As the U.S. presidential election moves into its final weeks, United Methodists are focusing attention on a global issue that’s getting little in the way of candidate and media attention: Earth’s rapidly warming environment and its effect on people. Two…
Oil company foundation funds climate-skeptic Christian groups
The Shell USA Co. Foundation donated half a million dollars over a decade to conservative Christian groups that deny a human role in climate change, oppose environmental regulations and favor the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency. According to a…
Some evangelicals still don’t believe climate change is real, while others believe it is God’s judgment for sin
June was the 13th month in a row to break global heat records, and the summer of 2024 already has seen more frequent and long-lived heat waves, hotter and bigger wildfires, longer lasting and more violent storms, and more heat-related…
Letter to the Editor: We vote for the party, not the person
Dear Editor: In response to Kirsten Christensen Roberts’ opinion piece: Yes, Kristen, your young people were deceived in 2016 and they unwisely voted for Donald Trump not realizing you don’t vote for an individual, you vote for a party. This…
Must we change our language to reach climate change deniers?
How can journalists reach evangelicals who get triggered by the term “climate change”? This is the question Rebecca Randall asks in a piece last week for BioLogos. Despite the fact that 97% of scientists accept climate science and 92% of Americans who…
What about China?
I have a friend who regularly hijacks my social media posts about climate change with a statement like, “There’s no point in investing all this money to transition away from fossil fuels unless China, India and Russia do the same.”…
New Climate Fellow aims to get churches talking about creation care
If your church’s community garden didn’t fare well in this summer’s excessive heat or flooding rains, it’s time for the congregation to talk about how to deal locally with the global climate crisis. That’s the first message from Becca Edwards,…
The climate canary is dead
I was on my way to a good friend’s installation to a new ministry when the climate crisis whomped me right upside my head. Maybe it was the heat radiating up from the highway overpass I’d just crossed that ignited…
Being ‘resilient’ isn’t good enough for climate justice, Malcom urges
“Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it,” says a familiar adage. The longtime saying is getting a new, more urgent interpretation from United Methodists, who are acting to create more sustainable futures in the wake of…