By Abi Taylor, Operation Noah Trustee

Operation Noah, Climate Stewards, Green Christian and A Rocha teamed up earlier this month to host a stall at New Wine, a Christian festival in Somerset. It was a very busy week, chatting to lots of interested Christians, leading climate prayers, playing games and trying to stay cool! 

It was challenging at times given the unprecedented level of extreme heat, but it reaffirmed how important it was to be there, encouraging Christians take action on the climate crisis. 

Our stall centred around a question of the day, hoping to get attendees to chat to us. We discussed everything from, ‘is taking climate action a distraction from sharing the gospel?’ to ‘can individual actions make a difference to climate change?’ 

New Wine was a particularly interesting place to have these conversations given that, unlike some other Christian festivals in the UK, climate justice was not woven into the programme of the festival; in fact, we were virtually the only place at the festival speaking about the topic. It was quite a stark contrast to be on the stall, surrounded by the urgency of the climate crisis, and then to sit in evening meetings and seminars where the environment went unmentioned. 

Even in festival talks, various challenges our world is facing would be discussed, including global conflicts, AI, and the cost of living. And yet there was no mention of the crisis which is exacerbating them all: the climate crisis. It was pretty shocking. 

However, we had many encouraging conversations with Christians who felt frustrated about the festival’s silence on climate and who were personally passionate about environmental justice. 

We were able to speak to those who stopped by our stall about ethical banking, flying, food, rewilding and voting – and many people took away our climate prayer card and resources. We particularly loved engaging with young people, and it was incredible how knowledgeable they were on the climate crisis and how interested they were in the work of our charities. 

We also had a great time working out carbon footprints in lego bricks and ranking the emissions of everyday activities – interestingly, many people had no idea how carbon intensive flying was! 

It was also cool to see so many children challenging their parents to live differently. 

We also had some uncomfortable conversations as a handful of climate deniers stopped to speak to us. It can be really hard to hear Christians use the Bible as a reason to ignore the threat of climate chaos – or even to be in favour of it. It’s also bizarre given they are often the same people who care deeply about those living in poverty, in refugee camps or in developing nations – people who are often the most vulnerable to the effects of climate breakdown. 

But in having these difficult conversations, it hit home how critical Operation Noah’s work is in engaging Christians to care for creation, to understand the science and to join up their thinking on the ways in which the climate crisis underpins Jesus’ call for us to love God and neighbour. 

Overall, I had a great time as a trustee repping Operation Noah and promoting the work that we do; my hope and prayer is that New Wine, as a festival, will become more engaged with the reality of the climate crisis and what a faithful Christian response might look like. 

A great start would be to see some speaker sessions on it next year.