wfn.org | WCC NEWS: Churches to ring the alarm on climate change

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World Council of Churches - News Release

Contact: +41 22 791 6153 +41 79 507 6363 media@wcc-coe.org
For immediate release - 12/11/2009 09:55:56

>CHURCHES TO RING THE ALARM ON CLIMATE CHANGE

As nations are spelling out their bargaining positions for the
negotiations on a new international climate deal to take place in
Copenhagen next month, churches around the world are trying to
ring home the message that climate protection is an ethical and
spiritual issue.

The 7-18 December United Nations summit in the Danish capital
Copenhagen will set the agenda for the next stage of the fight
against climate change. "This is the last chance the world has to
keep global temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius," says
Alexi Barnett, campaign officer for Scottish Catholic
International Aid Fund, explaining the importance of churches'
support for a successful outcome in Copenhagen.

That is why her organization has teamed up with Christian Aid
and the [Presbyterian] Church of Scotland to get congregations in
the northern part of the United Kingdom to heed a call by the
World Council of Churches (WCC) and ring their bells on Sunday,
13 December.

On that Sunday, midway through the UN summit, the WCC invites
churches around the world to use their bells, drums, gongs or
whatever their tradition offers to call people to prayer and
action in the face of climate change.

By sounding their bells or other instruments 350 times,
participating churches will symbolize the 350 parts per million
that mark the safe upper limit for CO2 in the atmosphere
according to many scientists.

Groups ranging from the Open Sanctuary at Holy Trinity Anglican
Church in Tilba Tilba, Australia, to the Lutheran congregation in
Sibiu, Romania, have already pledged their participation. Some
link the climate action with their traditional advent
celebrations, such as the Evangelical Lutheran Epiphany Church in
Hamburg, Germany, that will invite children to draw stars of hope
while the bells will be rung and 350 drum beats will be sounded
ahead of the congregation's advent concert.

As each group starts their own observation of the 13 December
event at 3 p.m. local time, a chain of chimes and prayers will be
stretching in a time-line from the South Pacific – where the day
first begins and where the effects of climate change are already
felt today – to Denmark (
http://www.gronkirke.dk/index.php?id=370 )and across the
globe. 

The politics of bells: controversy on the role of church in
society

Even before the bells have started ringing, they have managed to
stir a debate about the special perspective Christians bring to
the climate debate. "In some countries, the question has been
raised whether churches have the right to use their bells for
what may be considered to be a political campaign," says Dr
Guillermo Kerber, WCC programme executive on climate change. 

"Those who support the campaign see the care of creation and of
people's lives and livelihoods threatened by climate change more
as an ethical and spiritual issue that, of course, has political
implications, not in a partisan sense but referring to the common
good," Kerber adds. 

"We pray that decision makers everywhere take seriously the
responsibility implicit in God giving humankind dominion over His
creatures upon the earth," says Dr Mogens Lemvig Hansen,
explaining why the Danish Lutheran Church of Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada, of which he is president, will ring its bells.

"Churches have a special role to play – and church bells have a
role to play" in this debate, says Bill McKibben, a well-known
writer and a Sunday school teacher in the United Methodist
Church, in a video message on youtube (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MrzVwU_7V0 ). 

"Where I live, in the United States, before we had radio when
somebody's house caught on fire we rang the church bells so that
everybody would know and come out to do something about it. Well,
something's on fire now", adds McKibben, whose book The End of
Naturewas one of the first to explain global warming to a
mainstream audience when it came out in 1989. 

The Conference of European Churches (CEC) and the Council of
European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE) have endorsed the campaign
in a joint letter ( http://cec-kek.org/pdf/ENClimatechange.pdf
)to the churches in Europe.

Also on 13 December, participants at the UN conference are
invited to pray alongside the Danish Queen and church leaders
from around the world in an ecumenical celebration at
Copenhagen's Lutheran Cathedral. 

The Archbishop of Canterbury, spiritual leader of the Anglican
Communion comprising some 80 million Christians worldwide, will
preach the sermon. The celebration will be broadcast live on
Danish television and on the website of the Danish Broadcasting
Corporation ( http://www.dr.dk/ ). 

More information on the bell ringing campaign:
http://www.bellringing350.org ( http://www.bellringing350.org/
)

WCC activities ahead of the Copenhagen summit:
http://www.oikoumene.org/climatechange

>UN Climate Change Conference:
>http://en.cop15.dk/

Additional information:Juan Michel,+41 22 791 6153 +41 79 507
6363media@wcc-coe.org

The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith,
witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical
fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings
together 349 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches
representing more than 560 million Christians in over 110
countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic
Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia, from
the Methodist Church in Kenya. Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland.