Coming back to Earth

Humanity at the beginning of the third millennium is faced with unprecedented challenges – climate change, species extinction, resource decline, economic instability and widening inequality to name but a few. Although Christians say that they believe that they have good news for world, there is little recognition that Christianity has anything distinctive or important to say about these global challenges. This crisis of relevance is reflected in widespread disaffection with the Christian church, both without and within. Coming Back to Earth is a collection of essays that examines some of the foundational challenges that must be confronted this century – climate change, urban life, agriculture and food – with the conviction that the great biblical narrative has something essential to say about each of them: essential in that we need to hear it; and essential in that it penetrates to the very essence of the problem and its solution. It argues that we can find in the Bible both prescient explanations for our current predicament and pertinent wisdom that offers hopeful guidance. Through all of this we are invited to re-think our understanding of the church and its purpose in a hurting and broken world, the reasons for the Christianity’s seeming irrelevance today, and what might be required to renew the church as a dynamic, engaged and hopeful witness to the good news of the kingdom of God.

‘Cornford writes engagingly, passionately and prophetically, with personal example and application to the
Australian context.’ – Philip Muston, The Gippsland Anglican.