Blog

Can a Christian be a climate activist?

Shouldn’t poverty alleviation be the biggest global priority? Isn’t the world going to end anyway? Are climate activists trying to play God? These are all questions raised by well-intending individuals, who may not view climate change as a high risk. By addressing these questions, we can argue that Christians, and members of all faith systems, can play a key role in leading climate action.

Mangrove theology: Get stuck in and put down deep roots

When I was a young lad, Church Mission Society (CMS) had a young adults’ newsletter which I read avidly. The title of one article has stuck with me ever since: ‘Has God called you to stay where you are?’

At the time my family lived in a quiet Midlands village with a somewhat sleepy church, so the idea that mission meant travelling the world and seeing exciting, exotic places appealed greatly. By the time I reached my 30s I’d lived in over 20 different places, visited lots of countries, and God was saying something rather different to me.

Hope in a post-truth world

The Oxford English Dictionary has announced its ‘Word of the Year for 2016’ in both the UK and USA is ‘post-truth’. In a year that has seen bitterly divisive campaigns in the Brexit referendum and the US election, and a rise in political extremism in various parts of the world, it is clear that we have entered a toxic era of fear and uncertainty about what to believe and who to trust.

Postcards from the Middle East by Chris Naylor: 4. Visitors drop a bombshell

“You are breaking the mould. Abu Charbel, like many others, thinks the church should keep to traditional areas of work.” “But what about priorities?” I pressed. “What is the most important thing? Preaching, poverty relief, or conservation of rare species?”

Reconciling conservation and development

‘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.

Job – humbled and healed by nature

Job may seem a strange character to launch a new series of biblical eco-heroes. After all, his story is famously depressing: a tale of undeserved suffering, humiliation and the apparent absence of God. Yet the book of Job also contains the longest passage about non-human creation in the Bible.

Growing pains: Population, Consumption and Economics

Population, Consumption, Economics: three words that are desperately important for our future on planet Earth. They are linked by one problematic word, ‘Growth’: exploding global population, increasing per capita consumption, and political obsession with economic growth. How much is enough?

Is ecology a luxury in a time of crisis?

A friend was recently on holiday in France and found a local Catholic newspaper with the headline, ‘Is ecology a luxury in this time of crisis?’ At first sight the […]

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?”

Why didn’t Jesus talk about creation care?

“If creation care is so important, why didn’t Jesus speak about it?” The question wrong-footed me at first: after all, when Jesus summed up the Law and the Prophets he said, ‘Love God and love your neighbour’, not ‘Go hug a tree’!