This morning Operation Noah and Christian Climate Action delivered two giant Valentine’s Day cards to the Church of England and Methodist Church, asking the Churches to break up with fossil fuels in 2015 to show their love for creation.
This is the first of a number of actions calling on the Church to divest that are taking place around Global Divestment Day this week.
The cards were filled with messages from Christians asking the Churches to disinvest for the love of all the things they care about that are threatened by climate change. Many people asked the Church to ‘invest in the future and not the past; the Kingdom of God and not the fossil fuel industry’, and urged Church investors to fulfil their ‘moral and ethical duty to lead the way in forging a new economy’. Others spoke of their family and friends: ‘disinvest for the love of my two-year-old grandson who loves creation and will grow up in a world which is unrecognisable from today’.
We delivered the cards to two members of the Church of England General Synod, which will debate disinvestment from fossil fuels later this year, and a member of the Methodist Church’s ethical investment advisory committee, which is currently reviewing the ethics of the Church’s investments in fossil fuels. Collectively the Churches have more than £100 million directly invested in fossil fuel companies.
This evening Christians will gather again outside the Church of England General Synod at a prayer vigil for the climate, calling on Synod to vote for disinvestment later this year.
We hope that the Churches will show their love for our wonderful planet and all its people this Valentine’s Day by committing to disinvest from the companies that plan to burn enough fossil fuels to push our climate into catastrophic levels of change. Please pledge to invest in creation not destruction in 2015!
Notes
If you’d like to come along to the prayer vigil this evening, see Christian Climate Action’s Facebook event page here.