Story by Dr Steve Douglas

The Churches are undergoing a ‘greening’ as they belatedly begin to take environmentalism seriously. Some say Western Christian Churches are at least 20 years behind broader society in comprehending and responding to the global ecological crisis. Since the early 1990s, Australia’s largest Churches have been at least trying to catch up. One, the Uniting Church, has promoted environmentalism in some form since the Church formed in 1977, but it has recently recognised that it hasn’t lived its own teachings, and that its policies have been primarily directed at governments and those outside the Church. Catholicism has also paid lip service to some environmental concerns since the late 1960s and early 1970s. Anglicanism is far newer to the movement, trailing the others in policy and practice, and remaining the least environmentally engaged and committed of Australia’s three largest Christian traditions. But even Anglicanism has started to change.

Prominent religious commentators such as Dr Paul Collins, write that the Catholic Church, by far the largest denomination in Australia, has recognised the validity of environmentalism but that the Church’s response is limited to policy “window-dressing”. It’s environmental organisation, Catholic Earthcare, has produced some relatively substantial environmental policies and these aren’t just targeted towards politicians and those outside the Church – they’re increasingly aimed at getting Catholics to change how they see and live their faith in relation to Nature, or as they term it, ‘Creation’. Unfortunately, there are forces within Catholicism that remain disinterested or even overtly hostile. Sydney’s Cardinal George Pell has dismissed climate change as “a scary story for grown-ups” and is one of at least two fellow Catholic leaders who oppose the operation of Catholic Earthcare. Pell sees Nature as other, and keeps humans above all else but God, failing to see that human suffering is Nature’s suffering and that environmentalism and social justice ultimately share the same challenges rather than being in conflict. This remains a common view, not just on Catholicism or Christianity, but in some form throughout much of the West. Most of us, religious or otherwise, still tend to put humans first and the rest of Nature comes an often very poor second, if at all.

Despite the opposition and the far more common apathy, there are examples of meaningful institutional ‘greening’ within Catholicism. You can find monks and more often nuns that have returned to their earlier communal ethic of self-sufficiency by growing a significant portion of their food, but now this is done with ‘organic’ techniques and permaculture. The buildings they inhabit might be solar powered, have solar water heaters, and use native gardens. A small number of such facilities engage in relatively radical environmental education for fellow Christians and for others. Some, whilst still Catholic, are open to all comers, and they teach ecospirituality, ecotheology, and how to put these values into practice at home and at work. Some of what they teach would be dismissed as heretical or at least ‘dangerous’ by many in the Church, but whilst their new or perhaps rediscovered version of the sacredness of Nature/Creation might look Pagan to some, it is backed by well-argued theology and science.

The phenomenon of ‘greening’ at the religious fringes of Catholicism is of sufficient magnitude to be recognised with the term ‘the green sisters movement’, which primarily applies in the USA and Canada, but which has its practitioners in Australia as well. ‘Green brothers’ exist, but their numbers are far smaller, and as men tend to die before women, the severe aging of the ordained religious orders is such that most of the few remaining brothers are too old to start much of a ‘green’ revolution, even if they wanted to.

Anglicanism in Australia doesn’t rate much of a mention in this context, other than its single national policy statement justifying Anglican concern for the environment.

The standout case is that of Anglican Bishop George Browning, the clergyman in charge of the region known as the Diocese of Canberra & Goulburn. Browning has been publicly outspoken in various media, advocating a much tougher action by governments to deal with climate change and the associated water crisis. He’s also put his views into practice, spending large sums of Church funds to retrofit its infrastructure in order to reduce energy and water use, and mandating energy and water efficiency standards for all new Church buildings and major renovations. Unfortunately, Browning and his supporters lack broad acceptance in the rank and file members of suburban and rural parishes. Even most of his priests aren’t on board the environmental bandwagon that Browning leads. Yet this is hardly surprising given the relatively low levels of education amongst Anglican clergy, combined with their often nearing retirement, and that for most of their religious lives, the Church has been disinterested in if not overtly hostile towards environmentalism. Little wonder that the parish priests aren’t so keen to undertake environmental audits of their buildings or to pay a few dollars a week extra to buy certified ‘green’ electricity from their dwindling funds.

