"Jesus was an activist, no doubt about it," the Rev Dr Sue Parfitt says from a flowery armchair in her quaint cottage in Bristol. The octogenarian looks up to her mantelpiece at a wooden figure of Christ on the cross. "He broke the law continually and in the end was arrested and executed for it." In the armchair opposite, Judy Bruce, 85, a retired biology teacher, smiles wryly.
A week ago they were arrested after the display case of Magna Carta at the British Library was chipped with a hammer and chisel. They held a banner that declared: "The government is breaking the law." The act was carried out on behalf of Just Stop Oil (JSO). Bruce and Parfitt were both arrested and charged with £2,000 in criminal damage.
So why are two respectable elderly women, a reverend and a teacher, risking getting arrested in the name of the climate?
Parfitt, 82, was raised a Christian by conservative parents in south Wales. She read history at Bristol University and was briefly involved with the peace movement in the late 1960s but stopped because she feared being arrested at such a young age.
"It's a different matter getting arrested in my eighties," she says, matter-of-factly. "The point is to make the best use of your latter years. And what could be a better use than trying to save humanity from extinction?"
After stints as a nun and a family therapist, Parfitt married an Anglican priest and trained as one herself. When her husband died in 2013 she joined Christian Climate Action.
Bruce came to activism later in life, after retiring from teaching biology in a private school. She became involved with Extinction Rebellion after her partner died in 2020, motivated to break the law after "realising that non-arrestable ways of doing things are not making any impact at all".
Parfitt's background as a historian means she wants to ensure any historical document will not be damaged. "There was no question there was any risk to Magna Carta, nor would we want there to be," she says.
