Frugality and a Discipleship of Climate Action

Reflecting on a previous blog post, individual climate action is important, but not for the reasons we may think

Welcome! I’m Jessica, and this newsletter is about faith and climate action. You can subscribe by clicking here:

Want to support my work but not ready or able to subscribe yet? You can buy me a coffee! Click here:

For the last few months, I have been thinking about the efficacy of individual action in response to the climate crisis. The fact is that if the fossil fuel industry does not stop what it’s doing, nothing we do in our own lives will matter. Full stop.

Yet, there is an important role that individual behaviour change has to play; it is not that recycling, buying organic, or reducing our consumption will reduce global heating on its own. Instead, individual actions have the impact of character formation; they come out of and further transform who we are, what we believe, and then, in turn, how we act. It is about how individual climate action interacts with our capacity for social and political action and prepares us for the kind of lives we will have to live in the future, that individual change becomes effective.

With that in mind, below is a blog post I wrote more than a year ago on the concept of frugality. Frugality, the way that theologian James Nash understood it 30 years ago, offers us a more nuanced way to understand the need to limit our consumption and other dangerous individual actions in light of the climate (and wider ecological) crisis.

I’d love to know what you think. Come back and let me know:

Frugality and a Discipleship of Climate Action

(previously titled “Frugality and a Discipleship of Earth Healing”)

Photo by cottonbro studio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-in-yellow-shirt-sitting-on-chair-6068964/

I like to be frugal. I try to buy things second-hand or, even better, receive them as gifts through the Buy Nothing group on Facebook. I don’t shop for clothes very often and prefer to wear scarves and jewellery to dress up a modest wardrobe. Our cars are older, and we hope to drive them until they wear out. We live in a house that could use a lot of cosmetic updates, but we save our money and time for other things. Some of my frugality is intentional, as I seek to live a life in life with my values as a Christian and climate activist.

However, to consider frugality as simply a way of buying less is to limit its potential as I, and others, seek to live a discipleship of Earth healing. I have discovered, in thinking about and confronting the challenges of consumerism and its role in the ecological crisis, that there is a greater potential for the virtue of frugality to play a greater role than just encouraging second-hand shopping. We have to begin, I have come to realize, by confronting the challenge of consumerism.

Consumerism and Being Frugal

The challenge of consumerism in our world is a well-known problem, especially concerning the ecological crisis. Consumerism, the preoccupation with consuming more and more goods, having more and more, and our identities being defined by what we own or consume, has proven to be a fatal flaw in society with respect to the Earth. Indeed, the problems of consumerism are not only ecological, they are also social, psychological, educational, and more.

What is sometimes promoted as an alternative to consumerism is to become frugal. To be frugal is to be “sparing or economical; thrifty,” according to the Canadian Oxford Dictionary. It is to keep things “plain, simple, or provided in small quantity and with avoidance of excess.” This is certainly not what consumerism is about. Since, though, consumerism is one of the issues we must confront in responding to the ecological crisis, I decided to learn more about what frugality is, and its possibility as a means to Earth healing, beyond the small steps I have been taking.

Want to continue reading? Consider upgrading to a paid subscription. With a paid subscription you will receive insightful essays and inspiring sermons that explore the reality of the climate crisis in light of faith and the need for action. Every paid subscription makes it possible for me to support and inspire others to take climate action. Upgrade your subscription here: