16th June 2023
Dear Editor,
As fear of extinction mounts, the basic thrust of our faith is even more relevant. That thrust is at once simple, profound, and extremely difficult to sustain. It is to love God in all creation and therefore in its every part, our better-self included, but not our egos.
Beside all the rich Palliative Pastoral Care the church promotes, it is vital that we also follow the Prophetic Call for a genuine and lasting Structural Curative, or new earth.
That call can only be met by redesigning the structures of society from scratch, to lead to justice, and thence to peace. That must mean a reawakening to, and changing of three fundamental, intrinsically interwoven, and deeply encultured fault lines:-
1. The restructuring of the monetary system to end centuries of exponential exploitation, usury.
2. The recognition that we are stewards, not owners of creation, by creating Land Value Tax as the basic balancing factor of our economic lives.
3. The ending of the institutional rigidity of power over others, which thwarts the dignity of co-operative sharing of all our appropriate skills and tasks for the Common Good.
There are numerous collaborative groups working on each of these, very few indeed that work on the necessary interaction of all three.
Sincerely,
in our shared trusteeship of this sacred planet,
with 27 (now 59) endorsements to date of the text.
Rev Canon Peter Challen