Skip to footer

Tackling climate change through prayer

The recently released United Nations report on climate change is one of both warning and hope. Each of us can let God inspire in us the love, peace of mind, and wisdom that help us play our part in caring for the planet.

Christian Science Perspective audio edition
Loading the player...

This week, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report that conveyed an urgent need to address climate change. Another key takeaway of the report is one of hope: that dire outcomes aren’t inevitable. (For more about the IPCC’s report, check out “Climate report: Hope is not lost, but ‘we need to move faster,’” CSMonitor.com, Aug. 10, 2021.)

We’ve compiled some pieces from The Christian Science Publishing Society’s archives that highlight the value of prayer in tackling climate issues. Within each one you’ll find ideas to inspire your own prayers and actions to improve our environment and nurture hope and healing in the world around us.

“Expanding your footprint in a helpful way” explores how expressing our God-given goodness enables each of us to contribute to the improvement of our environment.

“The whole world in His hands” is a short (5-minute) podcast on how we can face fears of climate change with spiritual poise and a greater expectancy of finding solutions.

In “Caring spiritually for our human environment,” a man shares how a spiritual perspective of nature brought hope for sustainable solutions to environmental issues – and also freed him from recurring pain and breathing difficulties associated with smog in his city.

The author of “Lazarus and the biosphere” explores the relevance of lessons from Jesus’ healing ministry to contemporary environmental problems.

In “Climate change, politics, and prayer,” a former federal policy advisor shares inspiration that played a key role in her work on bipartisan climate change legislation.

“When we have the willingness to cast out of our own thinking sin, fear, even worldly mortal opinions, condemnations, and prophecies,” an engineering professor writes in “A divinely scientific solution to climate change,” “then our consciousness – now reflecting the divine Mind – can bring real change through our prayers, empowered as they are by our reflected love for humanity and our earth.”

The author of “How can we pray for our environment?” considers how an understanding of God’s care for His universe helps us become more open to solutions to environmental issues.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Tackling climate change through prayer
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/A-Christian-Science-Perspective/2021/0812/Tackling-climate-change-through-prayer
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe