European Christian Environmental Network (ECEN)

In the decade prior to the ECEN’s founding, European churches were beginning to recognize the need to work together to address environmental issues. The First European Ecumenical Assembly, held in Basel, Switzerland in 1989, included a statement urging churches to take responsibility for creation and to work towards reducing the exploitation of the planet’s resources. In 1995, the environmental commissioners of European Churches gathered together at a conference in Mulheim entitled “Protecting the Environment-Safeguarding God’s Creation,” where representatives from fourteen countries agreed on the centrality of environmental concerns for contemporary Christianity. That same year, an ecumenical conference on Environment and Development, called “Sustainability: A Challenge to Our Lifestyles,” was held on Crete. These early meetings were crucial steps leading to the creation of the ECEN, which grew out of a series of recommendations adopted by the Second European Ecumenical Assembly in Graz, Austria in 1997. These recommendations urged churches to embrace a “new practice of ecological responsibility” and called for the creation of a pan-European network of churches involved in environmental work. Over the next year, an ad hoc working group drafted a proposal inviting European churches to send representatives to the inaugural Assembly of ECEN in Vilemov, in the Czech Republic, in October of 1998. Sixty representatives from twenty-four countries and various Christian denominations (including Orthodox, Protestant, and Roman Catholic) attended this first meeting. The Vilemov Assembly crafted an Inaugural Statement, a preliminary list of aims and priority issues, and an organizational structure for the Network. These preliminary guidelines were superceded at the 1999 Loccum Assembly, which established the goals, organizational structure, and membership criteria of ECEN.