Sweden: Malmo Churches Ring Bells for Greta Thunberg’s Climate Strike

Employees work to hang the new tenor bell at the Orleans cathedral, western France on Nove
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Chris Tomlinson

Churches in the multicultural Swedish city of Malmö collectively rang their bells to support the climate strike movement led by Swedish teen Greta Thunberg.

The bells rang out at lunchtime on Friday as part of the global climate strike that saw 150 separate demonstrations across Sweden alone, Aftonbladet reports.

Church of Sweden priest Sofia Tunebro commented on the move, saying: “We are all people and regardless of who we are, what we believe in or what position we have, we are in desperate need of the climate and our planet. We talk a lot about protecting creation by protecting man.”

“The climate crisis is an existential crisis where everyone must be involved and contribute,” Tunebro added.

The stunt is not the first time the Church of Sweden has supported a “progressive” political cause. The left-liberal church is well-known to endorse social justice viewpoints within its ranks, including dropping the words “Lord” and “He” when referring to God in 2017.

The changes to the Church Handbook, which had been updated last in 1986, now forces priests to refer to God as “mother” as well as “father” and use neutral pronouns.

Members of the Swedish church have also spoken out against deportations of illegal migrants and bogus asylum seekers, with Malmö priest Per Kristiansson slamming police for raiding a church-sponsored migrant camp holding illegals.

“Formally, they are correct. But we claim that the church must be a protected place for all people, and especially people who for are some reason on the run,” he said at the time.

Priests Peter Englund and Helena Myrstener, also from Malmö, even went so far as to demand the church, along with the rest of Sweden, stop celebrating the country’s National Day, claiming it was “poison.”

“Patriotism has its roots in the patriarchal thinking that celebrates traditional masculinity as strength, competition, inequality, and reduces men to soldiers, and women to mothers. It goes without saying that this does not create good conditions for a world without borders,” the pair said.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com

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