God saw that it was good. Do we? Letting the natural world be itself – not just a reserve bank for our convenience – is an act of grace, and one that we should be glad to embrace, because when the world around us flourishes, so do we. The material life in the midst of which we live is the neighbour we must learn to love – and love for itself.

Dr Rowan Williams
Former Archbishop of Canterbury

Britain stands on the cusp of being a world leader in nature restoration. With groundbreaking legislation to reverse biodiversity loss, unprecedented support for farmers and broad political support for nature, our reputation on the world stage will now be determined bydelivery. This places both a responsibility and an opportunity on the shoulders of large landowners like the Church. A responsibility to help lead this nation-uniting push for nature and an opportunity to inspire the world by restoring Britain’s cherished landscapes to life.

Michael Gove
Former Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities 2022–24

The land of the UK is some of the most nature depleted on the planet. It is also some of the most unequally owned. These two things are intimately connected: we can’t solve the first without changing the latter. Throughout Britain, nature loving citizens are desperate to bring their landscapes back to life, but all too often they face obstacles in their way. This has to change. The Church has a responsibility to act for the common good of all. By committing to 30×30 they can make a strong step in this direction.

Caroline Lucas
Former leader of the Green Party

The Church Commissioners have a wonderful op-portunity to make so much of its unique landholding. By allowing tracts of its 100,000 acres to be rewilded they will be a church of England indeed, an example and a guiding light. “Consider the lilies of the field … I tell you, Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these” … but those lilies and a million other life forms depend upon us letting nature free where we can. The 30×30 plan is potent, achievable, manageable and hugely beneficial.

Stephen Fry
Broadcaster, actor and writer

2 cor 5.17–19 provides a mandate for the ministry of re-conciliation, which extends to the whole of creation (and cf Col 1.20). Reconciling our wounded relationship to the earth should be at the forefront of the church’s message and ministry, fundamental to providing a just and peaceful future for all.

John Witcombe
Dean of Coventry Cathedral

The British public are more concerned than ever about the devastation of the UK’s natural heritage and the frightening decline of our wildlife. We now rank lowest in the G7 and in the bottom 10% of all nations for the intactness of our biodiversity. How can we knowingly bequeath this to our children? By committing to 30×30 on their land the Church Commissioners would set a model for the entire nation, demonstrating that healthy food production, quality housing and flourishing nature can all have a place in our future.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
Chef, Broadcaster and Environmentalist

We are the first country in the world to make a legal commitment to halt the decline in biodiversity but we will only reach our targets on species abundance if we see the widespread adoption of regenerative agriculture techniques across the farmed landscape. The Church is a major landowner in England and has an important role to play supporting its tenants in embracing nature friendly farming.

George Eustice
Former Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs 2020–2022

Re-wilding is one of the most powerful, practical and effective conservation tools we have to save our collapsing ecosystems and cool the climate. Much more than that, rewilding projects create jobs, can significantly boost the rural economy and provide a vital income stream for struggling farmers in a time of essential transition. No wonder it’s overwhelmingly popular with the British public. By committing to re-wild 30% of their substantial landholdings by 2030 the Church of England could inspire the nation and give us a prayer in these times of terrifying crisis.

Chris Packham CBE
Naturalist, broadcaster and author

The united nations brokered agreement to restore 30% of land and seas for nature by 2030 is of landmark significance for our planet. It is for biodiversity what the Paris Agreement is for climate. Today, however, with barely 3% of England’s land adequately protected for nature, our international reputation as an environmental leader hangs in the balance. If we are going to meet our United Nations obligations and reach 30×30, we urgently need major English landowners such as the Church Commissioners to take bold action and commit to reaching this crucial target on their own land. Without such leadership here and around the world, the UN target will surely become another hollow gesture amidst the catastrophe of the Sixth Mass Extinction.

Sir Partha Dasgupta
GBE FBA FRS, Frank Ramsey Professor Emeritus, University of Cambridge

For too long we have treated the climate crisis and the nature crisis as two separate events. We seek to solve the climate crisis with one hand, whilst continuing to destroy essential ecosystems on the planet, forgetting that they are intimately interconnected. With ‘The State of Nature Report’ estimating that one in six species at risk of being lost in Britain, suffering the effects of an overwhelmingly degraded landscape, restoring our natural environment in a holistic, diverse and impactful way is essential. One incredible way to do this is through rewilding. Rewilding stands in the face of a disconnected approach to climate action, providing space for nature to flourish whilst also drawing down carbon from the atmosphere. It acknowledges the fact that everything in our planet is connected and urges us to approach our solutions in the same way.

Joycelyn Longdon
Environmental justice technologist and educator, PhD Justice-led Bioacoustics, Cambridge University.

The church of england can provide leadership to other religious institutions by rewilding 30% of its lands, demonstrating it cares about recreating God’s creation, and restoring previously lost biodiversity.

Sir Robert T Watson
CMG, FRS, ex-Chief Scientific Advisor DEFRA,former chair IPBES and IPCC

By divesting from fossil fuels the Church Commissioners have bravely taken a stand against one polluting industry, but by failing to rewild any meaningful portion of their land, they have proven themselves timid in the face of another: livestock farming. The Commissioners hide their reluctance to restore nature on anything more than a tiny portion of their land behind the ill defined and scientifically unfounded claims of regenerative farming. Regenerative farming is not a climate solution (at the very best it can sequester just 60% of its own emissions) and it most certainly isn’t a substitute for restoring wild ecosystems. Such greenwashing would not be tolerated in any other sector, neither should it be in matters of land.

George Monbiot
Columnist and campaigner

Our tendency to assume that the universe is at our disposal, that it has no intrinsic worth other than its utility to the human species has made us careless to the point of extreme culpability. We are destroying nature at an unprecedented rate. It is a kind of blasphemy. How can we pray with integrity, how can we live gladly on the earth, when we are so cavalier with our own habitat? ‘When one part of the body suffers, all the other parts suffer with it.’ (1 Cor 12,26) For the Church Commissioners to engage in substantial rewilding on their land would be a spur and an encouragement to people of faith everywhere.

Kathy Galloway
Author and former leader of the Iona Community

Up and down the country, people are tuning into the vital importance of nature, not just as the source of everything we have and everything we love, but viscerally. We are nature. Nature is us. Our physical health and our inner sense of wellbeing are essentially nourished by spending time in nature. And yet, in this country we are woefully short on nature. As one of the largest landowners in the country, the Church has the power to breathe life back into nature in Britain by committing to big, bold rewilding plans. Please, Church Commissioners, commit to 30×30.

Ben Goldsmith
Environmentalist

By rewilding 30% of its lands by 2030, the Church of England can be on the right side of history in tackling the twin biodiversity and climate emergencies that we face today.

Prof. Pete Smith
FRS, FRSE, FNA, FEurASc, FI Soil Sci., FRSB, Professor of Soils & Global Change and Science Director of Scotland’s ClimateXChange, University of Aberdeen

The evidence is now overwhelming that land use by agriculture is an enormous driver of biodiversity loss worldwide. One solution that can both reduce the amount of land needed for food production, and also feed the poor in the developing countries, is the use of Genetically Modified plants to increase the productivity of the land. An additional measure that would help would be to spare large areas of land from farming of any kind and let natural processes return. In acknowledgement of this imperative, responsible large landowners like the Church Commissioners should set aside a significant portion of their holdings for rewilding. 30% by 2030 would be a very good place to start.

Sir Richard Roberts
Nobel Laureate (Physiology or Medicine)

Throughout history, lawyers and priests have formed a powerful combination. Between them, they allowed the destructive idea of nature as a mere dead resource to be used purely for human ends to become a foundational idea in our society. We now need to work together to create a new basis for our society: one that sees nature as sacred, as worthy of rights and a voice in our systems and that sees the guardianship and enrichment of nature as a key human purpose on earth.

Paul Powlesland
Barrister and Founder for Lawyers for Nature

Our environment is breaking down, taking with it the foundations of our economies, food security, health and quality of life. The climate and nature crises underpin this breakdown, and these crises are fundamentally connected. Making space for wildlife is the quickest way to enhance our planet’s ability to store carbon, and boost nature and people’s ability to adapt and cope with changing climatic conditions. Rewilding is a flexible, low-cost, hands-off management approach to nature recovery that can be deployed across a wide range of situations. Major English landowners such as the Church Commissioners can help secure a liveable, sustainable future for all by promoting rapid and significant nature recovery on their lands through rewilding.

Prof Nathalie Pettorelli
Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London

Martin Luther was incensed by the indulgence of the church of his day. There were those in the church who thought their selling of indulgences served some higher purpose. No one looks back today and says there was a higher purpose of merit. Similarly, the Commissioners of the Church of England today might try to argue that maximising profits from their land serves some higher purpose. It would be far better to be ahead of the times, and help to demonstrate through your actions that another way is possible.

Professor Danny Dorling
Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography, University of Oxford

Feel the call of the life/soul force in you asking for your life energies, your life hours, your life loves, in these times… to lament what we have done, and then to make repairs, to re-find the relationship with our other-than-human kin… giving them their homes, to allow life’s wisdom to heal the land, to find our wildness together.

Dr Gail Bradbrook
Co Founder Extinction Rebellion

One of the five core missions of the Church of England is to ‘safeguard the integrity of creation’. With 105,000 acres of land in England, making them one of the top ten institutional landowners in the country, the Church Commissioners have a particular duty to steward land well. Yet they cannot currently claim to be doing so. A mere 4% of their English estate is wooded; just 2% is protected as Sites of Special Scientific Interest; and the Commissioners’ 5,000-acre Fenland estate, comprising drained and degraded peat, is adding to the climate crisis through the erosion of its soil carbon. But the Church Commissioners have the chance to turn this around, by boldly pledging to put aside 30% of their landholdings for nature by 2030. Will they do so?

Guy Shrubsole
Environmental campaigner and author of Who Owns England, The Lost Rainforests of Britain and The Lie of the Land

The Church of England is one of the biggest landowners in the country. In this socio-ecological crisis, it is no longer a church matter but one of land justice. It is imperative that land must be rewilded. We should nurture our connection with nature: for now and for the long-term future; for the benefit of our humanity and for all those living organisms with whom we share the planet.

Professor Nicola Clayton FRS
Professor of Comparative Cognition, University of Cambridge

The UK is one of the most wildlife-depleted nations on Earth. Insect populations continue to plummet, down 78% in the last 20 years, threatening the base of the food chain and vital ecosystem services such as pollination. There is a desperate and urgent need to set aside 30% of our land for nature before it is too late. The Church can play an important leadership role in this.

Dave Goulson
Professor of Biology at Sussex University, specialising in bumblebees

I think rewilding needs to operate with at least two strands. We need a spiritual rewilding that restores and rewilds our connections with the rest of the natural world from which we emerge and on which we utterly depend, and that inspires the next generation to be stewards in the return of wild nature. We also need a practical rewilding that actively makes space for wild nature to heal and thrive, and that happens in a dense network of sites across the country so that wild nature can reweave its webs of connection. And these threads need to be intimately interwoven. What better way to do this than this country’s religious institutions committing to ambitious rewilding of their lands?

Yadvinder Malhi CBE FRS
Professor of Ecosystem Science, University of Oxford; Director, Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery

It is not enough to agree to ‘protect’ the land and ‘increase biodiversity’. These are not specific targets, we can’t hold you to account with these. The Church is already a secretive institution, rarely held to account. With the exemption of freedom of information acts and unclear structures we demand specific targets with timings and percentages. Rewild 30% of your English Land by 2030.”

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

The church of england needs to exercise its proper leadership role as the established church to help our country mitigate the worst aspects of future climate change by committing to rewild at least 10% (i.e., the Biblical tithe) of its land by 2030.

Professor Chris Baker
Director of research at William Temple Foundation

For progressive black Pentecostals in Britain, Jesus’ driving out of demons has a deep socio-political meaning and significance. It is symbolic of driving out all forms of oppression that destroy the people. Today, the ‘demon’ of carbon threatens us, especially those in the less polluting southern hemisphere. In the tradition of Jesus, we demand an exorcising of carbon – that is, carbon neutrality.

Prof. Robert Beckford
BAFTA Award winning documentary filmmaker and professorial research fellow at the Queens Foundation

In the great shared trial of our time – the ecological and climate emergency– everyone and every organisation needs to figure out what their potential superpower is, and use it, so that together we have a future. The Church’s superpower is its unique moral and spiritual standing. So the Church needs to preach, unashamedly: about the urgent need to create a more divine world. To respect Creation – or expect damnation. But we all know that preaching is no use unless one practises what one preaches. So the Church really has no credible alternative but to lead by example. The Church rewilding some significant percentage of its land, and soon, would be the Church setting the best possible example.

Rupert Read
Philosopher, academic, author and activist

Biodiversity underpins the natural products and essential services we need to survive, from the food that we eat and the soils that support our crops to the quality of the air and water that we rely on. Biodiversity can lock up carbon in our plants and soils, stabilise our neighbourhood climates and help reduce the severity of flooding and coastal erosion. When we re-wild, we invest in biodiversity to improve the quality of life for all of us, whether rich or poor, rural or urban, failing to rewild is failing to invest in our future.

Prof. Alistair S. Jump FRSB
Professor of Plant Ecology, University of Stirling

As a child I benefited from access to the sprawling garden attached to the Church of England Rectory where I was brought up. Access to this largely-wild slice of rural Gloucestershire undoubtedly stimulated my interest in wildlife and biodiversity, and ultimately led to my career in conservation science. I support rewilding the Church of England’s properties in order that my own children and generations to come can benefit from the inspiration provided by the green spaces that the Church owns, curates or manages across the UK.

Professor David Burslem
Interdisciplinary Director, Environment and Biodiversity, University of Aberdeen

The wellbeing of future generations depends on us making peace with the land and with nature. And what better way of brokering this peace than by offering the lands of the Church for restoration and rewilding, as havens for trees, flowers and all God’s creatures?

