Marks of Mission: Caring for creation

In the final part of the series considering the Marks of Mission, Thomas Baldwin considers the fifth: to care for creation.

IN 1990, as green issues began to move into the mainstream, the Anglican Consultative Committee added another strand to the Marks of Mission first drawn up seven years before. The fifth Mark, they announced, was ‘to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth’.

Eleven years after that, in 2001, representatives of multiple Scottish denominations met in Dunblane, near Stirling, to form a group encouraging churches to get involved in environmental issues.

In May this year the organisation that grew out of that meeting, Eco-Congregation Scotland, returned to Dunblane for its Annual Gathering and AGM. And while the environmental news always seems to be unremittingly grim, treasurer Mary Sweetland says much progress has been made in the past 21 years.

“We said that the churches have a responsibility to care for creation and that we need to raise awareness of that, and encourage churches to get involved, and in 21 years we’ve actually achieved that,” says Mary, who is also a former chair of Eco-Congregation as well as being part of the Church of Scotland’s Net Zero group. “Most of the denominations in Scotland have made a commitment to net zero, to reducing their carbon footprint and to caring for creation.

“Twenty odd years ago there wasn’t a theology (of environmentalism), we had to argue with ministers that it was something they should be preaching about. So one of the things Eco-Congregation has done is to have an Eco Chaplain (currently the Rev David Coleman), and we’ve got into the theological colleges to say that environmental Christianity needs to be on the curriculum. And we’ve given them a lot of guidance and ideas on where environmental aspects are found in the Bible, because 20 years ago we were having arguments with people saying ‘the Bible doesn’t say that’.”

In the past three years, the Church of Scotland has officially recognised the climate emergency and pledged to reduce its carbon emissions to net zero (meaning the organisation would put no more carbon into the atmosphere than it takes out) by 2030. It also, after a lengthy debate about the best way to influence the behaviour of oil and gas companies, announced last year that it was no longer investing in such companies. This year, as part of the net zero drive, it began a pilot project to instal electric vehicle charging points in church car parks.

There is also plenty of work going on at congregational level, judging by membership of Eco-Congregation. There are now 580 churches signed up altogether, and Mary says that Church of Scotland membership has ‘increased quite noticeably’. “More and more churches have been forced to look into this as part of developing a mission plan, and they’ve realised there’s an awful lot of information around that says it’s not too challenging.”

Churches signing up as eco congregations initially carry out an environmental check-up, helping them to assess the environmental work they are doing and identify the next steps.

In some cases, that can lead to major projects. Westray Parish Church in Orkney received its gold eco-congregation award after leading the community in developing island-wide energy projects, including installing a community owned wind turbine. And Greenbank Parish in Edinburgh, the Church of Scotland’s newest gold award recipient, installed a hydrogenenabled boiler.

However, there are many smaller ways to make a positive impact. Mary says: “It’s making sure your church is signed up to a green energy tariff. Basic maintenance, making sure your churches are well maintained, reducing draughts, making sure you’re not sitting with broken windows.

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“We can use church grounds: have allotments and growing spaces, look at the number of trees we’ve got. Buy local if you can, and show people how to cook so they don’t waste food. Teach skills like knitting and sewing, so people aren’t buying as many clothes.

“There’s also a big opportunity now, and a positive that can come out of rising energy costs, to look at how do we use less.

And a lot of it goes back to our older members and we used to be frugal, wore cardigans and jumpers rather than just going round in t-shirts. Turn your heating down one or two degrees. It’s all this stuff that the government are encouraging us to do to reduce energy bills.”

While caring for creation might sometimes be treated as a lower priority for the church than some of the other Marks of Mission, Mary says it interlinks strongly with at least two of them.

Firstly, as those most affected by climate change are those in poorer countries which have done least to cause it, there is a strong tie to the fourth Mark, which urges the church to ‘transform unjust structures of society’.

“We said that the churches have a responsibility to care for creation and that we need to raise awareness of that, and encourage churches to get involved, and in 21 years we’ve actually achieved that

But it also speaks to a section of society which the church notoriously finds hard to reach. “It’s certainly one way to reach out to young people,” says Mary, “Because they expect us to be doing things to look after the planet.

“I once had a friend who was doing the flower arrangements in church using oasis, and her 10-year-old granddaughter asked ‘is that biodegradable?’ And of course we found out it’s not, but you can get biodegradable foam for arranging flowers so the church moved to that.

“So that’s the challenge from the younger generation: they’re looking at these things and expecting the church to take them forward.

”The feedback we got from COP26 (last year’s climate conference in Glasgow, at which the churches had a strong presence) was how grateful the young people were that churches were raising their heads and raising the issue.”

But even without that incentive, Mary is adamant that caring for the planet is a key part of the church’s mission in itself, and is buoyant when she looks at how attitudes have changed.

“I’m certainly optimistic compared to the battles and arguments we used to have to have, and the ‘nothing to do with us’ approach we got 10 to 15 years ago.

Folk know we’re trying to do things and bring about change. We’ve reached a tipping point.

“God created all living things. We are stewards, and we need to look after God’s creation.”