The College of Bishops met on Thursday to continue considering next steps for the Church of England following the recent debate at General Synod on identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage.

Last month’s Synod considered proposals from the bishops which would enable same-sex couples who have marked a significant stage of their relationship such as a civil marriage or civil partnership to come to church to give thanks, offer prayers of dedication to God and to receive God’s blessing. Synod members also met in small groups to consider and comment on a set of draft texts for these prayers known as Prayers of Love and Faith, and to offer their views on proposed pastoral guidance.

At Thursday’s meeting, in London, bishops began reviewing those comments and considered how to approach the task of refining the Prayers of Love and Faith and preparing the new pastoral guidance.

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The WSJ-NORC poll surveyed 1,019 adults from March 1 to 13, largely before the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and subsequent turmoil in the financial industry. Roughly 4 in 10 cited healthcare and housing costs as big worries, and nearly two-thirds said inflation is a major concern.

“No matter how much they increase your pay, everything else is going up,” said Kristy Morrow, a coordinator for a hospital who lives in Big Spring, Texas. “I do fear that for the kids.”

Ms. Morrow, 37, said she’s concerned her children will be worse off because deep divisions in America have left people unable to fix the country’s problems. The single mother of two young boys and an adult daughter, who earns about $45,000 a year, said she traded her Chevrolet Tahoe for a GMC Terrain to lower her gas costs and is teaching her boys the importance of spending money on needs, not wants.

The findings showed fresh anxiety about the strength of the job market, which was a rare point of economic optimism as recently as last year. More than half of respondents said it wouldn’t be easy to find another job with comparable pay and benefits. That was the highest level since 2010, according to NORC’s General Social Survey.

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“An overwhelming share of Americans aren’t confident their children’s lives will be better than their own, according to a new WSJ-NORC Poll that shows growing skepticism about the value of a college degree and record-low levels of overall happiness.” https://t.co/eaPXHI4vcJ

— Josh Kraushaar (@JoshKraushaar) March 24, 2023

South Carolina’s top accountant Richard Eckstrom says he will resign effective April 30 after disclosing to state lawmakers that he inflated the state’s cash balances for a decade, eventually reaching about $3.5 billion.

In a Thursday resignation letter to Gov. Henry McMaster, the comptroller general reiterated his advocacy that the Legislature move forward on legislation for a constitutional change to make his position appointed by the governor, rather than elected every four years by the voters. “Over the course of my time in public office I have taken great pride in the responsibility trusted to me,” Eckstrom, 74, wrote in his letter to McMaster, obtained by The State Media Co.

“I have been humble in my approach to the job an attribute I hope our constituents have recognized and will remember.” Eckstrom’s early resignation means the General Assembly will nominate and elect the next comptroller general during a joint assembly to be scheduled at a later date. Eckstrom’s leave also means he’ll avoid a trial in the Senate, a hearing legislators were soon going to announce would start April 11.

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South Carolina’s Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom has told Gov. Henry McMaster he plans to resign effective April 30 after he disclosed a $3.5 billion accounting error that stretched for a decade. https://t.co/0THLb5Uhxl

— The State Newspaper (@thestate) March 23, 2023

And so his question to all those who have the freedom to speak in the Church and for the Church is ‘who do you really speak for?’ But if we take seriously the underlying theme of his words and witness, that question is also, ‘who do you really feel with?’ Are you immersed in the real life of the Body, or is your life in Christ seen only as having the same sentiments as the powerful? Sentir con la Iglesia in the sense in which the mature Romero learned those words is what will teach you how to speak on behalf of the Body. And we must make no mistake about what this can entail: Romero knew that this kind of ‘feeling with the Church’ could only mean taking risks with and for the Body of Christ – so that, as he later put it, in words that are still shocking and sobering, it would be ‘sad’ if priests in such a context were not being killed alongside their flock. As of course they were in El Salvador, again and again in those nightmare years.

But he never suggests that speaking on behalf of the Body is the responsibility of a spiritual elite. He never dramatised the role of the priest so as to play down the responsibility of the people. If every priest and bishop were silenced, he said, ‘each of you will have to be God’s microphone. Each of you will have to be a messenger, a prophet. The Church will always exist as long as even one baptized person is alive.’ Each part of the Body, because it shares the sufferings of the whole – and the hope and radiance of the whole – has authority to speak out of that common life in the crucified and risen Jesus.

So Romero’s question and challenge is addressed to all of us, not only those who have the privilege of some sort of public megaphone for their voices. The Church is maintained in truth; and the whole Church has to be a community where truth is told about the abuses of power and the cries of the vulnerable. Once again, if we are serious about sentir con la Iglesia, we ask not only who we are speaking for but whose voice still needs to be heard, in the Church and in society at large. The questions here are as grave as they were thirty years ago. In Salvador itself, the methods of repression familiar in Romero’s day were still common until very recently. We can at least celebrate the fact that the present head of state there has not only apologized for government collusion in Romero’s murder but has also spoken boldly on behalf of those whose environment and livelihood are threatened by the rapacity of the mining companies, who are set on a new round of exploitation in Salvador and whose critics have been abducted and butchered just as so many were three decades back. The skies are not clear: our own Anglican bishop in Salvador was attacked ten days ago by unknown enemies; but the signs of hope are there, and the will to defend the poor and heal the wounds.

Read it all.

Almighty God, who didst call thy servant Oscar Romero to be a voice for the voiceless poor, and to give his life as a seed of freedom and a sign of hope: Grant that, inspired by his sacrifice and the example of the martyrs of El Salvador, we may without fear or favor witness to thy Word who abideth, thy Word who is Life, even Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with thee and the Holy Spirit, be praise and glory now and for ever. Amen.

St Oscar Romero was assassinated #OTD 24 March 1980 while saying Mass in San Salvador Cathedral. He had been a champion of human rights and social justice, and an outspoken critic of the military regime. His memorial in Southwark Catholic Cathedral, London. pic.twitter.com/XVt9VBnWdO

— Simon Knott (@last_of_england) March 24, 2023

O Lord Jesus Christ, who didst feed the multitude by the lakeside, using the humble gifts of a boy’s generous impulse, and a disciple’s faith in thy power: Help us in thy Church to call forth such generosity in others, and strengthen our faith that the hungry millions can be fed; for thy name’s sake.

Wishing you a fabulous Friday from North Yorkshire 😊 pic.twitter.com/u7VCZSrjtM

— Nicky (@Nicky13Johnson) March 24, 2023

“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!” says the Lord. Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who care for my people: “You have scattered my flock, and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. Behold, I will attend to you for your evil doings, says the Lord. Then I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. I will set shepherds over them who will care for them, and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall any be missing, says the Lord.

“Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’

“Therefore, behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when men shall no longer say, ‘As the Lord lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt,’ but ‘As the Lord lives who brought up and led the descendants of the house of Israel out of the north country and out of all the countries where he had driven them.’ Then they shall dwell in their own land.”

–Jeremiah 23:1-8

Happy Friday to everyone #friends #chasseurdebeauté pic.twitter.com/nMYKs0uF9B

— Catherine Benoist (@benoistart) March 24, 2023

A vicar undergoing treatment for stage four skin cancer has made a song from the sounds of an MRI scanning machine.

The Reverend Matthew Simpkins, of Lexden in Colchester, was first diagnosed with the disease in 2019.

In 2021, the cancer returned and the 44-year-old, who is the priest-in-charge of Lexden, has had months of treatment and various scans.

“I thought the way I am going to get through this is by writing a song during this scan,” he said.

Read it all.

An Essex vicar found the best way to cope with MRI scans – was to turn the noises into a pop song 🎸
Matt has stage 4 cancer & says making music is therapy to him
This weird and wonderful story is on Look East at 6:30pm! 🎥 #essex #colchetser #suffolk https://t.co/JgMdMh85v6

— Zoie O'Brien (@ZoieOBrien_) March 22, 2023

Viewing figures for the Church of England’s national online services show that the services continue to receive about 150,000 views per week. They accrued more than eight million views in 2022.

The Church of England is marking the three-year anniversary of its online services this week, introduced in March 2020, when gathering for public worship was restricted as part of measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19. One year later, it was able to report that clips and content from the services had been seen 40 million times on social-media channels.

The current figures are acknowledged to be a conservative estimate. “Our analysis in May 2022 showed that 20 per cent of viewers watch with at least one other person; so this would add at least another 30,000 views to the above,” a Church House spokeswoman said on Wednesday.

“This is without including listeners to the Daily Hope phone line, and also instances where the service is put out on hospital radio or in prisons or old people’s homes, which we don’t currently track but which we hear anecdotally is happening. Our New Year’s Day 2023 service gained 800,000 views.”

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Viewing figures for the Church of England’s national online services show that the services continue to receive about 150,000 views per week. They accrued more than eight million views in 2022 https://t.co/SH3v3crH07

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) March 22, 2023

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, flew into Moscow this week cast by Beijing as its emissary for peace in Ukraine. His summit with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, however, demonstrated that his priority remains shoring up ties with Moscow to gird against what he sees as a long campaign by the United States to hobble China’s ascent.

Talk of Ukraine was overshadowed by Mr. Xi’s vow of ironclad solidarity with Russia as a political, diplomatic, economic and military partner: two superpowers aligned in countering American dominance and a Western-led world order. The summit showed Mr. Xi’s intention to entrench Beijing’s tilt toward Moscow against what he recently called an effort by the United States at the full-fledged “containment” of China.

Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin used the pomp of the three-day state visit that ended on Wednesday to signal to their publics and to Western capitals that the bond between their two countries remained robust and, in their eyes, indispensable, 13 months after Mr. Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine. They laid out their vision for the world in a nine-point joint statement that covered everything from Taiwan to climate change and relations with Mongolia, often depicting the United States as the obstacle to a better, fairer world.

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When Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin issued a joint statement last year, they had said their countries had a “limitless friendship.” This time, they sought to draw clearer boundaries, declaring that they are not in a traditional political and military alliance. https://t.co/eaNVkt4CCk

— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) March 22, 2023

One of the highlights of my pandemic workweek was the Zoom workout I did with a dozen fellow swimmers once we lost access to our pool. Most aspects of my life were upended, but the 7:45 a.m. home exercise session was a constant: a warm-up, two sets of resistance exercises designed by our loyal coach, then stretching and gabbing. None of us wanted to give up this routine when restrictions eased, and we’re still at it.

I feel more upbeat and quicker on the uptake on days when I do planks and squats. Now a new paper evaluating studies of the impact of exercise on mood shows that physical activity, of any kind, is just as effective as antidepressants at reducing feelings of anxiety and depression—and sometimes more effective.

Dr. Ben Singh, a research fellow at the University of South Australia, was the lead author of the study, which appeared in February in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. He and 12 other scientists combed the research literature for all randomly controlled studies published before 2022 that involved adding exercise to a person’s “usual care,” to see how physical activity might relieve psychological distress.

Read it all.

For some people with depression, regular exercise may often be just as effective as medication at bringing relief https://t.co/EBz4YemXKa

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) March 23, 2023

Almighty God, who willest to be glorified in thy saints, and didst raise up thy servant Gregory the Illuminator to be a light in the world, and to preach the Gospel to the people of Armenia: Shine, we pray thee, in our hearts, that we also in our generation may show forth thy praise, who hast called us out of darkness into thy marvelous light; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

#OTD March 23, 332
Gregory the Illuminator, who converted a nation before Constantine even embraced Christianity, dies. A missionary to his homeland of Armenia, he converted King Tiridates, and much of the kingdom followed suit. pic.twitter.com/1IJO2pXEkm

— ☧ Today in Christian History (@HistoricalRook) March 23, 2023

O Lord and heavenly Father, who hast given unto us thy people the true bread that cometh down from heaven, even thy Son Jesus Christ: Grant that our souls may so be fed by him who giveth life unto the world, that we may abide in him and he in us, and thy Church be filled with the power of his unending life; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

A nice golden start to the day here in Glastonbury today. pic.twitter.com/w1BTGhFn3Z

— Michelle Cowbourne (@Glastomichelle) March 23, 2023

Thus says the LORD of hosts: “Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes; they speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD. They say continually to those who despise the word of the LORD, ‘It shall be well with you’; and to every one who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, ‘No evil shall come upon you.'”

–Jeremiah 23:16-17

GM!😀Finally on 'colours of sunrise' week is a stunning sunrise over the iconic cliffs of West Bay, #Dorset (of TV's #Broadchurch fame)

Settings: 15.0 sec at f – 13 ISO 50 #Thephotohour #StormHour #Southwest660 pic.twitter.com/kaJSuZSUzb

— Gary Holpin | Photography (@GaryHolpin) March 23, 2023

“Music has the great capacity to draw in people who are not necessarily committed Christians at this moment, but who are talented musicians, and who may find, if they are allowed to put their gifts into church music, that faith emerges.”

Church and cathedral choirs were masterful at enabling personal and spiritual growth, Dr Hance said, referring to a transformation at St Leonard’s, Streatham, “in an unglamorous bit of South London . . . a thoroughly ordinary inner urban church, a little bit catholic but not really, a little bit evangelical but not that much, a building with beautiful bits” and a diverse congregation.

“This church has doubled in attendance over the five years the present Rector has been in post, and not from doing anything very left-field or wacky, but by investing in doing what we do as well as we can do it, and most especially the music and the liturgy. The present music director has built a wonderful choir through hard work and skilful networking and the music on a Sunday morning is always excellent, sometimes glorious. We now have a children’s choir who are taking their first steps and they will become excellent over time too.

“It’s all about the right level of investment in the people, helping them to discover and develop their skills and talents, to become more than they thought they could be. . . We call it discipleship.”

Read it all.

Music shapes the mission of the Church: who it attracts and who it repels, the Revd Dr Stephen Hance, who is the Church of England’s national lead for evangelism, told the annual Royal School of Church Music (RSCM) online conference on Saturday https://t.co/j3PZT4dNW3

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) March 21, 2023

The industry makes most of its profits from those who are vulnerable, with 86% of online betting profits coming from 5% of customers. Most of thesepeople are already suffering from gambling–related harms or have been diagnosed as suffering from an addiction. Further, the statistics show that 35% of people with a gambling disorder receive daily incentives to gamble, compared to only 4% of those without. All too often there are reports in the media of people receiving offers of ‘free’ spins and the chance to be a ‘VIP customer’ when they have been trying to stop gambling.

Coroners currently do not need to record an opinion on the factors that may have caused a person to taketheir life. My Private Members Bill, the Coroners (Determination of Suicide) Bill aims to change that.

It is estimated that between 400 – 500 people take their lives each year in this country due to gambling. Yet when the House of Lords ministers answered my questions they claimed that there was no reliable statistics of the numbers of deaths caused by gambling. Furthermore, they showed little concern to find out.

If this bill comes into law, the requirement on coroners to record the ‘where, how and what’ questions associated with each suicide will remain unchanged. However, once this part of the inquesthas been concluded, each coroner will be required to record the co-morbidities of each suicide….

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Coroners currently do not need to record an opinion on the factors that may have caused a person to take their life this has to change, argues the Bishop of St Albans in this important article discussing his PMB – https://t.co/pK6hMtBJlC #Parliament #SuicidePrevention

— Alistair Thompson (@ali_thompson1) March 17, 2023

The speed of the change is astonishing. Since entering America in 2017, TikTok has picked up more users than all but a handful of social-media apps, which have been around more than twice as long (see chart 1). Among young audiences, it crushes the competition. Americans aged 18-24 spend an hour a day on TikTok, twice as long as they spend on Instagram and Snapchat and more than five times as long as they spend on Facebook, which these days is mainly a medium for communicating with the grandparents (see chart 2).

TikTok’s success has prompted its rivals to reinvent themselves. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has turned both apps’ main feeds into algorithmically sorted “discovery engines” and launched Reels, a TikTok clone bolted onto Facebook and Instagram. Similar lookalike products have been created by YouTube (Shorts), Snapchat (Spotlight), Pinterest (Watch) and even Netflix (Fast Laughs). The latest TikTok-inspired makeover, announced on March 8th, was by Spotify, a music app whose homepage now features video clips that can be skipped by swiping up. (TikTok’s Chinese sister app, Douyin, is having a similar effect in its home market, where digital giants like Tencent are increasingly putting short videos at the centre of their offerings.)

