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.
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.'
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.
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.
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.