THE climate crisis is breaking down the old divide between scientists and people of faith, the Vicar of St Anne’s, Kew, in south-west London, Canon Giles Fraser, has said. He is leading an initiative to deepen the Church’s theological engagement with the climate crisis.
As chairman of a new educational charity, Kew Theology and Gardening (KTG), Canon Fraser is leading retreats inside Kew’s Royal Botanical Gardens, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and hosting lectures by botanists in conversation with theologians.
The divide between science and faith was “definitely softening”, he told the Church Times this week, because atheists and scientists and people of faith “recognise in each other a common cause to be had in the fight against the climate catastrophe”. Scientists who had taken part in events “like reaching out beyond their normal constituencies”, he said.
Canon Fraser has prepared reflections and prayers for a Stations of the Trees, based on the Stations of the Cross, which he updates three times a year to reflect the changing seasons. Each retreat comprises a service in St Anne’s, the Stations carried out in the Gardens, a talk, and choral evensong, often led by the choir of Southwark Cathedral.
Retreats have so far been run for clergy, churchgoers in Kew, and members of Southwark diocese, and are now open to all. A retreat for children from the parish’s primary school will take place in June, led by the Team Vicar for St Mary’s Eco Church, in the North Lambeth parish, the Revd Dr Sharon Moughtin.
Lectures hosted by KTG so far have been given by the Rector of St James’s, Piccadilly, the Revd Lucy Winkett, and Kew’s outgoing Director of Gardens, Richard Barley, among others. Dr Carmody Grey, Professor of Integral Ecology at Radboud University, in the Netherlands, is due to speak in September. Dr Martin J Hodson, an environmental biologist and visiting Researcher at Oxford Brookes University, is due to speak in May.
Canon Fraser said that, while the image of an eco-activist might be a member of the group Just Stop Oil, he wanted to provide theological underpinning for the “huge army of people” concerned about the natural world. The Royal Horticultural Society says that about 41 million people, or 60 per cent of the UK population, gardened at least once a month in 2024.
The relationship between gardening and faith “is such a rich seam of thought”, Canon Fraser continued; he described gardening as “such a faithful, or very faith-adjacent, activity”. “Most people do it on their knees, their hands in the dirt, spending quality time in quiet . . . outside, listening to the birds.” Planting could be an act of hope or defiance, which underlined a sense of co-responsibility and co-operation with something beyond oneself, he said.
In an introductory video about KTG, the Area Bishop of Kingston, in Southwark diocese, the Rt Revd Martin Gainsborough, who is a trustee of KTG, says: “At the heart of the Christian narrative, there’s something about a garden, and that we’ve travelled away from God’s gift and God’s beauty, and through our faith we’re trying to get back there.”
Canon Fraser said that St John’s Gospel’s mention of Mary Magdalene supposing Jesus to be the gardener after the resurrection was “a deliberate reference” to humanity being recalled to the Garden.
He also expressed the hope that the theology and gardening initiative would become “more ecumenical and more interfaith”. He said that “all the major faith traditions have a theological rootedness in the natural world.”
Kew Gardens said in a statement that it hoped that its “data and expertise are seen as a source of fact and truth, upon which we hope people will make decisions that will ultimately care for our planet and its future”.
kewtheologyandgardening.org.uk/events-schedule
Visitors can collect a copy of the Stations of the Trees from St Anne’s: stanneskew.org.uk
