Join Us for the Lutheran Wave of Prayer for Climate Justice

We hope you will join us on March 11, 2021, alongside peoples and communities of all faith backgrounds, to raise awareness about climate justice. With these prayers and opportunities for education, advocacy, and action, we hope to empower and embolden our communities to live out our faithful call to care for Creation.

As part of the Greenfaith Sacred People, Sacred Earth Day of Action, we invite you and your community to join in the following prayer at 11am in your time zone on March 11. Consider sharing the prayer on social media, joining in with communities around the world.

We encourage you to use this Day of Action also as a time to begin conversation around how your community will choose to live out climate justice and other forms of environmental justice, including during the week of Earth Day April 16 – 23rd.  Please embrace  this month to learn more about local, national, and global movements to enact climate justice, and join in those efforts.   Below is the prayer and a set of links to resources for further action.

Faithfully joined in prayer,

Global Refuge
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA)
Lutherans Restoring Creation (LRC)
Lutheran World Federation (LWF)
Center for Climate Justice and Faith of Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary (PLTS)

Our Prayer

Creator God, all things live, and move, and have their being in you. We praise you, God, for the Earth that sustains life. Our demand for growth, and an endless cycle of production and consumption  are exhausting our world. The forests are leached, the topsoil erodes, the fields  fail, the deserts advance, the seas acidify, the storms intensify. Humans and  animals are forced to flee in search of security.

You made us in your image, with power and responsibility to seek the good for all in Earth’s great web of life. Guide us and empower us, to carry out our responsibilities and exercise our power to support all your good creation.

We gather in the image of the Creator  who is a community of love. 

We gather in the name of the Redeemer  who reconciles all of creation. 

We gather in the presence of the Life Giver  who inspires new life and renews it. 

(adapted from the resources Light for Katowice and Season of Creation 2020) 

Further Resources

• Lutherans Restoring Creation:  Earth Day Service w/Bishop Eaton on Good Shepherd Sunday April 25th
• Interfaith Power & Light’s Climate Action Week: Sacred Ground
• Congregational Self-Organizing Kit, Covenant with Creation & Action Plan Guide
• Lutheran World Federation/Climate Justice
  • Ecotheology and Season of Creation: https://www.lutheranworld.org/content/ecotheological-studies
  • Climate justice resources: https://www.lutheranworld.org/climate-justice
• ELCA/Social Statements on Creation, Climate Advocacy Resources, Connections to other ELCA Ministries
• Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary’s Center for Climate Justice and Faith with its Certificate in Climate Justice and Faith.
• “River of Life” – ELCA World Hunger’s water-focused Vacation Bible School for 2021 (at-home version available March 2021); also available: “God’s Good Creation,” a creation- and animal-focused Vacation Bible School program for children
• “God, Migration and the Climate Crisis,” Global Refuge’ webinar addressing the following questions:  “Where does faith fit into the understanding of climate change and humanity’s role in it? How can faith communities mobilize to help those affected by climate displacement? What can people of faith do to protect our planet and those living on it?”

Learn more about climate migration at the Global Refuge Climate Migration Hub.