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 organisation has teamed up with Christian Aid and the 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 and across the globe.
