Valentine’s Day Preach-In on Climate Change
Over one thousand congregations and 350,000 people of faith are expected to participate in Interfaith Power & Light’s National Preach-In on Climate Change this Valentine’s Day weekend. The theme of the 2014 Preach-In is “Doing our Part”, and congregations all over the country will be doing their part by using energy more efficiently and greening their facilities to help curb climate change and protect our children’s future. The Preach-In comes just as the EPA prepares to implement first-ever limits on carbon pollution from power plants. Clergy and lay people will use the chance to speak out strongly in support of the new rules. They will be sending valentines post cards to their senators asking them to love Creation and “do their part” by supporting the new climate safeguards.
God calls us to love one another, and the president stated during his second inauguration speech that the United States “will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.” “The religious community all over the country is doing its part – now we need our representatives in Washington to do theirs,” said The Rev. Sally Bingham, IPL president and founder. “The extreme weather events we have been experiencing make it clear that action on climate change is more urgent than ever.”
In addition to calling for support for the new EPA rules, participants will be screening the film, Chasing Ice, which deploys revolutionary time-lapse cameras to capture multi-year records of the world’s changing glaciers. The hauntingly beautiful videos compress years into seconds, and capture ancient mountains of ice in motion as they disappear.
Interfaith Power & Light is a national network of faith communities who believe global warming is a moral issue that people of faith are called to address. Caring for Creation and for the most vulnerable members of our community are common tenets in all major religions and IPL draws on that commonality to bring diverse faith groups together in service of stewardship of Creation. IPL has 40 state affiliates and reaches 15,000 congregations on a regular basis. Your congregation can take part in the Preach-In via free downloadable materials available at www.preachin.org, or order low-cost pre-printed materials including the Valentine postcards to send to senators. The program website includes sample sermons from many faith traditions, as well as a national map showing where and what events are taking place. Please join us.