Mark Dowd's address to the Independent Schools Religious Studies Association

Imagine you're walking down a tranquil country lane in an idyllic Devon village. The birds are chirrupping, autumn leaves cascade on carpets of wind and the prospect of a pint of bitter awaits you after your nine mile hike on Exmoor. Suddenly there's bellowing smoke. You turn the corner. A thatched cottage is on fire. You run towards it to alert the owners, but to your amazement, you come across the proprietor just ten metres outside his home. And he looks so calm. The flames are roaring, the fumes waft past him. There is no way he cannot know what is engulfing his home behind him.  Yet he and his wife, who attentively holds for her husband a pot of Dulex anti-rusting solution, carry on regardless. Their faces remain intently focussed on the metal bolt on the pale yellow wooden gate.

In 2005, a huge United Nations survey revealed that 15 of the planet's 24 ecosystems were undergoing severe stress and faced future collapse. In European cities like Naples, landfill sites are packed to overflowing. Coral reefs are dying in our acidifying oceans with many major fish stocks at an all time low. Rainforests, the lungs of our Earthly home, continue to be ripped out for profit. And perhaps most seriously of all, an overwhelming majority of climate scientists speak in ever more urgent tones about the dangers of us approaching a global warming tipping point which runs the risk of unleashing a pattern of events that modern humanity has never had to face up to.  In spite of all this, Catholics continue arcane debates about the Latin mass and whether to stick with celibacy. The Anglican Communion expends huge amounts of energy on the sexual peccadillos of gay Bishops. And despite having some amazing pro-Creation credentials, those who take inspiration from the Qu'ran spend hours locked in heated conversations about how many Jihadis you can get on the head of a pin.  There is something in the theological lexicon called "sins of omission." And I do sometimes wonder whether we are prone to generating hype and intense interest in one domain with the express purpose of avoiding our real duty and obligation in others.

What I want to invite you to ponder on this morning on a day when we are examining "belief and modernity", is that humanity is running up a huge ecological debt and that to stave off the "climate crunch", we may have to move to a post-enlightenment world in which mankind is no longer the measure of all things. Moreover, the major religions of the world may yet prove to be a huge asset as we seek to dig up some long-ignored sacred narratives. What we will need to do, is to move away from an anthropocentric relationship with the natural world ñ not to an ecocentric vision, where nature is a goddess. What we need is a theocentric vision where humanity rediscovers the rightness of just relationships with the natural world under the reign of the Creator. Anything less and I fear James Lovelock's Gaia principle may well have its day as Nature makes a huge corrective and depletes larges swathes of humanity to the dustbin of history.

"Oh my ñ what have we got here?" some of you may already asking yourselves. "Has the college really coughed up £169 to hear some weird ex Dominican gloom and doom eco-nutter with a hair shirt?" The truth is, I am a bit of a Johnny-Come-Lately on all this: indeed for many years I was cynical about tree huggers and very dubious about the claims made for the science of climate change. Like thousands of Christians in this land, I thought faith was all about going to Church, praying and looking after your neighbour. I never had time for those proselytising "green people" with their bottles of expensive Ecover washing up liquid.  My own "ecological conversion", to borrow a phrase from the late Pope John Paul II, came in late 2006 when I had to present a film for Channel 4 called God Is Green. For weeks I immersed myself in report after report on CO2, methane, nitrous oxide and water vapour. When it came to shooting the film, it was only then that I encountered an industry of denial. Take a look at this excerpt, for example, from a pro fossil-fuel think tank based in Washington.

CLIP 1: Competitive Enterprise Institute (link to clip coming soon - transcript follows)

"Thereís something in these pictures you can't see. It's essential to life. We breath it in. Plants breath it out. It's called carbon dioxide. CO2. The fuels that produce CO2 have freed us from a world of backbreaking labour... But now some politicians want to label carbon dioxide a pollutant. Imagine what will happen if they had their way. Carbon Dioxide. They call it pollution. We call it life."

A truly Orwellian bit of material. This ad, funded by Exxon Mobil and others, was repeatedly shown in various target states in the USA.  It's taken Americans a long time to wake up and smell the coffee, yet the truth is that the science of global heating through greenhouse gases was established in the nineteenth century by scientists like Fourier, Tyndall and the Swede, Svante Arrhenius. In 1956, TIME magazine put out a front page story called "One Big Greenhouse" with planet Earth trapped inside a large glass object. Presidents Johnson and Carter both had reports go to Congress with warnings about the build up of gases in the atmosphere, but it is only in late 2008 that President-Elect Obama can speak unambiguously about "a planet in peril."

