This week, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report on the state of the climate crisis. It is a report that frames, in the cautious language of science, the dire state of the world. This panel of experts from around the world found that warming of 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius in the next century is certain unless there are extreme and immediate cuts in greenhouse gases. This level of warming would spread and intensify the kinds of extreme weather — hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and heat waves — we have seen unfold for over a decade. This report shows us the reality that our actions will not be enough to prevent catastrophic climate change. Immediate action on climate can prevent the worst effects of climate change — but catastrophe has already happened. Catastrophes are happening all around us.
When wildfires raged across Nevada in July, Chad Adamik knew he needed goats.
My first memory of receiving Christ is forever entangled with a social faux pas that caused me stress and pain.
Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other world organizations announced that over 1.5 million children had already been orphaned because of COVID-19, with more losses likely to come. Those precious souls are in desperate need of support, but not the kind Christians typically give. Around the world, devastation is caused by the institutionalization of children in residential schools and orphanages. Sadly, these institutions across the globe are often financially supported by American churches and charitable Christians who are unaware of their limitations and risks.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons is piloting a program to replace physical mail to prisoners with scanned copies, a program I believe is extremely unjust and has urgent implications for the practice of our faith, both for Christians who are incarcerated and Christians on the outside.
The United Nations panel on climate change told the world on Monday that global warming was dangerously close to being out of control – and that humans were “unequivocally” to blame.
Already, greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere are high enough to guarantee climate disruption for decades if not centuries, the report from the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned.
This is for you: for all of us who have watched as our bodies and our minds and our very being were commodified by the people in power, and even as we gained influence and strength, we knew our value hinged only upon what we might do, how we might produce, all the while knowing that a physical or mental collapse could hasten our own destruction. So we keep going.
Alejandra Bedoya, 14, shows visitors around her family coffee farm in southwest Colombia: The steep hills are dark green with coffee bushes, the air is alive with birdsong and the coffee drying in the sun emits a sweet, rich fragrance.
Things haven’t always been tranquil in southern Tolima, which is not too far from the birthplace of the now-demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerilla group. The FARC and Colombian government were embroiled in more than 50 years of open conflict until a peace deal in 2016.
Talking about reparations in church inevitably brings up theological and economic questions. Sometimes these questions are asked in good faith. Other times, these questions are based on myths that need to be deconstructed.