In Africa, Church Leaders Responding to Climate Change Locally and Globally

by UrbanFaith Staff | Oct 7, 2014 | Feature, Headline News |

c. 2014 Religion News Service

A delegation of Lutheran Church leaders in Africa look at the drying corpse of a cow in the Kajiado area of southeastern Kenya. Climate change is causing serious and frequent droughts that decimate livestock in Africa’s rural areas. Religion News Service (Photo Credit: Fredrick Nzwili)

NAIROBI, Kenya (RNS) As climate change devastates communities in Kenya, church leaders are helping to address the crisis locally while also calling on industrialized nations to own up to their responsibilities for spewing greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.

“I think they (industrialized nations) are responsible for most of the emissions,” said Peter Solomon Gichira, the climate change program officer at the All Africa Conference of Churches. “They have responsibility to support climate change adaptation and mitigation as a moral obligation.”

“But we (in Africa) also have a role to play because we have not been very good stewards of the environment,” added Gichira, a poverty and development expert.

People living in the Global South such as Kenya are suffering the worst consequences, climate experts say.

Droughts have become more severe and recurrent and are frequently followed by excessive rains or floods. Temperatures are much higher and weather patterns are now unpredictable.

In conferences, church leaders and officials have heard from experts that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide from industrial plants trap heat, slowing or preventing it from being lost in space.

“We need enhanced adaptive capacity in partnership with the nations,” said the Rev. Patrick Maina, a conservationist with the Presbyterian Church of East Africa.

Maina runs a massive tree planting project on church compounds and members’ farms in his presbytery in the Great Rift Valley area. He also gives talks on climate change.

Recently, Maina and other church leaders have stepped up efforts to help communities cope with the crisis.

In eastern Kenya, villagers are constructing structures known as sand dams with support from the Mennonite Central Committee. Working through the Utooni Development Organization, a self-help group, villagers in the largely Christian Utooni area are building large concrete walls across a dry riverbed, stopping or slowing down the rapid flow of rainwater to the Indian Ocean.

The simple structures — 231 have been built since 2009 — store water under the riverbed, so it can be used for irrigation, tree planting and domestic consumption throughout the year. With 50 sand dams constructed each year, the area is much cooler and better to live in, according to Esther Mbolu, a resident of Utooni.

Selena McCoy Carpenter, Kenya representative with the Mennonite Central Committee, said some people who did not have water can now access it and others who could not grow food are now capable of farming.

“By providing basic needs, we are showing God’s compassion,” she said.

On the slopes of Mount Kenya, Trade Craft East Africa, a nongovernmental organization and the Christian Community Services of Mount Kenya East, a development agency in five Anglican dioceses, are helping small-scale farmers adapt to climate change through use of both modern and traditional weather forecasting methods.

Farmers predict weather by using indigenous practices such as watching flying dragonflies, low-swooping swallows or flowering acacia trees.

But with weather patterns becoming unpredictable, farmers have been adding scientific forecasts delivered by meteorologists to determine when or what crops to plant.

“This is resulting in good harvest,” said Eston Njuki, a program officer at British-based Christian Aid, which funded the project with the Anglican Diocese of Mbeere. “The farmers are able to beat or reduce the threat of climate change.”

Copyright 2014 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be reproduced without written permission.

How Superstition May Thwart Ebola’s Eradication in Guinea

by UrbanFaith Staff | Sep 23, 2014 | Feature, Headline News | 3 comments

NAIROBI, Kenya (RNS) Church leaders in West Africa are raising concerns over sporadic violence that has killed one of their own and frustrated efforts to stem the Ebola epidemic.

The violence took a dangerous turn last week in a remote village in southeast Guinea, when fearful villagers killed eight members of a disinfection and awareness team, including an evangelical church pastor.

The Rev. Moise Mamy, was a member of the Water of Life Ebola awareness team, a relief wing of the Christian and Missionary Alliance. He headed the Hope Clinic, a facility providing medical and surgical services in the remote village of Womey.

