Understanding the Link Between Gender-Based Violence and Ecological Breakdown

Across South Africa, a growing wave of purple is spreading through our timelines, women and allies are changing their profile photos to purple, a colour of dignity, repentance, and justice, to demand an end to gender-based violence (GBV) and femicide. This movement is not just a cry for safety; it is a call for renewal, morally, socially and ecologically. For Green ELCSA, this is not a separate struggle. It is one and the same as our fight for climate and environmental justice.

The same systems that degrade the earth also dehumanise women. Both are born of domination, exploitation, and the misuse of power, the belief that one can take, extract, and destroy without accountability. When forests are cleared, when rivers are poisoned, when women are silenced, these are all expressions of the same sin: the denial of dignity. A society that normalises violence against its women cannot be trusted to live in harmony with creation. And an economy that plunders the planet for profit will always find new ways to exploit the vulnerable. In Green ELCSA, we name this reality as ecological sin, the breaking of relationships that God intended for balance and care.

Environmental Dignity: Healing People and the Planet

Green ELCSA’s vision of environmental dignity rests on one conviction: human and natural systems depend on each other. When women are unsafe, communities lose stability. When ecosystems collapse, women and young girls, especially in rural and low-income settings, bear the first and worst impacts.

Violence against women and young girls, and violence against the earth are not parallel crises; they are interlocking wounds, healing one requires healing the other. The purple movement reminds us that justice for women is also justice for creation. Every woman who rises, every survivor who speaks, every community that chooses care over cruelty, restores part of God’s design for wholeness.

Faith in Action: 

To stand against GBV is to proclaim the Gospel in its fullest form (Mark 16:15). As Green ELCSA, we are called to act where theology meets transformation, where faith takes shape in justice. So, if you turn purple, by changing church and personal profiles to stand in visible solidarity with the movement against GBV and femicide, and if you preach and teach from texts of restoration and justice (Mark 16:15; Romans 8:22; Micah 6:8), you become part of the healing work of God. You proclaim that the Good News is not only spoken but lived, through compassion, equality, and care for all creation. You affirm that salvation is not the escape from the world, but the renewal of it.

We dream of a society where justice flows like a river, where women and men live in safety, and the land rejoices under their care. A world where ubuntu includes the soil, the water, and the air. A society where repentance is not a statement but a system; where the protection of life becomes the truest form of worship.