Each morning, as M. John Kuruvilla unlocks the wooden gates of Christ Church in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, the sweet smells of wild citrus greet him as he steps into the shade of towering mango and neem trees on the five-acre campus of the 166-year-old Victorian church building. It’s a living tapestry decades in the making.
He starts the day by walking through the campus, checking labels, pruning trees, and watering flowers. As the church’s warden and steward, he oversees daily maintenance of the grounds and tends to the congregation’s environmental stewardship initiatives.
These efforts began soon after Kerala faced devastating floods in the summer of 2018, killing more than 350 people. Kerala churches in the same denomination saw their sanctuaries flood. “That moment, seeing not just the damage but the faces of our parishioners made us realize climate change wasn’t just news headlines. It was now. It was us,” Kuruvilla said.
Stories of repeated monsoon floods and searing summer heat waves began to dominate church conversations. The number of extreme rainfall events has tripled across the country over the last 70 years, according to the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology. In January, Kerala saw unusually high temperatures, reaching into the upper 90s. Those heat waves typically arrive in March and April.
This sense of urgency led Christ Church, which is part of the Church of South India (CSI), to start actively tackling climate change in 2019 through its Ecological Forum. The group initially started in 2008 to protect the campus’s more than 119 tree varieties and champion creation care.
“Our church campus is not just a sacred space for worship but a sanctuary for nature,” he said, pausing under a 100-year-old mango tree that survived the 2018 deluge. The forum’s early years focused on cataloguing each tree in the church compound, launching an annual sapling drive that encouraged each family in the parish to plant a tree, and distributing 150 “eco kits” of compost and saplings to homes. Along the church’s garden path, members of the Ecological Forum planted different trees named in Scripture.
As head of the initiative since 2023, Kuruvilla steered Christ Church toward further sustainability, switching from single-use plastics to compostable materials at church gatherings and overseeing the installation of a 15-kilowatt solar energy system in 2022 that now powers the entire church and parish house.
“When the first [electricity] bill hit zero, we held it up at Sunday service,” he said, laughing. “That’s when people wanted to know how we do it.”
At first, many congregants feared the solar scheme was out of reach. “A few older members said, ‘That’s fine for the rich but not for us,’” Kuruvilla said. “But we brought in energy advisers, negotiated discounts for group buys, and showed neighbors our experience. Slowly, even skeptics came on board.”
Today, more than half of the 1,200 church households have solar panels set up on their homes, thanks to guidance and support from the church.
Every December, the vicar, Alex P. Oommen, visits church members’ homes for a “green audit”—evaluating energy use, water conservation, home gardening, and recycling. Families installed rooftop rainwater-catchment systems, cutting their municipal water use by 40 percent. The church celebrates the most sustainable examples on Sundays.
Support also goes out to the broader community. The church arranges study tours with agricultural university scientists; buys organic produce in bulk from local farmers to support regional livelihoods; and mobilizes a campus and neighborhood cleanup every Gandhi Jayanti (a national holiday), inviting locals of other faiths.
“Our greatest ministry isn’t in the pews; it’s in how the church campus inspires the city,” Kuruvilla said. Schoolchildren visit the church’s garden, learn about the church’s waste management system, or join workshops run by the youth group’s “green ambassadors.” “We’ve tried to be a demonstration site for sustainable city life. If even nonmembers learn how faith and ecology fit, we’ve succeeded,” Kuruvilla said.
Parishioner Elsie Mathew’s family joined the first solar-power workshop in 2022, but she admits they still had doubts. “The upfront cost scared us,” she said. “But the church helped with research and a group discount.” They saw their electricity bill fall by nearly 40 percent.
Their resolve further strengthened when they saw the church leading. Mathew started volunteering at tree-planting drives, which have placed more than 4,000 saplings across the city since 2019, and then became a green-audit advocate herself. “The year after our install, our neighbor signed up too.”
Mathew now coordinates the church’s school-outreach program, training youth to teach composting, organic gardening, and climate awareness to local students. “My daughter’s school even started a mini tree nursery,” she said. “These changes ripple out.”
Over the past two years, Christ Church reports a 35 to 40 percent reduction in water use across green-audited parish households, and its Ecological Forum has twice taken top honors in the CSI Diocese’s Green Parish competition. Their efforts inspired seven neighboring churches to start similar ecological ministries in the past year, with 2,700 households now involved.
Churches in other parts of India are also seeking to combat climate change. For instance, in the northeast state Nagaland, the Ao Baptist Arogo Mungdang is reimagining how faith communities steward rural land through the Tuli Farm project. Started in the early 2000s, the 130-acre farm is used as an eco-conscious retreat center, an agricultural innovation center, and the Canaan Farmers School. Here, local farmers, many of whom are from Indigenous tribes, receive hands-on training in organic cultivation and sustainability, coupled with regular spiritual retreats.
Sameer Bora, a farmer based in Nagaland, credits the program for changing his mind about modern farming. “I used to burn stubble and use chemicals,” he said, referring to pesticides. “Now, after seeing what good compost does and after prayer and discussion, I switched to techniques [I learned from the school].”
The practice of burning straw stubble after harvesting grains is banned in India, as it is a major cause of air pollution around the country and has caused a massive public health crisis. Local governments have fined farmers who continue to burn stubble and have even sent some to jail.
Bora said that since making the change, “my yields are better, and my heart is lighter too.”
Sustainability pushes against traditional farming practices and requires farmers to trust their trainers. The goal, said the school’s director, Chubatola Aier, in a January speech, is not just crop yields but a culture of sharing, care, and resilience that matches the gospel’s vision for creation.
Back in Kerala, Kuruvilla hopes to see in the next few years every household in the church using solar power, every child understanding composting before turning 10, and five other small parishes start similar projects.
More immediately, he’s working on building a biodiversity map to share online so others can learn, and maybe even replicate the model. “Floods and droughts may keep coming, but if each church becomes a wellspring, spiritually and ecologically, hope can keep spreading.”
Mathew echoes the feeling: “Caring for creation isn’t optional for us—it’s how our faith takes root in the world. Faith without works really is dead.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated that Christ Church flooded in the 2018 Kerala floods.
