Should the Church be saving the planet, or saving people?

Sir Paul Marshall, the owner of GB News, has apparently committed the unforgivable sin. Instead of seeking to save the planet from global warming, he has contributed money to the seemingly lesser cause of actually seeing people saved by coming to faith in Jesus. 

The co-owner of GB News, a British TV channel accused of broadcasting climate change denial, has donated £28m to influential Church of England institutions that support climate action.

This raises “serious questions”, say Christian leaders, given that Sir Paul Marshall’s views on the climate crisis and those frequently broadcast on the TV channel are “in direct opposition” to the Church of England, which believes that “responding to the climate crisis is an essential part of our responsibility to safeguard God’s creation and achieve a just world”.

Rev Dr Darrell Hannah (whom I happen to know from NT academics) is chair of Operation Noah, a ‘leading UK Christian climate charity.’ He commented: 

Marshall’s views are in direct opposition to those of the Church of England. Given his outsized influence on our country – and in light of his problematic views on the most significant moral and practical challenge of our time – serious questions need to be asked about Sir Paul Marshall’s donations to faith groups, and specifically to the Church of England. This cannot go unchallenged.

There is quite a lot here which ‘cannot go unchallenged’—not least the projection of what Sir Paul actually believes. The same Guardian article actually cites his position. 

Sir Paul generally agrees with Christian and Anglican teaching on the environment and climate change. Like many people, including many Christians, he just doesn’t subscribe to net zero by 2050 due to the serious negative impact on poor people, their communities and the economy. Instead, he prefers to allow human innovation to adapt to and to limit climate change. This is a perfectly reasonable position held by millions of people, including many Christians.

GB News (the other villain of the piece here) might well have challenged some of the dogmatic approaches to climate change; presenters have accepted that the climate is changing, but they have challenged claims about the rate of change and the costs of ‘net zero’—as have many others.

(I do love the naming of a climate charity ‘Operation Noah’, when the story of Noah in Genesis 8 to 10 was largely about God’s judgement on the evil of humanity, and his saving of the faithful remnant of Noah’s family…)

And it is not true to claim that Paul Marshall has donated ‘to the Church of England.’ He has contributed to one particular congregation, and one charity, but all congregations are separate legal entities from the central Church. For those making sweeping ideological comments, it is just too easy to lump everyone together and call them ‘the Church of England’ rather than take time to understand what is actually going on here. 

The Church of England is indeed a ‘broad church’, not in the virtuous sense of tolerating a wide range of views, but in the sometimes problematic sense of being a collection of different entities who often don’t agree with one another.

And this reality means that Marshall’s views are not ‘in opposition to the Church of England.’ General Synod did indeed pass a rushed motion on net zero in 2020—but many are now challenging this, as Synod did not think through the costs and implications for local churches, particular those with historic buildings. Many now consider that the hasty measures are damaging to local ministry. 

An analysis undertaken in 2022 of a series of church court rulings, and comments made by ecclesiastical judges, has shown that green heating systems, such as electric boilers or heat pumps, are either too expensive for parish churches which are buckling under financial pressure, or that they cannot be fitted in historic buildings. Of course, Synod did not allow such realities to dent their climate change virtue.  

The Daily Telegraph reported last year:

Net zero targets are killing off the Church of England, clergy and wardens have warned. Access to new oil or gas boilers has been restricted under a Church of England commitment to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2030.

A Telegraph investigation can reveal that the policy has left dozens of churches in the cold for months on end, with rural churches bearing the brunt of the policy. Priests and wardens have warned that the green energy drive is putting parishioners’ health at risk, driving down church attendance and causing damp to rot historic buildings.

The inimitable Marcus Walker, the rector of St Bartholomew the Great Church in central London, led opposition to the net zero policy in Synod. His church lost heating in the winter of 2022.

It is worth revisiting the 2020 Synod motion and its introduction. The motion originated as an Oxford Diocesan motion, and so was introduced by one of the suffragan bishops from that diocese, Olivia Graham.

We have the rest of this decade to take decisive action. The motion challenges us in all areas of life, from finances to buildings and political advocacy. We must not kick this can down the road for future generations to deal with. There is no greater issue facing society today than runaway climate change. Our Church, with the level of resources, reach and influence we have must be on the frontline of the battle to save God’s creation.

