Green Sabbath: A Personal Journey of Faith, Economics, and Environmental Stewardship

Rowlando Morgan

My journey towards finding the Green Sabbath Project has been a long and winding one that has involved many fascinating stops along the way. I grew up as and remain a Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) Christian, where observance of the seventh-day Sabbath is a central part of the church’s beliefs and practice. However, the Sabbath is more than a matter of tradition for me as my observance of the Sabbath has significantly impacted my life: from my career choices to my general worldview.

At just eight years old, I faced a defining moment in my life: as I stepped out of a football match as Sabbath approached, it became apparent to me that my love for football could not fully coexist with my faithfulness to the Sabbath commandment. One ramification of this was that it solidified my commitment to the Sabbath and my faith more generally. It became more than a way of life or a rule to follow—it became a principle that I would later find a deep need to explore from an economic and mathematical perspective.

Early Reflections: Faith, Economics, and the Sabbath

As I reached my later teenage years, my Sabbath observance often sparked conversations with non-Sabbath-keeping Christians. It was these discussions that led me to explore the Sabbath in more detail. At the same time, I started to learn economics at school, and it did not take me long to learn of the vast number of biblical texts related to finance and economics. My love for economics then led me to pursue an undergraduate degree in Economics at the University of Cambridge, where I dove into topics like economic history and economic cycles.

It was during my early twenties that I increasingly began to view the Sabbath not just as a religious commandment but as an aspect of economics. Moreover, as it limited the range of careers that I thought were viable it also played a role in a personal ‘economics.’ Moreover, I was long aware of the seeming importance of the number seven in the bible, and I noticed its relationship to how debts were to be treated.

A Biblical Economic Framework: Rest as a Cornerstone

I now view the Sabbath as being a part of a biblical system of economic management, one which is unified and revolves around the concept of rest and the number seven. The Sabbath commandment addresses people, animals, and even the land, by providing rest for them all. For people and some of their domesticated animals, this rest was to be once a week. For land, in contrast, it was meant to occur every seventh year—the sabbatical year. Debt cycles were similarly tied to this principle, with a complete forgiveness of debts every seven years, engendering ‘rest’ and ‘liberty’ for debtors.

This is indeed a structured system and one that deeply fascinates me. For instance, the debt forgiveness leads to rest—both for individuals and the economy as a whole—and this challenges modern assumptions about how economies are meant to function. For example, forgiving debts alleviates the pressure on debtors to make repayments, allowing them to experience economic freedom. This, in turn, decreases the necessity for production, which in turn benefits the environment through reduced exploitation the earth’s resources.

In more recent years I have also noticed that this structured system of economic regulation serves as a means of addressing the interconnectedness of economics with the environment.

The Green Sabbath: Bridging Faith and Environmentalism

The Sabbath, as I came to see it, is much more than a religious observance. It is a unifying principle that aligns with key Christian teachings, including liberation, equality, and stewardship. Jesus’s statement that the Sabbath was “made for man” resonates as an example of biblical scriptures referring to a biblical cosmology where God ended the process of creation with a symbol of rest for all of creation, not just ‘Man,’ humanity.

The Green Sabbath thereby emerges as a natural extension of the biblical Sabbath, by highlighting the deep interrelationships between the science of our world, the economics and morality. The Sabbath can be seen as an opportunity to extend rest to the environment which people inhabit by reducing the strain generated by human economic activity. Indeed, from this perspective, pollution and resource depletion can be considered abstract forms of oppression—oppression that a coordinated day of rest serves to alleviate.

Having worked on environmental issues in various capacities, including roles at the UK’s Department for Transport and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, I am well aware of the urgency of addressing environmental degradation and the challenges of finding effective solutions. The Green Sabbath points the way to an ancient solution.

The Economic and Environmental Logic of Rest

The Green Sabbath concept, is for me, rooted in both spiritual and economic calculus. For instance, in modern economies, environmental harm often stems from the demands of economic activity. Transportation, for instance, is a major contributor to CO2 emissions and much of it is a “derived demand”. A weekly cessation of work, as embodied in the Sabbath principle, would naturally reduce these emissions, and thereby provide the environment with much-needed rest. However, the significance of the Sabbath is more than simply abstaining from work; it is also about coordination. For instance, the Sabbath could not function as effectively as a means to alleviate environmental damage if the rest induced were not simultaneous across society. This is where the idea of regulation comes in—a necessary tool to prevent individuals or businesses from exploiting the rest of others for competitive advantage. In economic terms, the Sabbath addresses a kind of “market failure,” where uncoordinated behaviour might undermine the common good.

The principle is simple: when everyone rests, no one gains a competitive edge, and thus everyone, including the environment, can experience a maximal benefit of rest. This aligns well with the principes of ‘game theory’, which shows that cooperation often leads to better outcomes than competition. By ensuring communal rest, the Sabbath prevents the “free rider” problem, where some individuals or firms benefit from the good behaviour of others without participating themselves.

Liberation Through Rest

The Sabbath, at its core, is about liberation. It ensures moments of equality by removing the pressures of competition through work. For me, this connects deeply with the Christian message. Jesus’s mission was to forgive debts and bring liberation, a principle that perfectly aligns with the Sabbath’s call to remove one’s pecuniary demands upon others.

In the context of the Green Sabbath, this liberation can be more easily seen to extend to the environment. The land, like people, is seen in biblical terms as part of a larger system. It, too, deserves rest and associated refreshment. By refraining from economic activity, nature is given time to recover from damage induced through pollution and resource depletion. In a world dominated by technical solutions to environmental problems, the Sabbath offers a refreshing alternative: a cost-saving, low-tech solution that relies on collective action and a shared value system.

The Bigger Picture: Harmony and Sustainability

I consider the Green Sabbath project to not only be about environmental protection but also about encouraging a more harmonious world. For me, the Sabbath is an institution that balances work and rest; as well strength and weakness, as well. By strength and weakness, I mean that the ‘master’ or ‘boss’ in any economic employment relationship may naturally be considered to be in a position of strength: they have the money and the employee is seeking it to earn a living. The employee is in a position of weakness and hence we have labour laws and regulations to mitigate potential abusive employer behaviour. On any given Sabbath day, this power imbalance, at least in principle, is temporarily suspended. The wider environment also is vulnerable to the decisions of human economic actors, and it too is presented a form of protection via the Sabbath principle, firstly each seventh day, but also each seventh year according to the biblical principle of the Sabbatical year when land was to obtain a year of rest. As such, the Sabbath provides a vision of a world of mutual respect and reciprocity. Pollution and environmental degradation can be seen as forms of oppression—especially where the burdens are placed on future generations and nature itself.

The concept of “doing nothing” might seem counterintuitive in a society that values productivity, but from an economic perspective, it’s a powerful baseline option. In cost-benefit analyses, the idea of abstaining from action is often overlooked. The Sabbath demonstrates the wisdom of stepping back, of pausing, and of recognizing that sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to cease from activity; to not play the game.

Rowlando Morgan is an all round economist in England, with experience working in government and private sector economic consultancy, and also actively engaging in research related to biblical economics. He has a particular interest in economics related to the Sabbath and debt.