Civil Disobedience and Christian Discipleship in the Climate Crisis

Understanding Righteousness and Creation Care

God is not interested in how beautifully we play or sing if we are not also on the right side of justice and righteousness. Righteousness means doing the right thing out of love. As Christians, we care for creation because we are called to be righteous and to do the right thing motivated by love.

Jesus taught us about this through the parable of the Good Samaritan—his practical example of what it means to love our neighbor. Taking peaceful direct action on climate and nature is simply doing the right thing by not walking by on the other side of the road.

The Crisis We Face

We witness record-breaking floods, fires, and hurricanes driven by fossil-fueled climate change. These are not natural disasters. The people suffering most—in Indonesia, West Africa, and other vulnerable regions—are not responsible for the fossil fuels that caused their suffering. It was people in the global north, in the industrialized world, which was started by this country.

Large areas of the world are already too hot for human habitation. At just three degrees of global warming—where we are heading—vast regions including West Africa and the Amazon rainforest will become uninhabitable. Hundreds of millions of people live in these areas. We must act out of righteousness because it is no longer just about stopping dangerous climate change. It is about loving our neighbor and responding to their suffering with solidarity.

Why We Must Act Now

When someone tells you "it's too late, there's nothing we can do," remember three things:

1. Every 0.1 degrees less warming means less damage and fewer deaths.
2. The Good Samaritan didn't know if the man he rescued would survive, yet he helped anyway. If he thought the man had no chance, would he have left him by the side of the road?
3. Whatever happens, it will never be too late to do the right thing.

As Wendell Berry wrote: "We do not have the right to ask whether we are going to succeed or not. The only question we have a right to ask is what's the right thing to do? What does this earth require of us if we want to continue to live on it?"

God's Call to Us Now

God has called us into life at this unique moment in the history of his creation and given us a profoundly important role to play. He asks us first to understand what's happening to the planet, then to do all in our power to act to slow it down.

The climate crisis is a crisis of justice and truth. It requires the gift of ourselves to God so that he can use us in the struggle against the self-serving and truth-obfuscating preoccupations of the fossil fuel industry and governments that have been persuaded, bribed, and intimidated into believing we can continue business as usual.

Christians are called to follow Jesus into sacrifice, following him on the way of the cross. We are called into resistance to evil—something we committed to at our baptism. For some Christians, this means following Jesus and the great Baptist minister Martin Luther King into civil disobedience: turning over the tables in the temple and calling out the evil of the system that is causing the breakdown of our planet.

The Cost and the Reward

Every previous movement of social change has required a radical edge—people prepared to go to prison if necessary to achieve change. We don't always know how it works or even if it will work. But that is not our business as Christians. Our business is obedience to what we perceive God is calling us to do, whatever it takes and whatever the cost.

As St. Peter said in Acts 4 and 5: "If we must choose between obeying God and obeying human beings, we must always obey God." This will sometimes, as it did for Jesus, involve breaking the law.

When God asks something hard of us, the rewards are immense. Many Christians attest that engaging in civil disobedience for the sake of the gospel is a moment of intense enlivening of their spiritual life—what one activist describes as "a graced high point of one's life." As St. Francis wrote, we ask neither for nor receive reward save the knowledge that we have done God's will.

What God Is Asking of You

First, be outraged at the trashing of God's beautiful creation and passionate about taking action on its behalf.

Second, pray with all your heart for creation—especially now as COP 30 concludes. Pray that world leaders will not be sidetracked and bribed by the fossil fuel industry but will instead take the hard decisions required to reduce carbon emissions urgently and without delay. Pray they will pay reparations to countries who have suffered most from what we in the global north have caused.

Third, stop the opening of Rosebank, an immense new oil field in the North Sea. The UK government is being tempted to abandon its commitment to ending fossil fuels. Write to your MP and urge them not to open this new fossil fuel field. The hundreds of millions of tons of carbon that will be released is lunacy.

Fourth, switch your investments and banking away from those supporting the fossil fuel industry. All five major banks support fossil fuel companies. However much good you do—growing your own food, recycling, eating less meat—it's meaningless if you keep banking with Barclays, Nat West, Lloyds, HSBC, and similar institutions. Switch to an ethical bank. What we do with our money is a powerful act of discipleship in relation to creation care.

Fifth, examine your lifestyle choices—your diet, how you heat your home, how you travel. Cut down on meat and fish. Use your car less and public transport more. Help each other make these choices.

Sixth, engage with the political system. Persuade political parties that the climate and nature crisis is the only show in town. Nothing else matters by comparison. We haven't got a planet; nothing else matters really.

Seventh, stand up and be counted. Give prophetic witness in your church, workplace, school, places of recreation, among neighbors, friends, and family. This is costly. You may lose friends. God may even ask you to get out on the streets and join Christian climate action to disrupt business as usual—a kind of shock tactic to wake up a world sleepwalking into oblivion.

Our Tools as Christians

God has given us Christians special tools to use during our short lives on earth: the tools of loving commitment to our neighbor above ourselves. We do what we do—whatever the cost, whatever it takes—trying to make ourselves less important in these arguments, following God in his yearning for justice and truth and his courage to do what needs to be done. Let's use them.