HARVEST festival stays a mainstay within the Church of England calendar, but is less common in denominations which have been expanding in recent times, research from the charity Green Christian suggests.
Its representative survey of greater than 600 regular churchgoers in Britain found that, while two-thirds of Anglican, Methodist, Roman Catholic, and Presbyterian churches continued to mark harvest within the Church’s yr, just below one quarter of respondents from New Churches, and fewer than half from Black Majority, Independent, and Pentecostal churches, normally held services.
Professor Tim Cooper, of Nottingham Trent University, who led the research, stressed the importance of the festival to Christians. “Churchgoers of all backgrounds and traditions claim to look after God’s creation. But if we make decisions in our food and farming practices that will not be sustainable, we lack environmental integrity and dishonour the creation that God loves.”
This was also disrespectful to farmers, he suggested. “Harvest suppers are a super opportunity for churches to supply meals based on LOAF principles — using ingredients which are local, organic, animal-friendly and fairly traded — and thereby encourage Christians to place the principle of caring for God’s creation into each day practice.”
Reports from dioceses indicate that Harvest festivals are increasingly focused on giving. The harvest appeal at Chichester this yr raised £10,000 for the ecumenical charity Friends of the Holy Land, which is able to go on to support families facing severe deprivation. Tearfund is a typical recipient of harvest appeals, and foodbanks are a preferred focus for harvest collections.
“Harvest nowadays is an excellent opportunity to attach in people’s minds the growing focus in our society on the environment, health, and food, with God,” a combined group of churches and schools in Stroud reports.
“It is an excellent opportunity to speak in regards to the production and consumption of local food [and] to present thanks for all of the wonderful gifts of creation and to reconnect with our place as stewards of that creation. It can be a chance to hope for and with the farming community, many struggling in today’s global economic climate.”
Owen HHarvest giving in St Edmundsbury Cathedral
The focus is strongest in rural churches, and in Church of England schools, but not exclusively. The emphasis at St Peter’s, Belsize Park, in London, will likely be a celebration and thanksgiving for “food producers, local providers, suppliers, cafés, and restaurants”, and the community is inspired to bring foods and toiletries to support the local homeless charity, St Mungo’s.
In Brent, children from Christ Church School went to church for the harvest festival, but in addition harvested potatoes, spring onions, and garlic from the college’s garden beds for Mohamad, the college chef, to make use of in dinners.
Services in cathedrals have a give attention to climate change, farming, food poverty, and sustainability, corresponding to within the diocese of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich, which has had a full day of “seasonal celebration, community gathering, and thanksgiving”. There were Suffolk horses, and cattle and sheep on the Green outside the cathedral, while a centrepiece was the Love Britain Food Harvest Torch, which has travelled round agricultural shows in Suffolk, and was because of be a feature of the National Harvest Festival at Westminster Abbey on Thursday.
Harvest celebrations in Winchester were a part of the Big Green Weekend. Harvest donations in Newcastle Cathedral will help to support the West End Refugee Service, and artwork by asylum-seekers and refugee members of the Bible-study group has been inspired by the cathedral and the natural world. Wakefield held a Messy Harvest; Hereford Cathedral hosted the two-day county harvest festival (including an appearance of Ronaldo, the bull); while in Salisbury, the county harvest thanksgiving choral evensong featured a procession of offerings.
Uniquely, on the county harvest festival service at Chelmsford Cathedral, a barn owl from Barleylands Farm flew down the center of the aisle, having made an “impeccable” practice flight upfront of the event. At previous festivals, tractors have driven down the central aisle, and young farmers have performed choreography with wheelbarrows.