Joseph A Tobias
Professor of Biodiversity & Ecosystems, Imperial College London

Be it God’s Earth or Gaia, the duty of care we have for this precious planet of ours is more important now than ever before. It would be such an inspiration for all of us to see Church leaders stop pontificating and step up to their full stewardship responsibilities.

Jonathan Porritt
Author and sustainability campaigner

Modern humanity sometimes demonstrates hubris in our sense of superiority and ‘command and control’ over the planetary environment. Yet, exactly the same light of God that can shine through human nature vitalises the wonderful diversity of microbes, plants and animals with which we share this planet, that still pulses and buzzes with Life. A sense of humility and connection to nature is prompted when we surround ourselves with wildlife. Research shows this motivates us to apply more care and protection for the other species with which we share this planet.

Many churchyards are already sensitively managed to encourage the flourishing of life balanced with respectful tribute for lives past. It would be wonderful if this attention could be extended to the whole of the church estate. Rewilding 30% of the Estate would help to allow a ‘rewilding of human nature’ –rejecting hubris and turning towards a sense of reverence, care and wonder for the divine.

Tom Oliver
Professor of Applied Ecology & Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, University of Reading

This is a marvellous opportunity to increase the diversity of impoverished UK wildlife, and it has my complete support. Rewilding is a key weapon in the battle against climate and ecological collapse, and a major contributor to the well-being of every UK citizen. We can’t afford not to do it.

Bill McGuire
Professor Emeritus of Geophysical & Climate Hazards, UCL

The UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries. 15% of Britain’s species are threatened with extinction. We must think about how our actions affect all lives, not just humans. We share this world and must act like it.

Professor Jim Lynch OBE
KHS, FRSC, FRSB, FRSA, FRGS, Distinguished Professor of Life Sciences Emeritus, Centre for Environment and Sustainability, University of Surrey

Two challenges for our and future generations is to develop an agriculture that captures more carbon from the atmosphere than it emits to it, so helping to resolve the climate crisis, and that regenerates biodiversity. As a major landowner, the Church of England could play a pioneering role in addressing these twin challenges, in which, doubtless, rewilding would have a role to play.

Professor Paul Ekins OBE
Professor of Resources and Environmental Policy,UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources

For people of all religions or of none, interacting with the natural world can cause the spirits to lift and make our days feel better. The Church Commissioners were at the forefront of considering ESG matters in their investments; to think in parallel terms about the environment in terms of the land they own would only make sense. Intensively farmed land has caused biodiversity to decrease massively: where are the larks singing to gladden the heart, or the pollinators foraging and doing their pollinating business? Taking land out of this chemical-rich but diversity-poor agriculture to allow our native species to come back in numbers and restore the health of our ecosystems could make an enormous difference to all our lives, now and for the future.

Professor Dame Athene Donald
DBE FRS, Master, Churchill College and Professor Emerita, University of Cambridge

Restoring and rewilding 30% of land will help reduce flooding and benefit thousands of people living downstream. Rewilding will create a landscape that is more resilient to the larger and more intense storms that we will face under climate change. I cannot think of a more fitting use of Church land than helping to reduce the misery flooding brings to communities.

Professor Dominick Spracklen
University of Leeds

For all faiths and none, rewilding 30% of CoE lands would be an inspirational statement of intent to redress the harm humanity has wreaked on our planet. Just as we have begun to attend to our historical roots in slavery, it is now time to acknowledge how much of Western advancement has been enabled by exploiting non-human beings. I very much hope that CoE will lead the way in rising to the challenge.

Professor Ioan Fazey
Professor in the Social Dimensions of Environment and Change, University of York, UK

Rewilding tackles the climate and biodiversity crises simultaneously, providing space for nature to flourish whilst also drawing down carbon from the atmosphere. Everything on our planet is joined up and connected. It’s time for our way of thinking to be the same.

Professor Carrie Lear
Professor of Past Climates and Earth System Change, Cardiff University

Compassion and generosity are at the core of Christianity. Today, humanity shows very little of this towards the rest of the living world. By rewilding 30% of Church Commissioner land by 2030, the Church of England would be setting a vital example – and it is the very least the Church of England could do to better fulfil its role as a guardian and steward.

Chantal Lyons
Author and science communicator

As city-dwellers, we are acutely aware of the need to understand the human alignment to God’s creation. During the Covid crisis, people in cities struggled without the ability to step outside of their space and connect with nature. Rewilding our land must surely be a priority. It is a sign of desiring to care for rather than consume our planet, it is a mark of sacred and shared belonging and challenges the very concept of land ownership. Plant colour, plant life, plant all that is good to see and smell and enjoy, let your fields speak of God’s love for all creation.

Carrie Grant MBE
TV presenter, singer and author

What could be more important for the Church to set an example on restoring nature from the damage created by humans? What’s the point in preaching about how to be a better person if the natural world is in crisis.? Church commissioners are in a position of responsibility – they need to take a lead by wilding or rewilding much of the land they own. This can turn the tide on the decline of nature and bring back species that are at the brink of extinction. Surely, we all want to help create a better world for the next generation rather than leaving them in despair about the future they face?