And it's not just vested interests that have acted as a barrier. Some rather unorthodox religious beliefs have also made their mark. Since I gave up broadcasting to work full time for Operation Noah, I've attended scores of public meetings. On one occasion, in Bolton, a man assailed me and yelled that he didnít believe global warming was happening. "Anyway," he said, "even if it is true, it doesnít worry me. You see it might be God's way of preparing for the Second Coming. And I am going to be OK... I am saved. I am going to be lifted up in the Rapture."

This point of view might be unusual for post-industrial Lancashire, but as I came to discover in the Bible Belt when I examined how the Christian Right were coming to blows on all this, it's anything but uncommon.

CLIP 2: The Endtimers: Hal Lindsay's "Planet Earth." (link to clip coming soon - transcript follows)

"Winning that battle in the US depends on the resolution of fierce contradictions at the heart of evangelical Christianity. Many believers here are what are called Endtimers ñ worshippers who positively embrace plagues, droughts as disasters that tick the boxes of prophetic fulfilment before the Apocalypse and Christís glorious return."

(Hal Lindsay: Planet Earth: The Final Chapter)

"In Luke chapter 21 verses 25 and 26, he said that men's hearts would fail them for fear at the things coming upon the world and the roaring of the waves and the sea. Many other indications and prophecy: heatwaves and so on indicated that there would be a global weather pattern change which is exactly what we are seeing."

Even the some moderate evangelical have traditionally seen global warming as an elaborate hoax, a web of lies spun by groups in US society hostile to the Christian right.

Jim Ball, National Association of Evangelicals:

"What you have had in terms of climate change and other environmental problems ñ the three basic messengers in the United States have been: democratic politicians, environmentalists and scientists. Now in my community these are not the most trusted messengers."

The worm is slowly turning in the Evangelical world. In the last two years many have come together to form the Evangelical Climate Initiative which emphasises justice issues, namely that the poor of the world who pollute the least will be the earliest casualties of floods and droughts. Indeed why use the future tense since as many in Christian Aid and CAFOD will tell you, this process is already well under way. But for some in the Armageddon, or should it be Carmageddon brigade, so as far as fossil fuels are concerned the message is clear: "bring it on." On this basis it would be less a matter of Songs of Praise and more Top Gear. Imagine Jeremy Clarkson, suitably attired in flowing black robes, leading a high carbon Gospel choir in a rendition of "Praise my Coal the King of Heaven.

On another of my public meetings, one vicar, whose face had been getting more and more crimson as my talk went on, confronted me at the end of my address with the following: "All this talk of acting to protect God's creation. Well let me tell you, I went into the ministry to save souls, not seals." In the nicest possible way, I asked him to reflect that might he, in no small part, be acting to save his own soul by saving the seals? But he was having none of it. It's our old friend again: the legacy of Greek philosophy and dualism. Spirit good, physical stuff bad. This has huge implications for trying to focus on an urgent Christian ethic of Creation theology. If the created world is no more than a snare, a backdrop of temptations which threaten personal redemption, then how on earth do you enthuse people to care about it in the first place?

This point was partly taken up in a now rather notorious 1967 paper by Lynn White Jnr entitled "The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis." White's polemic was greeted with open arms by green atheists since it asserted that it was nothing less than the Judeao-Christian culture which was to blame for planetary degradation. "Christianity not only established a dualism of man and nature," says White, "it also insisted that it is God's will that man exploit nature for his proper ends."

White's argument can be summarised in the following neat syllogism:

1. Humanity began to lose its way principally in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when scientific and technological discoveries in the West began a process of humans seeing themselves as both masters of and separate from nature.

2. The dominant cultural assumptions in this period were still shaped by beliefs that might be broadly described as Judaeo-Christian in outlook.

3. Therefore, we can lay the blame at the door of the predominant religious belief system: Christianity.

To which I would say that's as bad a non sequitur as I have come across, and White's polemic would not stand the test of even the most basic scrutiny from a first year undergraduate student of logic. What about St Francis, Celtic Spirituality, and the simple earth-based practices of early monasticism? Not to mention the Creation-affirming, near-pantheism of the canticle of Daniel and some of the later psalms? Well they appear to count for nothing in White's analysis. But the mud stuck, partly because of a number of scriptural hostages to fortune. Indeed there are Christians in the US especially who have taken up the command to subdue to Earth and practice Dominion as a green light to using the natural world in a purely instrumental fashion. When you read Psalm 8, for example, that talks of us being made little less than gods and having the birds of the air and the fish of the sea under our feet, well, you can see where a temptation to hubris and arrogance might stem from. And with some of the sea level rises now being predicted for later in the century, maybe that vision of us having marine life quite literally under our feet may not be that far off from the truth.

