Network of Earthkeeping Christian Communities in South Africa

 

NECCSA UPDATE: MAY 2009

 

Over the next two months we will use the forum provided by the regular NECCSA Update to invite widespread discussion amongst Christians involved in earthkeeping in South Africa on a document entitled "Climate change - the coming decade of truth for God's household". This document is currently being drafted and discussed within a committee of the SACC in the Western Cape on climate change. This document will also be discussed in depth at two workshops, namely on 21/22 May 2009 at Unisa and on 11 June 2009 at UWC.

In the text below you will find some background to the document as well as the first section of the current version of the document (version 6). You are welcome to forward any comments, suggestions and criticisms on the document to Ernst Conradie at econradie@uwc.ac.za or to Deon Snyman at deon.snyman@telkomsa.net .

Background to the document

(Adapted from the minutes of the first meeting of the committee)


The vision to produce such a document came from a conference on Christian theology and climate change organized by ICCO / Kerkinactie in association with SAFCEI (the South African Faith Communities' Environment Institute), one of its partner organizations in South Africa. This conference took place at the University of the Western Cape in November 2007. At the conference some guidelines were established regarding the outline of such a document. Ernst Conradie was asked to put this in writing immediately after the conference.


The process of working on such a document was taken forward by SAFCEI and more specifically by an interim sub-committee of its management committee, including Ab Ijzerman, Andrew Warmback and Ernst Conradie. This committee has continued with its work on a more or less informal basis over the last year. It has produced 5 versions of the document , each time circulating that for comment to a number of interested persons and church groups, digesting the feedback and adding further sections to the document in every new version. Ernst Conradie acted as the editorial secretary of this committee.


In April 2008 SAFCEI requested the SACC to accept ownership of the process of producing such a document. The rationale behind this request was the Christian-specific nature of such a document (since SAFCEI is a multi-faith organization) and the need to render credibility to the production, acceptance and the dissemination of such a document.


After much further consultation with various persons involved (including a meeting with Rev Siyabulela Gidi, Director SACC Western Cape, 20 February 2009) a climate change sub-committee of the SACC (Western Cape) has been established that can take the process forward. The interim sub-committee of SAFCEI could therefore pass the outcome of its work (version 5 of the document) on to the newly established climate change sub-committee of the SACC (Western Cape). One of the tasks of the committee will be to continue working on the document. This would preferably be done in ongoing consultation with advisors and ecumenical organizations in other regions in South Africa.


Although the present version of the document has already gone through an extended process of consultation and discussion, much further work is required in this regard. From the beginning the persons involved agreed that the process of producing the document is as important as the eventual outcome since this will help to stimulate discussion regarding climate change in churches in South Africa.
 

It should be noted that the present version (6) of the document does not as yet cover the full outline of the document as envisaged in November 2007. A number of sections will therefore still have to be added. This is in line with the process followed thus far, namely to add a section or two with every new version of the document so that feedback can be taken into account in the process of writing. The document will probably have to go through a number of further stages and versions before it can be finalized.
 

The need to produce, alongside the document, appropriate resources for Christian worship, Bible study material, guidelines for appropriate practical responses to climate change from within Christian communities, Sunday school material and so forth is recognized. Such resources should be available in a wide range of genres. It is anticipated that the newly established SACC (Western Cape) climate change sub-committee would attend to the development of such resources as well.


 Climate change – The coming decade of truth for God's household


1. Climate change on the agenda of Christians in South Africa


Background and purpose of the document
This document emerged from a number of ecumenical consultations and conferences on Christianity and climate change in the Southern African context. It follows on a series of similar theological statements on social issues emerging over the last few decades from within the (South) African context – including the Message to the People of South Africa (1968), the Belhar confession (1982/1986), the Kairos Document (1985/1986), the Road to Damascus (1989), The Land is Crying for Justice (2002), the Accra Declaration (2005) and the Oikos Journey (2006).


This document seeks to complement similar ecumenical processes and documents on climate change from other regions of the world. It builds on documents emerging from within the World Council of Churches on climate change, including Accelerated climate change: Sign of peril, Test of faith (1993), Solidarity with victims of climate change (2002) and Alternative Globalization Addressing Peoples and Earth (AGAPE) (2005). It draws from statements in the context of the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC), including the African Church leaders' statement on climate change and water (3-5 June 2008) and the call from the AACC to the UN Climate Change conference, held from 13 to 19 December 2007 in Bali, Indonesia, entitled Responsible church leadership to reverse global warming and to ensure equitable development and a report on an Ecumenical Consultation on Climate Change (Africa), held in Nairobi, 3-5 June 2008. It should also be understood against the background of a resolution adopted by the 2007 triennial national conference of the South African Council of Churches on climate change.
 

