Church Bells ring for Climate Change

Tuesday, 20 October 2009 08:52

In Denmark, bishops and priests are encouraging all churches to ring their bells during the UN climate summit in Copenhagen.  

Green Church (Grøn Kirke) and a climate group under the Council of the Danish Churches are calling on all Danish churches to ring their bells 350 times on Sunday 13 December at 15.00 to call for “alert, hope and action.”

The ringing of the bells is encouraged by, amongst others, the bishops in Roskilde, Peter Fischer-Møller, who stresses that the ringing must happen in connection with a service or prayers and be approved by the local bishop.

Bishop: It is about our future

However, far from all agree with Peter Fischer-Møller and the proposal has stirred a debate in Denmark. Chairwoman of the national parliament of Denmark’s Church Committee, Britta Schall Holberg (the Liberals), believes that the priests and bishops have gone insane suggesting something like this. She describes it as abuse to use the church in the climate debate.

“The climate is not a political matter. It is about the planet and our joint future, which we, as a church, ought to relate to,” says Peter Fischer-Møller.

Peter Balslev-Clausen is the rural dean in Helsingør and assigned as a coadjutor professor at the department for church history at the University of Copenhagen. According to him, except from royal funerals, catastrophes and the liberation of Denmark on 5 May 1945, the church bells have never been rung for anything else but to mark grief or joy. “The planned ringing of the bells is clearly a political statement that takes the gospel as hostage in a matter that should be solved politically and technically,” he says. He states that one should be vary careful not to mix religion with the climate debate.

Clergyman Martin Ishøy is one of the priests who want to let the church bells ring for the climate.

“The climate threat is also an ethical and religious challenge,” he says.

Source: Jyllands-Posten