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The Ice We Skate Is Getting Pretty Thin - A Review of "Time to Act" by Christian Climate Action

 It was 7:30am on the 30th of September 2021. I had just experienced the joy of a Newcastle to Stockton commuter train and now I found myself wandering through the town looking for people planning to walk to Newcastle with me as part of the Young Christian Climate Network Relay to COP 26. At the town square I saw a few people sitting down at one of the benches and holding out an unfamiliar banner that said “Christian Climate Action.” Now logically, most people would have assumed they would be the people I was looking for, however the caffeine from my breakfast coffee had yet to kick in and in a moment of panic I suddenly thought to myself “Oh no, anti-environmentalist people have come to protest us![1]” Thankfully sense reigned, I quickly Google’d Christian Climate Action, realised that weregoing to be fellow climate pilgrims and bleary eyed I went over to them and began four incredible days of walking and climate activism.


Big fan of the blue, green, pink combo!
 

“Time to Act” is the manifesto of Christian Climate Action (CCA), the Christian wing of Extinction Rebellion (XR), though interestingly they actually formed six years before XR in 2012. It’s an anthology written by different members and supporters of CCA including everything from reflections on why people take part in climate action, poetry, prayers, liturgies, memoirs of CCA actions, practical guidance on how to do a whole range of activism, theological reflections on grappling with the climate crises and ethical discussions on non-violent civil disobedience. It’s therefore quite hard to review since 39 individual chapters means 39 different takes on the topic and I don’t think even my most dedicated reader would like me to try and review every single chapter individually!

The other thing that makes this book hard to review is that having been published in 2019 the shadow of the pandemic leaves its mark on the reader. We know now that 2020 would not be a great year of activism, and that the hopes and aspirations shown within the book would have to be postponed as Covid-19 radically reshaped all our lives. Furthermore, as someone who got to know quite a few of the contributors via my involvement with the Young Christian Climate Network it almost felt like hearing what people were saying five minutes before you walk into the room since I got to hear the more developed positions and opinions while walking to Newcastle and beyond!


Climate pilgrims are a fearsome lot!

That being said the book is a fun read. It’s got a range of theological views represented (including a few articles by members of other faiths – I particularly enjoyed the chapter by Rabbi Jeffrey Newman on civil disobedience in the Jewish tradition) though I’d say that overall it’s of a lightly charismatic nature with an Anglican flavour. The best chapters are definitely Hannah Malcolm’s discussion on climate grief in “Life in the Shadow of Death” and Anthony G Reddie’s discussion on race and climate action in “The monstrous shadow – race, climate and justice.” Both are just fantastic theological discussions that are well worth reading by anyone interested in how we experience the climate crisis. The one thing I felt missing from the anthology would have been something about future economics, many of the contributors talked about moving away from capitalism and so it would have been nice to have seen an articulation of what individuals (or CCA collectively) thought should be steps taken to achieve that goal.

Overall, it’s an interesting read and for anyone involved with UK Christian politics, it’s a useful primer about an activist group that is not going away anytime soon. You may or may not choose to agree with them on the use of civil disobedience, but you walk away from the book with a feeling that these are good, ordinary people trying their best to do what they think is right. And once more you feel that despite the challenges, they are still people who have the rarest of commodities in climate activism - Hope.

 


[1] I’d almost definitely heard of Christian Climate Action (CCA) before Stockton as part of the organising team of the YCCN Relay to COP26 but it’s amazing the jumps the mind will make when tired.



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