While most presbyteries have appointed an environmental agent, the Assembly's Panel on the Environment regrets that not all have done so.
A recent report of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, entitled Justice for All, calls on the Churches to acknowledge "a world that is not moving towards a sustainable future, but rather is rapidly heading towards an increasingly deeper ecological crisis, with the threat of increased rapacious de-forestration: pollution of water supplies and contamination of air and destruction of the soil". The livelihood of whole groups of people is threatened as result, with a major cause of it all the greed of many.
The panel, therefore, encourages the Church to counter such threats in practical concern for the creation and people. Environmental concern is indubitably an aspect of Evengelical witness, it is believed. Congregations are encouraged to increase environmental awareness and witness in a variety of suggested ways. Members, for example, might be frequently referred to the informative and challenging Green Page, appearing monthly now in the Presbyterian Herald, the magazine of the Church.
Moreover, the panel has made available for members of congregational committees an environmental audit in the form of a ticklist which, if used, will not only result in environmental benefit but in financial savings to the congregation as well.
The tick-list comprises the following: insulation of church property to prevent unnecessary heat loss; segregation of waste materials like paper, fabric, glass etc for easy sorting at local amenity centres and the recycling of some of it; prohibition of the use of such aerosols which contribute to the "greenhouse effect"; and the use of cleaning and washing up materials which are environmentally friendly.
The church's Panel on Conciliation, after a recent quiet start, now finds that requests for assistance in the resolving of disputes and the training of "agents of peace" have reached a degree at which the conciliators are almost overburdened. Conciliators on request will assist with difficulties arising out of disputes of various kinds, speak at elders' and church workers' conferences and share in the training of those wishing to join the ranks of "agents of peace".
The Conciliation Panel will provide free of charge on application to the Rev R.F.S. Poots, Church House, Belfast, study materials on the teaching of the Bible labour relationships and peace-making. The Rev Terence Patrick McCaughey, senior lecturer in Trinity College, Dublin, will launch Unusual Suspects - Twelve Radical Clergy, by Denis Carroll on Monday at 6-7.30 p.m. at the offices of the Columba Press, 55 Spruce Avenue, Stillorgan Industrial Estate, Blackrock. This important paperback costs £9.99. Carroll presents the lifes and work of radical clergy, extensively researched and critically appraised.
Presbyterians especially will appreciate contributions on the Rev James Porter, satirist and putative United Irishman, who was hanged before his church in Greyabbey, Co Down. The pleas of his wife and little children failed to move Lord Londonderry who could have intervened to spare Porter's life.
And equally appreciated will be the chapter on the erudite Rev William Steele Dickson, Minister of Ballyhalbert and later Portaferry, whose role as adjutant general of the forces of the United Irishmen in Co Down is a moot point.
Carroll also writes about the Rev Isaac Nelson, Minister of Donegall Street, Belfast, in the 19th century, member of the Irish Parliamentary Party, associate of Parnell and Biggar and critic of the revival of 1859 in his Year of Delusion in reply to the Rev William Gibson's Year of Grace.