Reading Area Green Christians

We are a group of about 40 Christians of various denominations from Reading and the surrounding area. We currently meet via Zoom every two to three months and warmly welcome new members – email us on reading@greenchristian.org.uk to find out more. Our primary purpose is to support each other in the work we are doing in our churches, but we also occasionally organise events together. You can also find us on Facebook and join our Facebook group.

A couple of our members are creating a range of leaflets for use in local churches with suggestions for action, prayer and discussion on a range of topics. These range from food and energy use to sharing God’s Creation..

Reducing Waste

We are compiling a list of places where you can buy goods locally with little or no packaging. Please note that inclusion on the list below is not intended as endorsement of the products but as information about zero waste shopping opportunities:

Recent activities:

Many of us have been attending The Big One in London (pictured right).

Our joint campaigning is primarily focussed on The Climate and Ecology Bill.

St Mary’s Wargrave were filmed as part of Aljazeera’s Earthrise episode – Believing in Change: Faith and the Mission to Protect our Planet.

St Nicolas Earley have just become a Silver EcoChurch.

Churches in Woodley are putting together a Creation Walk for this year’s Reading Climate Festival.

St John & St Stephen’s Newtown had a good turn out for a showing of The Letter: A Message for Our Earth.

Events in 2022 included

Reading Climate Festival. During the week we launched our campaign to support The Climate & Ecology Bill at an online meeting, we also published the first of our leaflets and discussion materials to use in local churches, and we collaborated with the Diocese of Oxford to present a workshop on joy-fuelled activism which is available to watch here.

We had been campaigning to persuade the Berkshire Pensions Fund to divest from fossil fuels for some years now and were delighted to learn that in January 2022 they took the decision to completely divest extractive fossil fuel companies from their Global Equities Fund.

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Events in 2021 included

Several of our members went to Glasgow for COP26 and before that we helped to host the YCCN relay from the G7 meeting at Carbis Bay to the conference. You can now watch the Creative Climate Workshop, the launch of the Sanctuary art exhibition and an interview with artist Emma Major, and the Climate Service at Reading Minster with Bishop Olivia on youtube.

We also joined in celebrations for the 900th anniversary of Reading Abbey. Local churches organised events in the abbey ruins over three lunch times using the stage created for RABBLE Theatre’s ‘The Last Abbot’. So we provided a dramatic dialogue between a modern abbey visitor and a fifteenth-century novice. They discussed the medieval monastic contribution to the development of science, the modern church’s response to the challenge of Climate Change and how medieval monastic simplicity and prayer can help with the modern challenge.

Events in 2020

Leading worship at the Oxford Diocesan Synod on 14 March 2020 where a Climate Emergency was declared and a commitment was made to be carbon neutral by 2035. Find out more here.

On 10 June we joined Milton Keynes Green Alliance at the Citizens:MK Assembly to address the Thames Valley Police and Crime Commisioner.

On 30 June we attended the Time is Now Virtual Lobby.

Early in September, some of us attended Extinction Rebellion’s September Rebellion.

In November 2019 we organised an event attended by 60 local Christians with workshops to explore dealing with the Climate Crisis through lament, improving buildings, political campaigning, working with local groups and talking to our neighbours. This is the report: