The Logos and Cosmos Initiative by IFES (International Fellowship of Evangelical Students) began in 2021, and we (Venuz and Johnny) were invited to consider several deeper questions that integrated our faith with our academic backgrounds: “How can we understand environmental issues through the eyes of faith? What does our Christian faith have to say about this crisis? What actions can we propose as Christians and professionals?”

Amidst these ruminations, we initiated a small action which involved creating space for dialogue with students from the University Evangelical Group (GEU) in Guatemala. The goal was to understand the science of climate change, articulate a Christian perspective, and encourage students to reflect on how their academic knowledge and skills could contribute to the message of restoration in the gospel. The project seeks to engage university students in reflection, so they understand how deeply God cares for creation. This belief should motivate them to be part of the plan to care for and restore it through changes in their lifestyles, personal aspirations, diet, community life, and more. We hope that by presenting the issue and the message of the gospel, the concept of caring for creation becomes a part of students’ lives.

Today, we have concluded this first stage, but we continue with a new project called “From Reflection to Action.” Here, we aim to promote dialogue spaces that include other important perspectives for the university, such as indigenous knowledge. Additionally, we want to provide tools and incentives for students to propose their own projects.

Please keep us in prayer:

• for the project’s beginning (September) and for the participants, that it becomes a space to reconnect with the Creator God and Sustainer of life.
• There are many plans and dreams for the medium and long term, but we need discernment, courage, and capabilities to work towards these. Pray that the Lord may provide in His time and finds us responsive to His call.
• We also desire to partner with the local church community and others around the world with individuals who have identified this as their calling. This would allow us to continue growing and enduring.

(Venuz Perez)

IFES Word and World: Theological Conversations about the world students live in

In a time God’s world is being degraded and damaged, is there room for hope? When even conservative estimates of climate change forecast disastrous alterations of neighbourhoods and ecosystems, who can we hope in, and what can we hope for?

From the editor: Environmental sustainability is a hot topic at many universities, named as a major goal of my new university. What are Christians at universities to think? The latest issue of IFES Word & World explores Hope for Creation. Some of the authors will be familiar names to LWCCN members:

• Las Newman from Jamaica writes that faith in Christ means hope for creation and caring for creation as a way to cherish God’s gifts. Read now
• Ruth Hicks de Olmedo presents how the students of CECE, the IFES movement in Ecuador, are presenting good news for the whole creation through the Genesis Project. Read now
• Andrew Shepherd from New Zealand invites us to recognize non-human animals as our fellow creatures, breathed into life by God as his agents and our fellow-worshippers. Read now
• Pablo Pistilli from Argentina invites readers to move beyond a pessimistic theology to caring for God’s creation.
  Read now
• E. Daniel Cárdenas-Vásquez from Peru and the United States proposes that genetically engineered foods are a way to feed those in most need and proclaim good news to the poor. Read now

United Bible Society’s The Bible Translator: Translation in an Age of Ecological Crisis

In all honesty, we would not have expected Bible translators to be spending a lot of time on the environmental crisis. It looks like we were wrong.

From the editor: These are some of the considerations behind the special session of the Society of Biblical Literature’s Ecological Hermeneutics section at the 2018 Annual Meeting of SBL in Denver, Colorado, on the topic of “Ecology, Economy, and Translation”…we have papers here treating the Pentateuch, Psalms, Prophets, Gospels, and Revelation. Implications for translation, our particular interest in this journal, are present in all of these. They are offered in the hope of stimulating ongoing discussion in the translation community about the impact of ecological and economic crises on the translation task.

Some of the articles in this issue include:

• Being “Rich towards God” in the Capitalocene: An Ecological/Economic Reading of Luke 12.13-34 Andrew Shepherd
• Retranslating Genesis 1–2: Reconnecting Biblical Thought and Contemporary Experience Theodore Hiebert
• Palaces of Ivory or Teeth (Ps 45.9): Carol Adams’s Absent Referent and Ecological Translation of the Psalms Arthur Walker-Jones
• The Growing Seeds (Mark 4.26-32): Can Growth Be Eco-Sustainably Translated? Some Preliminary Thoughts Paraskevi Arapoglou
• Woe, Horror, Disaster, or Lament? Revisiting Translations of ouai in Revelation 8.13 Barbara R. Rossing
• “Do not harm the trees!” Ecology, Empire, and Translation in the Book of Revelation Peter S. Perry