History
Flow diagram of our history
A potted history of the first 40 years with highlights as printed in Green Christian magazine in 2022 can be seen here– click on the picture to see the complete article.
A file with more details or the history is being prepared here. If you are interested in reading or updating this “History of Green Christian” please contact the webeditor. This could be useful for people carrying out research on history. Past Annual reports can be found -WE NEED TO PUT THESE ALTOGETHER – I can find the back to 2007.
The first years
1981: An invitation at the Ecology Party (Now the Green Party) conference at Malvern was made for any Christians there to an informal prayer meeting. A group was formed called Christian Ecology Group (CEG). Judith Pritchard agreed to maintain a mailing list of supporters, while Tim Cooper arranged a meeting in London to discuss future activities.
It was agreed to hold a conference at the Ammerdown retreat centre and produce a series of articles exploring how our ‘green’ beliefs fitted with our Christian beliefs. This was later published as a booklet, God’s Green World, which attracted considerable interest: Several hundred copies were sold at a CEG stall at the Greenbelt Arts Festival.
In the meantime, the conference was held at Ammerdown and the Christian Ecology Group was formally established with a steering group chaired by Tim and with Judith as Secretary. Judith Pritchard subsequently produced a regular newsletter and later served as the first editor of our newsletter. The main aims were to Share Green Insights with Christians and Christian Insights with people in the Green Movement.
The history continues from there. Our name changed to Christian Ecology Link in 1989 , then our name changed to Green Christian in 2014. (We keep the name Christian Ecology Link for some carity /admin purposes.) We held various conferences.
From 1998 to 2000 we ran the Christian Ecology Link Millennium Certificate. given to churches that sent in a report of ten Green/Environmentally friendly things they had done. (25 churches took part). In 2021 (or 2000?) Led by Rev David Pickering and funded by Keep Britain Tidy EcoCongregation started. This became “Eco Church” run by A Rocha UK and was relaunched as such in 2016, and continues as EcoCongregation Scotland in Scotland, and the Catholics have a similar programme called “Live Simply” Many individual GC members are involved in Eco Church.