The new environmental policy

There was a thread running through much of what was said on the environment that went along the lines of 'it's not a bandwagon'. To stop it becoming such an issue there was much rightly said about needing to awaken the church's distinctive prophetic voice. Now I'll apologies only once for anything that sounds a little eco-bore, it wasn't the tone of synod, but I've been greening vicarages for years now and like a policy that has 5 year targets for church's eco-audits along with formal reviews every 3. But perhaps it could have been tougher, as that only puts Southwark a few steps in front of the current administration.

An amendments to the policy by Rev. Paul (by now I had started to jot down first, if not surnames) was voted in and I think I could find myself getting enthused by; that the church's business is to be "publicly and consistently challenging society and government to confront the obstacles to sustainability that are presented by the consumer lifestyle and by the growth economy."

How cool is that. And many, many others in synod agreed; 'we need the courage to make a difference... even when things aren't simple or obvious'; 'the church needs to be a witness in self-sacrifice'.

To be fair there were a couple of voices against - really a couple, that is two I think - who took issue with it being just a gesture or perhaps a not-from-grass-roots-making-bureaucracy initiative. But Bishop Tom did point out that this was a request not an instruction to parishes, so I'll just have to make sure its requested very loudly round here; I did apologise for bias earlier didn't I?

Well, it passed with a huge majority. As did the whole policy which followed. Though there was one jaw droppingly awkward moment when possibly the sole "global warming is natural" view got aired, so everyone was very polite and ignored it.

The Shrinking the Footprint scheme was touted; and I've just been to visit its resource site and - for a crusty old green - been very heartened at what I saw. Simple pragmatic church based advice set up in a way that requires little extra work that churchwardens and vicars should already be doing.

Lastly there was a suggestion that the environment should be put up as a standing order on the agenda, so you'll be reading a lot more about it here.

As part of the debate we also got given the Mother's Union booklet providing some good reflection on the spirituality of justice and ecology. I know that's very easy for activists to burn out without a good support of theology and prayer.

It was mentioned that the synods had started thinking about the environment back in the '70s so its thoughts on such matters should be sound; after all, that's the time its taken for me to grow up.