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Short-form video has taken over social media. Although users have a seemingly endless appetite for the format, it is proving less profitable for platforms than the old news feed https://t.co/3uUiiiW4VL

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) March 21, 2023

I had a most remarkable but unsettling experience last week. Craig Mundie, the former chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, was giving me a demonstration of GPT-4, the most advanced version of the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI and launched in November. Craig was preparing to brief the board of my wife’s museum, Planet Word, of which he is a member, about the effect ChatGPT will have on words, language and innovation.

“You need to understand,” Craig warned me before he started his demo, “this is going to change everything about how we do everything. I think that it represents mankind’s greatest invention to date. It is qualitatively different — and it will be transformational.”

Large language modules like ChatGPT will steadily increase in their capabilities, Craig added, and take us “toward a form of artificial general intelligence,” delivering efficiencies in operations, ideas, discoveries and insights “that have never been attainable before across every domain.”

Then he did a demonstration. And I realized Craig’s words were an understatement.

Read it all.

Insightful article by @tomfriedman. “Are we ready? It’s not looking that way: We’re debating whether to ban books at the dawn of a technology that can summarize or answer questions about virtually every book for everyone everywhere in a second.” #GPT4 https://t.co/Z3APrDVrlJ

— Michael Y. Uohara, MD (@mikeuohara_md) March 22, 2023

Almighty and everlasting God, the source and perfection of all virtues, who didst inspire thy servant James de Koven to do what is right and to preach what is true: Grant that all ministers and stewards of thy mysteries may afford to thy faithful people, by word and example, the knowledge of thy grace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Today the Episcopal Church commemorates James DeKoven, Priest, 1879 https://t.co/KvUQBNQEMg

A priest & educator who taught at Nashotah House & Racine College (now The DeKoven Center https://t.co/nPAViHbmdE), he was a leader of the Anglo-Catholic movement in the Episcopal Church. pic.twitter.com/bGvr0rawC9

— The Anglican Church in St Petersburg (@anglicanspb) March 22, 2023

Merciful Lord,
absolve your people from their offences,
that through your bountiful goodness
we may all be delivered from the chains of those sins
which by our frailty we have committed;
grant this, heavenly Father,
for Jesus Christ’s sake, our blessed Lord and Saviour,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

Bright Blue Skies. 12°C and a keen Southwesterly breeze. Daffodils pic.twitter.com/f027R9N0M7

— Yorkshire Wolds Weather (@WeatherWolds) March 22, 2023

The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: “Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do. Then the word of the LORD came to me: “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? says the LORD. Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.

–Jeremiah 18:1-6

"Blue Hour, City in Bloom"#Daybreak #Dawn #JeffersonMemorial #CherryBlossoms, #PeakBloom #WashingtonDC #StormHour #ThePhotoHour pic.twitter.com/6lWJiuxi1q

— Thomas R Fletcher (@ThomasRFletcher) March 22, 2023

What’s missing? This exceedingly important discussion usually slides past a huge societal disruption in the early 21st century, the palpable decline in vitality for much of American religion, with shrunken youth groups, disappearing Sunday school programs, slumping worship attendance by teens and young adults — and with it the loss of congregations as natural places for young people to meet possible mates.

Writing about the CDC report for World magazine, Allie Beth Stuckey adds a spiritual crisis to all the other ills. She contends that social media help exchange “the god of self” for the true God through constant focus on ourselves, as in “how we feel, how we look, how we sound, what we want, what we like.”

We hear constant calls to teach girls “to love themselves more.” Yet she suggests that such “self-idolatry” is “driving teens into feelings of purposelessness and depression.”

Solutions do not come from the place where girls’ problems lie. Instead, people throughout history “have needed purpose, joy, and satisfaction that exists outside of themselves, namely in the God who created them.”

Read it all.

With alarming new reports on American youth, what should religious leaders be doing? https://t.co/rPH7DLbtky on the CDC report that shows rising percentages of hopelessness and suicide, much connected with increasing singleness and relational dysfunction pic.twitter.com/bIAx8VGBUM

— Jayson Casper (@jnjcasper) March 11, 2023

A spokesman for the diocese of York said this week: “The sender has taken some trouble both with identifying their chosen pseudo-sender and the intended victim. In many cases the sender has used an untraceable Gmail address, or texted from an equally untraceable pay-as-you-go or ‘burner’ mobile phone.”

