we might do better to think in terms of human restraint in using natural resources.

Thinking in terms of creation-care is preferable, but only if we recall that we too are created beings, dependent upon both God and the non-human creation. We need the rest of creation more than they need us. Since we have tended to think of ourselves as separate from the rest of creation, the language of creation-care does not always sufficiently emphasise the degree to which the ecological crisis is also a humanitarian one, affecting people, and affecting them right now.

Climate change disproportionately affects the global poor, black and brown people, women, and children. Those who, historically, have been least culpable are also the ones who are bearing the most cost. Those who are already marginalised will be marginalised further. We have a responsibility to future generations who bear the consequences of our actions and inaction. So I prefer to think in terms of justice. Whilst I am unsure whether God has given Christians a mandate to “steward” creation, I am confident he has given us one to do justice and love mercy, and to love our neighbours as ourselves.

This month, as we celebrate creation-tide, we may well rejoice in the beauty of the natural world and the splendour of all that God has made. We may even consider our culpability in the world’s problems and may commit to live differently. But let us not shy away from addressing the human cost of the ecological emergency, and our prophetic role in addressing that.

A Christian response to “the environment” cannot be left to those environmental enthusiasts and nature lovers who have heroically advocated for decades. Nor can the theology be delegated to the specialism of eco-theologians. It will involve the whole Body of Christ, in all its diversity, uniting, as the Church takes up its calling to announce and signify the Kingdom of God. I am probably slightly too fond of saying “in the face of global heating, we cannot be lukewarm”. But really, as those who seek to follow Christ, we can’t afford to be anything other than “all in”.

September 1, 2022
General Synod: The Highs & Lows

by the Rt Revd David Walker, Bishop of Manchester

The General Synod of the Church of England, which I’ve been attending most of this last week, is a body that attracts its fair share of criticism. Its internal debates can seem far away from the reality of normal church life, let alone the lives we live in our neighbourhoods and communities. And when it turns its hand to commenting on matters of public concern, the queue of members lining up to repeat exactly the same points that several previous speakers have made, but simply with their own personal anecdotes, soon becomes woefully tedious. However, it can also be a place where decisions are made that provide both a moral underpinning and a structured framework for the mission and ministry to which we believe God has called us.

In those respects, this Synod was like most synods.

The draft Cathedrals Measure may not sound the most exciting piece of business ever thought of, and the details of what we agreed at its Revision Stage need not detain us, rather it was an example of what a good legislative process looks like. A complex and interconnected series of recommendations, given a fair wind by Synod last year, had been subject to thorough scrutiny, involving all the major stakeholder groups, and only then brought back for us to revise. The care with which the work had been done outside the chamber, and not only in the formal meetings of the Revision Committee, made our task far more straightforward. Voices had clearly been heard, and there had been none of the preciousness that can lead to a proposed change being rejected simply because it stands at variance with the original proposals. Cathedrals are a vital part of our life, showcasing what the Church of England can do, and working closely with the cities in which they stand. A good legal framework will help then to flourish and serve us in the years ahead.

We also had a good and important debate about Safeguarding. Not only were we able to show the progress being made against the five specific recommendations put to us so far by IICSA, we also got to see the incoming lead bishop in action, presenting an overwhelmingly supported amendment that commits us to a deeper engagement with survivors, and to backing up our words with action. As with cathedrals, the key to doing well will be working together, with all parties fully involved both within and beyond formal meetings. I look forward to taking part in something that won’t be without pain and struggle but which can get us all to a better place. We will do the work before deciding the results.

And then the careful work, led and presented by the former Bishop of London, into where exactly the Channel Islands fitinto our structures, showed equal diligence in spending time and effort, over several years, in bringing all the interested parties to a common and agreed mind. What could have been a messy piece of legislation, with all its stages required over four consecutive days, passed smoothly on its way.

My hopes for the Living in Love and Faith process, for which we received a short update on progress and a slightly oddly structured Q&A session, lie chiefly in that unlike previous expeditions into the territory of relationships, identity and sexuality, there has been a deep involvement, both formally and informally, with the rich diversity of scholarship, science and human experience contained within our Church. However, the nature of the exercise has meant that whilst consultation has ranged very widely, draft texts have not been circulated for comment beyond the group itself and the bishops. That inevitably means that there are levels of both fear and suspicion among Synod members, lest the published document be judged slanted in either a conservative or liberal direction. Hence, I believe that the big challenge, for both the team writing the LLF document and those of us in the House of Bishops who will see the next draft in March, is to affirm our diversity in words that will allow all us in the Church to see that we are being offered space to live and flourish, alongside those with whom we disagree deeply, in one body. The book won’t mandate a particular change programme, but it must resource and support us in forming the change proposals we will need, within a fixed time frame. And that process will need to be open and transparent.

The less satisfactory aspects of Synod were where we departed from that methodology of doing careful and inclusive work beforehand, seeking to find and build the best consensus, before then presenting matters to Synod.

