2008-09 Ebor Lectures Series 3
Theme: Eco-crisis, Sustainable Living, and the Future of the Planet
The reality of climate change, and the challenges it presents to sustainable living, is perhaps the key issue facing humanity at present. The developing ecological crisis raises profound questions for theology, religious traditions, politics and economics. The Ebor Lectures for 2008-09 examine the roots and causes of this global emergency from a variety of perspectives and look at the implications of the crisis for future sustainable living on the planet.
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Some of the talks in this series of Ebor Lectures were published in a book:
Sebastian C. H. Kim and Jonathan Draper (eds.) Christianity and the Renewal of Nature: Creation, Climate Change and Human Responsibility London: SPCK, 2011. |
Speakers
N.B. Biographical details and lecture descriptions were those written in advance of the lectures and have not been updated since.
Mr Martin Redfern - Senior Producer, BBC Radio Science Unit
'Hope, Hype and Honesty Reporting Global Change: A Still Point on a Turning Planet'
1 October 2008 at Temple Hall, York St John University
'Hope, Hype and Honesty Reporting Global Change: A Still Point on a Turning Planet'
1 October 2008 at Temple Hall, York St John University
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Every astronaut who has seen Planet Earth from the outside has been struck – often in a deeply spiritual way – by how beautiful yet fragile it seems; a blue jewel in an unforgiving, black Universe. That image has become a metaphor of our age and yet its implications are only just beginning to dawn on the mass media and the general population.
Past history, present observation and future prediction reveals dramatic swings in climate. Through adaptability, life in general has won through, but many species of life and civilisations of humans have not. This time, we are ourselves the principle perpetrators of global change, but we could also be the solution. The Media’s search for headlines has led to predictions of climate change being both sensationalised and criticised, to the confusion of many. Dualistic religion has not helped, suggesting to some that, as regents over the biosphere, they can do what they like while comforting others that God will look after them whatever they do. But we cannot afford to treat Nature as some external, disposable asset. In a world where every one of us must take responsibility for the environmental consequences of our actions, the media have a special responsibility to report the science of climate change clearly and accurately, without hype or distortion. Martin argued that a non-dualistic approach, in which we recognise that humankind is inseparable from our environment and that both are inseparable from God, can transform our relationship with our planet and perhaps with our God. Martin Redfern is a senior producer in the BBC Radio Science Unit where he has worked for most of the last 25 years. Before that he graduated in Geology from University College London, joining the BBC as a studio manager. He has spent time as a science producer in BBC TV and as science news editor for BBC World Service. Most of his work now is on science feature programmes for Radio 4 and World Service, for which he has won many awards including 3 ABSW science writer’s awards. In 2005 he was awarded a Templeton Cambridge Journalism Fellowship in Science and Religion and he is still an advisor to that scheme. He is also a director of the Scientific and Medical Network. Earlier this year he spent a month in Antarctica reporting on climate change and he’s just completed a 30-part series on the history of cosmology. |
Professor Tim Gorringe - Professor of Theological Ethics, University of Exeter
'Silence in Heaven: Reading Climate Change Through the Book of Revelation'
29 October 2008 at York Minster
'Silence in Heaven: Reading Climate Change Through the Book of Revelation'
29 October 2008 at York Minster
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Professor Gorringe read parts of the Book of Revelation and considered the text in relation to climate change.
Professor Tim Gorringe worked in parishes for six years before going to South India to teach theology at the Tamil Nadu Theological Seminary, where he worked for seven years. His links with India remain close. On return to Britain he was for nine years Chaplain, Fellow and Tutor in Theology at St John's College, Oxford. In 1995 he became Reader in Contextual Theology at St Andrew's and in 1998 took up his present post as St Luke's Professor of Theological Studies. His academic interests focus on the interrelation between theology, social science, art and politics. His most recent major book is a theology of culture. Aside from theology he is a bee-keeper, poultry-keeper, theatre-goer, home-wine-maker, political activist, poetry lover and a member of the Iona Community. His specialist subject areas include:
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Dr Elaine Storkey - President, Tearfund
'Creation, Ecological Crisis and the Global Poor'
4 March 2009 at Temple Hall, York St John University
'Creation, Ecological Crisis and the Global Poor'
4 March 2009 at Temple Hall, York St John University
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Dr Elaine Storkey is President of Tearfund. She lectured with the Theology faculty at Oxford University from 2003 to 2007, and was previously a lecturer in Theology at Kings College, London. For eight years she was the director of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. She is the author of eight books, and has contributed to dozens more. She writes regularly for a number of newspapers and journals, and is a regular broadcaster on programmes for the BBC, from ‘Thought for the Day’ to Nightwaves. She broadcasts frequently with the BBC World Service. Elaine has been a member of the General Synod of the Church of England since 1987, was a member of Crown Nominations Commission until this year, and previously served with two Archbishops’ Commissions (Rural and Cathedrals). She is chair of Fulcrum, associate editor of Third Way, Vice President of the University of Gloucestershire, and member of High Table at Newnham College Cambridge.
