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.
Ten questions with Hannah Mitchell
en staff
Date posted: 8 Sep 2025
Hannah Mitchell is the Children and Youth Worker at Pontrhydyrun Baptist Church, Cwmbran and is a member of the Evangelical Movement of Wales Management Board.
1. How did you become a Christian?
Climate ‘alarmism’
Date posted: 1 Apr 2024
Dear Editor,
I am surprised that David Golding (letters, en February 2024) should resort to describing those holding my opinion as ‘sinfully complacent’. I assure him that I am deeply passionate about this subject and, although I have many faults, being complacent isn’t one of them. For the record, I spent 16 years as a trustee of an evangelical relief agency.
The Cross: Atonement, controversy & victory
Dan Strange
Date posted: 20 Aug 2025
In the last few weeks there's been a flurry of on-line activity over John Mark Comer's comments on Instagram concerning Andrew Remington Rillera's book "Lamb of the Free", writes Dr Dan Strange, Director of the Crosslands Forum.
Comer posted: "One of the most important academic books I've read in years. Next I'll read rebuttals, but this seems to be the final Biblical / exegetical knock out blow to PSA [Penal Substitutionary Atonement]."
Hot topic
Date posted: 1 Oct 2023
Dear Editor,
In response to Simon Marsh’s piece ‘Hot, hot and hotter still’ in September’s en, it is disturbing to see another article in the Christian press about a coming climate disaster. This seems to be a prevailing view today, but it is not universally held despite claims to the contrary. It is important for the sake of journalistic balance that different opinions are presented.
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.’
earth watch
Energy, emissions, and the choice of Boaz
Paul Kunert
Date posted: 8 Jun 2025
Energy, and how we produce it, is the key to a stable climate. Three quarters of emissions come from energy production. Get energy right, and we’ve broken the back of it. So, the latest Global Energy Review report from the highly regarded International Energy Agency is a vital health check. What’s happening to energy demand? How are we producing it? Does the arc of emissions bend toward zero?
According to the report, the answers to those questions are: one, it’s going up; two, increasingly from renewables; and three, either no or only slowly. Now, I know it’s hard to engage with numbers and percentages. So, here are just two headlines. In 2024, global energy demand rose by 2.2%. And carbon emissions rose by 0.8%. Behind those headlines is a mixed story. On the plus side, most of the growth came from wind and solar energy. In fact, 40% of all energy now comes from low carbon renewables and nuclear. But on the minus side, use of gas, oil and coal also rose, and carbon emissions are still going up, when we need them to be going down (fast).
earth watch
What will you do to adapt?
Simon Marsh
Date posted: 1 Sep 2022
What did you do to stay cool this summer?
By the time you read this, I hope we’ll be heading into somewhat cooler weather, but at the time of writing, we’ve just experienced the hottest temperatures ever in the UK.
Why are weather disaster movies so fascinating for us?
Kirsten Birkett
Date posted: 12 Sep 2024
I have just watched the movie Twisters, a remake of the 1996 movie Twister, which I enjoyed back in the day.
There are some differences, but the same basic plot; a weather scientist who has an almost mystic ability to predict tornadoes, trying to find a way to prevent them and so stop the tremendous damage that they wreak to human lives. It’s well made and fun; but this is not a review of the movie. What it made me reflect upon is why I like disaster weather movies so much.
God is using migration to fulfil His mission
Chris Howles
Date posted: 6 Mar 2025
There can be few topics more likely to canvass votes, generate clicks, or provoke vigorous and sometimes heated discussions than that of international migration in the world today.
And perhaps for good reason, for not many people or places are unaffected by this issue. Indeed some already speculate that the 21st century will in time be known as ‘The Century of Migration’.
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.
A Liberal Democrat election view: A ‘change’ election
Tim Farron
Date posted: 1 Jul 2024
This general election feels very much like a ‘change’ election. People feel things are broken; they are disillusioned and seeking something different.
But disillusionment often means looking for someone to blame. Elections should of course highlight dividing lines between parties, but any ‘us versus them’ debate that actively pits groups against each other should be a red flag to Christians. We mustn’t lose sight of the dignity and worth of our opponents as human beings.
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.
After Smyth, after Makin – how does evangelical culture need to change?
Nicola Laver
Date posted: 21 Nov 2024
The Makin Review into the horrific abuse carried out by John Smyth was always going to send shockwaves through the Church of England – and the evangelical world both within that denomination and beyond it. Smyth – QC, church reader and sadist – abused at least 115 children and young men over a period spanning some 50 years. Some later attempted suicide.
The report does not hold back. The victims’ accounts are harrowing; the failures of successive CofE leaders – including many evangelicals – from the top down are exposed. Makin could not be clearer: conservative evangelical culture facilitated Smyth’s abuse. His brutal proclivities were an open secret among a faction within the church who could have acted – but didn’t. The institution, its beliefs and reputation, were more important than the individuals being abused.
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.
politics & policy
Pursuing Christ alone
Tim Farron
Date posted: 1 Mar 2024
One of the accounts I follow on X is called Exploding Heads. It offers a satirical take on the way we interact with the news, and has a great character called ‘Colin from Portsmouth’ who constantly phones into a radio station to express outrage about the state of the country.
One of the funniest sketches involves him shouting out a ‘list of woke things’ to the bemused radio host, all of which pose a ‘threat to Western civilisation’. They include: The Guardian, the British Army nowadays, almond milk, ‘King Prince Charles’, and the laws of physics.
‘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.
Abortion – what about the hard cases?
'The slaughter of so many millions of unborn children in the West in the last few decades is one of the great blind spots of our decaying culture,' (en Editorial, September).
Indeed it is – and in the East.