Part 1 of the Season of Creation.
The Season of Creation is a recent Christian observance inviting churches to give sustained attention to God as Creator, the goodness and vulnerability of creation, and our responsibilities as humans within it. Usually observed from 1 September to 4 October, it has developed into a significant ecumenical movement embracing Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, Protestant and other Christian traditions. Within the Uniting Church in Australia (UCA), it has particular resonance because an important strand of the movement developed in Australia and because care for creation accords closely with the Church’s understanding of reconciliation, justice and Christian discipleship.
Origin of the observance
The Season of Creation had several points of origin. In 1989 Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I designated 1 September as a day of prayer for creation in the Orthodox Church. The World Council of Churches subsequently encouraged a longer period of observance, eventually connecting 1 September with 4 October, the feast of Francis of Assisi. Pope Francis strengthened its ecumenical character in 2015 by establishing 1 September as the Catholic World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation.
There is also an important Australian dimension to the Season of Creation. Beginning in 2000, Lutheran biblical scholar Norman Habel and St Stephen’s Lutheran Church in Adelaide experimented with Sundays devoted specifically to biblical creation themes. Habel subsequently worked with the Uniting Church’s Commission for Mission in Victoria to develop the idea further. By the middle of that decade, an Australian Season of Creation had emerged with a three-year cycle somewhat analogous to the Revised Common Lectionary, including Sundays focusing on forests, rivers, land, wilderness and animals. This Australian initiative and the broader international movement arose independently but have increasingly converged.
Associated with the Earth Bible project, Habel encouraged Christians to read Scripture attentively to Earth and its non-human inhabitants rather than treating the natural world merely as scenery for the drama of human salvation. This approach challenged strongly anthropocentric interpretations of Scripture and encouraged recognition that humans belong within creation rather than standing apart from it.
However, this approach also requires critical scrutiny. An ecological hermeneutic may impose contemporary concerns upon ancient texts or personify “Earth” in ways unwarranted by the biblical text. Nor should the distinctive biblical vocation of humanity disappear into an undifferentiated community of all of God’s creatures. A stronger Christian approach is ultimately theocentric: creation possesses intrinsic worth because God created it, delights in it and sustains it. Humans possess distinctive responsibilities precisely because we are creatures accountable to the Creator.
A biblical theology of creation
The Book of Genesis declares creation to be “good” before considering its usefulness to humanity (Genesis 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25). The human creature adam is formed from the adamah, reminding human beings of their creatureliness. Psalm 24 declares that the earth belongs to the Lord, while Psalms 96 and 148 depict the non-human creation as participating in praise. Romans 8:18–25 pictures creation groaning and awaiting liberation. Revelation culminates not in redeemed humanity abandoning creation but in God’s dwelling with humanity amid the renewal of all things.
Most importantly, Christian creation theology is Christological. Colossians 1:15–20 declares that all things were created through Christ and for Christ, are sustained in Christ, and are encompassed within God’s reconciling purpose. John 1 and Ephesians 1 similarly give salvation a cosmic horizon. The Christian hope of the resurrection of the body is not the escape of souls from an expendable material world but part of the promised renewal of this present creation.
Within this framework, the Season of Creation is especially appropriate for the Uniting Church. The Basis of Union declares that in raising Jesus Christ, God “reasserted claim over the whole of creation,” and describes Christ as “the beginning of a new creation.” The Holy Spirit is the pledge of the coming “reconciliation and renewal” whose end is “the whole creation,” and, significantly, “the Church’s call is to serve that end.” Creation care is therefore not an optional addition to UCA theology. It can be understood as one expression of the Church’s participation in the mission of God.
A global ethical question
Against this background, the Uniting Church has taken a very serious approach to addressing global climate change. The UCA consistently connects care for creation with justice, public policy and the wellbeing of vulnerable communities. This reflects a recognition that the effects of climate change fall disproportionately upon people with fewer resources to adapt: low-lying island communities, Indigenous peoples, poorer nations, farmers and communities exposed to dangerous heat, drought, fire, flooding, food insecurity and displacement. Creation justice and neighbour-love belong together.
For Christians, this is fundamentally an ethical question. Jesus commands us to love our neighbours as ourselves (Mark 12:31) and teaches that our treatment of vulnerable people is inseparable from our response to him (Matthew 25:31–46). The Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12) extends naturally to foreseeable harms imposed upon distant neighbours and future generations. Where serious harm can reasonably be prevented, and where good can responsibly be done, Christian discipleship calls not for indifference but for action.
Within this ethical frame, the language of climate emergency can have a legitimate place in Christian discourse when used carefully rather than rhetorically. Dangerous climate change can constitute an existential threat to particular communities whose lands, livelihoods, water supplies or cultural continuity are endangered. Christians need not exaggerate scientific claims to recognise the moral seriousness of such dangers. Prudence itself requires action where risks are grave, foreseeable and potentially irreversible.
In Australia, this conversation should also include First Peoples and Country. The UCA’s Covenant relationship with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples encourages the wider Church to listen to Indigenous Christians and their traditions of relationship with Country. Such engagement should avoid romanticising Indigenous spirituality or appropriating it for non-Indigenous purposes. Properly practised, it involves listening, respect and recognition that Christian ecological reflection in Australia takes place on lands cared for by First Peoples for millennia.
Critical voices
Criticisms of the Season of Creation nevertheless deserve careful attention. Some Christians question whether another “season” should be added to a calendar already centred upon Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter and Pentecost. Others fear that specially chosen ecological readings encourage proof-texting or that worship can become a vehicle for particular political programs. There is also a legitimate concern that language about Earth’s sacredness can blur the distinction between Creator and creation.
These cautions need not undermine the observance. Indeed, they can help preserve its theological integrity. The Season should not compete with Easter and Christmas, substitute environmental activism for proclamation of the gospel, or require Christians to agree on every contested question of climate policy, energy technology or economics. Scientific evidence establishes moral responsibilities, but translating those responsibilities into particular policies still requires prudential political judgment.
At its best, therefore, the Season of Creation functions as a discipline of theological retrieval. It helps Christians recover something already present throughout Scripture and Christian doctrine: salvation concerns God’s creation, not humanity in isolation. For the Uniting Church, serious engagement with climate change is consequently not a distraction from Christian mission but one expression of it. A Church committed to reconciliation and renewal for the whole creation cannot remain indifferent when creation is damaged and neighbours are placed in danger.
Christian hope also guards against both complacency and despair. The world belongs to God; its future does not finally depend upon human achievement. Yet precisely because Christians hope for God’s renewal of creation, they are called to anticipate that future through faithful action in the present.
To love God is to cherish what God has made; to love our neighbours is to resist avoidable harm; and where there is good that can be done for people, communities and the wider creation, Christian discipleship gives us compelling reasons to do it.
Rev Dr Rod Benson is General Secretary of the NSW Ecumenical Council and a minister of the Uniting Church in Australia serving at North Rocks Community Church in Sydney.
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All Told 