Forty years ago, in southern Portugal, an unlikely new Christian venture began. Two Christian couples from the UK founded a centre in an old farmhouse in the Algarve to put into practice the Christian call to care for creation.
Nobody had done anything like it before. A Rocha (Portuguese for ‘The Rock’) is a welcoming, cross-cultural Christian community with a focus on science and research, practical conservation and environmental education. You can read the full story in Peter Harris’ Under the Bright Wings, which inspired me to visit in the 1990s and remain involved ever since.
From its beginnings as a single project in Portugal, A Rocha has grown to be a global family of conservation organisations, working in more than 20 countries on every continent except Antarctica. This growth is told in the sequel, Kingfisher’s Fire: A story of hope for God’s earth. In the UK, although there is no centre, A Rocha UK is active in working with churches through the Eco Church initiative and with Christian land managers to demonstrate active care for the natural world.