I’d hoped theEnvironment debatewould be a highlight, and in some ways it was. We heard passionate pleas for the Church to work to eliminate its carbon footprint. My one speech in the chamber this time was to support an amendment from the chair of the Finance Committee to set up the structures we will need to produce robust intermediate targets, identify specific solutions and oversee the work well. The crucial issue of selecting the year by which all this will be achieved was moved from a perhaps under-ambitious 2045 to a date of 2030. Whatever ones views on the urgency of the climate crisis, it felt unsatisfactory that this was achieved through an amendment which was decided after less than ten minutes debate, by a majority of 15, with a turnout that meant fewer than a third of Synod members voted in favour of it. Many, I suspect, were caught in the tea room, not having expected a close vote. 2030 maybe the right year, but the process felt flawed. Something that is too often the case with matters we decide at a single sitting.

Finally, to Question Time. At its best this is a highlight of Synod, and the move to having initial answers written has given space for more questions to be asked and more supplementaries to be put. It should be where chairs of committees and councils, who are often senior bishops, are held to account for the work the bodies they lead are doing. Sadly (indeed, I’d go further and say shamefully) it seems of late to be evolving into more of a blood sport. The aim of some questioners is at best to score partisan points and at worst to inflict maximum damage on the person put up to answer. We need accountability from our leaders, but we need to hold ourselves accountable for the way in which we exercise that accountability. Unless the minority who are presently abusing Question Time can curb their behaviour, it must be in doubt as to whether it can survive in its current form. That will be a pity, but better to have a pity than to let it degenerate into an unedifying and embarrassing circus.

I fear I’ve laboured the theme, but it matters.

What makes for a good Synod item is not simply the force of the arguments, the passion in the room, or the eloquence of the speakers on the day. It’s that whatever is brought to us has been properly discussed, and even better co-designed and co-produced, with all those who hold a significant stake in its outcome, so that everyone can fully own and exercise their part in the process.

February 14, 2020
Inside, Outside – XR, Church & Change

by the Revd Canon Giles Goddard, former Chair of the General Synod’s Human Sexuality Group and member of the co-ordinating group for the Living in Love and Faith project

October was a strange month for me. It was all about insiders and outsiders.

St John’s Waterloo was pleased to open its doors to the protesters of Extinction Rebellion. We gave fifty Red Rebels a home in the crypt for a fortnight, enabling them to rest and robe before going out to sites of protest around London. In their robes of red, with stark white faces, they witnessed silently to the consequences of catastrophic climate change.

The response we had from XR protestors who made us their home was moving. One person wrote to me afterwards – ‘I was brought up as a Christian. However, I have to say that in the sixty five years of my being on this planet this is the first time in my life that I have been quite so moved and impressed by such an open, loving and caring approach.’

At the same time I was hard at work helping with the fourth redrafting of the Living in Love and Faith resource, following feedback from the College of Bishops. I have been moved by the level of engagement from people across the spectrum of views in the Church of England, as we work closely together. We’re trying to create something which will genuinely help the church to engage better with the deeply contested issues this blog often covers. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating, but the process of making the pudding has been in many ways humbling.

Many of the XR rebels I spoke to are ‘insiders’, grandparents – often from the West Country – who have never protested before. Who have certainly never thought of being arrested, of intentionally breaking the law – they are the people we would think of as the haves, the comfortably off. But they have deliberately re-cast themselves as outsiders, as lawbreakers. They have reached the conclusion that this is the way they are called to try to bring about the urgent changes needed to resist global heating. The insiders have become outsiders.

Many of the people involved in LLF are ‘outsiders’. People who, because of the church’s history and theology, do not fit within the current structures. Lesbian and gay people in relationships, trans people. People bringing a different voice, people who have often in the past been shut out or marginal. But now we are in the room, being listened to and listening. For many it hasn’t been an easy process. Some have left – but others have stayed or joined. The outsiders have become insiders.

In March I compared the XR arrestees to Jesus, and got some pushback for that. But I didn’t change my mind in October. The challenge of climate change is so great that urgent measures are vital.

In October I was welcomed by the College of Bishops, expressly because of who I am, a unique and individual member of the Church of England’s spiritual community. It felt weird but good.

I’m not sure where I stand now, inside or outside the circle. I expect the XR protesters aren’t sure where they stand either. But I am absolutely sure that the necessary changes won’t happen, in climate or in the church, unless we are willing to unsettle ourselves and move outside our boundaries. Journeying together to an unknown future. Which, by God’s good grace, will be the better future for which we all hope.

November 15, 2019
The Rainbow of Non-violent Advocacy
by the Rt Revd Paul Bayes, Bishop of Liverpool and Chair of the Ozanne Foundation

Last Thursday I stood with a number of colleagues, lay and ordained, as part of the Christian Climate Action contribution to the Extinction Rebellion protests in London. We read from the book of Revelation In Trafalgar Square, standing in front of the National Gallery, surrounded by people of all faiths and none who were taking their stand together to form part of this extraordinary non-violent direct action movement.

I was not arrested, though I could have been. Some of my ordained colleagues there had been arrested the previous day, and a great many Christians have been arrested before and since, just a few of the 2600+ people (at the time of writing) who have taken their protest to the point of loss of liberty. Without violence they break the law and they face the music. And who are we to judge?

