Canterbury Commitment
Posted on 14 May 2021
The Canterbury Commitment is Quakers In Britain pledge of becoming a low carbon organisation.
The Canterbury Commitment, formally known as Minute 36 of British Yearly Meeting (held in Canterbury, Kent, 2011), begins by declaring:
“The action we are ready to take at this time is to make a strong corporate commitment to become a low-carbon, sustainable
Canterbury Commitment
community.”
The commitment recognises that “our actions have as yet been insufficient” and then quotes a previous British Quaker statement on climate change called A Framework For Action:
“Sustainability is an urgent matter for our Quaker witness. It is rooted in Quaker testimony and must be integral to all we do corporately and individually.”
A Framework For Action 2009-2014
Calling on all British Quakers to act on three levels – individually, Local Meetings and as a national body, the commitment states that the “process needs to be joyful and spirit-led” and quotes John Woolman.
“The produce of the earth is a gift from our gracious creator to the inhabitants, and to impoverish the earth now to support outward greatness appears to be an injury to the succeeding age.”
John Woolman
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Image from www.viator.com/