Call for churches to pray during international climate change talks

Image - NASA

The annual UN conference on climate change, COP19, will take place in Warsaw from 11 - 22 November. Christian Ecology Link is encouraging individuals and churches to pray for the negotiations over these two weeks, and particularly during the Sunday services on the 17th November.

CEL suggests people use this prayer:

To you, O Lord, we lift up our souls;
In you we trust, O God.

Faithful, merciful, trusting God,
You have let us loose on your world with enough fossilised carbon to destroy it,
and with enough intelligence to know that we do so.
Forgive us, Lord, for we know what we do.

We pray for the COP19 UN negotiations happening in Warsaw at the moment.
Let short term business interests bow to science.
Let politics give way to justice.
Let economics step back and allow righteousness to prevail.

Speak to the hearts of every negotiator
that they may feel your love for your earth,
and your desire for every child of God to do their part
in liberating creation from its bondage to decay.

Show us your ways, O Lord,
teach us your paths;
guide us in your truth and teach us,
for you are God our Saviour,
and our hope is in you all day long.

Amen

CEL Trustee, Ruth Jarman, who wrote the prayer, said: "With every passing year there seems less expectation that the UN’s process of tackling global carbon emissions will be successful and less hope that climate catastrophe can be averted. For people of faith this is no reason to stop demanding action from our leaders and makes prayer even
more vital."

Ruth is on the board of Operation Noah, the Climate Change Charity which has recently launched Bright Now, a campaign encouraging churches to disinvest from fossil fuel industries.

CEL Secretary Barbara Echlin said: "I am delighted we can use it at my church St Peter’s, Bexhill on 17 November - the Sunday after Remembrance Sunday."

CEL has more than 800 members throughout the UK and is asking its members to invite their church leaders to say the prayer (or a version of their choosing).