Julia Hailes MBE
Sustainability Pioneer

As part of the created order, humans are not just responsible for the stewardship of our planet, we are a dynamic part of the ecosystems that have evolved over millennia. We can no longer see ourselves as removed and distant, pulling at strings from afar, but we must acknowledge that we are woven into the fabric of this planet – as ordained by God. Church leaders, if we are to take justice seriously, must act accordingly – championing projects like “Rewild the Church” to safeguard the future of our home and honour God’s divine plan for creation.

Luke Dowding
CEO of One Body One Faith

It is time we turned the tables on making profits from the earth – the whole of the earth is God’s temple and should be honoured as such. Rewilding is a call to re-sacralise the earth, to see earth itself as sacred, an embodiment of God. Consider the wildflowers of the field, neither do they labour or spin. Yet not even Solomon in all his glory is dressed like these. Rewilding is not difficult – it is us getting out of the way so that nature can do its thing.

Revd. Dr. Clara Rushbrook
Co-Principal of Northern Baptist College and Co-Director of the Theology and Justice Network

God, in Amos, calls upon Israel to let justice flow like a river and righteousness like a never-failing stream. Every river in the UK is polluted. Industrial agriculture is a major source of that pollution. Only by re-wilding and reverting to sustainable food production can the rivers of justice begin to flow again.

Tim Presswood
Baptist Minister and immediate-past President of the Baptist Union of Great Britain

There are always many arguments in the established church as to why the status quo should be maintained – usually they are legalistic, materialistic or utilitarian. But the Wild Card challenge to the Church Commissioners causes us to consider deeply our calling to be prophetic, altruistic and spiritual in responding: especially as our stewardship of Creation has so catastrophically faltered. St Paul reminds us that In Christ, “ all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and reconcile to himself all things.” (Colossians 1. 19–20) All things – we note. I have lived a long life, and I am tired of lament; the butterflies have gone, and the kingfisher has not appeared this summer. The choice is stark, but God promises to reward the righteousness of restorative courage and hope. Do it now!

The Revd Canon John Halkes
Preacher, and one time Chair of Friends of The Earth

Two gardens: one with trees full of fruit and healing leaves, a stream of clean water running through the middle. The other garden, a bleak place, with tombs and tears and broken dreams. Our gift, with the risen Christ, is to turn the latter into the former.

Rosa Hunt & Ed Kaneen
Co Principles at Cardiff Baptist College

Christians cannot in good faith worship the God who delights in the flourishing of all creatures while being negligent about their part in effecting an anthropogenic mass extinction of our fellow creatures. It is past time to recall biblical mandates to set land aside and leave land fallow (Lev 23:22; 25:2–7) in order to make space for God’s other creatures to live alongside us.

David Clough
Chair in Theology and Applied Sciences, University of Aberdeen; Local Preacher in the Methodist Church

To care for the Earth is to sustain the flows of Providence. How can we participate in that work? Perhaps the deepest calling of the Church in these times is to deepen understanding that the climate and biodiversity crises are at root a spiritual crisis. They reflect a crisis led by the idolatry of Mammon over God. The most specific work that faith groups can offer in these times is to help others to deepen on their spiritual journey, and in accordance with Christ’s mission statement in Luke 4:18-19, to work towards a fuller integration of natural ecology with our human ecology.

Professor Alastair McIntosh
Author of Soil and Soul

Things have to change. The call and need to care for creation is clear. The Church has to do better, and we have the opportunity to do that. I long for the Church to take a prophetic lead in this work, to move faster and deeper to reduce our emissions and to restore nature.

Rev David Mayne
Regional Minister Team Leader, Eastern Baptist Association.

The force that lifts the mushrooms is the same force that grows our hair, fills our lungs and beats our heart. Leave a patch of earth alone and spontaneously, all by itself, there will soon be complexity beyond comprehension. This life force, the same sacred energy that created each of us and that sustains us, does not need our help. It doesn’t need our busyness or our money. It simply needs our humility to step back and sit in worship as it does its ancient work of boundless creation.

Joel Scott-Halkes
Co-founder Wild Card

God acts to ensure the flourishing of all creatures, including nonhuman fauna and flora, and prophetic texts present the cessation of human management of the land as a way in which God enables this to happen (Isaiah 34:10-15 and Jeremiah 50:39-40). The Church should attend to these prophetic visions when considering its own care of the land.

Peter Atkins
Postdoctoral Fellow in Old Testament andHebrew Bible at the University of Edinburgh.

