A message from the Dean - 3 September 2021
Dear Friends,
Caring for Creation
Have you ever visited the National Space Centre at Leicester? If not it’s well worth seeing. We all need regular exposure to things that create awe and wonder in our minds and emotions, but I have to say being taken around the centre by its curatorial staff was an eye-opener. I asked a young researcher what she found most awesome and perhaps most threatening. Without drawing a breath she pointed to a picture of the Earth’s biosphere, the Earth’s surface from the ocean floor to the upper atmosphere. It is no more than three miles deep. It is very thin compared to the Earth’s surface area and very fragile. It is the only planetary surface in the known universe capable of supporting organic life. If it becomes compromised or further degraded life on earth faces extinction – as simple and scary as that. You don’t have to be an eco-warrior to understand or appreciate the fact that we have to change our ways or perish.
The science fiction write Kim Stanley Robinson has called our way of life “cooking the biosphere”. A precise, if grim, way of speaking about what’s happening all around us. Scientists have been telling us about this for decades:
- The ozone layer has been depleted in the upper atmosphere thereby taking away protection from harmful ultra-violet radiation.
- Deforestation is creating mass extinction of species and reducing biodiversity.
- Carbon dioxide and other gases produced by industry, heating, transport and agriculture through reliance on fossil fuels are warming the earth’s surface, changing climates and melting the polar icecaps. This global warming is creating an inhospitable home for all forms of life, us included.
- Poor agricultural techniques on fragile soils are destroying topsoil and extending deserts on every continent.
- Inappropriate and industrial fishing is wiping out species and destroying fishing grounds.
- Over consumption of meat requires more in-puts of energy and feed than are derived in benefit, with more land being turned over to animal farming than plant-based food production.
- Chemicals used in agriculture and food processing and packaging are creating waste and pollution, endangering many species of insect, bird, fish and mammal; compromising human fertility and are thought to increase immune problems and cancer rates in humans.
- Effluents from domestic, agricultural, transport and industrial sources are acidifying lakes, poisoning rivers and ground water and polluting the air.
- The world’s human population is the largest it has ever been. It is estimated that if this entire population lived like all people in the richest nations, we would need 2.5 planets on which to live.
You might object that this is simply too awful to contemplate. Dare we ask for a miracle or a great awakening? I think the challenge before the human family is to recognise our inter-dependence with one another and all living things, that in itself will be the miracle of a changed consciousness. That’s the awakening that can enable us all to make the changes and allow us to hope for a future. Throughout September we will be keeping all the Sundays as Creation tide, culminating with our Harvest Thanksgiving on 3 October.
The Jewish Calendar celebrates Harvest-time as New Year. The Earth has produced its bounty and, at autumn, with all that abundance acknowledged, God is worshipped and honoured as the giver of every perfect gift, including the gift of conscience and right and proper ordering of the way those gifts are treated, used and shared. Taking those gifts and blessings confidently as coming from God can be a pledge for the future. The key in Jewish and Christian understanding of the Creation and the Environment is that human beings are co-workers with God in husbanding and mediating blessing. We are not plunderers, mere consumers, taskmasters, but, if you like, priests, using care, creativity, observation, deduction and skill to enable creation to thrive, and in its thriving to find our happiness. The Church of England has responded to the urgency of the climate crisis by setting targets for all parts of the Church to become carbon “net zero” by 2030. For sure, the care of creation is fundamental to all that we hold dear about life and existence itself. “The Earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the compass of the world and all who live therein” (Psalm 24:1). Future generations will judge us on how we did or did not respond to the current emergency. In conjunction therefore with the environmental charity ARocha, the Cathedral has undertaken an environmental audit and will be applying for “Eco Church” recognition. There is work to do; not simply going for photovoltaic panels on the roof! It will be about checking our patterns of consumption, behaviour, purchasing, the care of our land, habitation for wild-life, curbing noxious emissions and limiting our use of fossil fuels.
It is also about politics. Politicians do not lead where the public do not wish to follow. It will be easy for nation states to refuse to take steps if other nations deny the problem. Yet the problem does not disappear by avoiding it. Christian ethics begin in realism. What is actually happening? How are people, sentient beings, the land and sea actually affected? Moral judgements are coloured by evidence. Is what we see blessing or curse? Life or destruction? Diminishment or abundance? Therefore, the alliances between people of goodwill across the generations can create those structures of feeling, those patterns of values which can propel changes in global consumption and co-operation. We can also affirm the people and organisations who are the thought leaders – those who will help us see alternatives to the world as it is. Social media can quickly turn us into an unreflective mob of hate-mongers and prejudiced silo-dwellers. Faith must be the solvent of fear and untruth.
To get out of our climate emergency needs some acts of unparalleled imagination and initiative. We won’t all agree about the means, but if the pandemic has taught us anything it is that we live on a single planet in a global market and civilization. If one part is faced with deadly risk, all suffer. We have to decide as a global community what tasks are most important for us to take on now, and the part world faiths can play is to help rebuild trust, to get away from toxic fundamentalism, and hatred of difference.
Let me end with a prayer which is a commitment to active care for God’s creation:
Lord of life and giver of hope,
we pledge ourselves to care for creation,
to reduce our waste,
to live sustainably,
and to value the rich diversity of life.
May your wisdom guide us,
that life in all its forms may flourish,
and may we be faithful in voicing creation’s praise.
Pray this frequently. As World leaders and scientists, leaders of charities and NGOs gather in Glasgow for the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 26) from 1-12 November, dare to hope that real change, for the world’s good, can emerge. We have to stop cooking the biosphere.
To life!
With my love, prayers and blessings
Adrian Dorber
Dean of Lichfield