SAMS Ireland website

SAMS Ireland have a new website and logo. Please have a look


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Care for Creation - new growth in Ireland

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It is been quite a year for Care for Creation in Irish Churches, perhaps it could even be called a season of new growth. And it all came about because of two teenage girls speaking passionately. Tori and Isobella from Mullingar Parish in county Meath spoke for a few minutes at the Irish Churches Creation Care conference and captured the hearts of the audience and explained what creation care is all about.  You can see the moment below, Their project Lighten Our Darkness by Numbers is a youth-led response to climate change. They are educating church goers, engaging communities, building bridges to businesses, and enhancing biodiversity in church graveyards.   This short talk from the girls had a deep impact on the Archbishop of Armagh, and he spoke about it at his presidential address in General Synod.  Archbishop John McDowell said, We need to do what that group of young people from Westmeath are doing. That is, to work on ways of inspiring and equipping parishes t...
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#EarthDay 2021 and church divestment

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#EarthDay 2021 Will be remembered as a key day in the history of churches divesting from fossil fuels in Ireland. First of all, within the Church of Ireland, a friend of mine met with the Archbishop of Armagh to present a plan for climate action ahead of cop 26 later this year. The plan involves announcing full divestment from fossil fuels, making a commitment to net-zero emissions, and planning a theological conference on care for creation next year. The Archbishop agreed to proceed on each point of the plan. Later that day, I got a phone call from a senior Presbyterian minister who wanted to speak to me about plans for their church to divest from fossil fuels also. I had a very nice chat with her and it turns out that a proposal was put to the General Executive earlier this year to act, but it was decided to put it to a vote at General Assembly. We arranged a meeting later this week with other senior staff from the headquarters of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, over zoom of cour...
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The inside story of how Presbyterians in Ireland Divested from Fossil Fuels

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It's been a while since I've updated this blog, life has been busy. But I want to capture my feeling and thoughts from over the last few months with some back-dated posts. Here goes... My goodness, they did it!  The Presbyterians followed the Church of Ireland's lead and also committed to full divestment from fossil fuels. This means they will move about £3m out of BP and Shell - wow! A press release on the news was published on the Presbyterian Church website.  Here are some quotes from it. 'Climate change is not only an environmental issue. Climate change is a poverty issue. It’s a hunger issue. It’s an issue of inequality and injustice.’ - Prof Katharine Hayhoe The church is adopting a 'divest and engage' strategy, which means dumping investments from companies that extract fossil fuels and engaging with large consumers of fossil fuels so that they set targets for Net-Zero emissions. Some of the mainstream press also picked up the story, for example   RTE Ne...
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