Psalm 104:30 – “When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground.” Are we seeing a movement of God’s Spirit in and through society that the Church should both heed and follow? God may well be nudging us to show leadership in this area demonstrating our care and love for God’s creation in this land? In Genesis 2 God put Adam in the garden to work it and care for it. We should be following the same example and caring for the land which we have been given responsibility for.

Rev Canon Nick Atkins

Accepting the invitation to join in God’s mission to restore all of creation requires us to be actively involved in the good stewardship of the Earth. I therefore call on the church commissioners to urgently prioritise the good management of the land under their stewardship by authorising the rewilding of a minimum of 30% as a reflection of their commitment to the missio Dei.

Carl Smethurst
Regional Minister Team Leader at South West Baptist Association

To restore is to provide space for regrowth, regeneration and to intertwine the societies and communities we exist within with the nature we love so, but this is an act that MUST contain the deconstruction of the barriers that exist, one of the largest of which is the enclosures our country and land is split into, where it can no longer be accessed as a bedrock of growth and natural liberation, but instead becomes the plaything of economic output, financial gain, aesthetic or even simply to take it away from those less fortunate, which includes the wildlife we share this land with. Calling one of the largest and most complicit landowners to rewild such a large portion of their land is a significant step in undoing the toxic processing that has rendered our land all but dying and isolated. It is a call to hope and to future.

Jasmine Isa Qureshi
Ecologist Writer and Wild Card Campaigner

When genesis 2:15 puts the human being, the ‘earthling’ in the garden to ‘work’ or ‘till’ the earth, the verb is one that usually is translated ‘to serve’. This is repeated in Genesis 3:23. Serving the earth is the first mark of mission in Scripture: the context and reference point for all the other four marks of mission.

Andii Bowsher
Anglican chaplaincy, Northumbria University

If the church wants credibility in the future for its call to discipleship in Christ, it must act now to be able to point to having begun to do the things that make for peace. – Peace with the earth and peace among nations and peoples under pressure from the impacts of changing weather patterns. Thus the things that make for peace are the things that help mitigate adverse impacts and help the rest of nature to survive well.

Andii Bowsher
Anglican chaplaincy, Northumbria University

When god gave humans dominion over creation he meant that we should exercise a benevolent stewardship of creation that prized and protected the beauty of the natural world. As Christians we should be God’s kingly image bearers by enabling nature to speak of God’s glory.

Ian Birch
Educator at Scottish Baptist College

We believe that Earth is sacred, every life form and every human being, and we call the Commissioners to rewild at least 30% of the Church of England’s land as a witness to Earth’s sacredness and as a contribution to the healing of the planet.

John Philip Newell
Earth & Soul: A Celtic Initiative of Study, Spiritual Practice, and Compassionate Action

Trees are essential to the ecological wellbeing of the earth and thus part of good practice in justice peace and the integrity of creation. Many local churches are working hard to ensure that they are conserving the environment. I have recently been extremely inspired by the wonderful example of the quiet garden in St James Church Piccadilly which provided a healing space for many people within and beyond the church.

Margaret Halsey

The agape command

Biblical Axiom: “For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’” (Galatians 5:14, New International Version).

Theologians’ Definitions: This love is agape, meaning an unconditional active concern for the well-being (Gene Outka, Agape: An Ethical Analysis, p. 260), autonomy (Quinn White, Love First, p. 36), and relationships (Eric Silverman, The Supremacy of Love, p. 20–22) of all.

Empirical fact: Wilderness (notably forests) sustain ecosystems necessary for human life, let alone allowing for our flourishing. For example, the air we breathe, water we drink, and materials that shelter us and heat our homes are all thanks to this ecosystem, which also affects the presence of extreme weather events (The Wilderness Society 2022). Over 70% of UK land is agriculture, which, without pollinators, could not feed us (DEFRA, Gov Statistical Service 2022). Beyond our physical wellbeing, nature is essential for our mental health – reducing stress, anxiety and so much more (DEFRA, Mental Health Foundation 2023).

Implication: Fulfilling God’s law, that is loving our neighbour as ourself, requires us humans to rewild the Earth, and us Church stewards specifically to rewild Church land.

Zacharie Chiron
Founder of the charity The Agapic Project focused on putting in practice agape/unconditional universal love.

Racial capitalism has invariably found ways of ex-ploiting Black bodies and the lands and resources of indigenous peoples, making colossal amounts of money in the process. The exploitation of lands, recourses and cultures has paralleled the silencing of Global Majority Heritage people. One hopes that the face of our global movement for ecological justice will be those who are at the sharp end of vulnerability to climate change. As the Jamaican saying goes, “Who feels it knows it.” Hopefully, we are now willing to hear and take seriously the voice of the oppressed and the exploited.

