Wildfires: Climate change is ‘here & now’
en staff
Date posted: 23 Jan 2025
Leading climate scientist and evangelical Christian Katharine Hayhoe says the wildfires causing devastation in California are a stark reminder of the reality of climate change today.
Hayhoe, currently Chief Scientist for The Nature Conservancy, a non-profit international charitable organisation, says Los Angeles County was ‘tinder dry’ after receiving only 0.16 inches of rain since last May and experiencing ‘an unusually warm summer’.
After COP 29: evangelical scientist claims ‘history on our side’
Emily Pollok
Date posted: 22 Nov 2024
‘Gravity, history, and progress’ make the drive to clean and green energy unstoppable, says leading evangelical climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe as the COP 29 gathering concluded.
The 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference began on 11 November in Baku, Azerbaijan and ended on 22 November.
Christian climate scientists speak out
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Sep 2023
The summer heatwave across the northern hemisphere has seen almost uncontrollable forest fires break out from Canada to China, Algeria to Greece, as soaring, record temperatures hit the high-40°sC.
But as soon as the flames were doused, the question on many people’s minds was – to what extent are these record thermometer levels the result of human-made climate change?
Climate hope – if promises are kept, say evangelicals
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Jan 2024
Even as it opened, the UN Climate Change Conference COP 28 was making headlines for all the wrong reasons.
The BBC revealed claims that hosts, the United Arab Emirates, were planning to make oil and gas deals with 15 other countries at the event. Despite that, many Christian groups were represented there, some as part of the Christian Climate Observers Program, a non-denominational Christian presence advocating for God’s creation. All are, perhaps, encouraged by the fact that COP28 for the first time featured a ‘faith pavilion’. Evangelicals Now spoke to four leading Christian environmental organisations about their hopes and fears for the conference.
Seek to be peacemakers - and not partisans, US evangelicals are urged
en staff
Date posted: 4 Nov 2024
US evangelicals are being urged to act as peacemakers rather than partisans, as the drama of the 2024 Presidential election result unfolds.
Writing in The Times in the UK, leading evangelical scientist and author Dr Francis Collins, who led the Human Genome Project from 1993, urges: 'Take up the mantle of a peacemaker; you will be blessed; you may even be called a child of God.'
California wildfires: ‘God is at work in disaster’
Milla Ling-Davies
Date posted: 23 Jan 2025
As wildfires continue to blaze across Southern California, razing homes, schools and churches to the ground, local churches have been pulling together to lament, pray and provide relief – seeing God at work amid the tragedy.
The first and largest wildfire in California broke out on 7 January in the Pacific Palisades and was quickly followed by four more that same week – in Eaton, Hurst, Lidia and Kenneth. With 100 mph winds whipping up the fires, churches across the region reported extensive damage.
letter from Morocco
A land of physical drought and spiritual thirst
David Baker
Date posted: 3 Dec 2024
‘Are you ready to find out everything there is to know about Marrakech?’ our guide asked us, with well-practiced faux enthusiasm?
We assented with as much vigour as we could muster, given the early start to the tour of this historic Moroccan city.
‘Evangelicals for Harris’ in late push for votes - but face struggle as vote looms
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 28 Oct 2024
Although many US evangelicals are backing Donald Trump in the upcoming presidential election. Democratic nominee Kamala Harris has supporters among them too.
‘Evangelicals for Biden’ has rebranded as ‘Evangelicals for Harris’ in an effort to mobilise Christian voters for her campaign. The group argues that her faith ‘shines through in her clear Christian values displayed in her unwavering support for American families.’
Women’s group flourishes in Nigeria
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 17 Jul 2024
On a warm afternoon, the ululation, drumming and singing of a choir of two-dozen women can be heard across Gan Gora, a tiny village in Nigeria. ‘We are happy you arrived safely,’ they sing in Hausa, welcoming visitors to the community branch of the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) in Zangon Kataf, Kaduna. One song is from the book of Habakkuk: ‘Oh Lord, how long must I call for help, but you do not listen?’
The Guardian has reported how about 100 women dance regularly, including Rifkatu Dauda Kigbu, 53, hobbling on a fractured knee. This is a weekly meeting of zumunta mata, a fellowship of married women. Their visitors are zumunta mata members from an ECWA in Gonin Gora, a Kaduna suburb.
COP26: Christians demand action
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Nov 2021
Evangelicals are prominent among church
leaders demanding change in the run-up to
the COP26 climate change conference. This
will take place in Glasgow from 31 October
to 12 November and will be attended by
190 world leaders.
At COP21 in Paris in 2015, for the first
time, every country agreed to work together
to limit global warming to, ideally, 1.5 degrees;
to adapt to the impacts of a changing climate
and to make money available to do so. Under
this Paris Agreement they were mandated
to present how they would achieve this at
COP26.
Africa famine alert: ‘I failed to sleep when people came hungry…’ – pastor
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 May 2024
Christians and churches across vast tracts of southern Africa are bracing themselves for famine following a crippling drought. Across the region farmers suffered the driest February in decades. It has wiped out crops, led to power shortages, and now threatens to send already expensive food prices surging even higher.
In February, many parts of Zambia, Botswana and Zimbabwe had the lowest recorded rainfall since 1981. The dry spell, blamed on the El Niño weather system, is but the latest indicator of how severely Africa is being impacted by extreme weather events, which many scientists say are becoming increasingly frequent and severe due to man-made climate change.
‘Why, why are we erasing their voices?’
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Aug 2023
The mass slaughter of Christians across parts of Nigeria, violence which has already claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced over two million people, is almost entirely fuelled by Islamist extremism.
