Christian groups threaten to pull cash from banks funding oil

An alliance of Christians including a former Archbishop of Canterbury and the Methodists have issued an ultimatum to the high street banks to stop financing new fossil fuel projects or risk losing their business.
A total of 71 Christian groups have signed up to a statement committing them to “consider alternative banking options wherever possible” unless their bank stops financing new fossil fuel projects including oil fields.
The signatories include the former archbishop Rowan Williams as well as Methodists, Quakers, eight Roman Catholic religious orders and the Scottish Episcopal Church, which together have 400,000 members.
Some religious organisations have already announced plans to pull their business from Barclays, including Sheffield Cathedral, the charity Christian Aid and the evangelical festivals organiser Greenbelt. Barclays has been named as the biggest financer of fossil fuels in Europe. Chelmsford Cathedral is also understood to be preparing to shut its accounts at Barclays and move to another bank.
The threat from churches follows a campaign by 20 UK universities led by Cambridge to shift billions of pounds away from banks that continue to finance new fossil fuel projects.
Williams said: “Banks are very understandably seen as institutions we need to be able to trust. What we are asking is that the main high street banks should show themselves to be fully worthy of that trust by playing their part in creating a future we can trust: a future in which our lethal dependence on fossil fuels will at last be put behind us.”
Most of the UK banks have now pledged not to directly lend to individual new fossil fuel projects but they do still fund oil and gas companies at the corporate level and the money is then indirectly used to finance new projects.
Addressing chief executives of Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, NatWest and Santander UK, the churches said: “You hold immense influence and responsibility. However, we believe your financing practices represent a contradiction to our values as faith-based institutions.”
They quoted Psalm 24: “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.”
Bank lending was now “fuelling dangerous levels of global heating”, the churches said. In 2023 alone the UK banks provided $25 billion of funding to companies expanding fossil fuel production.
“The climate crisis will not just affect future generations, but is affecting the most vulnerable today, particularly in the global South,” their statement said. Banks should exit relationships with fossil fuel companies that carried on with new oil and gas projects, they added.
Barclays said it was providing funding for green energy including wind farms and modernising the electrical grid, but argued that funding of fossil fuel production was still needed “to keep the lights on” in the transition phase to net zero.
An HSBC spokeswoman said: “We work with our clients to support their efforts to scale clean energy investment whilst meeting the energy needs of today. Our detailed approach to the energy transition is set out in our Net-Zero Transition Plan.”
Tony Burdon, head of the lobby group Make My Money Matter, which helped to orchestrate the protest, said: “This largest action by Christian organisations on our polluting banks — Barclays, HSBC, Santander, NatWest and Lloyds — should be another wake-up call for them to stop financing the companies behind new oil and gas and profiting from the destruction of our planet. From the recent catastrophe in Valencia to wildfires in Canada, the climate crisis is happening around us and it is driven by fossil fuels, paid for by these banks.”
The Church of England is not signed up to the policy but is separately engaging with banks on fossil fuel finance. The Most Rev Justin Welby, the current archbishop, announced last week that he would resign over criticism of his handling of allegations of physical abuse by the barrister John Smyth.