This document emerged through a process of reflection, discussion and education amongst Christians in South Africa concerned with the many challenges posed by climate change, especially within our context. It is the product of ongoing consultations over a period of more than two years following a conference on climate change held at the University of the Western Cape in November 2007. Since then portions of the document have been discussed in numerous meetings of local church councils, interest groups, Bible study groups and various conference sessions. Since March 2009 a sub-committee of the SACC in the Western Cape accepted ownership of the process of producing the document. It was thus channeled through the official structures of the South African Council of Churches.
 

The document is primarily aimed at lay and ordained church leaders in various church structures and in local Christian communities. The purpose of the document is to assist Christians in Southern Africa to assess what is at stake in the challenges posed by climate change and to respond to such challenges from the perspective of Christian faith and practice. The aim of the document is therefore to offer prophetic witness, to recognise the signs of the time; but its focus is also educational, pastoral, confessional and practical. It calls on Christians to be trans­formed by the renewing of our minds (Rom 12:2), for a transformation of our perceptions, thinking, visions, attitudes, orientation, habits, practices and institutions.


This form of prophetic witness is also aimed at churches and speaks to the wider society only on that basis. This is not a form of prophecy that safely allocates the blame elsewhere and that merely reiterates a call to do something – which those in government or corporate business may not even hear or read, let alone listen to or respond to. It is aware of the temptation to speak as if Christians can occupy some moral high ground, especially on the issue of climate change. Instead, this document recognises that the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, that it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart and that it pierces through our own practices, habits and institutions (Heb 4:12).


This is a form of prophetic witness that gives weight to the voices of the many victims of society and of climate change. As is widely predicted, climate change will hit those of us who are already vulnerable the hardest – the poor, rural people, the elderly, the sick, women and children. Moreover, such victims will also affect numerous other forms of life that do not have a voice in human decision making processes. In continuity with other forms of prophetic witness emerging from within the South African context we therefore wish to listen to the voices of the victims in our own midst, including the theological questions that are raised in the process – on suffering, on God's promises, on God's care and on God's faithfulness. At the same time, some of us also need to recognise the temptation to speak on behalf of others (including other species) too eagerly. To be able to verbalise one's thoughts quicker than others does not necessarily imply that one is right.
 

On this basis, this document seeks to discern God's word for our times and to assist Christian communities, within the larger household of God, to respond appropriately to the challenges ahead. In terms of the method followed, the document assumes a tension between action and reflection and offers theological reflection on the responses of churches to climate change. It is structured in terms of the ongoing spiral of acting, seeing, judging and acting anew. Thus it describes current responses by churches (acting), it investigates what is at stake (seeing), it discerns the roots of the problem (judging) and it seeks to deepen a Christian response (acting anew).
 

The term "action" is used here to describe the worship (leitourgia), proclamation (kerugma), fellowship (koinonia) and service (diakonia) of Christian communities in South Africa. For this reason, a need was also recognised to produce, alongside the document, appropriate resources for Christian worship, Bible study material and guidelines for appropriate practical responses to climate change from within local Christian communities. Such resources should be available in a wide range of genres, including posters, lyrics, DVD's, Sunday school material, colour in books, etc.
 

Climate change as a challenge for Christians
We as Christians in South Africa often find ourselves in two minds when faced with the challenges posed by climate change:

In reflecting on the challenge of climate change from a Christian perspective there is another tension that has to be addressed. Those countries that have contributed most to climate change are also countries that are associated, at least from an historic perspective, with (Western) Christianity. As citizens of a southern country on the African continent, which has historical ties with both the North-West and the North-East, we may wish to distance ourselves from responsibility for the impact of industrialisation on climate change. Yet, we are also the direct or indirect bene­ficiaries of such industrialisation. Moreover, as Christians in dialogue with people of other living faiths we cannot distance ourselves from our Christian brothers and sisters elsewhere in the world. Indeed, Christianity is as much part of the problem underlying climate change as it may become part of an appropriate response to that.


There is an even deeper ambivalence that characterises prophetic witness on climate change. The "prophets" who are typically issuing warnings about climate change do not do so in the name of Christianity or even from a religious perspective. Those who have taken the lead and who have called for moral vision and moral leadership include scientists, consultants, politicians and journalists. Their work is being undermined by (religious) prophets of doom and destruction who typically evoke fear, not hope, leading to an inability to confront the stark challenges. Christians in South Africa and elsewhere in the world therefore find themselves in a position where they are being addressed in a prophetic mode instead of exercising their own prophetic responsibility.
 

