Dave is Director of Theology for A Rocha International, where he works to embed creation care into international Christian organizations, theological institutions, and mission movements. His past roles with A Rocha include being an International Trustee and the co-founder of A Rocha UK (with his wife Anne). He has a PhD from Cambridge University on biblical theology and biodiversity conservation, and has contributed to many books and articles, including Planetwise, available in six languages. Born and raised in India, Dave has a love for Indian food, Indian culture and Indian Christianity. Dave is also a qualified bird-ringer and loves birding, islands, running and mountains.
Hosea is best known as the prophet who married a prostitute. But, like Song of Songs, the book of Hosea is not only about human and divine love. A third set of relationships is woven through the book: God’s and humanity’s relationship with the land and its other creatures.
We live in a world where places are less valued than in earlier times. Technology and urbanization lead us away from being connected to places. As bodily creatures, we need bodily connections to places. And nature needs humans who are place-oriented, because such humans take an effort to care for places.
Today’s Middle East is beset by tragedy: a litany of human suffering, migration and exile in a region of such beauty and cultural richness. Yet, the Middle East is also one of the great wildlife migration routes: millions of birds take this route to and fro each year. What insights can we gain from linking these two mass migrations, one human, sudden and involuntary, the other avian, regular and instinctive?
It is funny what people say when you tell them you work in conservation. Their reactions are very varied, depending on how you describe it. But if you say you work for a charity (true), surprisingly often people think you are going to ask them for money (false). So as we charity workers actually depend upon people’s generosity, is there a good way to go fishing?
Today’s environmental problems are so complex they often seen intractable. To tackle them, we need not only politics and economics, science and technology. We also need great wisdom to move towards a more sustainable and just world. But where can we find it?
Each set of convictions addresses the same reality. So it shouldn’t be surprising that a recent insight within ecology aligns beautifully with the foundational biblical perspective that human beings have the God-given responsibility to care for all creation.
David was a man of contrasts and often contradictions: shepherd boy and powerful King; mighty warrior and sensitive poet; saint, sinner and song-writer. One striking thing about the Psalms attributed to David is the nature writing they contain. Here are just a few.
‘If you’re asking me to choose between conservation and development, I’m going to choose development every time.’ We received this comment repeatedly when we first arrived in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The biblical story of Ruth and Naomi has always been a favourite of mine. There are many themes that emerge. There’s also the importance of a book centred on women, when women we marginalized… and of course it’s a classic love story. However, my focus for this blog is that Ruth is also about agriculture and economics.
I wrote the lines below after listening to myself, on a Friday night, wearily moan that I was just an office drudge. By Sunday, after a two-day break from the computer, a good sermon and a bit of birding, I had a different perspective.
