The A Rocha Blog

Tom Rowley has been involved with A Rocha USA from its beginnings in 2000 − first as a board member, now as executive director. Prior to coming on staff with A Rocha, Tom had a varied career including stints as a columnist and freelance writer, fellow with the Rural Policy Research Institute, project manager for the TVA Rural Studies Program at the University of Kentucky, editor at Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy, and acting deputy director and social science analyst with the Economic Research Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Tom, Maria and their sons Jake and Michael currently live in central Oregon where they revel in learning about and playing in the forests, mountains, rivers and deserts of the region.

16th October 2012 | Tom Rowley | 5 comments

Hopeful action

At a recent conference in the USA, author and Professor Kathleen Dean Moore invited the audience to “give up hope” for the environment. At one end of the hope extreme, she said, is “hopelessness”: nothing we do will matter; at the other end is “uninformed hope”: everything will turn out all right. I agree that neither hopelessness nor uninformed hope is of any value. I stop short, however, of discarding hope.

Categories: Reflections
Tags: action hope
30th September 2012 | Dave Bookless | 15 comments

What’s the future for planet Earth?

I’ve grown up with the future according to Hollywood: visions of a scary, dystopian future with a world devastated and destroyed. It’s not surprising that popular Christian literature has followed suit. For years I assumed the central assumption was true: that this world would be destroyed completely when Christ returned in judgment. But as I started reading the Bible myself, my questions grew.

Categories: Questions
Tags: catastrophe future movies
18th September 2012 | Peter Harris | 11 comments

Smelling a Stradivarius (or how to value 100 endangered species)

“The ‘what can nature do for us’ approach has made it increasingly difficult for conservationists to protect the most threatened species on the planet. We have an important moral and ethical decision to make: Do these species have a right to survive or do we have a right to drive them to extinction?”

Categories: Reflections
Tags: conservation extinction IUCN priorities valuing nature
31st August 2012 | Dave Bookless | 20 comments

Songs and hymns I hate to sing

When I preach for A Rocha, the hymn ‘How great Thou art’ is often chosen. It’s often voted amongst all-time favourites, and verse two makes it an obvious choice for the Christian conservationist. Yet, whilst I love the tune and many of the lyrics, my heart sinks every time I hear the last verse…

Categories: Reflections
Tags: music theology
15th August 2012 | Leah Kostamo | 2 comments

Sabbath simplicity

My family keeps the Sabbath. Not religiously—as in, we don’t always do religious things. But we are pretty religious about “keeping” it. Our only hard and fast rule is no shopping. The point is, we say “no” to certain things. We step out of our normal rhythms of work and commerce and step into a new way of being.

Categories: Reflections
Tags: busyness rest Sabbath time
12th July 2012 | Miranda Harris | 10 comments

Family trees

We just got back from a family reunion, quite a big one – huge in fact. One branch of the family couldn’t make it, and one much-loved sister stayed behind to care for a very sick brother, but about 80 others travelled from all over the globe, eager to reconnect with each other. We rented a conference centre in the Netherlands, and slept in dormitories or small cabins in the woods.

Categories: Stories
Tags: community family
30th June 2012 | Dave Bookless | 5 comments

The poor or the planet: which comes first?

Forty years ago there was a huge debate amongst evangelical Christians. Is the gospel simply about ‘spiritual’ matters or does it include care for the poor and oppressed? That debate was won by the power of scripture. Today there’s renewed debate. Is the Gospel – God’s good news – only for people, or is it good news for all creation?

Categories: Questions
Tags: poverty priorities