Moreover, as many churches have had to admit, climate change seldom receives a priority on the social agenda of the church. This implies that Christians can scarcely speak about climate change with any degree of moral authority. Unlike Christian witness from within the South African context in the past, we have to recognise that we do not occupy the moral high ground and cannot speak from such a position. Any form of Christian witness in the context of climate change will therefore be to wield a two-edged sword.
 

Climate change as a moral, cultural and spiritual challenge
The content of the message coming from the scientific experts on climate change is no longer ambiguous. There can be no doubt that climate change is by far the most threatening environmental concern and that it will affect almost every aspect of our lives in the coming decades. It is therefore not only an environmental issue that only some activists need to be concerned about. At stake are the very foundations of industrialised civilisation. What is required to address climate change is a fundamental reorientation of the entire global economy. What needs to be changed are the sources of energy on which all economic activities rely – away from fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas towards sustainable alternatives. Moreover, this will have to be done within four decades (if a stabilisation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is to be reached by 2050) – of which the first decade will be the most crucial.


Climate change cannot be addressed merely through more information or planning. It is not a problem that can be resolved only on the basis of advanced forms of technology. The hope for quick technological fixes that will leave our consumerist ways of living untouched, has to be unmasked as false. This is less a problem of know-what or know-how than of know-why and know-wherefore. The crisis that we have to face is not merely an ecological crisis, but also a cultural crisis that concerns all aspects of everyday life in the consumer society. Indeed, it is a deadly sign of cultural failure. This indicates that the values underlying the dominant global cultural and economic practices have become bankrupt. The problem lies not outside but inside ourselves, not in the eco­system but in the human heart, in our attitudes, aspirations and orientations, in our habits, practices and institutions.
 

In the light of these cultural and spiritual dimensions of the challenge, the pervasive culture of consumerism is of crucial significance. As Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew 1 of Constantinople has observed:

Climate change is much more than an issue of environmental preserva­tion. Insofar as human-induced, it is a profoundly moral and spiritual problem. To persist on the current path of ecological destruction is not only folly. It is no less than suicidal, jeopardizing the diversity of the very earth that we inhabit, enjoy and share.

This assessment is also expressed in a "Declaration on the Environ­ment" signed by Patriarch Bartholomew I and Pope John Paul 11 on 10 June 2002:

What is required is an act of repentance on our part and a renewed attempt to view our­selves, one another, and the world around us within the perspective of the divine design for creation. The problem is not simply economic and technological; it is moral and spiritual. A solution at the economic and technological level can be found only if we undergo, in the most radical way, an inner change of heart, which can lead to a change in lifestyle and of unsustainable patterns of consumption and production. A genuine conversion in Christ will enable us to change the way we think and act.

Climate change as a new Kairos
It is therefore appropriate to see climate change as a new "kairos" – as a moment of truth and of opportunity where our collective response will have far-reaching consequences. For Christians worldwide this poses a similar challenge as the integrity of Christian witness and indeed of the gospel itself is at stake. In the midst of the struggle against apartheid in the 1980s Christians in South Africa also spoke of a "kairos" moment. This led to the publication of the Kairos Document in 1985. Since then we have been confronted with numerous other challenges – poverty, unemployment, the lasting legacy of our colonial and apartheid past, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the destruction of morals and family life, violence against the vulnerable, gangsterism and xenophobia, various addictions, crime, and corruption.
 

At this moment in history we are again called to recognise what is at stake in discerning the signs of our times. This is even more difficult than in the past. Although communities in South Africa are already experiencing the negative effects of climate change (often not recognising it as such), its full impact will become more visible only in coming decades. This will cause severe suffering for those who are already most vulnerable, including the urban and the rural poor. Moreover, there are many other forms of life that will be threatened as a result of climate change. Our actions in the decade that lies ahead will have long-lasting implications for many generations to come. On this basis we speak in this document of the challenges related to climate change as a "coming decade of truth for God's household". It is a challenge that will require from us repentance and a fundamental change of heart, attitude and action, in short, a form of ecological conversion (metanoia).
 

The following sections are as yet undeveloped. Please feel free to submit material that might address these topics.

 

2. Christian responses to climate change (Acting)
 

3. Investigating what is at stake (Seeing)
 

4. Discerning the roots of the problem (judging)
 

5. Responding to this vision (enhanced acting)

 

Notes: