Humans of the Uniting Church

What’s your Uniting Church story?

I was on the cradle roll of our local Uniting Church as a matter of family tradition and because it was “what you did” at the time. We stopped going to Sunday School when other commitments came up on Sunday mornings, but I’d just been presented with my first Bible as part of the yearly graduation, so I kept my faith alive reading the text, alone, for many years. Passages about the importance of church community prompted me to come back to that same church as a teenager, once I was old enough to walk there by myself.

I was welcomed with open arms, literally, by one of the Sunday School teachers, who quickly became a close friend and mentor. In my late teens, when another round of debate around LGBTQIA+ acceptance in the UCA led to almost half of our congregation leaving to join other denominations (including our lead Sunday School teacher) my mentor stepped up and asked me to co-lead with her – my first experience of leadership, and a rich one. (It may be worth pointing out that our teen Sunday School group was essentially a Bible Study, full of serious discussion about how to apply the texts to our lives. It was not a traditional youth group with lots of games and excursions. We had one of those as well, I tried going a few times and absolutely hated it. I’m very uncoordinated and compulsory sport at school was torture enough. There is no way I would have stepped into any kind of church leadership if youth group had been the only option available.)

One thing my little group didn’t really have the theological resources to help me with though was my passion for the environment. Stuck reading the Biblical text through my own very limited understanding, and a cultural lens that told me Christians didn’t care about the environment and believed we had the right to dominate it and use it however we liked, I felt very torn between my faith and love for the environment. I couldn’t understand why God would give me such a deep passion without intending me to pursue it. I considered ‘sacrificing’ my passion for the environment to dedicate my life to God by becoming a Minister, but thankfully was so terrified by the prospect of the public speaking involved that I did go on to enrol in Environmental Science at university. 

My life changed the day I discovered Ecotheology and I was able to finally bring my faith and passion for the environment together. I now see wonderful environmental verses throughout the entire Biblical text and wonder how I ever missed them, but that’s the power of lens and context, I guess. Almost immediately after this discovery, I founded the Five Leaf Eco-Awards (more below). 

But I wasn’t committed to the Uniting Church yet. I didn’t really understand why we had denominations and visited lots of different churches to talk about Five Leaf. I found one at the uni I quite liked that had basically hour-long lectures on the Bible each Sunday, but when I met with the pastor to tell him about Five Leaf he told me he wouldn’t take me seriously until I formally joined a church (read: his), and that women couldn’t lead men anyway. That finally drove me back to the Uniting Church, where I attended a talk one day by then President Alister McRae, describing why he loved the UCA. And many of his points were about our passion and action for social justice. So I decided if I had to pick a denomination, it would be the UCA. And that decision has been affirmed and reinforced many times over the years.

What enlivens your faith in Jesus? 

Being in nature is like oxygen for my faith. The wonders of God’s creation fascinate me and fill me with awe. I can’t help but think of God when I connect with other creatures and natural environments.

This connection between God and nature in my spirituality is completely innate. It has been part of me since before I can remember. The best decision I’ve ever made for my faith though was studying theology at university. Sure, it pulled apart and remade what I believed, but I think my remade faith is so much better, stronger, more diverse and much more interesting. Reading the Bible as a young person felt like a competition to memorise verses and re-read the same texts as many times as possible. My friend read the whole Bible four times, so then I had to as well to keep up, etc. I was just skimming over the text, missing all the richness within and behind it. Studying theology revealed the world of exegesis and different interpretations of the same text from different people, times in history, and through different contextual and cultural lenses. It has opened up for me exploring texts through the lenses of Eastern Orthodox theology, Oceanic Theologies (including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander theologies), Queer theologies, Metaphorical theologies and so many more.

I was able to explore some of these theologies in my Masters recently, looking at what each had to say about the anthropogenic extinction of animal and plant species as “Sin” and it was so much fun learning what each had to say, and how these insights can interact and help build a far more nuanced and exciting picture than only looking through the single dominant lens from western theological tradition. I think all this theological richness, and the horizons it offers -depths I will never be able to tap in a single lifetime - keeps faith interesting and ever renewing for me, in a way simply memorising the Bible while holding my own interpretation of it would never have done.

I particularly love practical theology. Theology that matters. Theology that changes the way we live, the way we interact with others and creation. Theology that pushes us to be better, more kind and ethical people. The Ecotheology I write and research always has this practical bent. I’m less interested in knowledge for its own sake than I am in knowledge that changes things. That’s why I was exploring sin. If we call anthropogenic species extinction sinful, and condemn it on the basis of our faith – can that change the way Christians act, and the many ways our individual and collective actions often contribute to the problem instead of supporting conservation and the preservation of God’s precious creatures?

What are you currently working on in regards to climate justice?

The Five Leaf Eco-Awards, an ecumenical environmental awards program for churches I founded to try and encourage churches to put their words and faith into practical climate and environmental action, will be 16 years old later this year.

I’ve seen a lot in that time. So many churches doing amazing things for God’s environment, and often in very creative ways. I’ve also loved seeing the connections this work has often created between churches and their communities, and the additional benefits that have come out for people and communities, as well as the environment. I’m proud that many of the churches on our list of awardees are Uniting Churches, and that many of our churches were key early leaders.

I’m pleased that more and more churches are now taking action for the environment, and it is now seen as far less unusual to link faith and creation care now than it was 16 years ago. But I’m also a little disappointed that the awards still need to exist. I look forward to the day when every single church in the country sees creation and climate action as such a central part of their Christian discipleship, faith and witness that they have all done at least enough for the Basic Certificate (our introductory award) and I can retire the program because outside incentives for action are no longer needed.