The villagers used machetes and rocks to kill the eight and later dumped their bodies in a septic tank at a local primary school, according to news reports. The murders have sparked outrage within the aid and church communities in West Africa, where superstition and myths prevail.

“The people were on a humanitarian mission,” said the Rev. Tolbert Thomas Jallah Jr., general secretary of the Fellowship of Christian Councils and Churches in West Africa. “They were trying to assist under a very difficult situation. Their killings and the violence are totally unacceptable.”

In Womey and its surroundings, some people refuse to acknowledge the existence of Ebola and accuse the health officials of intentionally infecting the populations. Information on Ebola eradication efforts are viewed suspiciously as Western propaganda and distribution of chlorine-based products are rejected as attempts to destroy villages.

This mistrust exists beyond Guinea, church officials say, and has resulted in periodic violence and protests in areas where governments have attempted to isolate those infected by the virus.

The World Health Organization said Thursday (Sept. 18) many of the estimated 700 new infections are in Liberia, but the situation remains dire in Sierra Leone and Guinea. Nigeria, Senegal and Democratic Republic of Congo have recorded some cases.

Jallah said the epidemic was destroying economies, disrupting markets and farming. He warned it was a matter of time before serious food shortages hit the region.

“This really is a difficult situation,” he said.

Recently, several airlines stopped flying to the West African countries raising concerns among relief organizations and churches that medical supplies and equipment will not reach those affected.

“We passionately plead with airlines to resume flights to our affected countries to help us fight Ebola,” said Ebun James-Dekam, general secretary of the Council of Churches in Sierra Leone.

Church leaders welcomed the recent announcement of 3,000 U.S troops to fight the epidemic in Liberia.

Copyright 2014 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be reproduced without written permission.

After Kidnapping Schoolgirls, Boko Haram Takes aim at Churches in Northeast Nigeria

by UrbanFaith Staff | Sep 4, 2014 | Feature, Headline News | 6 comments

c. 2014 Religion News Service

NAIROBI, KENYA (RNS) Five months after Boko Haram abducted more than 200 girls in Nigeria’s Borno State, the Islamic extremist group has begun occupying churches in the country’s northeastern region, church officials there said.

The militant group, which church leaders and analysts view as an African variation of the Islamic State, is also beheading men, forcing Christian women to convert to Islam and taking them as wives, officials said.

“Things are getting pretty bad,” said the Rev. John Bakeni, the secretary of the Maiduguri Roman Catholic diocese in northeastern Nigeria. “A good number of our parishes in Pulka and Madagali areas have been overrun in the last few days.”

The militants have turned the church compound and rectory of the St. Denis Parish in Madagali town into their base, the priest said. The militants overran the church center on Aug. 23.

“The priest in charge managed to escape, but they took his car and important church documents,” said Bakeni.

“Many civilians are now on the run,” he added. “Many others are being trapped and killed. Life means nothing here. It’s so cheap and valueless.”

In 2009, the group launched its first military operation in Maiduguri, advocating for a strict form of Shariah. Since then, it has attacked churches, villages, government installations and public places across north and northeastern Nigeria.

It has also carried out mass kidnappings in the region and is still holding captive more than 200 girls it grabbed from a local school in Chibok. The girls were kidnapped on April 14.

After seizing the Borno State town of Gwoza from government forces last month, the group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, announced an Islamic caliphate.

Church officials say a thin line divides Boko Haram and the Islamic State.

“The same ideology runs through their methods and disposition,” said Bakeni.

With the rise of Boko Haram, scholars say Islamic extremism threatens Africa as much as it does the Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“Boko Haram bears an inmate family resemblance to developments elsewhere in the Muslim world,” wrote Charles Villa-Vicencio, a South African theologian and a visiting professor in the Conflict Resolution Program at Georgetown University, in the July/August edition of the Horn of Africa Bulletin. “ … Resilient Muslims are engaged in a fight–back against the western influence.”

Copyright 2014 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be reproduced without written permission.