It was a nice Sunday afternoon. I was eating soup and a chicken with potatoes was roasting in our family oven. The TV was on, the Formula 1 season is over, so we were watching some religious news. Between the problems of Croatian missioners in Zimbabwe and the death of Serbian Patriarch Pavle, there was a news „Church bells will ring for Climate change“ .

I almost choke with the cream mushroom soup.

I am one of those people who was indoctrinated that „mancentric positioning“ of people regarding the environment has its deep root in „mancentric positioning“ of people in Bible.

Let me explain, if you ever start environmental philosophy and if you reach Christianity you can't skip this quote:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the cattle, and over all the wild animals and all the creatures that crawl on the ground.”

What can I tell you except „mancentric“ in its full meaning. After this it is hard to argue that one of the biggest pollutants are India and China, countries where Christianity is minor religion. Or you can put forward thousand of examples from the life of Saint Francis of Assisi and his vision of “brother wolf”. That construction with „domination over...“ stays hard as a rock.

In today's world those accusation are not welcome. The Catholic church with noticeable amount of 'run away sheep' from the heard, sex scandals does not need that „rediscovering of one more sin“. „Not caring for nature, not going green“ is relatively harmless when some liberal PhD babble about this in a fancy magazine in the late 60s ^(1). However when it starts to be quoted popularly in the new millennium, when it becomes so loud that even a cashier in a Czech supermarket speaks about how „she found peace, harmonizing with nature through Krishna and her yoga instructor“, well than you have to do something.

So among other things you put solar panels on the Pope's roof, print leaflets with notes how to recycle, or make the Catholic coalition on climate change ⁽²⁾ where you start discussing environmental degradation. Maybe we are made to dominate over nature but lets define domination. Does it mean to exploit other God creatures or to 'sustainable use them' for our purposes.

Bishop conference was closer to this second opinion. And you can interpret the Bible as you wish. An argument easily becomes a contra argument. Would God be pleased with our destruction of the planet, his mighty creation, that he generously allowed us to use. I don't think so.

And it seams that today not just the Vatican but the whole World Council of Churches shares my opinion. It is a whole bunch of 348 Protestant, Orthodox and Anglican churches representing around 560 million Christians in 110 countries ⁽³⁾.

So as they stated on December 13th 2009 Sunday, at 3.00 pm local time, midway through the UN summit Sunday bells, drums, gongs or whatever their tradition offers are going to ring as call to action and prayer on global warming. By ringing 350 times, participating churches will symbolize the 350 parts per million that mark the safe upper limit for CO2 in the atmosphere.

Of course there is a question how ethical of Church is to get involved in meter that is political to certain extent. Isn’t it goal to separate state from church, and make religion a private matter of each individual? True…

But than should we stop them from feeding hungry kids in Somalia? At the end it is political and economic problem of Somalia. Or this sounds to cruel for you.

Regarding the fact that climate change a long ago passed frames of just political problem let them ring the bells and hit the drums, maybe all that noise will wake up some last row sleepy politician.