Sound the warning, heed the alarm
David Golding
Date posted: 1 Mar 2024
The prophet Joel commanded the people of his day, 'Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain.' (Joel 2.1)
In our day, reasons for alarm are all too apparent. The average global temperature last year was the hottest ever recorded: 'What we’ve seen with 2023 is off the charts' (Gavin Schmidt, director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute in The Guardian). 'I want you to panic…,' said Greta Thunberg in 2019; now, after last year, no description seems too extreme for even experienced scientists.
earth watch
Climate justice: for the good of all creation
Simon Marsh
Date posted: 1 Jul 2021
‘What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!’
People seeking justice of one kind or another rarely seem to be out of the news these days. Christians should be discerning about which causes we support, but ultimately God is a God who loves justice and who wants us to do the same. As the prophet Micah says: ‘What does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.’ (Mic.6: 8). We should love, care for and support anyone suffering from genuine injustice.
earth watch
Since 1970: 69% gone!
Simon Marsh
Date posted: 1 Dec 2022
One of my favourite children’s books is Nick Butterworth and Mick Inkpens’ Wonderful Earth!
It’s a joyous and beautifully illustrated celebration of the wonder and diversity of creation. And sometimes creation is just gloriously weird; who could forget creatures such as the football fish, the weedy seadragon or the pink fairy armadillo? Wonderful Earth! is in part an imaginative reworking of Psalm 104, which celebrates the greatness of the Creator and His creation. There are wild donkeys quenching their thirst from mountain streams, cedars of Lebanon where the birds nest, hyraxes taking refuge in the crags, lions roaring for their prey and Leviathan frolicking in the vast sea, which teems with creatures beyond number.
Keswick: ‘My conversations online with AI’
Ros Clarke
Date posted: 1 Aug 2023
Have you experimented with ChatGPT or Google Bard? These two extraordinary chatbots based on large language models can have ‘conversations’ about anything and everything.
It is like an interactive form of Wikipedia, a helpline, a travel guide, a review site, and much, much more. The conversations can mimic ordinary human chat to an incredible degree. They were very excited to hear all about my new dog and asked sensible questions, though it was a bit like talking to a child who has just read a book and wants to list all the facts they have learned.
earth watch
Rivers of filth are flowing
Simon Marsh
Date posted: 1 Jun 2023
Is cleanliness next to godliness? Apparently, this phrase may have originated with John Wesley who thought that being a Christian was no excuse for slovenliness.
Although many of us took great care with cleanliness during the pandemic, these days we don’t naturally associate hygiene with being a Christian, despite all the Old Testament laws on cleanliness. Maybe we’re all too aware of Jesus’ condemnation of the Pharisees who were obsessed with the ritual hygiene laws, and have rightly taken to heart the importance of being spiritually clean. Pharisee alert over, that doesn’t mean we should neglect matters of personal or domestic hygiene.
earth watch
Eight million threatened
Simon Marsh
Date posted: 1 Nov 2022
What do Glasgow, Sharm El Sheikh, Kunming, and Montreal have in common? Shipbuilding cities? Exotic holiday destinations? Which is the odd one out, and why do they matter to the future of the planet?
You may remember the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow last year. The follow-up conference will be taking place shortly in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El Sheikh where there will be an assessment of whether countries are doing enough to tackle climate change (almost certainly not, according to the independent think tank Chatham House).
earth watch
Record-breaking climate
Simon Marsh
Date posted: 1 Sep 2021
The British are notorious for talking about the weather. It’s little wonder given that we live on an island which is subject to constantly changing weather systems. In last month’s column I talked about how ready the UK is for a changing climate, and how we are already experiencing hotter, drier summers but also more intense summer rainfall.
No sooner had I emailed my article to en than the world experienced a series of weather extremes which perfectly illustrated this point, so I make no apologies for returning to the subject.
earth watch
Spotting climate error
Simon Marsh
Date posted: 1 Apr 2022
Do you have an EV? No, that’s not shorthand for an Evangelical or even a new English translation of the Bible, it’s an Electric Vehicle.
My recent purchase of an EV has got me pondering, in a strange sort of way, the importance of truth when it comes to creation care.
politics & policy
Get out there, believer...
Tim Farron
Date posted: 1 Dec 2023
A general election is on the horizon. The electoral machine is starting to whir into a frenzy that won’t stop until whenever polling day lands.
Elections mean more than just a reshuffling of politicians or technical adjustments to the nation’s bank account. New governments shape the future. From the big commitments, like tackling the climate crisis, to the small, like promising to save the village post office. Elections are a moment for parties to set out their vision.
earth watch
Creation’s hope: Christ
Simon Marsh
Date posted: 1 Jan 2022
What happened at COP26?
At
the
beginning
of
November,
delegates from every nation
in the world
arrived
in Glasgow
for COP26, the UN
conference on climate change. COPs (in
full, the Conference of the Parties to the
UN Framework Convention on Climate
Change) happen annually but the big ones
are every five years or
so. COP26 was
particularly critical, being
the first major
gathering since the Paris Agreement in 2015;
the first test of whether countries would live
up to their promises on climate change.
‘I thought, wow, that is three seismic events in one year...’
John Woods
Date posted: 1 Oct 2023
Andrew Wilson is based in Eastbourne and serves as the Teaching Pastor at King’s Church London.
Andrew will be familiar to many from his books, including The God of All Things and 1 Corinthians for Today, the Think Theology website, and his regular columns in US magazine, Christianity Today. Our Reviews Editor John Woods was pleased to have the opportunity to chat with Andrew about his latest book Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West, which is now hot off the press from Crossway.
earth watch
Cumbrian coal mine
Simon Marsh
Date posted: 1 Feb 2023
A few weeks before Christmas, controversy exploded in the environmental world when the government gave planning permission for a coalmine in Whitehaven, Cumbria. It would be the first new coalmine in the country in 30 years.
Now the UK would not be what it is today without coal, a bountiful source of concentrated energy which has been exploited since Roman times. Plentiful supplies powered the Industrial Revolution and led to the creation of close-knit mining communities from the South Wales Valleys to the Clyde.
legal eye
Worried by the new Police Act? You should be
Nicola Laver
Date posted: 1 Jul 2022
Noisy and disruptive protests are, frankly, a nuisance to us all. At the time of writing, the prospect of serious disruption for many rail passengers with the planned June’s rail strikes is bad enough, but at least travellers can plan ahead and take a different route (or drive, if they can afford the fuel).
But try driving through a busy city and finding the road blocked with climate change protesters chained to their vehicles – all in a good cause, of course; but creating not merely a public nuisance but serious disruption.
earth watch
Are you ready for the future?
Simon Marsh
Date posted: 1 Aug 2021
Are you ready for the future? Pose that question to a Christian and I guess they will immediately start thinking of getting ready for the return of the Lord Jesus – a good reaction to have, but not quite what I had in mind. Let me put it this way: before that day comes, are you ready for the planet’s future?
I work in nature conservation, but I’m also a chartered town planner (yes, it is a slightly weird combination, but that’s another story). Town planners are in the business of looking to the future. They make plans for ten or 20 years ahead and even longer. It’s an uncertain endeavour. They have to carefully look at the evidence before making decisions, but also build in flexibility and regular review.
Jesus’ return and green issues today
Dave Gobbett
Date posted: 1 Dec 2022
The 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, widely known as COP27, has just been running in Egypt. In a timely new book* Dave Gobbett of Highfields Church Cardiff helps us think through a Biblical perspective on the environment. This extract explains how Jesus’ return might impact our thinking on this issue.
‘We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him … The Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever’ (1 Thess. 4:14, 16).
earth watch
Birds on a high wire
Simon Marsh
Date posted: 1 Feb 2022
In recent months, while the world’s attention has been on what we’re doing to the climate, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that – even aside from climate change – the rest of creation’s in a bad way as well.
We don’t always realise this. Over the last few decades we’ve been fed a diet of Attenborough documentaries which show an amazing world, but one seemingly untouched by human hand. Only recently this has begun to change. Scientists refer to the ‘shifting baseline syndrome’ as each successive generation of people accepts the world they see around them as normal, without realising how much nature has been lost in the past.
‘Fanatical arrogance of men of science?’ Selective, alarmist and dystopian
By Prof. Keith R. Fox
Date posted: 1 Sep 2022
‘I have never seen Francis Crick in a modest mood’ wrote James Watson at the start of his book The Double Helix.
Crick may well have said the same about Watson because these two scientists were certainly not known for their humility. And surely it is no surprise that some scientists are arrogant, just as are some sportspersons, some teachers, some doctors, some pastors and church leaders, and so on. Humans are not perfect and one way of being imperfect is arrogance. Scientists are no exception – they exhibit the same range of imperfections as society at large.
The promise of unfailing ‘seedtime and harvest’: a cover for climate complacency?
David Golding
Date posted: 1 Feb 2022
New figures just released by the European Climate Agency Copernicus reveal the last seven years as the world’s hottest on record.
We declare clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency and that the world’s people face untold suffering due to the climate crisis unless there are major transformations to global society. (Article in Bioscience endorsed by 11,000 scientists from 153 nations, 5 November 2019)
earth watch
Climate ‘crisis’? Really?
Simon Marsh
Date posted: 1 Oct 2020
Recently the Environment Minister for Northern Ireland, Edwin Poots, got into a spot of bother for saying publicly that his department didn’t believe there is a climate crisis.
He later retracted his words and his chief civil servant had to apologise for giving the minister a misleading briefing. He really does think there’s a climate crisis, a view also shared by governments and many local councils across the country who have declared a ‘climate emergency’. So that’s all right then.
John Stott’s ‘new’ book: a heartfelt environmental plea
Thomas Creedy
Date posted: 1 Nov 2021
In 2011 IVP published what was intended by the author to be his final book – summing up decades of prayer, study and ministry. John Stott’s The Radical Disciple, ten years on, continues to provoke, encourage and inspire.
Stott’s own purpose in that book was ‘to consider eight characteristics of Christian discipleship which are often neglected and yet deserve to be taken seriously’. One of these was ‘creation care’, an issue which is increasingly coming to our attention and the focus of the world. With the Stott centenary running from April 2021 to April 2022, IVP took the decision to publish John Stott on Creation Care, a definitive collection of Stott’s writings on the topic, carefully compiled from throughout his ministry. Sam Berry and Laura Yoder, in their own way, have carefully curated tens of thousands of Stott’s own words, adding interpretation and context, to produce a vital new book.
earth watch
After COP26: eco-anxiety?
Simon Marsh
Date posted: 1 Dec 2021
What keeps you awake at night? Perhaps it’s the threat of coronavirus. When I was a teenager, it was the threat of nuclear armageddon that made me anxious.
These days it’s ‘eco-anxiety’ that’s likely to be a worry, especially for children and young people. Eco-anxiety is the chronic fear of environmental doom; it’s not a medical diagnosis, but according to the British Medical Journal, reported in the Guardian, recognition of eco-anxiety and its complex psychological effects is increasing, as is its disproportionate impact on children and young people. According to the same report, a 2020 survey of child psychiatrists in England showed that more than half (57%) are seeing children and young people distressed about the climate crisis and the state of the environment.
earth watch
Would you break the law?
Simon Marsh
Date posted: 1 Nov 2021
Have you ever been on a protest march?
I’m not a natural protester, although there have been a couple of occasions when I joined a climate march. Most recently (before the pandemic) it was in support of a youth climate march in Cambridge. It ended on King’s Parade where many of the marchers lay down on the lawn in front of King’s College. I confess that my respect for authority was such that I kept off the grass.
defending our faith
Job, a witness for today
Chris Sinkinson
Date posted: 1 Nov 2021
In the midst of Covid, brutal murders,
energy crises, and the impact of climate
change, no doubt many of us are drawn to
the Book of Job as a work that expresses
what it means to live in a world of sorrow.
For apologetics and sermons it provides
a context to deal honestly and directly with
tragedy and pain.
earth watch
A story of hope
Simon Marsh
Date posted: 1 Jun 2022
It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the enormity
of the climate and ecological crisis.
‘Eco-anxiety’ may not be a medically-recognised condition, but
it’s
something
many people can relate to, especially if they
care deeply about
the natural world. It’s
important for Christians not only to share
the hope we have in Jesus Christ, but stories
of hope we can experience
in the world
about us. Indeed,
secular communicators
recognise that always harping on about the
bad stuff only puts people off taking action,
and so organisations working to care for
creation need to tell positive stories (while
not ignoring the bad news).