Church Declares ‘Climate Emergency’+Raises $3.5Million for Eco-Friendly Church
photo by John Cameron on Unsplash
A UK church has raised more than three and a half million dollars (£2.5 million) towards building a new eco-friendly and sustainable church building after the congregation declared a ‘climate emergency’ more than a year ago.
The 600 member congregation of St Thomas Anglican Church in Lancaster, took their zealousness to practice “creation care” as an act of social justice to a new level when they announced a three-year plan to radically transform into the greenest churches around. Not only did they announce their intent to aggressively seek to lower their carbon emissions and become carbon neutral, they also launched a newsletter to give members with tips and tricks to live more sustainably, preach on how humankind is daily damaging the earth with their consumptive appetites and started building a new church based on these needs and precepts.
The Church says its goal is to win an Arocha Eco-Church Bronze Award later this year, with hopes of attaining a Silver award by 2023.
In order to achieve such a…high and honorific award, one must be audited on a 100 question exam that asks how frequently and to what degrees the church does the following, among others.
- preaches on environmental issues and incorporates ecological concerns into worship
- how often the children and youth group teach on the environent and green concerns
- measure their carbon footprint and discovber to what degree the church offsets it
- whether or not the church uses LED bulbs
- whether the church uses recycled paper for their bulletins
- if the church incorporates rainwater barrels outside the building,
- if the church has a composting toilet
- if the toilets use water-conserving flushers and tanks
- whether the church has birdfeeders or plant flowers designed to help the bees
- whether they encourage reducing use of cars and vehicles in favor of walking or biking
- whether potluck meals s provided by the church use organic ingredients that are locally sourced and sustainably grown
- whether or not “the church has researched and established a grass mowing regime approptriate to the conservation of the grassland present”
- and about 90 other things
During a recent service, the last pastor engaged in some pretty spectacular bible twisting to explain God’s redemptive plan for the environment and nature:
God…has given us an important mandate to work with him to care for our world. And that’s why our witness as a church on issues of ecology is so important to our mission. Now some Christians are worried that when the church starts to talk about the environment, that we’re jumping on to apolitically correct bandwagon; that we risk distracting attention from our primary calling to tell people about Jesus.
But for me think that a commitment to Jesus commits us to the natural world. Have you ever noticed how the classic gospel in a nutshell passage in the bible take us not just to people but to the ‘whole world’? John 316 doesn’t say ‘for God so loved humanity that he sent his only so.n’ It says that he loved ‘the world’- the whole world.”The
The church building is to be the crowning jewel in their move towards greener worship, with its materials, construction techniques, and with its very design emphasizing its green footprint and low ecological impact. The Vicar of St Thomas’s, the Revd Jon Scamman told church times: “As a church, we believe God has called us to be good neighbors in the city. We’re delighted that this building project has given us new ways to live this out.”
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The name “St Thomas Anglican ” already clued me into something unbiblical was bound to be written about!
The blind leading the blind.
Clueless idiots pretending to be Christ’s church.
Just think of what could have been done to help the truly needy in their local community with that money.
But they instead poured the costly oil on the feet of mother earth. Isn’t that better? The needy are always among you. However, mother earth is in danger. It would appear as though they have the ability to twist scripture to cover all of this. .
Immortal souls are in danger not the earth . Honor God’s son Jesus Christ, believe in Him and and your soul will not perish!
I agree with Susan, the money could’ve been used for better things – reminds me of what Jesus said about tearing down barns and building bigger ones. And I probably don’t agree with them on much more than the need for clean water, clean air, and the fact that God has made us stewards of His creation – which is Biblical. But that being said, I am not going to criticize them too much because it appears to be a private venture using private money, they were up front about what the money was to be used for, etc., and that is several orders of magnitude better than the loons pushing for socialist/collectivist totalitarian “solutions” to the manufactured crisis. I have said to them many times, hey why don’t you put your money where your mouth is, rather than try to enslave everyone else on the planet with your totalitarian solutions. (and as of the last census, what most of us have known for a while is now official – in the USA the majority of the wealthy are democrats) So when they do, I’m going to give them some credit, even though I don’t agree with them. At least they’re not being hypocrites as bad as the Gore’s and Kerry’s of the world.
I was going to say “enslave the rest of the world” but that might’ve confused them.
What does the Bible say about the earth in the end?