But how does one counter all this? I've taken on more than fifty public meetings for Operation Noah so far this year and, with one or two exceptions, when I ask for a show of hands among the faith based communities I meet as to whether care for Creation and the natural world formed a part of their religious upbringing, the hands do not go up. This marginalisation is reflected in study. Most degree courses in theology have environmental matters tucked away in postgraduate options.  At A level on many examination boards, the environment is there under 'ethics' but often an option that can get glided over: sexual ethics often being a magnet that lures more than the odd hormone-crazed adolescent off the green agenda. A plea from me to anyone here today with influence to bear on these matters: this needs to be core business in our syllabi, our exam papers and in our classrooms.

And why? Now... this is where I go into Billy Graham mode... this is core business - because of Jesus. You won't get any simple mantras from him: nowhere in the Beatitudes does it say "Blessed are those with low carbon footprints." But any examination of Jesus' teachings shows an inspired teacher who is supremely at ease with and knowledgeable about the natural world around him. Lilies of the field, sparrows, mustards seeds, vineyards, weeds among the wheat, the calming of the seas ñ the list goes on and on.

Moreover, on the brink of Advent as we wait for coming of Emmanuel, God-with-us, the incarnate word of God made flesh is the most decisive riposte to dualism there can be. Ladies and gentleman ñ if you had any doubts before, then doubt ye no longer ñ because I say two words to you, and  they're almost identical. A simple noun and a verb. Matter matters!  This union of divinity and humanity ñ this bridging of spirit and flesh is the supreme revelation that the created world is indeed capable of transformation and redemption. Christ is the "first born of all creation" and "all things were made through him and for him," in the words of St Paul to the Colossians. Why on earth would Paul go into overdrive about all this if the marvel that is the miracle of Creation and the natural world is intrinsically flawed and a mere snare to tempt our fickle souls away from the Creator? It's all there in large print ñ in the Creation narrative: God deeming good what he has made on each separate day, not because of its eventual usefulness to us. No, because the light and day, land and sea, animal and plants are good in their very essences. After the flood, God's covenant is made with Noah and with "every living creature" on the face of the earth. When you hear professors of biodiversity warning that up to 20% or more of species face extinction over the next fifty years as a result of pollution and climatic change, we do have to ask if we are playing a central role in taking an eraser to those early passages of Genesis and rubbing out some of the best features off the pages of Creation. True enough, through the food chain and complex interdependency we already have a selfish interest in preservation of very last worm, beetle and starling.  But virtue ethics tells us we need to go further: we must look after this because as Psalm 24 tells us, it is not ours to dispense of: "The Earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof." If we are made in "Imago Dei" ñ we are called to practice true kingship ñ not domination, but a service to creation by being co-creators,  partners with God.

This is a central ethical command, not just in Christianity but in nearly all of the world's major faiths. Hindus, for example, have never fallen into the trap of dualism. If all of nature is imbued with divine spirit, or Brahman, then that has big implications for humanity's interdependence with the natural world, as I saw in Mumbai when I met up with an elegantly-robed Swammini in her temple.

CLIP 3: Hindu Swammini (link to clip coming soon - transcript follows)

"We are not separate, we are all connected just like the pearls are connected, when the thread is gone all the pearls will go. Similarly that one reality it connects all of us."

So does that means if we damage the sky and the trees we are in effect damaging ourselves?

"Yes. That is what we believe."

The earliest Hindu scriptures, the Vedas, are more than 5000 years old, and one of the common themes is that the sky and the earth are responsive elements. They are, in effect, our preservers. "Keep the sky free from pollution and cause it no damage," says one of the early Vedas. "Keep the Earth free form harm and invigorate it."

I have to say that consenting to record that piece in the middle of one of Mumbai's most insane traffic roundabouts was one of the more stupid things I have agreed to do in front of a camera, perhaps only bettered by agreeing to wear a spiky flesh mortifying chain at the top of an exposed upper left thigh in a film about Opus Dei. Honestly, some people will do anything to get on television!