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The Most Rev & Rt Hon Dr Rowan Williams - Archbishop of Canterbury
'Renewing the Face of the Earth: Human Responsibility and the Environment'
25 March 2009 at York Minster
'Renewing the Face of the Earth: Human Responsibility and the Environment'
25 March 2009 at York Minster
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Rowan Douglas Williams was born in Swansea, South Wales on 14 June 1950, into a Welsh-speaking family, and was educated at Dynevor School in Swansea and Christ's College Cambridge where he studied theology. He studied for his doctorate – in the theology of Vladimir Lossky, a leading figure in Russian twentieth-century religious thought – at Wadham College Oxford, taking his DPhil in 1975. After two years as a lecturer at the College of the Resurrection, near Leeds, he was ordained deacon in Ely Cathedral before returning to Cambridge.
From 1977 he spent nine years in academic and parish work in Cambridge: first at Westcott House, being ordained priest in 1978, and from 1980 as curate at St George's, Chesterton. In 1983 he was appointed as a lecturer in Divinity in the university, and the following year became dean and chaplain of Clare College. 1986 saw a return to Oxford now as Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity and Canon of Christ Church; he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1989, and became a fellow of the British Academy in 1990. He is also an accomplished poet and translator. In 1991 Professor Williams accepted election and consecration as Bishop of Monmouth, a diocese on the Welsh borders, and in 1999 on the retirement of Archbishop Alwyn Rice Jones he was elected Archbishop of Wales, one of the 38 primates of the Anglican Communion. Thus it was that, in July 2002, with eleven years experience as a diocesan bishop and three as a leading primate in the Communion, Archbishop Williams was confirmed on 2 December 2002 as the 104th bishop of the See of Canterbury: the first Welsh successor to St Augustine of Canterbury and the first since the mid-thirteenth century to be appointed from beyond the English Church. Dr Williams is acknowledged internationally as an outstanding theological writer, scholar and teacher. He has been involved in many theological, ecumenical and educational commissions. He has written extensively across a very wide range of related fields of professional study – philosophy, theology (especially early and patristic Christianity), spirituality and religious aesthetics – as evidenced by his bibliography. He has also written throughout his career on moral, ethical and social topics and, since becoming archbishop, has turned his attention increasingly on contemporary cultural and interfaith issues. As Archbishop of Canterbury his principal responsibilities are however pastoral – leading the life and witness of the Church of England in general and his own diocese in particular by his teaching and oversight, and promoting and guiding the communion of the world-wide Anglican Church by the globally recognised ministry of unity that attaches to the office of bishop of the see of Canterbury. His interests include music, fiction and languages. In 1981 Dr Williams married Jane Paul, a lecturer in theology, whom he met while living and working in Cambridge. They have a daughter and a son. |
Mr John Sauven - Executive Director, Greenpeace UK
'Disturbing the Present’
22 April 2009 at Temple Hall, York St John University
'Disturbing the Present’
22 April 2009 at Temple Hall, York St John University
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John Sauven has been Executive Director of Greenpeace UK since September 2007. Before that he was the director responsible for Greenpeace communications and working on solutions with business. With a background in forests he was instrumental in getting protection for the Great Bear temperate rainforest on the west coast of Canada. It was an epic battle, mostly fought in the market place between logging companies, timber traders and their retail customers in Europe and North America. It also involved pushing the industry as a whole to accept Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified products that guaranteed legal and sustainable products, now widely recognised in both the timber and paper sectors as the mark of sustainability.