This is the stark keynote conclusion of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom of Religion or Belief (APPG FoRB)’s new report Nigeria: Unfolding Genocide? Three Years On, which has just been launched in parliament. It features contributions from a range of 47 Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs), think tanks, journalists, academics and charities.
news in brief
USA: SBC not to ban women pastors
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has just failed to achieve the two-thirds majority vote needed to place a ban in its constitution on women being church pastors.
Issues impacting women are prominent at this year’s annual meeting of the SBC, taking place in Indianapolis. Church leaders also approved a resolution condemning in vitro fertilisation. The SBC is the largest Protestant denomination in the US, with over 50,000 churches and over 14 million members, and is now a serious political force in the country.
letter from Australia
From fires to floods
David Robertson
Date posted: 1 Aug 2022
Australia is experiencing a new government and a new Prime Minister.
As predicted before the recent election, the Labor party won and its leader, Anthony Albanese, was duly elected PM. It is noticeable and a reason for thanksgiving that there was no dispute about the result and the former PM, Scott Morrison, handed over the reins of power before all the votes were counted!
Climate deal lacks cash, says evangelical
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Jan 2023
A key pact made at the COP27 Climate
Summit
in Egypt doesn’t have enough
money behind it to make it work, according
to an evangelical climate expert.
Andy Atkins, chief executive of green
Christian organisation A Rocha, said of the
‘Loss and Damage Agreement’ – designed to
compensate poorer countries suffering from
climate change:
news in brief
Iraq: early inscriptions found in Mosul
Archaeologists restoring the historic Syriac Orthodox Mar Thomas Church in Mosul, Iraq, which was badly damaged by Islamic State fighters, have discovered about a dozen ancient relics and parchments.
The relics include six stone containers with Aramaic inscriptions, some relating to important figures in the early church. One refers to Simon ‘The Zealot’, one of Christ’s disciples; another mentions Saint Theodore, a Roman soldier born in Corum, Turkey, in the third century, who was beheaded for having converted to Christianity.
Hunger emergency: Christians respond
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Aug 2022
Even before the invasion of Ukraine, many of the poorest nations of the world were suffering the catastrophic impact of climate change.
Earlier this year the island of Madagascar, for example, experienced its ‘worst drought’ in 40 years. UNICEF says half a million under-fives will be ‘acutely malnourished’ this year; in the south, where 80% of the people depend on agriculture to survive, the UN World Food Programme estimates that half of the population now faces hunger. The drought has decimated crops and dried up water sources, resulting in little sustenance for communities and cattle. The pandemic, deforestation and Madagascar’s cyclone season have further exacerbated their woes. According to UNWFP, this could become ‘the first famine to be caused by climate change’.
Indonesia: Primate brings gospel to interfaith summit
Chris Sugden
Date posted: 1 Dec 2022
The Archbishop of Nigeria, Henry Ndukuba, has told a new international platform of religious leaders how many in the Global South are ‘finding in Jesus Christ hope for living and eternity’.
But the Primate also told the R20 (a gathering of leaders from major world religions in the countries of the G20,): ‘Nigeria is now one of the most dangerous countries to be a Christian.’
Christian mountaineer speaks out
en staff
Date posted: 1 Oct 2022
An evangelical mountaineer is encouraging individual believers to take small, seemingly ‘insignificant’ actions to help combat climate change.
Raphael Moser, a mountain guide and sports coach specialising in Alpine routes, was speaking after it emerged glaciers are melting faster and faster.
Evangelicals speak out at COP26
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Dec 2021
Christians have made their presence felt at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.
Many young evangelicals were among the thousands who marched through the city as part of the Fridays For Future movement, inspired by the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who was at the rally. Churches were behind a special handing-in of petition signatures and paper ‘prayer boats’ to the COP presidency.
Afghanistan: Christians flee from cities
Iain Taylor, Release International
Date posted: 1 Nov 2021
The latest reports from Afghanistan reveal
that Christians have been fleeing
the
cities, moving to remote areas to escape
the Taliban. Many Christians who remain
are trapped inside the country, unable to
leave via its now-sealed borders. Some have
received death threats.
Although many Christians managed
to
get out ahead of the Taliban advance, there
are still thought to be several thousand in
Afghanistan. Even if they wanted to leave
they could not, as the borders are strictly
controlled by the Taliban.
After the vote: what next for evangelicals in the US?
(As en went to press, various lawsuits disputing the result were ongoing.)
Gerald Bray reports from Alabama
The coronavirus pandemic has unexpectedly found me in Alabama, where I have enjoyed a front-row seat in the 2020 elections circus.
Nigeria: complex causes,
systematic destruction
All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for International Freedom of Religion or Belief
Date posted: 1 Aug 2020
A report was published on 15 June titled
‘Nigeria: Unfolding Genocide?’
It points out that the violence has claimed
the lives of thousands of people and displaced
hundreds of thousands more. It has caused
untold human and economic devastation and
heightened existing ethno-religious tensions.
Despite the scale of the violence, the conflict
is much less well known internationally than
the ten-year-long Boko Haram insurgency.
Nigeria: who will help us?
World Watch Monitor
Date posted: 1 Feb 2017
Christians in the south of Nigeria are failing to help their persecuted compatriots in the north, according to a veteran humanitarian campaigner, it was reported in late December.
Baroness Caroline Cox, who has made numerous aid missions to the country said: ‘My personal view is that many of those churches are immensely wealthy and I would hope they could do more to help those who are suffering in the north, particularly the internally displaced people who are left. They could work with churches [in the north] who know the needs to reach those most in need. From a Christian point of view, St Paul said that where one part of the Body of Christ suffers, we all suffer. There is an obligation to help our Christian brothers and sisters.’