Churches around the UK have been urged to highlight the plight of persecuted Christians by lighting their buildings in red.
Westminster Abbey and Westminster Cathedral, the iconic Anglican and Catholic focal points in London, will be floodlit in red on November 23. Lord Alton of Liverpool, a Catholic peer and campaigner for Christians in the Middle East said it was something everyone should get behind.
"People have become very frustrated at the failure of government to respond to the plight of Christians, especially in the Middle East, where there is a genocide under way against the ancient church in Syria and Iraq," he told Christian Today.
He told young people to put something red on their Facebook page on November 23 or wear something red to school or work.
"This is something that can be an act of unity standing together with those who have no voice to speak for themselves and whose rights have been trampled on and who have suffered and died for their beliefs," he told Christian Today.
"We who have so many privileges, freedoms and liberties should use those freedoms to speak out for those who don't.
"We who have faith especially have a duty to work for those who are dying and suffering grievously for their faith.
"Surely if a faith is worth dying for, for the rest of us it should be worth living for."
The campaign is organised by the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN). The red symbolises "the blood that has been shed by martyrs all over the world". It comes after the Trevi fountain was also lit up red on 29 April this year in honour of those who died for their faith.
Lord Alton said the joint Catholic-Anglican venture was a "wonderful ecumenical gesture" and told Christian Today Jewish and Muslim leaders would join Christians at a ceremony on November 23. He added that two synagogues had said they would light up their building in "an act of solidarity" with persecution Christians.
"This is something small communities of Christians up and down the country can get involved in."
The Catholic peer has tried to convince the government to recognise ISIS' atrocities against Christians and Yazidis as genocide. But despite a unanimous vote in the House of Commons the foreign office has refused to take action.
"If every parish in the country did the same [lit their buildings] it might at last wake up our political classes to the scale of the suffering," Lord Alton wrote in Catholic Truth Society in August.