I think that claiming society faces ‘no greater issue’ might be true from a secular humanist point of view. But is that our theological position—seriously? In a context where we have seen a radical deChristianising of our culture, and unprecedented and apparently terminal decline in church attendance—at least in the C of E? Might not ‘people coming to know Jesus’ be the most important issue facing society?

On the question of ‘the position of the Church of England’ we should note that every element of the motion is supplicatory: ‘commend… urge… urge… commit… call upon’. The reason for this is that, in such motion, the General Synod has no actual authority to command dioceses (who are legally independent) to do anything. So in fact all the zeal in dioceses to implement such things, regardless of the damage they are doing on the ground, is entirely voluntary.

We still should note the remarkable language here, and its extraordinary hubris. Olivia Graham says that we must be ‘on the frontline of the battle to save God’s creation’. Save God’s creation?

On current estimates, the United Kingdom produces about 0.7–0.8% of the world’s annual greenhouse gas emissions (or roughly the same for CO₂ alone). In 2024 that was about 387 million tonnes CO₂e.

The Church of England has about 16,000 parish churches, and most of these are low-occupancy, intermittently heated buildings. Even if the average parish emitted (say) 10 to 20 tonnes of CO₂ per year (a plausible ballpark based on church energy audits), that would give roughly 160,000–320,000 tonnes CO₂/year.

That would mean that we contribute about 0.04–0.08% of UK emissions, which is about 0.0003–0.0008% of global emissions. So in global terms, local Church of England churches are effectively a rounding error.

As for ‘our level of resources, reach, and influence’ I cannot help thinking that Olivia Graham is over-estimating how much attention people are paying to us. And if they do, what they might see is an organisation that is crippling itself in relation to its main goal in order to make a practically insignificant contribution whose major goal is signalling virtue.

It might be claimed that this is not, actually, a zero-sum game—that we can be concerned about mission and evangelism, and about ‘saving the planet.’ But the reality is, for many local churches, it really is. They have finite resources, both in terms of finance and energy, and it is very hard to give the same energy to both. Some argue that we need to look credible on this issue to outsiders—but I am yet to hear of anyone saying ‘Gosh, I ought to think about the claims of Jesus on my life; after all, look at my local church’s new heat pump.’

And what is fascinating is to note the zeal of the Net Zero motion.

That this Synod, affirming the fifth mark of mission, concerned by the scientific evidence that climate change is proceeding at a rapid rate and by the impact of climate events, and seeking to build on the decisions taken…

I wonder what response we would get to a motion that began:

That this Synod, affirming the first mark of mission, concerned by the evidence that few people hear and respond to the good news of repentance and faith in Jesus, and seeking to…

And it is also worth reflecting on Dr Hannah’s own situation, and how these matters affect his congregation in Ascot Heath. As it turns out, his parish is part of one of the most expensive towns in England. The top five wealthiest streets in Berkshire are all in Ascot. At the pinnacle is Titlarks Hill — known locally as “Millionaires’ Row” — which sits next to Sunningdale Golf Course and has an average property value of around £9 million. His congregation is drawn from one of the wealthiest postcodes in England. So perhaps questions of affordability are not something they need to worry about. 

But they might worry about the other kind of salvation. His diocese, Oxford, has seen church attendance drop by 30% in the last 15 years—and his own congregation has fallen by 10% in the last two years. On the church’s website, I could not find a single mention of mission, how to learn more about the Christian faith, or anything like an Alpha course for outsiders.

You might say I am being unkind to pick on Darrell’s own parish—but if someone is going to criticise someone else in the national media, it seems fair to me to ask what the impact is in their own back yard.

There is a kind of inverted ideological idiocy that would rather see money invested in a heat pump for a medieval building as it empties of people, than actually see people coming to faith and filling it with the warm of lives made new in Jesus.

I think it is wonderful that someone Like Sir Paul Marshall is putting money into serious efforts to see more people come to know the good news of Jesus for themselves. In the light of continued decline in Church of England attendance, I think we would be wise to welcome this rather than criticise it.

(A much shorter version of this piece was published at Premier Christianity.)