Donald Trump is holding a gun to the head of Volodymyr Zelensky, demanding huge reparations payments and laying claim to half of Ukraine’s oil, gas, and hydrocarbon resources as well as almost all its metals and much of its infrastructure.

The latest version of his “minerals deal”, obtained by The Telegraph, is unprecedented in the history of modern diplomacy and state relations.

“It is an expropriation document,” said Alan Riley, an expert on energy law at the Atlantic Council. “There are no guarantees, no defence clauses, the US puts up nothing.

“The Americans can walk away, the Ukrainians can’t. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

Read it all.

Trump now threatens Europe with assisting Putin in rebuilding his war machine if Zelensky doesn’t sign over Ukraine’s resources.https://t.co/jhRH9B0aeE

— Jay in Kyiv (@JayinKyiv) March 27, 2025

The US’s federal debt burden is set to surpass the peak it reached in the wake of the second world war in coming years, Congress’s fiscal watchdog has warned, underscoring growing concerns over America’s public finances.

The Congressional Budget Office said on Thursday that the US’s debt-to-GDP ratio would reach 107 per cent during the 2029 fiscal year — exceeding the 1940s era peak — and continue rising to 156 per cent by 2055. The debt-to-GDP ratio is forecast to be 100 per cent for the 2025 fiscal year.

The projections come just days after Moody’s delivered a warning about the sustainability of the US’s fiscal position, with the rating agency saying that President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs could compromise attempts to bring its large federal deficit under control by raising interest rates.

“Mounting debt would slow economic growth, push up interest payments to foreign holders of US debt and pose significant risks to the fiscal and economic outlook; it could also cause lawmakers to feel constrained in their policy choices,” the CBO said on Thursday.

Read it all.

US debt burden to top second world war peak in coming years, CBO says via @FT
https://t.co/SfaV25Dypt

— Stare Decisis (@MsResJudicata) March 27, 2025

The Church of England’s drive to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2030 is already reducing energy bills and making churches fit for the future, the lead bishop for the environment says.

Speaking to a gathering of diocesan environment officers at the British Antarctic Survey, in Cambridge, the Bishop of Norwich, the Rt Revd Graham Usher, said that acting to tackle the climate and nature crises was a sign of Christian compassion, and “the right thing to do”.

“There is a link here through compassion with Anglicans — with all people around the world — many of whom are on the front line of climate change and biodiversity loss,” he said. “If we truly believe that we are brothers and sisters in Christ, we should have a concern and a compassion for where biodiversity and climate-change loss is impacting people’s lives.”

Read it all.

The Church of England’s drive to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2030 is already reducing energy bills and making churches fit for the future, the lead bishop for the environment says https://t.co/HqvW3NE7TD pic.twitter.com/2bDaAog0hh

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) March 27, 2025

Human trafficking continues to expand and evolve, often hiding in plain sight. This harsh reality is laid bare in the UNODC’s (United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime’s) Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2024, published at the end of last year. Reports such as this should wake us up to the brutal realities faced by too many and lead us to ask what can be done to stop this crime.

The report says that there was a 25-per-cent increase in detected trafficking victims globally in 2022, surpassing pre-pandemic levels in 2019. Alarmingly, this includes a 31-per-cent rise in child victims. At International Justice Mission (IJM), a global NGO working to combat trafficking, we witness these harsh realities daily. These are not just statistics, but individuals: sons, daughters, mothers, and fathers who deserve to live in freedom and safety.

The report identifies how climate change, conflict, and displacement are exacerbating trafficking risks. Loss of livelihoods, safety, shelter, and financial security leave vulnerable communities exposed to exploitation. Traffickers prey on those most at risk, taking advantage of crises to further their profits.

A significant shift in trafficking patterns is also evident. For the first time, victims of forced labour now outnumber those trafficked for sexual exploitation — which remains a significant issue, particularly for women and girls, who account for 61 per cent of detected victims.

Read it all.

A UN report identifies factors that are exacerbating the problem, writes Mary Sebastian @IJMhttps://t.co/4gvcqnU8mB

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) March 21, 2025

If you want to try to change the world, you’ve broadly got three options. You can work with the powerful — not necessarily sharing their goals or methods, not always endorsing their slogans or ignoring their lies, but nonetheless patiently correcting their wrong turnings and softening their harsh judgements. Alternatively, you can work against the powerful. You can campaign for the dignity of suppressed peoples and groups, you can highlight miscarriages of justice, you may denounce and upbraid and protest.

But that choice — between a pragmatism that risks complacency and an idealism that flirts with self-righteousness — doesn’t comprise the full set of options. There’s a third approach, and that is to seek to model what a better society might look like: to practise a renewed politics and try to inspire others to join you, and in their own context do the same.

