Hannah Mann speaks to BBC Radio Oxford's Lilley Mitchell about Creationtide across the diocese.
"A lot of what our churches are doing are being really courageous and bold in the way that they're speaking up for environmental issues locally and to local politicians and also nationally."
Hannah shared the amazing environmental projects happening in churches across the Diocese of Oxford in Creationtide and beyond. Listen to the interview on Soundcloud or read the transcript below.
Transcript
Lilley Mitchell
And welcome to you, if you've just popped the kettle on, I'm Lilley, sitting in for Phil this Sunday. And this September, the Church focuses on creation and looking after the world Christians believe God created. Creationtide runs from 1 September until 4 October, and all Christians give thanks for the world in which we live. The Bishop of Reading is the Bishop Mary Gregory:
Bishop Mary
We lead such busy lives, that I sometimes think we can rush past the creation in which we live and this is an invitation really to stop and for me to look and to listen and to think about the beautiful planet which we're a key part of, but not the only part.
Lilley
And Hannah Mann is the diocese Environmental Action Programme Manager and joins us now. Morning to you Hannah.
Hannah Mann
Good morning. Thanks for having me.
Lilley
Really lovely to have you on. So just tell us what your role is exactly then, Hannah.
Hannah
So my role is to support and encourage our 800 churches across the diocese to think about how they can care for creation in their own context, whether that's caring for their churchyards or whether that's looking after their buildings and so on. We offer guidance and signposting. We provide things like energy audits and we preach and teach where we can on all matters of environmental action and creation care.
Lilley
How lovely and this time creation tide, I guess you're rather busy.
Hannah
It is a really busy time for us, lots going on. We'll be visiting a church in a couple of weeks to talk about their decarbonisation project. We've got a joint service with our linked diocese in Vaxjo, Sweden, which we're really looking forward to. And we're bringing churches together later in the month so they can have some conversations about the ways that they are caring for creation to help them inspire one another as well.
Lilley
How amazing. And you you spoke about some of those projects there. We've spoken as well about Eco Church, Net Zero Church. You spoke about decarbonising. It's so interesting what churches can do, isn't it? We always think about quite a doom and gloom aspect, you know, we can't make a difference, but churches and church communities really can make a difference.
Hannah
Absolutely.
Churches are at the heart of the community in so many places, and not only can they look after their own environment in terms of the building that they're in, the churchyards that they look after and the way that they preach and teach about creation care, but they are also often that heartbeat of the community. And a lot of what our churches are doing are being really courageous and bold in the way that they're speaking up for environmental issues locally and to local politicians and also nationally.
And they're also there to try and model the way that we can all be changing aspects of our lives so that we can as individuals better take care of creation, whether that's really simple things like switching to a renewable energy provider, for example, or bigger things as we to decarbonise our buildings, both our homes and our churches.
Lilley
What does that actually mean, Hannah? When you say decarbonising a church, what does that mean on the ground?
Hannah
That means for a church to remove fossil fuels from its building as a way of heating and lighting the church and moving to a heating system and an energy system that is run off low carbon technology. So we have examples of churches already doing this.
In some ways it can be quite simple. We have a church over in Sibford called Holy Trinity that recently removed its oil boiler and has replaced that with electric under-pew heating run off a renewable energy tariff.
And in some cases, it's much more complex. We have a church in Abingdon that has recently installed an air-to-air source heat pump and solar panels as a way of removing the gas boiler that was there previously. It's trying to take those big projects and remove the fossil fuels that run our beautiful churches.
Lilley
How fascinating and great that you can show away because obviously churches are very old, very drafty, tricky buildings to do things with. So if you can do it, do know what I mean? And everyone can sort of take an example for that. And rewilding the churchyards as well, that sounds like a lovely project.
Hannah
That's absolutely wonderful. And it's one of those ways that can really bring in the whole community as part of that project as well.
We've got a number of churches that are setting up churchyard management plans, which sounds quite dry, but it's a way of thinking about how they can, as you say, let parts of the church grow longer, grow more wild so that it encourages more biodiversity into the churchyard. Installing things like bird boxes and bat boxes, tree planting. We have a church down in St Lawrence's Hungerford that plants thousands of trees every year in partnership with the Woodland Trust.
So wherever the church is on its journey, it might have a very small piece of land, it might have more land. There's always ways that it can take part and can invite the community in as well to help with that on community planting days. And that's always great at this time of year as well in Creationtide.
Lilley
Brilliant. And I guess lastly, Hannah, you know, if people want to find out, if they want to join in, do they sort of Google Creationtide - or other search engines are available, obviously. But if people want to find out more, what's the best way?
Hannah
Absolutely. Yeah, there's information on our diocesan website, there's the Season of Creation website, which talks across the whole of the Anglican Communion, and there's also plenty of information on the A Rocha Eco Church website as well.
Lilley
Hannah, thank you so much. Have a lovely rest of your Sunday.
Hannah
Thank you very much for having me.
Lilley
Oh, the lovely Hannah Mann, the diocese environmental action program manager.