Another area I’ve become really passionate about in the last few years is Climate Pastoral Care – that is, equipping those providing pastoral care to our communities with the knowledge and skills to assist them with the climate anxiety, grief and distress they are experiencing. Because this is big, and becoming more and more of an issue.

Five quick facts:

1. 95% of Australian youth believe climate change is a serious issue (Australian Psychological Society, 2019).
2. ¾ of Australians (all ages) report feeling fairly or very concerned about climate change (Griffith University, 2022).
3. 80% of Australians report experiencing a natural disaster since 2019 (Climate Council, 2023).
4. A global survey of climate anxiety in children and young people around the world found that of the 10,000 surveyed (including 1,000 Australians), 56% believe that humanity is doomed due to climate change (The Lancet, 2021).
5. TEARfund research confirms that 86% of 18–40-year-old Australian Christians want climate action now or in the next 5 years. Also, the younger they are, the more urgently they want action (Tearfund, 2022).

In this context, our churches cannot be relevant to people’s lives without responding to and acting on climate change. And in a world where 56% of young people are not seeing a future for themselves, or humanity, we have to be ready to support them with the incredible grief and distress that naturally comes with that. Whether you agree with them or not, this is their experience, and it is shaping their lives and decisions, in a whole host of ways – we need to be conscious of that, and provide what support we can.

In 2019 I created the first ever Climate Pastoral Care training day in Sydney as part of my UnitingEarth Advocate role with the NSW.ACT Synod (a role that was later made redundant). This event brought together psychologists at the cutting edge of the emerging field of climate psychology and church leaders and members. We had about 60 people attend, but I had to explain to many what climate anxiety was, and we had more candidates for ministry attend than ordained ministers.

Then the 2020 Black Summer Bushfires happened, and the Sydney CBD (among many other areas) was blanketed in thick smoke that made it hard to breathe, and for a while the idea of living through some kind of climate Armageddon came alive in a way it never had before. Climate anxiety in this country went through the roof. So, when we held an online Climate Pastoral Care Conference later that year (during COVID) we sold over 300 tickets. And I didn’t have to explain to anyone what climate anxiety was anymore.

The family connections of our Pasifika churches and the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander churches also brought home to us again and again that climate has already had devastating impacts on so many people. It’s not just something to anticipate anymore, but history and lived reality. The amazing Rev. James Bhagwan, General Secretary of the Pacific Conference of Churches often reminds me that their people don’t have time for climate anxiety, they are too busy already trying to deal with their experiences of climate grief from what has already happened.

So when the Executive Director of Waterspirit, a spiritual ecology nonprofit in the USA, reached out to me to talk about the Climate Pastoral Care Conferences I’d been organising, and lamenting that she wasn’t aware of anything similar in the US, we decided to work together to create the Climate Pastoral Care Course online. Rather than a conference which is only available at one time, and thus challenging for many church leaders to engage with (a funeral always comes up when you try to book in training), this online course is self-paced, available online at any time that suits you, and offers a variety of videos, podcasts, written information, social media exercises, reflections and journal exercises to allow you to learn your own way, and at the depth you want to explore. The course is now available through Thinkific, and we are proud of what we have pulled together from the amazing growing expertise in this area around the world, and the positive feedback we have received.

I have a crazy dream for this course, and related Climate Pastoral Care work – that if we can train church leaders, already present and providing care in almost every town and suburb of both our countries, to at least be aware of, and sensitive to climate anxiety and grief, to normalise the experience and create safe spaces for people to share what they are feeling and to know where people can go to find additional support and resources; we can create a climate distress safety net for our communities that will unfortunately become more and more necessary over time as climate impacts continue to worsen and impact more people directly.  

What’s one thing you love telling people about the UCA?

I love telling non-church people that the UCA does actually care about the environment, and that we have a long history of action in this area. They are usually so surprised. The rhetoric they hear is that Christians think we can use and abuse the earth how we like, or that we think it’s going to be burned up in the rapture so doesn’t matter (even though God made and loves it). So it’s fun to flip that on its head and tell them about our community gardens, repair cafes, climate activism and climate anxiety sermon series.

It’s also fun to tell them that the wise use of energy, protection of the environment, replenishment of resources and concern for the human rights of future generations were mentioned in the 1977 Statement to the Nation when our church came into being, that we have at least 13 national Assembly Resolutions on climate, and to point to awesome statements like An Economy of Life and the Rights of Nature and the Rights of Future Generations.  

What’s one thing you’d like to change, or something you hope for?

Obviously, I’d love ALL of our churches to be taking serious action caring for God’s Creation. I honestly believe that the biggest opportunity for the UCA right now is modelling for people what deep, connected community that is also connected to nature can look like. It’s providing local, place-based leadership that shows how we can live better as kin. In our individualist, exhausted, secretly terrified society, church community gardens and repair cafes and climate protests are countercultural actions. Caring for the earth and for each other are radical acts. Radical like Jesus. Radical that points us towards a better future we can make happen. With a bit of courage and faith.

It would even just be really nice to be able to tell people to simply visit their local UCA if they’re looking for an environmentally active church, instead of having to ask them to scroll all the way through the list of award winning churches on our website in hopes of finding one near them.

What's one thing you would like the rest of the Uniting Church to pray for?

I think it’s less what I’d like the UCA to pray, than how I’d like to them to pray. Yes, please, pray for climate justice. If you can though, pray outside, pray with and alongside other creatures loved by God, pray in the humility of Saint Francis, remembering that there is more to creation than just human beings. Allow our First Nations, CALD and LGBTQIA+ communities to lead us in prayer. Pray for justice and in solidarity with all peoples, and above all turn your prayers into action. We who are already suffering the impacts of climate change don’t need any more pretty words – we need real action, right now.