News

COP26: Congregation Walks Through Plastic to Church

Tuesday November 2 2021

A local congregation was made to walk through their plastic waste in order to get into church on Sunday.

New Kilpatrick Parish Church in Bearsden invited their congregation to collect their plastic waste for a fortnight and bring it all to church. A team then strung it all together along their walkway which formed the main entrance to their church, forcing the whole congregation to walk past all the plastic collected as a reminder of how much we use and then immediately throw away.

As COP26 begins the team, working with St Andrew's Roman Catholic Church in Bearsden, wanted the congregation to have a visual reminder of how easily we discard so much plastic which damages creation.

Church minister the Rev Roddy Hamilton said: “It was quite a sight watching the congregation line up to go into church surrounded by all our plastic waste. That in itself was quite a lesson.”

“We take great care of our building and to have all this plastic hanging and blowing in the wind felt quite uncomfortable, as if we were vandalising the church, desecrating it even. It wasn’t too big a leap to realise we do the same to creation, daily.”

Following the service the same team gathered to dismantle and sort all the plastic so that as much as was possible was recycled. Mr Hamilton said: “That was another lesson in how much we are unable to recycle in East Dumbartonshire.”

Also in COP26 news:

An art installation repurposing old chairs has been unveiled at Glasgow Cathedral to launch the programme of COP26 events there.

Global development charity Tearfund is hosting daily prayer meetings at St George’s Tron Church, and prayer walks around the city.

The writer, activist, former leader of the Iona Community and head of Christian Aid Scotland, Kathy Galloway, has begun a daily blog from COP26 on the Iona Community website.

The Moderator of the General Assembly, Lord Wallace, yesterday met Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and the Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, Mark Strange along with the Anglican Communion delegation to the COP. Lord Wallace tweeted: “We agreed that the strength of global faith communities is something the world's leaders should not and cannot ignore. As the leaders meet, we should be praying that they will heed the calls of those most in threatened and most in need.”

Churches from throughout Scotland are sharing their images of banners and events for COP through the Church Facebook page.