Archbishop Moxon made the comments in Alexandria, Egypt, during a February meeting of the Anglican primates of the 34 Anglican provinces that make up the worldwide Anglican Communion.

He had earlier led a special session on the impact of global warming on the environment. He was supported in his 90-minute address by Archbishop Paul Sarkar of Bangladesh, a country which faces dire consequences if sea levels rise.

Archbishop Moxon later told a press conference that the gathered Anglican leaders were agreed that the Anglican Communion should offer "moral leadership" in the campaign against climate change.

This, he suggested, was significantly a matter of setting an example.

He spoke of the need for Anglicans to embrace lifestyle changes, and to cut back unnecessary or environmentally hazardous modes of travel. He also spoke of the need for Anglican leaders to encourage what he called "eco-friendly congregations and environmental projects".

Archbishop Moxon told the media that the primates believed the church has a "Biblical, theological and practical role to play in every community" on the issue.
Anglicans needed to do what they could to prevent carbon emissions, and the "overcooking or choking of the planet".

Such efforts, he said, should be seen as "an act of participation in God's creation and redemption."

During his presentation to the conference, the Archbishop, quoting Michael Northcott, said people need to recover a sense of spiritual significance of treasuring and guarding their own local ecosystems.

The role of the Church was to express solidarity with the victims of climate change and with the earth itself. Northcott proposed a Christian vision of politics as radically participative and grounded in an ethic of care and compassion.

"Christian congregations are just the kind of communities which can bring facts, scripture and morality together with the people who can make a difference. Many of these local groups are already making strenuous efforts to address climate impacts of their activities and of the lifestyles of their members," Northcott wrote in A Moral Climate.

In the middle of last year, Bishops gathered at the Lambeth Conference said in a joint statement: "A partnership is required, to allow the solutions which lie in our human capabilities to be seen and activated. Moral leadership is at the centre of this to ensure problems created by humans are solved by humans."

For a pdf version of Archbishop Moxon's presentation, click on the link below.

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