At least one person is believed to have lost £1000 in the con and another only narrowly avoided losing a similar sum when they became suspicious after being asked to supply the voucher codes.

The diocesan spokesman continued: “It seems this is a national trend with similar reports from other Church of England dioceses. We have reported one specimen case to North Yorkshire police who have passed it over to Action Fraud, a national police scheme. Incumbents may like to consider advising their church officers and PCC members that: ‘I will never ask you by email to spend your own money for the church’.”

A joint unit of Northumbria, Cleveland, and Durham police has issued an alert over similar issues in the northeast, saying: “Clergy will never ask you to give them money, vouchers, or personal banking details directly, even to help someone in need . . . Even if they’re saying you’ll be refunded, it is a scam.”

Read it all.

Scammers have for a second time impersonated the Archbishop of York and other clergy to ask priests and church staff to buy them Amazon vouchers and online gift cards https://t.co/uHDbKQn5Ez

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) March 21, 2023

…the silt never ceased arriving in Lake Powell, the reservoir above the dam. Each day on average for the past 60 years, the equivalent of 61 supersize Mississippi River barge-loads of sand and mud have been deposited there. The total accumulation would bury the length of Manhattan to a depth of 126 feet — close to the height of a 12-story building.

For years this mud was hidden beneath Lake Powell’s blue waters. Now, as climate change and overuse of the Colorado have drawn the reservoir down to record lows, the silt is exposed — forming “‌mud glaciers‌‌.” And because of a gradient created when the lake level falls, the giant mud blobs are moving at a rate of 100 feet or more per day toward the dam.

These advancing mud blobs pose existential threats to the water supply of the Southwest: One day they could form a constipating plug that blocks Glen Canyon, preventing the water from flowing downriver. They could also someday endanger the structural integrity of the dam.

Asked about the dangers that the sediment posed, Floyd Dominy, the commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in 1963, later quipped, “We will let people in the future worry about it.”

Read it all.

In Opinion

Near the Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River, "advancing mud blobs pose existential threats to the water supply of the Southwest," Dale Maharidge, a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, writes in a guest essay. https://t.co/ZaShKLoaxL

— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 20, 2023

And here is my real beef with Welby’s Church: managerialism. The backdrop to Welby’s appointment was the banking crisis and the subsequent Occupy camp at St Paul’s Cathedral. The Church needed to get a bit more this worldly, many thought. It needed to understand finance and business. When it came to capitalism, Welby was a grown-up, having worked for Elf Aquitaine in a previous life. And 11 years in the oil industry clearly shaped his thinking about organisational structures. The old, slightly bumbling high-table, soft-power understanding of Lambeth Palace was not for him. Welby wanted to change things and have access to levers of real executive power.

But the Church of England is not set up like this. It never has been. The parish system is the very model of subsidiarity. If anything, the Church is a bottom-up institution rather than top-down. You bow to your bishop, but you don’t necessarily do everything he asks. Under Welby, however, the centre has grown ever stronger, the parishes increasingly weaker. Max Weber famously divided power into the charismatic, the traditional and the legal/rational. Welby is the first archbishop who has tried to govern through the latter.

The “Save the Parish” movement was established as a fightback. Too many bishops became middle managers, hidden behind their laptops. Directives and new initiatives came down from head office, which many of the clergy, myself included, received with an inner groan. In the face of declining attendance, we all had to learn that evangelical up-speak, and get on with the paperwork. Morale has plummeted.

The Church’s reaction to Covid was the depressing conclusion of Welby’s legal/rational approach to power.

Read it all.

This is first rate: serious but not unsympathetic. It aligns with my thoughts: there is much to like about JW. He has been unfailingly kind towards me despite my implicit criticisms on Safeguarding. All the more reason to be “Father in God” rather than CEO https://t.co/qeiCvC9rIm

— MartinSewell (@SewellMartin) March 21, 2023

Almighty God, who didst give to thy servant Thomas Ken grace and courage to bear witness to the truth before rulers and kings: Give us also thy strength that, following his example, we may constantly defend what is right, boldly reprove what is evil, and patiently suffer for the truth’s sake, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, now and ever.