Unsurprisingly, the ultraconservative so-called Sydney Anglicans have only recently decided that environmentalism isn’t the work of the Devil.

The Uniting Church is a different but also a similar story. Different because it has had over thirty years of experience in proclaiming a range of ecological ills and the need for action to address them, but similar because this hasn’t amounted to much change within the Church and the way it operates. The Church has been vocal on environmental issues since its inception, with a particular passion for anti-nuclear policies, and a remarkable avoidance of the later concern for forest conservation that dominated environmentalism in the 1980s and 90s. Some parts of the Church, particularly its generally more progressive regional bodies in NSW and Victoria, had even called for mandatory solar hot water systems to be installed on Church buildings in response to the 1970s energy crisis and later in response to climate change.

Despite its far more democratic and modern structures, and its relative wealth of environmental policies, the Uniting Church has struggled to comply with its own official views. The key word of Uniting Church environmental policy, at least when it comes to internal compliance is ‘encourage’. Much the same is true in the Catholic and Anglican traditions but at least the bishops in these older Churches can and sometimes do wield their authority for the environmental good. The Uniting Church doesn’t have the ‘green sisters’ of Catholicism’s fringe, nor the high-level and practical environmental leadership seen in Anglicanism’s Bishop Browning, but it does have something of a grassroots movement and one that has a degree of youth on its side. Victoria’s Uniting Church has The Earth Team based in Melbourne. This group pushed through the first official Church response to the forestry conflicts in Victoria and Tasmania. It took years to achieve and there was considerable opposition from those in the Church who still feel that the debate is one of jobs vs. the environment, and that timber industry jobs are more important than any suspiciously Pagan notions of forests as sacred, even as part of God’s Creation. Nonetheless, there is now a Church policy, relatively well researched and argued, and it recommends a position very similar to that of mainstream environment groups such as the Australian Conservation Foundation.

The greatest challenge facing the Uniting Church isn’t their demonstrably ineffective commitment to voluntary compliance with policies, but the same demographic crunch seem as likely to wipe out the Anglican Church in twenty years. The Uniting Church, which was smaller than Anglicanism to begin with, is losing members through age and through ‘defection’ even faster. It is also facing internal divisions that have gone as far as legal actions to contest who owns a particular church building and land – is it the local congregation or is it the state office? There are deep divisions between the ultraconservatives in the Fred Nile tradition, and the more progressive forces who take a liberal stand on gender equity, gay rights, gay clergy and on environmental responsibly. With assets in at least the tens of millions, there are some very valuable ‘scraps’ to be fought over as the Uniting Church ages and fractures. The expensive city real estate will likely be sold but what will happen to the significant areas of bushland owned by the Church and held as retreat centres and camping grounds? I suspect that sadly, economic rationalism will trump any ecological policies and notions of sacred Creation. You only have to see the number of people employed by the Church to manage its real estate portfolio compared to those employed to formulate, disseminate and implement its environmental policies to understand my scepticism in this regard.

The Churches are certainly undergoing a ‘greening’ and it’s a good and meaningful thing, but environmentalism certainly isn’t ‘core business’ for the Churches, no matter how strident their calls for ecological justice. As we’ve seen in all levels of government and the corporate world, a proclaimed ecological conversion isn’t the same as an actual conversion. How many corporations have learnt the art of ‘greenwash’ so that they can carry out business as usual but with a ‘greener’ image? The Churches are no different; indeed, they share many of the same difficulties as governments and industry in confronting the challenges of the eco-social crisis. They have conflicting agendas, often lack technical skills, maintain organisational structures that inherently or accidently marginalise ecological interests, and they can rarely look themselves in the metaphorical mirror with a meaningful degree of honesty. In short, they’re in just as much trouble as most other human organisations because they are little or arguably no different to them, irrespective of any religious claims.

Dr Steve Douglas researched the environmental policies and practices of the Catholic, Anglican and Uniting Churches for his PhD at the Australian National University.