Reflection
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We must confront the ‘sin’ of global warming Paula Clifford, head of Christian Aid’s community communications team, argues the theological case behind our climate change campaign
‘CLIMATE CHANGE IS too important to be left to the environmentalists.’ Not my words, but an impassioned plea from the floor during one of the debates on climate change at January’s World Social Forum in Nairobi. The realisation that global warming has the potential to affect every aspect of our lives has led to a growing call for the voices of theologians and ethics experts to be heard in the worldwide debate. ‘We need to think about the kind of society we want,’ was another comment at that same Nairobi discussion. As Christian Aid embarks on a campaign that tackles global warming as a justice issue, it is clear that both these speakers were stating truths that must be reflected in our theology as well as our campaigning. Some might argue that Christian environmentalism has already provided us with an adequate theological basis for dealing with climate change. Not so. In this thinking, God creates a world that perfectly reflects his glory and entrusts it to Adam. Environmental destruction is then seen as humankind’s failure to play its part properly in this hierarchy: a view which I think belittles human beings (who, as theologian Jane Williams pointed out in a Christian Aid seminar, are surely more than just keepers) and also nature itself, which has a less subordinate relationship with both God and his people than this suggests. But, more crucially, what this view does not take into account is the kind of society we want. Care for the land is, of course,
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enshrined in Old Testament law, with the principle of the Sabbath year (Leviticus 25). But this is closely linked to another law: to care for one another, in particular the poor and vulnerable (Deuteronomy 26.15). With the coming of human society, caring for the created world and caring for one another go together. It’s in the New Testament, though, that we see most clearly the inter-relationships between God, people and the world around us. In the incarnation, Jesus becomes part of the world he created and brings into it good news for the poor. To love God is to enter into a just and loving relationship with one another and with the world around us. So what has gone wrong? African traditional religions, I’m reliably informed, refer to sin as ‘broken relationships’. And, while others may want to focus on the fractured relationship between humankind and nature, it’s the broken relationship between human beings that our climate change campaign seeks to address above all, as global warming impacts on the poorest people who have done the least to bring it about. We should not lose sight of the fact that forgiveness and renewal are at the heart of the Christian Gospel. The resurrection offers us the hope of a world that is transformed and yet still physical. It gives us a promise that God has a use for a changed new world – albeit one that, like the resurrected body of Christ, bears the scars of suffering. It is up to us to see that such a world survives.
Aid and debt
The case of the £ CHRISTIAN AID CAMPAIGNERS in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, drummed home the call for change at two powerful global organisations when they handed Gordon Brown a specially-carved drum from Senegal. The drum – carved with ‘Gordon Brown: drum out poverty!’ – was accompanied by a petition calling on the chancellor to use his influence to stop the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank pushing poor countries to open up their markets. More than 25,000 people signed the Stop Paying for Poverty petition at festivals and campaign events during 2006. It was delivered by Rev David Redmayne and schoolchildren from Gordon Brown’s constituency. The hand-in followed several months in which Christian Aid campaigners have been keeping a watchful eye on a certain £50 million. This sum had become the focus of campaigners’ attention when Hilary Benn, the UK’s minister for international development, announced that he would withhold £50 million from the World Bank because it had not made enough progress in cutting the harmful economic conditions it attaches to its grants and loans. The announcement came on the same day, last September, that 3,000 Christian Aid campaigners gathered in London to drum
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