What Is A Green Christian?

 As my initial foray into this new blog I thought it good to address the basic question of “What is a Green Christian?”  After all, there are quite a few of us.  The Facebook group, Green Christian, has 2.1k followers and more and more churches are looking to become recognised as eco churches.

I would suggest that primarily a Green Christian is somebody who takes seriously God’s commandment in Genesis, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.””  In other words, “I have created this wonderful, diverse planet for you to live on, look after it.”

I would suggest that a Green Christian is somebody who takes seriously Jesus commandment to “love your neighbour as you love yourself.”  The parable of the Good Samaritan makes it clear that our neighbour is every other person with whom we share this beautiful, wonderful, amazing planet.

Our planet is now experiencing a climate emergency.  If we don’t do something about the greenhouse gases polluting our atmosphere then global temperatures will rise by a devastating 1.5 degrees Celsius.  This will lead to significant further melting of the polar ice caps resulting in rises in sea levels that could devastate low lying areas.  We’ve already seen that rising temperatures lead to dangerous changes in global weather patterns with the unprecedented flooding in Pakistan recently and drought and wildfires due to temperatures never before recorded in other countries.  All this is having a significant negative effect on the lives of people across our globe resulting in suffering and even death.

It’s not too late to prevent the worst effects of climate change to come.  Green Christians recognise that we need to change our own lifestyles, to live simpler lives that are less consumer orientated and don’t serve to prop up the greedy capitalist system that is more interested in short term profit than in saving the human race.  Green Christians recognise that by purchasing greener products we can help to reduce pollution and climate change and that by our life choices, eg hanging washing out or in a clothes horse rather than using a tumble dryer we can help do our bit towards reducing greenhouse gases.

Some Green Christians go further by taking political action in the form of highlighting the issues on social media, writing to MPs, marching and protesting and even by taking part in civil disobedience.

I believe that all Christians should be Green Christians because if web aren’t taking the climate emergency seriously can we really be said to be “loving our neighbours as we love ourselves”?