Episode 15: Dr Ruth Valerio
Interview Date: 23 July 2021. Interviewer: Dr Jason Clark. Research and questions by Dr Simon Machin.
The daughter of missionary parents, Ruth Valerio, has been actively connected to many of the major initiatives in the charismatic renewal and social justice for most of her life. She has been the youngest speaker at Spring Harvest (which she later chaired), a researcher at the Evangelical Alliance, and then head of its Social Responsibility department; whilst in her church life, Ruth has witnessed the birth of the 24/7 Prayer Movement. Increasingly drawn to embedding the values of social justice, environmentalism and simple living in her own life, Ruth helped to galvanise A Rocha UK, a Christian environmental organisation, into greater influence through its Eco Church programme. Ruth Valerio is currently Global Advocacy and Influencing Director for the international NGO Tearfund.
Dr Ruth Valerio - Timed Interview Summary
0:00 - 28:59
Family background. Ruth was born in Harlow, Essex and brought up just across the border, in Hertfordshire, near Ware. Her parents, Martin and Elizabeth Goldsmith, were lecturers at the All Nations Christian College and she grew up in the neighbouring village. Paternal and maternal grandparents have very different lifestyles. On her father’s side wealthy Jewish merchants who move to England from Germany. On her mother’s side overseas missionaries going back several generations. Both Ruth’s parents face loss as children and trauma as a result of the Second World War. Martin Goldsmith’s father died before he was born, and a wealthy relation pays for him and his two brothers to go to Bermuda during the War in case Hitler invaded and Jews were interned. Elizabeth grows up as part of a missionary family in China, one of six siblings. Her mother dies when she is six, her father, a distinguished surgeon, being unable to save her. The six children are separated from their father during the War and placed by the Japanese in an internment camp. When the family are reunited in England after the war, they only have the clothes that they are wearing. Martin converts to Christianity at university and he meets Elizabeth when they are undertaking language training before going abroad on the same boat. He proposes to her at every port until she accepts. Ruth has a very strong sense of her family background because of this history and grew up experiencing Christianity from as early as she can remember, her elder sister also being a strong influence. Ruth partly ascribes her ability to take a stand on issues she believes in from a period late on at her junior school when she was bullied.
29:00 – 39:06
Childhood environment and school. Ruth’s parents still live in the house where Ruth was born, so she grew up in a rooted environment. But the international bible college where her parents teach means that Ruth experiences great cultural diversity, too. The area in which she grew up is now in the commuter-belt but in many ways, it has not changed, and recently Ruth has enjoyed returning to enjoy the heritage buildings there she did not explore as a child. Ruth attends the Church of England junior school outside the village, then the Simon Balle co-educational comprehensive school in Hertford, but moves in the sixth form to the expensive fee-paying Haileybury Public School. She applies to Cambridge University and is accepted, initially to study history although she changes her mind during a gap year and upon arriving there, studies Divinity.
39:07 - 53:07
Cambridge University. In some ways, although Ruth enjoys the course, the beauty of the colleges and the buildings, she has the sense of not being part of the in-crowd but slightly struggling because of not being part of it. Finds the Christian Union too conservative. Conversely some people from her home religious environment worry at the effect that an intellectual Christianity will have on her, so she is coached by Roger Forster of the Ichthus Fellowship during the vacations. Her older sister and husband have established themselves in Chichester in a church plant, and this is a counter-influence. The Spring Harvest series of summer conferences have always been helpful for Ruth from her adolescence and various factors come together to spark her first interest in ecology from a Christian perspective. In combination with the Evangelical Alliance, Spring Harvest runs a campaign for Christians, aligned to the 1991 Rio Earth Summit, entitled Whose Earth? There is a rally in Hyde Park, London. An associated book is written by a leader in her Chichester church, Chris Seaton (at the time her home church there is not interested in the environment, although it is now). Ruth still remembers the great impact that the book has on her.
53:08 - 1:01:29
Employment after Cambridge. Having thoroughly enjoyed grappling with theological issues, Ruth completes a Part-Time Masters at London School of Theology. Through contacts, she learns that the Director of the Evangelical Alliance, Clive Calver is developing media contacts, and needs support in gathering ideas for some panel work with the BBC World Service. Ruth works part-time as his research assistant, and by doing so she starts to understand the international arms trade. She has also seen extreme poverty for the first time by volunteering in slums in Ethiopia with her then husband, Greg, and her vision for social justice grows outwards. At the point at which Clive Calver leaves the Evangelical Alliance to go to America and Joel Edwards takes over, a role comes up heading up the EA’s social responsibility work. Ruth applies and gets the job. She also becomes at the time, aged twenty-four, the youngest person to have spoken at Spring Harvest and continues to do so for 21 years. She has been on the leadership team of Spring Harvest, and also chaired it at one point.
1:01:30 - 1:08:39
Life in Chichester. Ruth has lived on the same council estate in Chichester for 26 years and has a Chichester City Civic Award for the community work she has been part of there. Having been engaged in social justice work nationally and internationally she wants to see how it can be practiced locally, and is part of an initiative from the church fellowship to engage with life on the council estates there. She co-chairs a Community Association. It takes a long time before her family is accepted as they are initially regarded as part of a cult, but now she is just regarded, and regards herself, as a resident and part of the community.