On the way to Trafalgar Square I passed Downing Street and Admiralty Arch, two of the several places where I myself had been arrested in the 1980s, over 35 years ago. At that time it was my great privilege to be a national co-chair of Christian CND, and to have been able to take a stand on the wide rainbow of non-violent advocacy which wanted to see nuclear weapons banned, within the still wider rainbow that seeks to change the world for the better in any way. That was around the time of the “Church and the Bomb” report. I spent time lobbying the General Synod and arguing with bishops, and I spent time in the cells at Cannon Row police station. All that advocacy felt like one seamless thing to me.

And the arguments used against Extinction Rebellion last week were also familiar to me, since the same things had been said to me whenever I sat in the road, or chained myself to railings, or prayed persistently outside a US base, or otherwise took action all those years ago. “Isn’t this just ridiculous middle-class posturing?” “Aren’t you just messing about?” “Do you really think that these protests will change policy – will change anything at all?”

All these are fair questions, but they miss the point. The point is that non-violent advocacy is a wide, wide rainbow, and each colour in it has its place, and it would be foolish to assume that no part of it makes or will make a difference. It’s a matter of diversity, as St Paul understood very well when he spoke of the body and its different parts.

The advocacy of Mahatma Gandhi or of Dr Martin Luther King took its place within this diverse, non-violent, world-changing rainbow. Within the rainbow some work quietly and unobtrusively to influence political and other leaders with facts, evidence, scholarship, quiet wisdom, nuance. Others will follow the advice of an editor of the Economist: “Simplify, then exaggerate”, crafting messages which motivate the heart and lead people to take a stand, and proclaiming them clearly and very loudly.

In the case of Extinction Rebellion the messages and demands are suitably loud and clear (See https://rebellion.earth/the-truth/demands/):
- Tell the truth (and declare a climate emergency)
- Act now (and move to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2025)
- Go beyond politics (and establish a citizens’ assembly to focus the practical steps)
The details of these demands are of course open to debate, and so are some of the tactical choices made about where and how to protest and what to disrupt. But when it comes to the future of the planet the rainbow of advocacy needs XR, just as it nees Greta Thunberg and the school strikes. The urgency of the climate crisis means that nuanced debate between sophisticated grown-ups is not enough, as the famous sculpture by Isaac Cordal, “Waiting for climate change”, makes clear:

All this is personal. It bears in on each one of us, as Bishop Rowan Williams knows. Writing in the afterword to the XR manual “This Is Not A Drill” [1], he has this to say:

“To put it very directly: it is worth changing our habits of consumption, the default settings for our lifestyle, the various kinds of denial and evasion of bodily reality that suit us, the fantasies of limitless growth and control, simply because there are healthy and unhealthy ways of living in this universe.

To go on determinedly playing the trumpet in a string quartet is a recipe for frustration and collapse and conflict. There are ways of learning to live better, to make peace with the world. Learn them anyway: they will limit the disease and destruction; they may even be seeds for a future we can’t imagine…

It just might work.”

And as a person of faith he says:

“In the Book of Proverbs, in the Hebrew Scriptures, the divine wisdom is described as ‘filled with delight’ at the entire world which flows from that wisdom. For me as a religious believer, the denial or corruption of that delight is like spitting in the face of the life-giving Word who is to be met in all things and all people…”

And he ends by saying:

“Anger, love and joy may sound like odd bedfellows, but these are the seeds of a future that will offer life – not success, but life.”

So what? Well, with all this in mind, there is a question for you who are reading this. On this matter – the future of the planet – and indeed on any other matter of justice and peace, will you take your stand within the rainbow of non-violent advocacy? And if you will, where will be the right place, the best place, for you yourself to stand?

Of course some approaches stand outside any non-violent advocacy rainbow. On one side is the assumption that no advocacy is necessary at all, or perhaps that advocating is so naïve as to be pointless, or perhaps that we can’t be bothered – that other people will engage with it and so we won’t have to. And on the other side, the assumption that only violence will change things, or that if we feel we must break the law, then having broken the law, no consequences should or must be faced.

Neither of these approaches was taken by Mahatma Gandhi, or by Dr King. As they engaged with the issues of justice that lay before them, each one understood the spectrum of advocacy and operated across it; at times pragmatic, at times prophetic. Jesus too spoke highly of the law and also acted in ways that challenged it, reaching out to the excluded. In words of the Lutheran Gordon Lathrop that so often speak to my own heart, “…we are speaking of the biblical, historic Christ who eats with sinners and outsiders, who is made a curse and sin itself for us, who justifies the ungodly, and who is himself the hole in any system”.

Jesus lived with urgency, for the times were urgent. The times for us too are urgent, as indeed they have always been.

If you’re a Christian then, in matters of the future of the planet, in all matters of justice and peace, will you listen for the voice of the triune God who loves you, the voice of the Holy Spirit within you who comforts and provokes you? Will you take your stand within the rainbow of non-violent advocacy? And if you will, where will you stand?

Paul Bayes is Bishop of Liverpool

[1] Extinction Rebellion, “This Is Not A Drill”, Penguin Books 2019
October 18, 2019