Professor Anthony Reddie
Professor of Black Theology at University of Oxford and Director of Oxford Centre for Religion and Culture

I’m reminded of what Pope Benedict XVI said in Caritas in Veritate: “Our duties toward the environment link to our duties toward the human person, considered in himself and in relation to others. It would be wrong to uphold one set of duties while trampling on the other.” I interpret this as meaning that we should care for those yet to come, and the world they will inherit (and have to steward) in future generations. So even those who don’t care about God’s creation for its own self – which in fact I DO – still have a duty to look after it, for those others’ sakes.

Cat Jenkins
Green Christian

Psalm 104 celebrates God and creation in a way that understands creation to be for mutual delight: both God’s delight to and fro with creation, and the delight between the various created beings – flora and fauna. Here creation has not been created just for the benefit of human beings – indeed are humans and their ships seen as playthings for leviathan? We humans may have a particular role to play in caring for creation but not at the expense of all other fellow members of creation. Wild mammalian life that originally comprised 100% of all mammals, has now been reduced to a mere 4% (by mass) with humans counting for 34% whilst human farmed livestock accounts for 62%! Surely we should be reflecting on how well and how equitably we have been caring for the whole of creation when we consider how much we have allowed our capacity to shape the balance between wild and domesticated use of the land and sea?

Judith Russenberger
Christian Climate Action

I saw the film ‘Wilding’ on Wednesday and asked a young woman member of the audience afterwards what she thought of it. She said it had made a big impression and she’d been surprised by how emotional she’d felt. I’m 70 and she was about 50 years younger and I felt emotional myself about how damaged a world young people like her are inheriting from us. If that’s not a call to action, I don’t know what is. Many I know are anxious but feel Helpless about what they can do. The Church has a vital role in guiding and showing us what must be done – leading by example in these times when urgent measures must be taken, showing how loving actions for others and for the natural world is both our responsibility and a demonstration of spiritual purpose.

Jan Hall
Retired advice centre manager

I am jewish, but have been contemplating converting to Christianity for some time now. One of the reasons is that I have been inspired by the earthly, corporeal dimension of Christ and his grace, and the idea the communion in space/place and time is an integral part of the Christian teaching. The idea that creation is in itself good, and that evil derives from a privation of creation (such as the instrumental use of land for profit or power), has inspired me not only towards Christianity, but towards a vision of Christianity that fosters a much more humble, charitable and pastoral relationship to nature.

Matthew Gordon

Looking after our environment and boosting biodiversity we’ve lost is needed to look after people. It’s essential to give space for wildlife to thrive, for people to experience the necessary calming of being within nature and to enable us to continue producing food.

Land ownership puts the church in a position of power and privilege. I think the church should use that power for good rather than profit, be open about current land use and commit to rewilding 30% of church land.

Richard Smith

We are all part of Gods creation and as such we are answerable for our neglect or care of all He has given us. We need to act positively to restore balance and repair the harm we have done by greed, ignorance, apathy. Thank you for doing this change, metanoia and caring for our communities, in love and gratitude.

Jo Willis
Orthodox Christian

The exploitation and desecration of nature that characterises our current planetary civilisation is drving the sixth mass extinction. There is an urgent need for leaders of all faiths to address egocentrism, anthropocentrism and reductive utilitarian cultures. In doing so, they can play a crucially important role in shifting our cultures towards a more ecocentric cosmology where we embrace, respect, honour and protect the wonder that is creation. This will involve restoring nature everywhere and promoting a care ethic that is informed by ecological literacy and an appreciation of intrinsic value.

Glen Cousquer
Lecturer in One Health and Conservation Medicine at University of Edinburgh

The church was once a symbol for morality, community and hope and it can be again; by honouring its duty to life and land and rewilding now.

Gully Bujak
Community Organiser

franz fanon said that “Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it, or betray it”. It is clear that it is the responsibility of the present generation – particularly those privileged enough to steward vast swathes of land – to heal the broken bond between humanity and the Earth of which we are a part. Act with courage, and with mercy towards the living beings under your care, or else heed James 2:13.

Patrick Thelwell
Futurist

The Church of England is one of the biggest landowners in the country – this is not just a church issue, it’s one of land and therefore affects us all. Why should one group of people, one institution, have so much control and power over land we should all share.

Sean Irving
PHD Candidate and Community Organiser

For too long Western humanity’s understanding of the land has been based around the question ‘What can it do for me?’ This has led to a dismantling of the perfect balance in nature, leading to devastating species loss and the destabilisation of global temperatures. As humans and animals around the world suffer the immeasurable cost of our arrogance, we need the Church commissioners to change their thinking and to see their land, not an asset to be exploited, but as something of brilliant design which must be cared for.

Hazel Draper
Activist

This is a chance for the church to use its land to act as true stewards of nature. Rewilding could create spaces that celebrate the beauty and benefits of wild nature: clean air, fresh water, sequestered carbon, pollination, resilient ecosystems, and a connection with the natural world.