It was from the lessons learnt in the Great Bear campaign that similar tactics were used elsewhere including in Indonesia, the Congo in central Africa and the Amazon. John Sauven co-ordinated the international campaign to secure a moratoria on further destruction of the Amazon by soya producers. It involved eventually bringing together a huge alliance of US and European multinationals along with Brazilian counterparts involved in the soya producing, commodity trading and food retailing sectors. It was one of Greenpeace's most successful campaigns to protect large areas of the world's last intact rainforests providing both climate and biodiversity protection. |
Professor Mary Grey - Professor Emerita, University of Wales, Lampeter
'‘Consider the lilies of the field’: How Luke’s Gospel Could Save the Planet'
6 May 2009 at Temple Hall, York St John University
'‘Consider the lilies of the field’: How Luke’s Gospel Could Save the Planet'
6 May 2009 at Temple Hall, York St John University
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That the planet is in crisis is not disputed. Even before the urgency of climate change was realised there was no aspect of creation unaffected. But how could our reading of sacred texts empower a Christian response?
This lecture, (aware that the people of New Testament times wore a far lighter ecological footprint than ourselves), reads one text, the Gospel of Luke with a new lens: this is the lens of ecological liberation, understanding Luke as a liberation theologian, and God's redeeming action in Jesus as including the redemption of the entire planet. Professor Mary Grey is an ecofeminist liberation theologian, until recently D.J.James Professor of Pastoral Theology at the University of Wales, Lampeter and formerly Professor of Contemporary Theology at the University of Southampton, based at La Sainte Union (1993-7). Before that she was Professor of Feminism and Christianity at the Catholic University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands. She is now professorial research fellow at St Mary’s University College, Twickenham, London, UK. Her recent writing includes: Introducing Feminist Images of God, (London: Continuum 2001), Sacred Longings: Ecofeminist Theology and Globalisation, (London: SCM 2003, Fortress 2004), The Unheard Scream – the Struggles of Dalit Women in India,(New Delhi 2004), Pursuing the Dream – a Jewish- Christian Conversation, with Rabbi Dan Cohn Sherbok, (Darton, Longman and Todd 2005). For 10 years she was editor of the Journal Ecotheology. Her theological project is now reconciliation, of which reconciliation to the earth is a special focus. See To Rwanda and Back: Spirituality, Justice and Liberation (Darton, Longman and Todd 2008). She is a founding trustee of the NGO, Wells for India, a water-based organisation in Rajasthan, NW India and is also Chair of the Theology Group of Friends of Sabeel UK. (An organisation for the liberation of Christians in Palestine). |
Professor Nicholas Owens - Director, British Antarctic Survey
'The Science of Climate Change'
3 June 2009 at York St John University
'The Science of Climate Change'
3 June 2009 at York St John University
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There’s an air of optimism around Professor Nick Owens. When asked why he took the job at BAS he says with a smile “It’s simply the best job in UK environmental science”.
Professor Owens comes from Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), where he was Director for seven years. In that time, he oversaw a transformation of the institute following a restructuring of Britain’s marine science centres. He helped come up with a bold plan which effectively saw PML privatised. This proved a huge success and PML grew physically, financially and by reputation. He is a specialist in marine biogeochemistry. His professorship at Newcastle University and his position at PML allowed him to follow his passion for hands on research. Professor Owens has studied the processes and reactions (chemical, physical, geological and biological) that govern the composition of the sea and has carried out research on most of the world’s oceans but has a particular interest in the Southern Ocean. His love of the sea started at a young age. Living near the beach in a house in West Cumberland, he spent a lot of time fishing in small boats with his father. Professor Owens has worked in the Antarctic before on research ships and says, “I’ve done three trips to the frozen continent and they were the most magical and rewarding of my science career”. When asked about how to tackle climate change Professor Owens says, “The UK needs to take a leadership in mitigation and remediation of climate change. There are mixed messages from scientists about the future and it is difficult to communicate the uncertainties in science. Academic debate is the essence of the scientific method but non-scientists can take these contradictions as meaning we don’t know what we’re talking about. We’ve got to get better at communicating especially at explaining the uncertainties about predictions”. So what can we do? “I’m a natural optimist,” he says. “I think science will come up with some very novel solutions, but we can’t be complacent. Alongside the technological solutions we also have to change our social systems. Britain led the Industrial Revolution and had a huge influence on the world. We should grasp that leadership back again and be in the vanguard of scientific and technological solutions.” |