Tellingly, that wise guru turned out to be rather fatalistic when I asked her whether Hindus ought to be opposing some the western consumerist models of development given the danger of exacerbating global warming. Wouldn't the writers of the Vedas be horrified at what we are doing to the natural world, I asked her? "They would remain detached and unconcerned," she said. "If the heavy rains come, they will come. There is nothing you can do to stop it," she said unnervingly.

So what's the way forward on all this? Can I offer you any hope or are we all going to hell in a fossil fuelled driven handcart? Sure, technology will be of use. Cleaner, greener ways to power our lives are a necessity. Given the huge threats to international peace that flow from the race for limited energy reserves in an approaching era of peak oil, countries that generate as much of their energy as possible will not just be free of dependency, I'd argue they are less likely to be militaristic. The climate agenda can be a peace agenda. We heard of a "peace dividend" after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Well surely there's a case to be made for the "climate dividend": a massive transfer of global defence budgets into reforestation, insulation of buildings and Research and Development into renewable energy technologies. And just as they did on slavery and debt, Church and faith communities can be huge players in this. At Operation Noah we take a hard nosed view that a DIY "change your lightbulbs" approach based on isolated acts of virtue cannot get us out of the mess we are now in. Nationwide ñ indeed global agreements binding in law are essential.  But also, as a species we've got to slow down. The ecological crisis reflects a deeper spiritual crisis.

As evidence of this I offer you a story of a recent tube journey. There I was on the District Line on my way up from Wimbledon when a young couple boarded at Putney Bridge. It was Friday lunchtime and they were in the middle of the mother of all rows. Most passengers hid behind their newspapers as the voices grew ever louder. It all centred on the fact that the social diary for the weekend had a great gaping hole in it. She thought HE should have been lining up the parties. He accused HER of taking her eye off the ball ñ after all, he'd been ever so busy at work, didn't she know. Suddenly as we neared Earl's Court, his face changed expression. "I've got a signal," he said, caressing his mobile phone. "Come on." I didn't actually want to alight in west London ñ I was on my way to the City, but I sensed what might be about to happen. So, inquisitive soul that I am, I followed them off onto the platform and, resembling a character out of BBC1's "Spooks", I stood at ninety degrees to them, three quarters hidden by my copy of the Guardian. What I had sensed might be about to happen came true. Within four minutes, over a thousands pounds had been spent on a lastminute.com weekend trip to Budapest. The flight was at 4.30pm that afternoon, which meant a crazed rush to get home and pack and get to Heathrow. They were coming back at 3pm on the Sunday. But despite the expense, the gap had been filled. The accusatory space of silence and time, that pocket, that bubble in our lives where God gently stirs and works inside us, closed out ñ a trap door slammed shut ñ with consequences not only for their bank balance but also the environment.

Some religious figures have dwelt on the flying issue to such a degree that they have gone so far as to say it is sinful ñ at least excessive flying without regard for the impact on fellow creatures, neighbours and surroundings. One such figure was the Rev Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London, who I caught up with one morning after he had presided over an Operation Noah service on the day of a climate change rally in London.

CLIP 4: The Bishop of London (link to clip coming soon - transcript follows)

Mark: I've got a practical idea. Could you possibly make a flight pledge which means that you vow not to fly for the next year? There's a gold one and a silver one with two short haul flights. (Bishops laughs.) It's the whole, "I will if you will" approach and the thing is if I have your name at the top of that list I've got a much better chance of getting a lot more names."

Bishop: Yes, now let me think what can I think of...

Mark: If you're really worried, you can go for the silver with an escape clause of two short haul flights...

Bishop (taking pen and clipboard): No, I think I am going to go for gold. (Signs.)

Mark: Good for you (taking pen and also signing). Well I suppose that means I am going to have to do it now. I am going to have to take my next five years' holidays in Blackpool.

Bishop: Well, actually we go to North Devon.

Mark: How we actually make these programmes without flying is another matter of course... and one we'll return to later.

Bishop: Yes, that's a very good point. (Bishop walks off.)

I hadn't expected him to sign. But then when he did, I felt I had to as well. Maybe there's a lesson there for us all?

And not a flight was taken. For the poor Bishop that meant a four day trip to Rumania and back by train at one point. But apart from affording him the chance to wriggle out of a few tedious looking international engagements, it also meant that for a whole year on the Today programme he was constantly being introduced as the "green Bishop." A man who practised what he preached! A year on, I caught up with him to see how the year had gone. Did people in the House of Lords think he had been mad to sign that pledge?

