IF HE were alive today, what would Brave New World visionary Aldous Huxley have made of the sight of a former Archbishop of Canterbury parading up Parliament Hill in a ‘climate repentance ceremony’?
Baron (Rowan) Williams of Oystermouth, whom Tony Blair elevated to Canterbury in 2002, took part in the multi-faith ceremony on the fringe of Hampstead last Sunday. Faith leaders asked forgiveness for climate sins, and called for humility and action from world leaders as they sought to address climate change during COP27, which has just ended.
Christian Today reported that participants in the ‘penitential march’ carried scrolls inscribed with ‘Ten Principles for Climate Repentance’.
Lord Williams intoned: ‘Humans have caused untold harm to our precious planet. Climate repentance means all of us holding up our hands to climate sins, something that is all too often missing from these conversations. Only when we deeply acknowledge the past and the present can we make the courageous changes necessary for a future of climate justice. The Ten Principles set out the path for that future.’
With his deep biblical knowledge, though not a Christian himself, Huxley would have realised that a new eco-religion hijacking Christian language and concepts had come on to the scene in 21st century Britain. Apart from stealing the Christian concept of ‘repentance’, it has even aped the Ten Commandments.
The ‘climate repentance’ called for by this religion seems more akin to the worship of Gaia, the Greek goddess of the Earth, than to Christianity. True Christian repentance involves penitent believers, in dependence on God’s grace in Jesus Christ, determining to turn away from attitudes and behaviours the Bible clearly teaches are wrong, particularly in the Ten Commandments. Christ showed how God’s commands applied at the motivational level in his Sermon on the Mount, inviting his disciples to pursue personal righteousness and repentance as opposed to an outward show of religiosity.
Where in the Bible is there a clear definition of the ‘climate sins’ from which ‘we’ should repent? Who is the ‘we’ here? Humanity in general? Or particularly those human beings living in industrialised nations? According to the dogma of the eco-religionists, ‘we’ would seem to be the latter.
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