Anglican theologian and biblical scholar, N. T. Wright, in his recent essay, Jesus is Coming – Plant a Tree! said that, “for early Christians, the resurrection of Jesus launched God’s new creation upon the world,” … and “God’s kingdom would come ‘on earth as in heaven.’ ” Further, Wright says, “we are called to build for the kingdom”, and “in the new creation, the ancient human mandate to look after the garden is dramatically reaffirmed.” 1
The sad reality is that we have let God down. We are not living in harmony with the earth, and in fact, we are demanding more from the earth than it can provide. 2
In September 2011, the Episcopal House of Bishops addressed our ecological challenges by issuing a Pastoral Teaching on the Environment.3 They challenged the church to face the urgency of the environmental crisis and take faithful action as an expression of our love for God and God’s creation.
The Bishops encouraged us “to take steps in our individual lives, and in community, public policy, business, and other forms of corporate decision-making, to practice environmental stewardship and justice, including (1) a commitment to energy conservation and the use of clean, renewable sources of energy; and (2) efforts to reduce, reuse, and recycle, and whenever possible to buy products made from recycled materials.”
Following a period of study and reflection, on October 1, 2017 in response to the Bishop’s teaching, Church of the Nativity launched our program called “Restoring God’s Earth: A Year of Personal Action.”
Monthly, for one year, on our website www.zerowastechurch.org, we introduced a new theme, and for each week we offered several small actions that people could take to improve the way that they live on Earth.
The actions for our 12 monthly themes have been compiled, and Restoring God’s Earth is now downloadable as a PDF E-Book! 4
1. Wright, N.T. (2019) Jesus is Coming – Plant a Tree! Retrieved from https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/environment/jesus-is-coming-plant-a-tree.
2. Steffen, W. (2015). Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet, Science. 347 (6223): 1259855.
3. Episcopal Church House of Bishops (September 20, 2011). A Pastoral Teaching on the Environment. Retrieved from https://www.episcopalchurch.org/posts/publicaffairs/episcopal-church-house-bishops-issues-pastoral-teaching.
4. Allen, Stephanie, Gilmore, Dargan, Ridout, Karen, Sigel, Carl, and Tessier, Ailsa. (February 20, 2019). Restoring God’s Earth: A Year of Personal Action. Retrieved from http://www.zerowastechurch.org/restoring-gods-earth-a-year-personal-action/