Greener than thou

My car broke down recently, a matter not in itself very interesting or noteworthy. But we live in a rural parish, not well served with buses, and with three small children under five and a mile or two from shop and nursery, I discovered we simply couldn’t operate without two cars. I found this shocking and frustrating: like many of us, I consider that I’m doing my best to be environmentally aware: we recycle, compost, take British holidays and generally try to do our ‘bit’. But car use is definitely our big bugbear. My husband has to drive to the train station to commute to work, and I can’t get to work or church or school without a car. My dependence on it was such that we had to hire a second car while mine was in the garage. This is ridiculous, I thought – surely we can manage without for a few days. But trying to walk to nursery, there was no pavement on the lane to keep the 4 year old on. The double pram took up half the road. Though only a lane, the lack of pavement seemed to  encourage cars to drive as if it were an A road. I’m afraid half a mile on, I vowed not to do it again.

But it started me thinking –our car use is as heavy at the weekends as in the week. We drive  to church. So does a lot of the congregation. So, in rural parishes, does the vicar who may have eight or nine churches and villages to get round. Yet the Church has vowed to nurture God’s creation and groups like A Rocha and the Chiltern Gateway project (see page 2) are working hand in hand with conservation groups, putting rural churches at the heart of conservation efforts.

What can we do in rural parishes to discourage car use, which would not cripple church attendance? In many churches people do an informal car share, with neighbours taking others to church. Perhaps churches could run a bus to pick up the congregation. Or perhaps we could copy more urban parishes and have active home groups – church at home – so people didn’t have so far to travel.

I wonder what St Paul would have done in the age of the car. Would he have put his evangelistic mission first, and travelled round in jets offsetting his pollution through plant a tree schemes? Or would he have vowed not to travel by air, as the Bishop of London pledged recently, and used other methods to spread the Gospel – the internet, i-Church – or perhaps he would simply do what Nick Molony has done and take to the streets, without food or money or change of clothes.

The issue of climate change presents huge challenges to the rural Church. If we really mean what we say about caring for God’s creation, then all of us, in churches large and small, need to start looking for solutions as a congregation.

Rebecca Paveley is editor of the DOOR.