"Well," he said, "I am now known in some circles as a kind of ecclesiastical Swampy. But you know. It's amazing how defensive people can get. When you make a public pledge like that, you get people coming up to you and saying, "I have a second home in Andalucia. I suppose you think I am awful  flying there four or five times a year?"

And what, pray tell, did he say in response to public confessions of that kind?

"Well Mark, as Ignatius of Antioch once said, 'A Bishop never more resembles Jesus Christ than when he has his mouth shut.'"

The Bishop's tale masks an awkward dilemma: how best to be prophetic and take a stance without coming across as a low carbon Pharisee? How to take a stance and sound the alarm bells without paralysing people with fear and yet instilling the urgency the situation now requires? How many of you knew that the Archbishop of Canterbury himself had made a 2008 pledge on flying and had quietly taken the train to Rome and back in the Spring to fulfil an appointment with Pope Benedict?

A fortnight ago, I attended a private Whitehall breakfast seminar in which a government official gently berated a number of environmental campaigners and policy wonks for failing to stir up a greater sense of urgency on the issue of climate change. Looking ahead to next December's critical UN summit in Copenhagen, the official said that it was going to be hard for the UK government to make the case for deep and binding cuts if it could not demonstrate real domestic pressure at home to do so. We did make the point that ignoring a million and a half protestors on the subject of Iraq might have something to do with the public's lack of faith in mobilising themselves in the body politic, but be that as it may.

So what can a person of faith do in 2009? This week I am going to Cardiff to board a Lightship: a floating vessel in Cardiff bay which acts as a counselling centre and place for worship for many of the City's churches. It's a genuinely ecumenical space. My plan is to get many schoolchildren and parents on board early next year with parishioners from local churches. They will wear animal masks, and bear photo placards of the vulnerable seaside communities of Bangladesh and of all aspects of the natural world which are threatened by the changes we are making to the chemical composition of the atmosphere. This modern day Ark will feature hymns of praise for Creation.  Its images will be sent around the country in an attempt to goad other NGOs into action. People are tired of marching round Trafalgar Square with placards. So we need something different if this kind of public witness is to work. It boasts many advantages. It involves the younger generations ñ those who stand to lose most. It is upbeat and joyful and gives the religiously committed a specific practical task around which to focus, while not excluding others. The Flood, after all, is a genuine Jungian archetype that appeals well beyond conventional religious boundaries. It has huge inter-faith potential across the Abrahamic faiths. And in its celebration of Noah, it focuses on the first genuinely virtuous figure in the Bible: Noah was chosen as an upright man who responded to the call of God at a time of threat. Unquestioningly. Long before David Attenborough, he is the first great conservationist.

So watch out ñ 2009 may be the year of the Ark. Not just in coastal cities and on canals, but Arks in window sills in houses, built by schoolchildren from recycled materials and displayed in schools, crafted by church communities and mosques for outside our places of worship. Arks taken to town halls and lovingly presented to the local mayor. And in December, as the world's leaders gather in Copenhagen, a city on the waterfront ñ might Swedish, German and Danish churches greet the world's leaders with a flotilla of vessels representing the huge spectrum of creation that it is their task ñ our task to nurture and protect by divine decree?

Writing in 1992, the great theologian and ecologist John Cobb reminded us of our place as humans in the wider context of our earthly home:

"If we conceive the five billion years of the Earth's past as though recorded in ten volumes of five hundred pages each," he wrote, "it is not until page 499 of the tenth volume that human kind appears. The last two words on the last page recount our story from the rise of civilisation six thousand years ago until the present."

We need a Gandhi, a Mandela, for the Earth's atmosphere and the major religions of the world have thousand of years of cumulative wisdom between them, a wisdom which has been largely lost in an Enlightenment world where humanity rules and has become impoverished by a mechanistic view of nature. These narratives now urgently need rediscovering.

And the climate challenge, if tackled courageously, has so many potential benefits, bringing communities closer together as energy and resource sharing becomes more and more necessary. In a post 9/11 world, climate is the great equaliser between faiths. As we're finding now in the USA, serious scientific study of the planet does not have to be at the expense of a Bible-based faith: science and religion are bedpartners, not enemies. And if it is the world of religious inspiration that sets hearts alights and makes the moral case for a paradigm shift about the way we interact with the natural world, might not that, in some small part, re-engage youth with the world of religious belief and conviction?

I end this address on the subject of the next generations. We have a duty to those who have not yet walked the Earth. It's a well known mantra from an American Indian tribe and it has stood the test of time:

"We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children."