If you think about it, both the Old and the New Testaments assume that third kind of politics. The Old Testament is about the chosen people: a tiny nation buffeted from Canaan to Egypt to the wilderness to the Promised Land and later to Babylon and back. They have no pretensions to be masters of the universe. They’re hard-pressed just to run their own society faithfully and protect it from invaders. The New Testament is even more limited in aspiration to conventional political power: this is a people seeking to model a transformed life, without any pretension to geographical territory. All they’re looking to do is to live God’s future now by sharing together the life they will enter eternally.

From time to time a society has to ask itself, What kind of people do we want to be?

Read it all.

Saint Martin in-the-Fields ‘Royal Parish Church’ Trafalgar Square #London
(1810 Thomas Bonnor after James Robert Thompson ⁦⁦@YaleBritishArt⁩)
The James Gibbs design of 1722-6 is a much copied church design across New England. pic.twitter.com/43aP1Hv17v

— OldLondonNow (@oldlondonnow) February 22, 2021

Jipp’s view is that Paul wants to offer “a robust theory of how relation to Christ is humanity’s supreme good, and is, therefore, necessary for human flourishing”, and he is right to insist on the importance of facing the inevitability of death”, as our “fundamental human predicament”, which means that in this life human flourishing is unobtainable because of the undeniable presence of sin and death (“this present evil age” — Galatians 1.4). But for Paul, of course, death is not the end; our only hope is that God has raised Jesus from the dead. Paul sees the possibility of a “transformed moral agency”, whereby we are seen to think, act, and feel in a way that is orientated towards, and therefore unified by, loving and worshipping God.

This is a very rich and powerful doctrine, in which Christ is seen as the “foundation of a new epistemology for persons-in-Christ”. Love is absolutely central here, making of us a sacred community, related to Christ and to one another, where the Church has to be a reconciling and forgiving community.

Jipp offers a very attractive vision of how “persons-in-Christ” can speak to our world. What, in your view, does it mean for any of us to flourish and live a good life in the world? I strongly recommend this book; it is not easy reading, but sheds interesting new light on the remarkable apostle Paul and his very telling use of athletic and military imagery.

Read it all (registration or subscription).

Book review: Nicholas King looks at being in Christ in St Paul's theologyhttps://t.co/baVGtgLjKc pic.twitter.com/ICUNsKhtA0

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) March 21, 2025

Since….[2023], stories like the ones we found in Levittown have become far more widespread. With federal law remaining largely silent on the legality of creating nonconsensual deepfake pornographic images, state prosecutors have scrambled to find charges that fit a new kind of harassment.

AI-based deepfaking services are hitting a peak. Traffic to the 10 most popular “nudifying” apps soared by more than 600% year over year, from 3 million views in April 2023 to 23 million in April 2024, according to figures provided to Bloomberg by a research company that asked not to be identified in connection with its data on online pornography. In January this year alone, the websites received 18 million views, the research shows.

With a stamp of approval from first lady Melania Trump, lawmakers this year are expected to pass a bill criminalizing the posting of nonconsensual pornographic deepfakes on the internet. It will penalize the posters with prison time and the platforms with fines if they don’t remove the fake pictures quickly enough.

The proposed Take It Down Act, which passed in the Senate in the last Congress with bipartisan support, wouldn’t outlaw the apps themselves. So San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu last year tried to tackle the root cause. He brought a first-of-its-kind lawsuit charging the deepfake app creators, arguing they broke federal and state revenge and child pornography rules and broke California’s competition law. The apps named in the lawsuit have either closed or appear to be operating under different names. Some have geofenced their services so they can’t be accessed in the state. Out of 16 apps named, representatives of only one of them have responded to Chiu’s complaint.

Read it all (and consider listening to the accompanying podcast).

A new podcast tries to understand exactly who was behind a global clearinghouse of nonconsensual deepfake pornography https://t.co/ERCR6WvrLm

— Bloomberg Markets (@markets) March 21, 2025

“All right, so let me say a word about the setting because it’s absolutely crucial for our purposes. At the beginning of chapter 20, it reads this way, And God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord, you God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You cannot understand any of the ten commandments unless you understand this as the preface and the premise of the entire passage. Whose we are and therefore who God is, and who we are, and who we were, and what God did. God first, God at the start, God as the fundamental reality, the only non-contingent being from whom all contingent reality and being and matter comes to exist. The only reason we’re here is because God allows us to be here. The only reason that there’s something rather than nothing is because God allowed it to be.”

“The only reason there is a nation of Israel is because God came down and heard their cry, and constituted them, and brought them out. So they are God’s people. They are redeemed out of a house of slavery, and they’re going into the Promised Land, and all these things, whatever else they are, are in the context of this covenant relationship, and that saving act, and the reality that He is our God, and we are His people. Now, as if that all isn’t enough, and that’s a ton, one more thing. And that is the specific setting of this passage in the book of Exodus itself. And I just want to remind you, because when we read in chapter 20, and God spake these words, my question is simply this. In what context, in the flow of the book, are these words actually said? It’s a crucial question.”

