Multifaith week of climate action
From the 14th to the 24th of September people of all faiths around Australia will publicly call for a clear plan to get us out of this climate crisis and move boldly and rapidly away from coal and gas and towards a sustainable future.
How to get involved
Come to a multi faith action at an iconic place of worship
People from every kind of faith background as well as senior faith leaders will hold media events at high-profile places of worship around the country on Tuesday September 17.
These events will involve the unveiling of giant banners on these buildings or in some cases large billboards out the front calling for the the kind of real change that is actually needed, such as an end to new coal and gas projects. Please see below for the full list of things we will be calling for.
We want these to show the full strength of feeling in faith communities, so please ask as many people as possible from your congregation or networks to come along.
Find the event nearest you at www.arrcc.org.au/flagships
Put up a banner up at your place of worship
All over Australia, places of worship will be putting up smaller banners. They will look something like the one below.
For all of the details about how to order one and what messages we'd like on them, please see www.arrcc.org.au/banners
We're asking that the banners should go up a few days before the week of action and ideally remain up afterwards. Hopefully, they can also be displayed in the lead-up to the 2025 Federal Election. Our suggested banners are nonpartisan.
Help get the word out
We would love your help contacting a few faith communities to let them know this is happening.
We have things you can use to invite people in your existing networks to get involved in your part of the country:
- A two-page information sheet with everything you need to know about the week of action locally. Great for emailing people.
- A simple A4 black and white poster that you and others can put up at your place of worship
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A short blurb for newsletters (e.g. the one that goes out to your congregation).
We can also provide you with lists of people to call in your part of the country. These are ARRCC supporters and will be sympathetic and interested! Even a few people doing this makes a really big difference.
To make it easy we can set you up with:
- A calling guide. This includes a text message to send before you call so that people know you’re not a scam caller.
- A follow up email.
If you’re up for this, please let us know by filling out the form at the bottom of this page and we will get in touch.
Facebook
You can also spread the word online. Here are the Facebook events for the flagship actions in:
Please invite your friends using the ‘invite’ button rather than just sharing the event. That way specific people get a notification that you’re inviting them to be there. By contrast, if you simply share the Facebook event people may or may not notice it in their newsfeed.
Sermons, services and rituals
We’re asking religious leaders to give sermons or khutbahs at services dedicated to climate action either in the lead-up to the Week of Action or during it. Suggested templates will be made available on this page.
Make some noise
We will have some great video content available on September 17 as well and we need as many people as possible to amplify the message on social media.
What are we calling for?
Faith communities everywhere will be calling on the leaders of both major parties to:
- Put an end to new coal and gas projects
- Outline their plan to move away from coal and gas towards clean energy, and provide a date by which they will phase them out completely
- Get public money out of those industries
- Provide serious financial assistance to our neighbours in the Pacific to keep their heads above water.
- Support a proposed global Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty to phase out fossil fuels
- Make a massive historic investment in clean energy that will create jobs in the process
- Love our nearest neighbours by getting behind their calls for a fossil fuel free Pacific
- Fully respect First Nations peoples’ rights to protect Country starting by amending the Native Title Act to remove flaws that favour mining interests over Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ rights and provide capacity for Traditional Owners to enact free, prior and informed consent with capacity to refuse mining. Also to remove power to compulsorily acquire native title lands and extinguish native title rights.
- Replace fossil fuels with renewable energy and not nuclear, which could not be deployed sufficiently quickly to address this urgent crisis, and which has its own moral problems.
Why are we doing this?
We love this shared home we call Earth. For many people of faith, it is sacred. And we want to hand it on to our kids in all its beauty and wonder, and for them to be safe. Yet governments everywhere are not doing nearly enough, and that includes ours. The world has just agreed at the most recent climate summit in Dubai to move away from fossil fuels.
Yet neither major party in Australia has a plan to do so, or a date to do it by. We’ve also seen the Government, which has made a good start in many ways, unveil a gas strategy that would be utterly dangerous, as well as announcements from the Opposition that would effectively take Australia out of the Paris Agreement and add billions of tonnes of CO2 from gas.
Everywhere, we are seeing unprecedented climate impacts and climate-fuelled storms, fires, droughts, and wars. Millions of people are being horribly affected. Here in Australia, we’re seeing more and more floods, bushfires and droughts.
As people of conscience from many different faith and spiritual traditions, we know this is wrong, and that it’s time to take action. We need our elected leaders to agree that this is bigger than politics - and that it’s urgent. This is a chance to unite for what we love. And we will do so from Perth to Cairns and Hobart to Tin Can Bay.
Who are we sending our message to?
We will ask all of these things of both the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton. We will also have a specific message for Peter Dutton asking him to stop backing nuclear energy, which would take far too long to build and which would cost a fortune, and to get behind renewable energy instead which is both cheap and available now.
Requests of iconic places of worship
Giant banners or billboards
We’re calling on large, iconic places of worship either to hang a huge banner from the side of your building or put up a large billboard out the front.
We can provide information about costs, sizes and, in the case of banners, free help from expeirienced climbers in putting it up.
All of the banners and billboards will be publicised to the media on Tuesday September 17.
Media attention
We'll be asking senior faith leaders to attend the multi-faith services outside these iconic places of worship in front of the giant banners, and then speak to the media. As mentioned above, there will be crowds of people of all faiths attending too.
We would like these events to be attractive to the media and coordinated, so that we can draw the attention of the broader public to our message. It would be good if local federal MPs and candidates could be invited to these events.
Rituals to bless the banners or billboards
On the day that the media is invited, we're asking you to hold a simple multi-faith ritual to bless the banner or billboard.
More information
For everything involved, please contact Tejopala Rawls on [email protected] or 0498 475 056.
This is the first step on the road to the election
The Week of Action will take place roughly eight months before the likely date for the next federal election. This is our chance as communities of faith to make it clear that we need all parties to head into that election with a serious plan to move away from fossil fuels. We will continue to press for this in the weeks and months leading up to it.
We will be addressing the leaders of both major parties. We are not partisan, and we need this to be above politics.
Find out more
There will also be up-to-date information over the coming weeks on this webpage including resources for you to hold a service about the week of action in the period leading up to it to build support in your congregation.
Register your interest
If you're keen to help to make this week of action a huge success, please fill out the form below to tell us what you're up for.
