What the Bible says about our responsibility to the Earth

Psalm 24:1 proclaims that the world belongs to God. Psalm 150:6 invites every living being to praise Him. Yet as the Bible and history tell us, we humans have repeatedly gone our own way, killing more than we consume and polluting His beautiful creation. We think we know it all. 

The Bible tells us from its opening chapter to the final book that God gave humans responsibility over His world (cosmos in John 3:16). He knew we would need His help and came to our rescue as Jesus Christ, who was present at its creation and holds it together (Colossians 1:15-17). This gives us hope for the future. Jesus taught us the importance of behaving as good tenants (Mark 12). We are tenants of the King. 

Sadly there have always been people who put short-term gain above the big picture. The Bible tells us that 'merchants of the earth', whose greed has spoilt His world, will perish (Revelation 18). We are called to love God and our neighbour, and that means fighting such people. We are called to climate action. 

Our responses

We can begin by being happy with little, without making a show of it (Matthew 6), and by refusing to conform to the greedy market pressures (Romans 12:2), for example by buying food that is local, in season, animal friendly and fairly traded, growing what we can, and minimising our consumption of plastics.

We are in a climate emergency. Our PCC recognized this publically in May 2021 with a statement you can read here.

Sir David Attenborough explained the emergency clearly from his point of view in his address to the world's leaders at COP26. And the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury's response is here. Let's talk about this and take action.

In July 2021, we received a silver Eco Church award from A Rocha UK. You can read about Eco Church awards here.

It is easy to think of this as an 'extra thing to do', the last thing a busy and perhaps under resourced church wants! It is better to think of it rather as a framework that helps churches do what they already have to do: look after their buildings and/or land. 

The scheme asks you to complete a survey of five key areas of church life:

Worship and teaching

• We learn the value of God's creation through teaching, prayer and worship. 
  
• We celebrate CreationTide in September but do not limit our teaching on creation care to that.
• We have run Lent courses on creation care in 2017 and 2021, and taken part in Making COP26 Count. We must now pray for COP27
• We have marked Climate Sunday since 2019, most recently on September 15th 2024.  Listen to the talk here
  

Management of church buildings

• We use sustainable materials in all new building work, such as the St Mary's Church Centre.
• We audit our energy use every ten years (2010 and 2020).
• We have taken measures to reduce heat loss and upgraded our boilers.
• We are using the Energy Footprint Tool in our parish returns.
• We consume green electricity and gas.
• We have installed bike racks.

Lifestyle

• We have been a Fairtrade Church since 1997 and provide Fairtrade coffee, tea and sugar.
• We try to minimise our use of paper in services and communications, in favour of an audio-visual system (first used in St Mary's for a talk by Sir John Houghton's mentioned below)  and emails.
• We provide recycled toilet paper in our loos, all but one of which have automatically controlled lighting.
• We do our best to avoid single-use plastic and have Affiliate Status with Twyford Rethinks its Plastic.

Management of land

• We have conducted wildlife surveys - including plants, bugs, bats and reptiles - and this year took part in Churches Count on Nature. Five species of bat have been identified flying around St Mary's, and our south porch has been a registered natterer's bat roost (see below). 

• St Peter's has some relatively uncommon species such as betony, orchids, grasshoppers and dark bush crickets. We have taken BBOWT advice in managing their habitat.
  

• In St Mary's cemetery, which is adjacent to a small nature reserve, we have added a garden of remembrance, put bat boxes onto trees and spotted woodpeckers and tree creepers.

• We work to improve the biodiversity of all of our land, for example the “Let It Grow” zone in St Mary's churchyard.
  

Community and global engagement

• In June 2010, a talk by Sir John Houghton was the catalyst for transition initiatives in our community, including a communal orchard, two nature reserves, an Apple Day at which we ran a stand, and sessions on renewable energy at St Mary's which encouraged some residents to install solar panels.
• We manage the Mill Green conservation area adjacent to St Mary's for the benefit of the community.
• We have engaged children in Bible-based wildlife activities, for example at Knowl Hill Academy and in summer holiday clubs.
• We lead monthly rambles open to all. In July 2021, we supported the YCCN relay walk from Cornwall to Glasgow by organising a tributary to meet it as it passed through our parish.
• Globally, we support agencies that work for people and planet, primarily Tearfund, Fairtrade and, until they sadly had to close in January 2023, Traidcraft.
• We have also donated to A Rocha UK and sponsored a water borehole in Kenya through the Maasai Evangelical Alliance.

On Friday 28th June 2019, a family of natterer's bats roosted in our south porch. Early visitors to our flower festival saw a juvenile bat on the floor. As the pup was unable to fly, we rang the South Bucks & Berks Bat Group and on their advice placed him on a ledge of the porch, away from feet and the sun. 

Rose-Ann Movsovic, a licensed handler who had run a bat survey in our land in 2018, arrived quickly and identified the species. She gave him some special milk from a little bottle, declared our porch a registered bat roost and took him to the local Bat Rescue Centre. 

At 9 pm she returned with the pup in the hope of reuniting him with his mother - an operation that often fails and involved infra red lights, a video camera, iPad and bat detector. Would there be a mother and child reunion? Click the Videos tab on their Facebook page and view their video entitled "Wargrave Natterer" to find out ...

Video from BatRescueBerkshire;

It's public access, so you won't need a Facebook account. 

By October, the video had been watched over 12,000 times on their web site and shared many times all over the world !

In August 2024, a female pup returned, but the roost is now in nearby trees. Rose-Ann and her team identified four species around the church: common and soprano pipistrelle, noctule and natterer's.

Bats & lighting

Two species of bat (common pipistrelle and natterer's) roost close to St Mary's, and three more (soprano pipistrelle, noctule and long-eared) are ambient. These and daubenton's bats have been identified as ambient at Knowl Hill too. With this is mind, we operate motion-detecting warm LED lighting for security and to enable bat flight paths to avoid bright lights and glare. 

For more information about any information on this page please click the hyperlinks and/or contact our Eco Church team lead .

On 20th July 2022, the production team of Al Jazeera's Earthrise series came to film Bishop Olivia speaking on the climate crisis to members of our church and churches nearby. It was broadcast in April 2023 as part of the fourth episode of its 2023 series "Believing in Change". You can watch it on YouTube here or on the programme's web site here. You can access other episodes at https://www.aljazeera.com/program/earthrise/

For more information about any of our environmental initiatives, contact our Eco Church lead