Eco-Congregations Ireland hold their first conference

Ireland is a very green country but the idea of churches being interested in green issues is very new. When the committee of Eco-congregations Ireland decided to have a conference they though that it would attract 30-40 people. The Dromantine conference centre in beautiful rural County Down was booked in faith for a two day residential conference from 9.30am on Friday 14th to 5pm on Saturday 15th September 2012. The conference attracted almost 150 attendees and a block booking at a local hotel had to be made to accommodate them all! There seems to be an awakening spirit of environmental awareness in the Irish churches.

Dromantine is just a few miles outside Newry, and thus just north of the Border. The participants were attracted from all the major denominations and from all parts of Ireland, North and South, and was particularly successful in attracting religious sisters and brothers. (In fact I have never been with so many nuns at one time in all my life!) Many of these religious communities have run gardens and farms as part of their vocation for many years so Christian environmentalism was for them a natural progression.

As the representative of Eco Congregations Scotland I was made very welcome and I told about some of the green achievements of Scottish churches and parishes in a workshop. ECI is in a different place to ECS. It was set up by the inter-church committee for social affairs five years ago and to date has made five awards to churches and dioceses. It still operates as a sub committee of this body. In contrast ECS is a charity in its own right and has now made 100 awards.

A range of distinguished speakers opened up the whole area of green theology and ethics.

Prof David Howell (Exeter) asked if the bible is green and how environmentalism be drawn from the text. Prof Stephen Williams (UTC Belfast) examined what a theology of creation could look like. Ann Primavasi looked at the threat to the world from Militarism. Alastair McIntosh spoke about money, consumerism and society and Peter Owen-Jones spoke about the quest for well-being in the twenty-first century. There were also workshops on weather, economics, GM crops, earth spirituality, and practical advice on what churches can do.

I enjoyed my long weekend in Northern Ireland and the great craic of the many coffee time and after hours encounters. I even ended up late on Friday night singing Irish songs with a Presbyterian couple from Belfast and four lovely nuns from Kilarney!