Exact matches only
//  Main  //  Menu

 
☰︎ Menu | 🔍︎ Search  //  Main  //   🖖︎ Prayers & Praxes   //   📅︎ Prayers for Civic Days on Civil Calendars   //   International Civil Calendar   //   Earth Day (22 April)


Earth Day (22 April)

This is an archive of prayers, pledges, and song composed for, or relevant to, Earth Day, an annual event on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First held on 22 April 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated globally by EARTHDAY.ORG (formerly Earth Day Network). In 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco, peace activist John McConnell proposed a day to honor the Earth and the concept of peace, to first be observed on 21 March 21 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. This day of nature’s equipoise was later sanctioned in a proclamation written by McConnell and signed by Secretary General U Thant at the United Nations. A month later, United States Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed the idea to hold a nationwide environmental teach-in on 22 April 1970. He hired a young activist, Denis Hayes, to be the National Coordinator. Nelson and Hayes renamed the event “Earth Day”. Denis and his staff grew the event beyond the original idea for a teach-in to include the entire United States. More than 20 million people poured out on the streets, and the first Earth Day remains the largest single-day protest in human history. On the 20th anniversary of Earth Day in 1990, Hayes took it international and organized events in 141 nations.

If you have composed a prayer for the Earth, please share it here.


Looking for something else?

For prayers composed in response to (or in anxious anticipation of) ecotastrophes, please visit here.

For additional prayers composed for the Earth, our collective home and life-support system, please visit here.


“A veritable universal pledge of allegiance to this planet and to its peoples,” by Adlai E. Stevenson Ⅱ (9 July 1965)

תְּפִלָּה לְמַעַן תֵּבֵל וּמְלוֹאָהּ | Prayer for the Preservation of the Environment, by Richard Shavei-Tzion

תפילה לעולם החי | Prayer for the Living Earth, by Rabbi Katy Z. Allen

Oración por nuestra tierra | תְּפִילָת הָאָרֶץ | A Prayer for Our Earth, an ecumenical prayer by Pope Francis, translated and adapted by Rabbi David Seidenberg (neohasid.org)

Prayer for the Earth, Air, Water, Fire of our Planet in Memory of Barry Commoner, by Rabbi Arthur Waskow

A Prayer for the Earth, by Rabbi David Seidenberg (neohasid.org)

Pledge of Allegiance to the Family of Earth, by Bella Abzug & Mim Kelber (Women’s Foreign Policy Council, 1989)

The Global Pledge of Allegiance, by Edna A. Maisner-Reitz (1988)

Earth Pledge, by an Unknown Author (Global Education Associates, ca. 1980)