Neither science nor theology can save the planet, despite the fact that the environmental movement was “one of the brightest stars of the 20th century”.
“The flaw in this new-found faith in the empirical, in science, is that the scientists now present themselves within the arena of environmental debate as being the potential saviours of the environment,” he said. “And the reality that is so often presented to us is the idea that science can save us but really it is proving to be part of the peril that we and all life face.
“The idea that science can save us is inherent within genetic modification, electric cars and what we have now is gallons of green wash where the business community can tinker with the edges and we can all carry on living the way we are living because business is going green when, in fact, you just have to look at the facts which are, among other things, that our brothers and sisters in the natural world face elimination, extinction, on the greatest scale since the arrival of modern humans.
Rev Owen Jones said that it was in communion with the natural world that “we will realise our most dazzling future”. He said, “If I think of the ordination vows I took as a priest: could you hear a robin within them? God, could you hear the sound of the waves, the wind in the trees, the sparrows? No.
He said that our care for the environment had the “wonderful potential” to bring out the best in us – “our nurturing, our compassion and our love”. “But somehow, and it will happen, we need to jump the fence we have built between ourselves and the natural world, we need a new language for this new world,” he said.
With Christianity being so human-possessed over the last thousand years, Rev Owen Jones believed the church had been “fantastically silent” when it came to our relationship with the environment. “It simply does not have the heritage to draw on, or the language to speak, and we need to be honest about that,” he said.
“You cannot put new wine in old wine skins and need to be much braver and much more confident about that we need to dream and imagine a new culture, a new character and a new church.
Rev Owen Jones said it was now time to move beyond words into action. “Maybe the time has come for a community that bears witness to the deep ecology present within the theology, the deep ecology, that is resonant in this room – what is it like to live out the Christian ecological perspective.
To read the full text of Rev Peter Owen Jones’s address, see http://www.christian-ecology.org.uk/owen-jones.htm.