WOE IS ME, for I am a man of oversized ecological footprint! Such a lament may soon be commonplace in our churches. Tomorrow the General Synod of the Church of England is likely to commend a report, Sharing God’s Planet, which, among other things, guides us to websites that quantify our eco-sinfulness. I’ve learnt, for example, that I need to sell the car, go vegan, dig an allotment and move my family into a corner of the church hall.

Nowhere in the report do you find an alternative to arguments that would have had a Stone Age man tortured with guilt over owning a spare fur. Similarly, while economic stagnation will be proposed tomorrow as the solution to global warming, you must look elsewhere for the counter-argument that this would simply make the world’s poor yet poorer.

Last year, when the general synod signed up the Church to the Trade Justice Movement, it was blithely asserted that “poverty and inequality have reached unprecedented levels” and “globalisation has yet to work for the benefit of the world’s poor”. It was said that “prominent economists” are sceptical about free trade, so protectionism by developing countries is to be encouraged.

Nowhere was there a mention of the many distinguished economists who reject all this and argue persuasively that free trade is pulling many of the poor out of misery in countries that have adopted it.

Did I say “free trade”? Purge my lips with a live coal! Synod took advice from Christian Aid, which recently ran adverts that equated free trade with Aids, drought and tsunamis. What chance constructive debate?

To imagine that the Church has a special revelation that enables it to cut through these complex issues is like expecting the Met Office to forecast the date of the Second Coming. The Church should not so casually claim Christ’s authority to adopt a corporate position which may be proved wrong, while excluding faithful dissenters.

Archbishop William Temple might have inclined to these environmental policies, but he would have thrown them out of synod. “The Church is committed to the everlasting Gospel . . . it must never commit itself to an ephemeral programme of detailed action,” he wrote. I’ll stick with St Paul: “Woe is me if I preach not the gospel.”

Mark Hart is Rector of Plemstall and Guilden Sutton, Chester