Jen Crawley-Page
Concerned Citizen

Rewilding recognises the beauty and utility nature can conjure alone. It is a movement of true humility. It recognises the damage we have done to nature through our control, how much we have held it back, and returning its own agency. But nature doesn’t hold grudges, and rewilding will see nature bring its benefits to local communities, the nation, and the world as a whole. The church has the opportunity to be a leader of this movement.

Jonny Crawley
PageCampaigner

Wild, dazzling, beautiful diversity. A million million forms of life set in motion by the Beloved. Each its own world and each together the body of Gaia, our Mother. What wonder. Justified for love’s sake alone, and so in all our hearts, we know what must be done.

Tony Whitehead
Activist, campaigning for a nature rich Dartmoor

The land now controlled by the Church Commissioners used to support local communities. The best way to return to that purpose is to rewild!

Forrest Lawrence
Student at Black Mountains College

The amount of land the Church owns makes how they manage that land of interest to us all, not just Christians. People of all religions and none must come together to demand that this land be used for the good of all; re-wilding and allowing space for nature and communities to flourish.

Poppy Silk
Masters student at Center for Alternative Technology

The church teaches us that the natural world is God’s creation, and humans have dominion over life on Earth. We need to be responsible managers at last and rectify the damage we have done to the ecology of the planet. We have committed sins against God’s creation, and must act now with compassionate service to re-wild and restore nature on God’s estate. We praise the natural world with hymns like All Things Bright and Beautiful and Jerusalem. Now the Church needs to put those words into action and rewild the Church estate.

Laura Quigley
Citizen

As, supposedly, the main port of call between humans and God, the church has the responsibility of stewarding the land gifted to us such that future generations can experience God’s creation – only through which may we ever ‘know’ God. To allow for the commodification of God’s design is to sever human connection to the divine, and so it falls on the church to ensure our land is upheld how God intended it. There is no God in luxury housing. Rewild the church!

Rebecca Lindsay
Activist

This world is not ours to own and we share this land with other species. Our actions, behaviours and way of interacting with the land is destroying the Earth and all her inhabitants. Let’s find a new way to be part of nature: rewild and reconnect.

Emma McBeath
Heritage Manager at the Pankhurst Centre

We live in a beautiful ecosystem, filled with integrated and complex patterns, reliances and webs of interconnectedness. Extractive industries break this, and the run-off effects are huge. Rewilding can restore the balance we need.

Andy McBeath
Civil Servant, Department of Education and Concerned Parent

Jesus uses parables/stories drawn from the natural world around us – the kingdom of heaven is like… a pearl, yeast, bread, a vine. The kingdom of heaven is found in the natural world around us if only we are willing to see it. Sacredness is all around us, and it pains me that the church does not act upon this belief.

Imogen McBeath
Campaigner and Member of Openshaw Baptist Tabernacle

I believe that we should be rewilding our landscape in the UK as nature is important for all of us. It’s important in helping us deal with fighting climate change and rebalancing our ecosystems, it’s important to restore biodiversity and protect wildlife, and it’s important for people and their well-being as nature has demonstrable benefits for people’s health and communal support.

Max Brassington
Activist

We often forget that humans can be a force of good, not just harmful for the planet. We are part of Nature, not pitted against it. But when our access to land is so limited, and when our land is used solely for profit, it’s easy to forget. Rewilding gives us that chance to reconnect, and you, the church, are withholding that.

Hannah Crowther
Community Organiser

We who have disturbed God’s nature, let us restore it!

Rosalind Kent

This would be an act of leading from the front and encouraging both other organisations and parishioners to follow suit.

Rich B
Petition signatory

We owe our wildlife our children ourselves and our precious planet the chance to survive and thrive. Returning as much land as possible to its natural state is essential for this to happen.

Christabelle H
Petition signatory

The church should already be doing its share but unfortunately needs a reminder of how important its role can play in the very survival of the world that the church teaches us is God’s creation.

Keith F
Petition signatory

We are not the only organisms on this possibly unique planet. We should respect their tenure as well.

Alan C
Petition signatory

… because every green space, every green corridor, every green habitat supports life, and as custodians we should care. The decimation and destruction of nature goes hand-in-hand with the decimation and destruction of humanity. It’s time to make a significant change and set an example of caring over profiteering at everyone’s expense… please stop, look and listen, we are killing our own living planet.

Mary G
Petition signatory

The Church of England should be leading the way. Let’s hope the Church Commissioners take note. We demand that they do.

Elizabeth S
Petition signatory

The church needs to live up to its public teachings of doing good, and to use its vast resources for the good of our countryside and wildlife.

Gillian Clare C
Petition signatory

Without a healthy environment we cannot solve our other problems, like food and water security, climate change, physical and mental health and so many more.

Jennifer B
Petition signatory