Ahead of the COP26 United Nations climate conference in Glasgow, Christians across Asia, Europe, and North America organized a season of monthly intercessory prayer, gathering from spring through fall of 2021. The campaign was led by former Baptist missionary Lowell Bliss, founder of the mission-and-environment nonprofit Eden's Vigil, together with leaders from the Lausanne/World Evangelical Alliance Creation Care Network, A Rocha International, Youth With A Mission England, Christian Missionary Fellowship International, Tearfund, and Young Evangelicals for Climate Action.
Bliss described the effort as a response to "a type of prayer commensurate to the urgency of the climate crisis," appealing to God to intervene amid what organizers called "this hour of great threat and profound injustice." He hoped evangelicals, charismatics, mainline Protestants, and Catholics alike would join in a united appeal for mercy.
COP26 was convened to review progress under the 2015 Paris Agreement, in which 190 nations committed to progressively deeper cuts to the carbon emissions driving global climate change; the fifth-year review had been delayed a year by COVID-19. Bliss prayed specifically that nations would cut emissions by half by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050, and that governments would bring revised targets to Glasgow that matched the Paris temperature goals.
The article, reported by Chris Hutton, noted a split among American evangelicals on the issue — roughly a quarter share Bliss's level of concern, per Pew Research polling, while others question the evidence or its human causes — but pointed out the picture looks different globally. Chris Elisara, executive director of the WEA's Creation Care Task Force, said European evangelicals are largely not skeptical and are working out a Christian response that both mitigates and adapts to climate change, while believers in places like the Philippines experience floods, droughts, and extreme weather as daily reality rather than debate.
Bliss's own conviction traces to years as a missionary in Varanasi, India, where a close friend died after a mosquito bite linked to polluted water — an experience that convinced him environmental degradation and the wellbeing of "souls and bodies" cannot be separated. The prayer campaign ran alongside a similarly-timed "Million Prayer Mission" launched by activist Peter Fargo, which drew evangelical and mainline churches together for weekly online prayer vigils for creation.
This report was originally published by Chris Hutton in Christianity Today on April 12, 2021; read the full article there.
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