Christians being confirmed or baptised in the Oxford diocese will henceforth be asked to commit to protecting the environment as part of the church’s formal liturgy.The addition to the ceremonies is supported by the Right Rev Steven Croft (see photo), bishop of Oxford, and asks people being baptised or confirmed to “strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the Earth”.The move, thought to be the first of its kind in the country, comes amid growing concern about the climate and ecological crisis among religious leaders. Earlier this year, more than 500 church leaders signed a letter to the government calling for no new fossil fuel developments, and Christian activists have been at the forefront of many climate protests in recent years.Steven, who is a member of the Lords select committee for the environment and climate change, said the church had a key moral and spiritual role to play in addressing the climate and ecological emergency.“The target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees is already slipping away from us,” he said. “Society has only a limited time to act but we should be in no doubt whatsoever that there is a strong and deep possibility of change if we act now.”The addition to the liturgy comes as the Oxford diocese announces plans to spend £10m improving the energy efficiency of its vicarages in an effort to hit net zero emissions by 2035. It is one of 10 dioceses to have divested from fossil fuel companies, making commitments not to invest in coal, oil and gas in the future.At a national level, the Church of England has been criticised for not acting quickly enough to cut its links with fossil fuel companies. It began to cut ties to coal and other heavily polluting industries in 2015, then pledged in 2018 to divest by 2023 from high-carbon companies that were “not aligned with the goals of the Paris agreement”. But as the deadline approaches, the organisation has said it is still “engaging” with key oil and gas interests, rather than cancelling all of its holdings.
Last week I slowed dowN – I switched everything off and went on a long walk. In fact I walked the St Cuthbert’s Way from Melrose in the Scottish borders to Holy Island in Northumberland.And the world opened up to me. I saw orchids growing in the hedgerow. A hare racing up the path ahead of me. Seals basking on the rocks. A cairn on an isolated hill top in the Cheviots. None of this could be seen from a car window. I had to get off the beaten track. I had to slow down.I slowed down to what some people call the speed of thought, or what I like to think of as God’s pace, walking speed, the speed of prayer.Someone once said that Jesus changed the world at three miles per hour. What they meant, is that he walked everywhere. And as he walked, he met people and listened to them and ministered to them and talked to them and changed them. And what might also be implied, is that our feverish demand for speed, and for getting everything done yesterday, is also changing the world, but not necessarily for the better. It seems these days that many of us, including me, want to get from A to B in the quickest possible time by the shortest possible route. But not only does this put every moment of the day under enormous stress and the endless pressure to produce and achieve, it means I miss out on all the beauty in between, things that can only really be appreciated by slowing down. Some things – you might even say the best things – simply can’t be done in a hurry. Like producing the best wine, or cooking a really good stew, or growing a garden. And as I walked, this was my prayer: Lord, make me slow to rush ahead of you – because that’s what I think is happening in so much that is wrong and confused in our world today and we see it’s devastating effects in displaced people, heat waves, flood, forest fire and famine - but make us quick to follow where you lead, and find a new and better way of inhabiting this earth.You’re probably not able to go on pilgrimage this week as I was lucky enough to do last week, in fact it’s been hard to get anywhere with the various strike action – so perhaps there has been a chance for some slow time, downtime, time to enjoy your day. I might take a long cut home. Throw away the teabags and rediscover the lost happiness of those two minutes we used to have when we warmed the pot and waited for the tea to mash. I’m going to switch off the telly tonight. Put a chair in the window. Look at the world. See what I can see. Count my blessings.You see, I don’t want any more time saving devices in my life, because they just add to the pressure of fitting more in. I want some time creating devices. Things that will slow me down.
THE central committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC) has condemned Russia’s “armed aggression” and “illegal invasion” of Ukraine, and has invited the Ukraine’s independent Orthodox Church to attend its meetings as an observer. But the way has also been cleared for Russian Orthodox leaders to attend the WCC Assembly this summer.“Our hearts grieve that, after eight years of unresolved crisis and conflict in the eastern regions of Ukraine, the Russian Federation launched an illegal invasion of its neighbour, a sovereign state — this tragic development represents a terrible failure of diplomacy, responsibility, and accountability to international law,” the committee said.“We declare that war, with the killing and all the other miserable consequences it entails, is incompatible with God’s very nature and will for humanity and against our fundamental Christian and ecumenical principles, and we reject any misuse of religious language and authority to justify armed aggression.”The statement was published at the close of a four-day meeting to prepare an agenda for the 11th WCC plenary, which opens in Karlsruhe on 31 August on the theme “Reconciliation and Unity”.The Revd Professor Jerry Pillay, a theologian from the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa, has been elected as the WCC’s new secretary-general.The central committee’s statement said that Russia’s invasion on 24 February had inflicted “an appalling toll of death, destruction and displacement” on the people of Ukraine, where thousands of civilians had been killed, cities reduced to ruins, and more than 14 million people — a quarter of the population — forced to flee their homes.There had been “many reports of atrocities which may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity”, the statement continued, including “sexual and gender-based violence” and a “heightened vulnerability to human trafficking”. The conflict had also led to a “massive proliferation of weapons”.“The effects threaten to tip many millions of already food-insecure people into famine around the world, to provoke widespread social and political instability, to destroy the post-World War IIinternational security architecture, to provoke a new global arms race, and to accelerate our trajectory towards climate catastrophe,” the central committee said.“We acknowledge and welcome the commitment of the Moscow Patriarchate — representing the WCC’s constituency in both Russia and Ukraine — to engage in encounter and dialogue under WCC auspices. . . Dialogue remains an obvious urgent necessity to address such a critical situation for the people of Ukraine, the future of the world and the ecumenical movement.”Calls have mounted for the Russian Orthodox Church to be barred from WCC meetings, after unsuccessful appeals for Patriarch Kirill to condemn the invasion and urge a ceasefire and negotiations.In March, the Church named a 23-member delegation team for the Karlsruhe plenary, headed by its foreign-relations director, Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev), although its final composition remains unclear after Hilarion’s demotion in early June by the Church’s Holy Synod (News, 17 June).In May, the Moscow Patriarchate welcomed the outcome of an inter-Orthodox consultation in Cyprus, in preparation for the WCC plenary, after its final report urged peace in Ukraine but made no mention of Russia’s invasion.On 22-26 May, a team from the WCC and Geneva-based ACT Alliance, grouping more than 140 faith-based member-organisations, visited the Russian-Ukrainian border area around Rostov-on-Don, at the Moscow Patriarchate’s invitation, to view the Russian Church’s work with refugees from the war.In an opening report to the central committee on 15 June, the WCC’s Orthodox acting secretary-general, the Revd Professor Ioan Sauca, said that the WCC, whose 352 member-Churches represent about 580 million Christians worldwide, had consistently denounced the conflict, while also maintaining contact and dialogue with Churches in Russia and Ukraine.He said that the WCC had been asked in letters and messages to expel the Russian Orthodox Church because of its wartime stance, and said that he understood how anger and frustration could impel “immediate radical decisions”.The WCC was created, however, as an “open platform for dialogue encounter, for discussion, and challenging one another”, Professor Sauca told the committee. “If we exclude those we do not like or agree with, with whom are we going to speak, and how can we advance to reconciliation and a lasting just peace?“It would be very easy to use the language of politicians, but we are called to use the language of our faith. It is easy to exclude, excommunicate, and demonise, but we are called as the WCC to meet and listen, even if and when we disagree.”
