Archbishop Thabo Makgoba
To the People of God – To the Laos – Good Hope
October 2009
Dear People of God
A heartfelt thank you to everyone who prayed for me and my family, sent messages, or otherwise supported us, following my mother’s death. She was a remarkably lady, who devoted her life to bringing us up in the face of great hardship, and who taught me so much of the life of faith which I was then able to make fully my own. She had reached the grand age of eighty, and, though we knew she was unwell, her death was nonetheless a shock. Yet I have felt so held up by the prayers of so many during this time. Thank you.
Alongside our diocesan visioning process, we are also working towards a provincial vision and mission statement, to help us affirm our common identity and the priorities to which God calls us, alongside the great differences of circumstances we face within our Dioceses. The intention is to support Dioceses’ and Parishes own priorities wherever it makes more sense and provides greater efficiency to organise provincially. The Anglican AIDS and Healthcare Trust and the Liturgical Commission are two existing examples of this – though we need to view their work within a more comprehensive understanding of how provincial and diocesan life relate.
Stewardship of creation and care of the environment remain close to my heart. This is a fundamental vocation from God. If we fail in our task then it is not just our physical planet that suffers, but actually we ourselves, and all God’s children, together with every other living animal and plant. In September, PSC passed three resolutions: calling on parishes to become ‘eco-congregations’; inviting us to make every September a ‘Season’ when we consider creation and our responsibility towards it; and exhorting us to take every possible step to reduce our carbon footprint.
In all this, we are privileged to be partners with the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute. SAFCEI, in which retired Bishop Geoff Davies plays a leading role, are doing some remarkable work and producing excellent resources and proposals on which we can draw. I encourage every parish to obtain their very powerful short dvd, which we watched at PSC (and almost watched at the Goudini conference, except for a ‘technical hitch’!).
I also hope many of you participated in the International Day of Climate Action on 24 October – just one of the events leading up to the UN Copenhagen Climate Conference in December, promoted by 350.org. This global organisation reminds me of the Jubilee 2000 campaign – when churches and others all around the world lent their combined weight to press governments to change their stance on debt to the poorest nations. None of us alone could do this – but together, we made a sufficient impact to force politicians to take the necessary steps. Now we can confidently do the same for the well-being of our world! ‘350’ is so named because this is the maximum safe level of parts per million of carbon dioxide within our atmosphere – yet current levels are around 390. The immediate goal is to demand that at the UN Copenhagen Climate Conference in December, governments make firm commitments to get us back to 350 as quickly as possible.
Please support this however you can, and if nothing else pray for ‘Climate Justice Now’ as, in the past, we prayed for political justice. We want our governments, as well as those of the richer nations of the world, to take seriously the need to treat God’s creation with proper respect, care, and justice, for ‘the Earth is the Lord’s, and all that is in it’.
Yours in the service of Christ,
+Thabo Cape Town
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