'The Kingdom of God is the celebration of Sabbath economics, of generous hospitality and sacrificial compassion, of investment in all that builds community, and the rejection of amassing fortunes in barns...' This series of seven Sabbath reflections by Bishop George Browning are designed for individual or group use in parishes, seminaries and other study environments.
Sabbath: God's Relationship with Creation; the Template for Human Society Sabbath: Presence, not Withdrawal Sabbath: Blessing and Hallowing within the Family of Creation Sabbath: Embracing Jubilee Sabbath Economics: The Theology of Enough Jesus: Sabbath Life, Fully Lived Sabbath: The 'Yet to Come'
'We Don't Have Much Time: Fracking and the environmental crisis', by the Revd Dr Canon Jeff Golliher, Programme Director for the Environment and Sustainable Communities, Anglican Communion Office at the UN in collaboration with the Executive Committee of the Anglican Communion Environmental Network. Extracted from Anglican World Magazine, November 2013
The Hope We Share: A Vision For Copenhagen a Statement from the Anglican Communion Environmental Network in preparation for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference Of Parties (COP) meetings to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark in December 2009.
Responses to Climate Change .A statement from the environmental network conference of the Anglican Communion meeting in Canberra, Australia , April 2005.
The Stewardship of Creation Statement from the Anglican Communion Environmental Network in preparation for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, September 2002.
The Lima Statement and Action Plan
Creation is in crisis. This is the conclusion of the Anglican Communion Environmental Network meeting in Lima, Peru, August 2011. Each participant from around the Communion reported accelerating impacts from human-induced climate change and environmental degradation in their regions. Many participants also reported extensive ignorance and, in some cases, unwillingness to take action.
We were appropriately reminded by our host, the Bishop of Peru, the Rt Revd Bill Godfrey of the need to teach our people in terms they understand. We begin with the discovery in Jesus Christ of the Good News of the Kingdom which draws us together - moving us from a world that divides to a Gospel that gathers.
Together we discerned an urgent calling to seek environmental justice and to encourage Anglicans everywhere to challenge and transform individuals and systems that spoil the earth, affect local communities adversely, and refuse to imagine a different kind of global community.
Among those systems most in need of transformation is an economic system that knows no alternative to continual growth. Rather than having an economy that serves the well-being of communities, our communities (human and other-than-human) serve the well-being of the economy.
Crisis and Commitment - The Lima Statement and Action Plan
Other documents and reports from the meeting:
Anglican Church in Aotearoa New Zealand & Polynesia: Provincial report to ACEN Anglican Church of Australia: Provincial report to ACEN Anglican Church of Australia: Provincial report Appendix Process Methodology for Developing Sustainability Guidelines for your Diocese, Anglican Diocese of Perth, 2011 Church of Bangladesh: Provincial report to ACEN Church of Bangladesh: Provincial report to ACEN - notes Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil: Slides for the Provincial report Anglican Church of Canada: Provincial report to ACEN The Episcopal Church: Provincial report to ACEN Anglican Church of Mexico: Provincial report to ACEN Provincial reports to ACEN for the Anglican Church of Burundi; the Church of England; the Church of Ireland; the Anglican Church of Kenya; the Church of the Province of S E Asia Episcopal Scottish Church: Provincial report to ACEN Anglican Church of Southern Africa: Provincial report to ACEN Anglican Church of Tanzania: Provincial report to ACEN Experiences from Northern Argentina: Dr Andrew Leake (editors note... Huge file 17MB!) Towards COP 17: A South African perspective Anglican Alliance: Presentation to ACEN
Anglican Networks: Presentation to ACEN The Crisis We Face: Where Do We Go From Here? What Would the Good Shepherd Do? - Canon Jeff Golliher
www.cusichaca.org: The Cusichaca Trust has pioneered the restoration of traditional Andean agricultural terraces and irrigation canals and established itself as a leading exponent of 'applied archaeology' in rural development. The Trust works with local partners in Peru, devising projects that reduce poverty and increase self-sufficiency amongst isolated rural communities, and showing how the technological achievements of the past can be put back to work to help solve contemporary problems.
Climate Change Bangladesh: The impact of climate change on Bangladesh and responses of the Church of Bangladesh, the Rt Revd Paul Sarker, February 2015.
'Change Development Paradigm and Life style', the Rt Revd Thomas K Oommen, Deputy Moderator of Church of South India, November 2014: This paper points out that the people who are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change are those who have done the least to cause it and concludes with a strident call to the rich to change their development paradigm and life style. God's Earth, Our HomeFive studies for individuals or groups based on 'Ecology and Economy', a lecture given by the Most Revd Dr Rowan Williams at the University of Kent, Canterbury, March 2005. Compiled by members of the Anglican Social Justice Working Group, Diocese of Dunedin, Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand & Polynesia.
Food and Fasting: A resource for Lent published by Food Matters: Connecting faith and food. Food Matters is a project of the Diocese of Oxford in the Church of England. See www.foodmatters.org.uk.