1:08:40 - 1:13:39
Church life in Chichester. The church with which Ruth is involved is very affected by the Toronto Blessing, a Christian revival associated with the Toronto Airport Vineyard Church in Canada. Ruth is not so affected as other members of the church although supportive of the movement. Looking back, some charismatic churches were reacting against the more sedate evangelical roots from which they had emerged, and therefore emphasizing the experiential side of Christianity. With her degree in theology (and growing interest in environmentalism) she stands slightly to one side of the major emphases of the time, although she does witness the first 24/7 Prayer meeting.
1:13:40 - 1:17:59
Chichester – other projects. With some friends Ruth takes on an allotment. Then she runs a pig co-operative for 10 years. Three families each take on a pig, and they learn of a residential centre which has some unused land. Ruth had been inspired by the early work of Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall at River Cottage. The project develops and involves other people. It helps to develop Ruth’s interest in the world food system. But she is now largely vegetarian.
1:18:00 - 1:25:19
More recent professional roles, including A Rocha UK. Ruth’s career has not been planned but more a response to what she has felt called to do. Her involvement with A Rocha UK, Britain’s only Christian Conservation Charity emerges from being asked to speak on creation care at a national evangelical conference in Cardiff. She shares speaking responsibilities with Dave Bookless, whom she meets for the first time. She is pleased to meet someone who is a kindred spirit, and quotes the pioneering American conservationist, Aldo Leopold: “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds”. One of her major contributions at A Rocha UK is to rethink an Eco-Congregation project and relabel it Eco-Church. There is a relaunch at St Paul’s Cathedral at which Rowan Williams preaches. She becomes Theology Advisor for A Rocha UK after 2013.
1:25:20 – 1:50:36
Doctorate and books. Getting to the point where her daughters were at school, and prompted by Greg, Ruth decides to do further study. Looks at doing a standard doctorate at King’s College London but Dr Luke Bretherton points out the distinction between a classic PhD for those who want to be professional scholars and a doctor of ministry for those who want to be a scholarly professional. It takes Ruth seven years to complete part-time and was not done with a view to anything. But underlining the study is the growing sense of not only campaigning but also looking on the impacts of her own life. Increasingly drawn to the concept of simple living. The views of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas on happiness (eudaimonia). Consumerism as against human flourishing. Virtuous living as a positive rather than pious idea. For Ruth simple living in its parenting aspect is encapsulated in the lunch box. But environmentalism has to stay balanced and not disappear into a Gnostic denial of material goods which rejects modern culture. Aristotle’s idea of the golden mean is important, a middle line. For Ruth, the key virtues are temperance and justice: “to live more simply so that others may simply live”. Stanley Hauerwas has described capitalism as amnesia. Simplicity for her is about getting rid of the clutter that consumerism puts in our lives that detracts from forming relationships with God, others, the wider natural world and ultimately ourselves. New monasticism works very well in the context of simple living as it builds rhythm into our lives. The traditional monastic tradition offers rootedness. This is a whole reframing of life. The doctoral thesis became a book, having been totally redesigned, called Just Living. For Ruth, there always has to be a practical aim, a So What?
1:50:37 - 2:00:32
Simple living and capitalism. Is it really true that simple living by affluent westerners will have a greater impact on lifting the global poor out of poverty rather than industrialization under non-corrupt and democratic governments? RV is not against capitalism. But without a network of relationships with the wider natural world, RV believes that short term gains through export-based economies will be offset by the negative effects of climate change. In Just Living, RV has tracked levels of income against happiness, and beyond a certain point, happiness does not increase. From other research, most people always seem to want 10% more! Learning contentment and gratitude is important and they go hand in hand. These values were instilled in Ruth by her parents.
2:00:33 – 2:10:14
Global Advocacy and Influencing Director for the international NGO Tearfund. Works in about 50 countries in some of the poorest communities in the world helping people lift themselves out of poverty through church communities. The model is called church and community transformation. As well as responding to disasters, Tearfund's other strand is advocacy and campaigning work. Big changes will come through governments and businesses adjusting their policies. It used to be true that environmental agencies and aid organizations were separate, and never the twain shall meet. Climate change and environmental factors are now interwoven with ecological problems such as drought, floods and crop failures disproportionately affecting very poor communities. Although Covid has shown that technological advances in the development of vaccines are possible in the West, there is not the political will to do this in developing countries. RV does not believe that there is much evidence that scientific innovation alone will solve climate change.
2:10:15 – 2:13:34
Current preoccupations. Books - Saying Yes To Life. L Is For Lifestyle. Just Living: faith and community in an age of consumerism. And a children’s book, Planet Protectors, 52 Ways to Look after God’s World, co-written with Paul Kerensa. Also recently launched a peer mentoring network called The Oikos Network for people around the world who have been trying to engage their denominations and churches in creation care.