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What an incredible time to be living in! While skepticism and eco-anxiety tend to be the results we most see nowadays as we grow aware of the dimensions of the climate crisis and the loss of biodiversity and the socio-environmental crisis, for me I can't help but feel the daring and stubborn Christian hope as I grow increasingly committed to ecumenical care for creation. 

Is not this the fast that I choose:

to loose the bonds of injustice,

to undo the thongs of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,

and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,

and bring the homeless poor into your house;

when you see the naked, to cover them,

and not to hide yourself from your own kin? - Isaiah 58:6-7

To understand Isaiah’s message about true and false fasting, let’s take a minute to remind ourselves of the role and intention of fasting in the context of our Christian faith. This is vital, as fasting is one of the spiritual disciplines in the Christian faith that is no longer practised universally.

The following message was delivered by Rev. Canon Gideon B. Byamugisha during an ecumenical service on 1 December, World AIDS Day. He reflected on the theme ““Let us overcome inequalities with justice and love.”

We believe that the global prayer campaign for the Korean Peninsula will be a key of peace to open the gate to cultivate forgiveness and reconciliation, a fountain of peace to revitalize a global ecumenical solidarity, and a milestone of peace to end the war on the Korean Peninsula after 70 years.

When the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, was recently admitted to hospital with COVID-19, spending a few days in intensive care, a number of British politicians and journalists talked about how the virus was the great leveller. Everyone from street cleaners to world leaders could get the disease; no-one was immune, therefore, we must all follow the same social distancing guidelines. But as Iñigo Aymar of Oxfam has pointed out, COVID-19 is not so much the great leveller, but the great revealer.

While facing this new pandemic, it begs the question: Is it not just another disease, so why all this fuss? Are there not many other epidemics and pandemics that are killing more people?

These days everyone uses the words “change” or “transformation” yet they are used to describe very different things. The French president Emmanuel Macron speaks of the transformation of the French economy through the liberalisation of labour laws, and in his book “India Transformed” Rakesh Mohan describes the benefits achieved by 25 years of neo-liberalism. So what do church-related aid organisations like Action de Carême, Pain pour le prochain and Etre partenaires mean when they use the word “transition”? Is this concept really part of the Christian message?

I sometimes ask people if they know which is the first point in the Bible that Bethlehem gets a mention. And that normally offers them quite a challenge. People certainly move back from the New Testament into the Old – and come up with responses like, ‘the story of David’, or ‘the Book of Ruth’. Good thinking. But actually the first mention of Bethlehem in our Bibles (as they are now set out) occurs much earlier still.

Never has humanity lived in a more connected, yet disconnected time! Connected by the endless notifications on our smartphones – alerting us to all the latest news and tidings in our social media, yet not connected deeply enough to respond substantially to people's suffering. Among the many tragedies are the human-made famines in South Sudan, Somalia, North-Eastern Nigeria and in Yemen.

Africa space is a religious space, a combination of 54 states from North to East, West to South. Differences in culture and religious persuasion exist, but a unity of purpose is always on peace and development. What is not negotiable is the strong believe in God, the piousness of Africans. That's why we boldly and unanimously walk on the common ground to say this weapon of mass destruction remaining unbanned is totally unacceptable.

When God created men and all the creatures of the earth, he placed Adam in the Garden of Eden. God planted a garden eastward in Eden and he made it to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food (Genesis 2:8-9). This may be considered as the foundation on which all other paradigms on food justice can be based. After creating Adam and Eve God made provision for their feeding and sustenance.