Carbon Fast for Lent The Carbon Fast for Lent, adapted by the Anglican Church of South Africa from materials produced by Tearfund, invites Anglicans and all local faith communities to focus on specific Lenten 'acts of love and sacrifice', and to take time reflecting on our contribution to climate change and those most impacted by it.
We Have Faith campaign statement 'A green economy for sustainable development and poverty eradication in preparation for Rio+20 and beyond', from members of the faith communities of southern Africa
Climate Change - A Challenge to the Churches in South Africa A publication of the South African Council of Churches Climate Change Committee, November 2009. This document is a response to the urgent need for churches in South Africa to engage in theological reflection on the challenges posed by climate change in order to discern the signs of the times.
Religious Leaders for a Sustainable Future Report, Declaration and Resolutions from the Summit of Religious Leaders of Southern Africa meeting at Midrand, South Africa, 10 to 12 February 2009.
A Pastoral Letter concerning 'Our Environment' from the Archbishop of Kenya the Most Rev Dr Eliud Wabukala to his Province, 6 August 2009.
Global Warming and Climate Change A presentation by the Co-Presiding Bishop of the Anglican Church in Aoteara, New Zealand & Polynesia to the 2009 Primates' Meeting 2009 in Alexandria, Egypt. The presentation has four main parts: The evidence and effects of global warming and climate change; A Biblical imperative; The Christian moral climate; What can the church do?
Economics and the Planet The 2010 Ruth Edgecombe Environmental Challenges lecture held at the KZN University Pietermaritzburg campus, South Africa, by Bishop Geoff Davies, Director of the Southern African Faith Communities' Environment Institute (SAFCEI). Bishop Davies looks at the environmental challenges confronting humanity under the headings of environmental destruction, involving biodiversity loss, habitat destruction and pollution of our life support systems; political violence, poverty and climate change.
Theology, Climate Change and Justice A paper written by Bishop Geoff Davies, Director of the Southern African Faith Communities' Environment Institute (SAFCEI), for the Southern African Economic Justice Network (EJN), that considers why Christians should be involved in environmental issues.
Inter Faith Seminar on Environment and Sustainability: Practical action and the faith communities This is the report of an event on 21 March 2011, organised by Shrinking the Footprint, the Church of England's national environment campaign and the London School of Jewish Studies, for those who have responsibilities for managing and promoting environmental action within faith organisations.
Gandhi, Ecology & World Religions by Adela DiUbaldo Torchia which deals with “a Gandhian ethics of economics which helps us to reengage the religion and ecology debate, and to re-envision ecology's more-with-less philosophy as an invitation to liberation rather than deprivation”.
'The Spiritual Dimension of Global Change': An address by Bishop George Browning delivered at the National Library in Canberra, Australia, 9 October 2012.
Elaine Murray: Living Hopefully in a Time of Climate Change
Wayne E. Demerse: Sensitizing Christians to the Value of Creation
George Browning: Christian responses to Climate Change and other Environmental issues. A lecture given at Oxford University, England, August 2009.
George Browning: Sustainability and Sabbath: Genesis 2:1-4a and the Climate Change debate This thesis argues that a person of faith and more particularly of Christian faith is a person who lives Sabbath rest, understands their place within the creation, and is committed to the redeeming of the whole created order and the fidelities which enable life to be sustainable.
Climate Change and the Gospel – David Atkinson
Climate Change and the Purposes of God: A call to the Church, an Operation Noah publication, 2012. The likelihood of runaway global warming, which will diminish food security, accelerate the extinction of huge numbers of species and make human life itself impossible in some parts of the world, raises questions that go to the heart of our Christian faith.
KAIROS Policy Briefing Paper 'Whose Green Economy?'
written by John Dillon. KAIROS Canada: Faithful Action for Justice unites Canadian churches and religious organisations in a faithful ecumenical response to the call to 'do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God' (Micah 6.8). See www.kairoscanada.org/research-analysis/kairos-briefing-papers/ for further briefing papers.
Steve de Gruchy: An Olive Agenda: First thoughts on a metaphorical theology of development This paper proposes a theological engagement with a metaphor that could transcend the duality between the 'green' environmental agenda and the 'brown' poverty agenda that has disabled development discourse for the past twenty years. The mix of green and brown suggests an olive agenda; which in turn provides a remarkably rich metaphor - the olive - that holds earth, land, climate, labour, time, family, food, nutrition, health, hunger, poverty, power and violence.
Steve de Gruchy: Agency, Sin and Grace: Protestant perspectives on mission and the earth crisis
Looking at five contemporary Christian traditions - Evangelical, Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian and Lutheran - this essay examines the relationship between Protestant mission thinking and the ecological crisis facing the earth. It then engages with the notions of agency, sin and grace to suggest an alternative Protestant approach to mission that is responsive to the depth of the crisis.