God Is Green

Whenever the church is reported in the press it seems to be talking about sex, as though that is the only thing we think about - female priests and bishops, blessing of same-sex relationships, gay adoption, protests about government shifting the moral goal-posts of society. All these things are important, but there are other issues which the churches should be addressing, not least climate-change and the environment. Happily the church is being pro-active here, and the green agenda is receiving the attention it deserves.

The Bishop of London, as the C of E's spokesman on environmental issues, has pledged to reduce his carbon footprint by not using air travel unless absolutely necessary, and has declared our obsession with cheap flights to be sinful. My wife, Rosemary, and I were planning to have a few days in the sun at half-term until our consciences got the better of us, and we plumped for Sidmouth instead. So we shall be spending three days watching the oil slick drift ashore from the containership aground in Lyme Bay - a nice piece of environmental irony.

St Bride's too is taking its environmental responsibilities seriously. We are looking at ways of shrinking our carbon footprint, in particular by installing photo-voltaic panels on one of our aisle roofs. If we can get grant assistance this should be completed within the year, and we can hopefully become a net contributor to the National Grid.

I recommend that you watch a new documentary programme called God is Green, which is to be screened on Monday 12th February at 8pm on Channel 4. It is directed by a member of the St Bride's congregation, Mark Dowd, and is a timely wake-up call for the churches to address the urgent environmental future. A reminder too for the C of E to be less obsessed about what goes on between the sheets, and more obsessed about what is going on between the planet's surface and its atmosphere, as stewards of God's creation.