#OTD 19 March 1711: death of Thomas Ken, non-juring bishop and hymn-writer. pic.twitter.com/D2SKsYXqdm

— Caroline Murray (@Prof_hedgehog) March 19, 2023

Grant us, O Lord, to rejoice in beholding the bliss of the heavenly Jerusalem; that as she is the home and mother of the multitude of the saints, we also may be counted worthy to have our portion within her; through thine only begotten Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Happy Spring Equinox from Glastonbury. The cloud eventually cleared on this first sunrise of Spring. The sun came out, lighting up the daffodils in the lane. #ostara #springequinox pic.twitter.com/KSJpPChesI

— Michelle Cowbourne (@Glastomichelle) March 21, 2023

The Lord reigns; let the earth rejoice; let the many coastlands be glad! Clouds and thick darkness are round about him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. Fire goes before him, and burns up his adversaries round about. His lightnings lighten the world; the earth sees and trembles. The mountains melt like wax before the LORD, before the Lord of all the earth. The heavens proclaim his righteousness; and all the peoples behold his glory.

–Psalm 97:1-6

Good morning 🌎✨💫❤️ Have a great day , drink Coffee , smile , laugh and have the best of time all my lovely friends #photo #photooftheday #goodmorning #Tuesday #nature #flowers #colourful @StormHour @ThePhotoHour pic.twitter.com/JqePTpaqWX

— Dr.P_78Glasgow (@AbhaPaulina) March 21, 2023

A forlorn cow nuzzles the soil in search of a blade of grass that isn’t there. In better times Andur was the “boss cow” in a herd of 70. She always enjoyed the best pasture, was first to drink from the water trough, and where she led the others followed. By the look of her clearly articulated ribcage, Andur will soon be the one doing the following to where the rest of the herd lie dead on the edge of the village of Funan-Qumbi in Marsabit County.

Cattle-herding tribes of northern Kenya have been waiting four years for the sustained rainfall that they need to survive, but for most of their livestock it is too late. In Marsabit County, 80 per cent of the cattle have died.

Drought is nothing new in this semi-arid region near the Ethiopian border and the pastoralists are resourceful, but even the most wizened tribal elder says that they have never seen anything like this. In the scattered villages dotted about the remote 67,000sq m region where some half a million people live, hawks pick on the animals’ carcasses. It’s a gruesome visual reminder of the climate disaster that has caused the death of 11 million heads of livestock in Kenya and left more than 23 million people in northern Kenya, southern Ethiopia and Somalia at risk of starvation, according to the UN World Food Programme. Some of the elderly in the far-flung villages are already dying of hunger, but their deaths are not being reported because of the shame.

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In Kenya, drought is wiping out livestock and children are dying from lack of food. It is a natural disaster made worse by rising global food prices. The region is bracing itself for heartbreak — within weeks https://t.co/49lRKmxEfi

— The Times and The Sunday Times (@thetimes) March 18, 2023

It’s Mothering Sunday today. Curiously, along with Christmas, Easter, and Remembrance Sunday, Mothering Sunday stands as one of the four days of the year when Church of England churches are likely to be full. There’s something primal and visceral about going back to see one’s mother on Mothering Sunday, and somehow this manifests itself in a larger number of people than usual heading down to church with, or to remember, their mother.

Its significance was even sharper in 2020. We may have blotted it from our collective memories, but Mothering Sunday 2020 fell on that fateful weekend just as we began to realise the full horror of the Covid pandemic. Although formal social distancing legislation was not brought in until the following day, most people resolved not to make their annual pilgrimages that Sunday, choosing to protect those we loved in the most counter-intuitive manner possible.

Not that Mothering Sunday is ever uncomplicated….

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Mothering Sunday lives on because the dream of our familial relationships is worth honouring, even if most of the time we honour them more in the breach.

There is perhaps something similar in our relationship to the parish church. https://t.co/zG48STk4gg

— The New Statesman (@NewStatesman) March 19, 2023