The Student Christian Movement of Canada heartily and fully endorses the aims and objectives of the Global Climate Strike, Sept 20-27, 2019.
We call upon all people to participate in this interruption to our daily routine of life and work. Climate Change threatens to permanently disrupt ‘life as usual’, but students are being educated for a world that will not exist when they graduate. Climate Change is already interrupting life for people around the world. We must respond.
We first express gratitude to the Indigenous nations around the world, especially in Turtle Island where the Student Christian Movement of Canada does its work. We name the ways that Christianity has supported Imperialism and Capitalism to attack Indigenous nationhood with genocidal intent. We acknowledge that violence done against the land is also violence against the Indigenous Peoples of the land.
SCM Canada recognises the need for complete truth telling, restitution, and the return of land, as essential precursors to ‘reconciliation’. We recognise the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as one of the tools that international Indigenous communities have offered as a minimum expectation. We believe that decolonization is a process that will liberate Settler society from violence and lack of vision.
We are grateful to the Indigenous Peoples, to scientists, to prophets, mystics, and people who live on the land who have been warning us, calling us to our responsibilities. We reject the ways that your voices have been silenced, mocked, shamed or sidelined.
We are grateful for the people of all faiths and none who share this calling and offer their wisdom. Those of us who profess the Christian faith have many ways to express and explore our deep grief and culpability in the centuries of ecological violence that have brought us to this moment. We invite others to share in this necessary journey with us, building an ecosystem of spiritual resiliency for the times ahead.
We are grateful to all leaders of faith who support this effort, and we urge others to do the same. ‘People of Faith for the Climate Strike’ Sign on Letter.
We commend professors, lecturers, teachers, and other educational facilitators who work to make it possible for students to participate in this strike and in additional efforts to raise consciousness and empower the necessary actions.
We commend organizers, activists and land defenders who are thinking through what needs to be done, not just in the upcoming climate strike, but in the weeks and months to come.
We commend the migrants and refugees, the international community, the advocates for those most affected by Climate Change, and everyone who rejects the false solution of imposing violent, human-made borders to shut out these communities. We acknowledge that Climate Justice is also Migrant Justice.
One day of a strike is not enough to overturn the global society that has raised profit like a sword over our heads and over the value of all living systems and beings.
Yet every barrier that this strike overcomes is one less barrier to that change, that ‘great turning’, the way forward. We believe that this time of urgency is a time for careful, deliberate, passionate action.
May hearts and minds be transformed. May the society that imposes borders and categories on lands and peoples come to repentance. May economics that obscure truth and justice be abandoned.
This is our living prayer as followers of Jesus in this time and place, and we offer it as to the chorus of voices calling for change.
Amen.