Or you may download it there.

The Ten Commandments, 1516 #cranach #lucascranach pic.twitter.com/WCVDG4prk0

— Lucas Cranach the Elder (@ArtistCranach) March 1, 2021

Some firms may even intend to quietly pare back their investment plans. In 2017 Foxconn, a Taiwanese maker of electronics, vowed to spend $10bn on a plant in Wisconsin that would employ 13,000 people. Mr Trump visited the proposed site, proclaiming it the “eighth wonder of the world”. Yet after much watering down of plans, the company said last year that it had spent just $1bn on the project, and created only 1,000 jobs.

Faced with American tariffs, some foreign companies could instead direct their attention elsewhere. That has been the case with Chinese firms, which bore the brunt of the duties imposed during Mr Trump’s first term. The flow of greenfield FDI from China to America slid from $8.2bn in 2016 to $6.5bn last year. According to Morgan Stanley, listed Chinese firms generated around a quarter of their foreign sales in America in 2024, down from roughly a half in 2016. Instead, they have turned to the fast-growing economies of the global south.

If Mr Trump’s objective is to encourage foreign businesses to build in America, there are more effective policies at his disposal than tariffs. On the campaign trail the president also promised to slash red tape. Tortuous planning processes have long held back American manufacturing. For foreign firms, fixing those would be far more motivating. 

Read it all.

Will Trump’s #tariffs turbocharge #foreign #investment in America?
Companies from #Asahi to #TSMC are expanding production in the country—for nowhttps://t.co/ga2y1Ryoxw pic.twitter.com/kNAGIbbRpA

— pebbleone (@TACITWR) March 17, 2025

The new Interim Dean of Winchester, Canon Roland Riem, has promised transparency and “radical candour” in response to a review, published last week, which identified leadership failings at Winchester Cathedral (News, 3 March).

In a statement read out to the cathedral’s congregation on Sunday, Canon Riem said that the Chapter would publish updates on its response to the review at three-monthly intervals.

Canon Riem, who was previously Vice-Dean of the cathedral, was confirmed as Interim Dean after the Very Revd Catherine Ogle brought forward her planned retirement.

In a statement last week, she apologised on behalf of the Chapter, saying that, although it had to accept “collective responsibility”, as its leader, she had decided to step back immediately (News, 7 March), ahead of her planned retirement.

Read it all.

The new Interim Dean of Winchester, Canon Roland Riem, has promised transparency and “radical candour” in response to a review, published last week, which identified leadership failings at Winchester Cathedralhttps://t.co/GbElq3J8JX

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) March 12, 2025

In her introduction to your latest book, Jesus Changes Everything, Tish Harrison Warren mentions something many Christians are concerned about: that we live in a post-Christian world. She’s wondering if we actually are living in a pre-Christian world and whether that might not be such a bad place to be. What’s your take on the time in which we live and the opportunities in front of the church?

Well, the mainstream Protestant church is dying. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It makes us free. I mean, for some time people argued that the world would go to hell if it were not Christian. That may be the case. But being Christian doesn’t mean you need a Christian America. 

What I think we’re experiencing is the ultimate working out of nihilism, which so often goes with liberalism. Liberalism is the presumption that you should have no story except the story you chose when you had no story.

Read it all.

In an interview with @Plough’s Charles E. Moore, Stanley Hauerwas meditates on the necessity of the gospel, the politics of the kingdom, and the high demands of sanctification.https://t.co/XI9F2ySH5C

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) March 11, 2025

War broke out in August and in September 1914 Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy wrote these words in his parish magazine:

“I cannot say too strongly that I believe every able-bodied man ought to volunteer for service anywhere. Here ought to be no shirking of that duty.”

This from the man who would, before long be writing this, “Waste”:

“Waste of Muscle, waste of Brain,
Waste of Patience, waste of Pain,
Waste of Manhood, waste of Health,
Waste of Beauty, waste of Wealth,
Waste of Blood, and waste of Tears,
Waste of Youth’s most precious years,
Waste of ways the Saints have trod,
Waste of glory, Waste of God–War!”

Read it all.

Delighted to be speaking on Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy at the Wantage Literary Festival on Sunday 21st @wantagelitfest pic.twitter.com/6O9REbmPks

— Linda Parker (@lindamparker56) October 18, 2018

The Synod’s failure to vote for such an approach, but to prefer more time to explore the legal and logistical barriers to outsourcing diocesan safeguarding teams while simultaneously creating a new, independent scrutiny body, was, Mr Myer said, “deeply disappointing”.

The decision, he said, “did not follow the recommendation from Professor Jay and many other specialists and professionals, or the preference of many survivors”.

Two separate surveys have suggested that about three-quarters of the victims and survivors questioned supported Professor Jay’s recommendations; but her advice was not supported by all safeguarding professionals.

Jim Gamble, the head of the INEQE Safeguarding Group, which is auditing all Church of England dioceses and cathedrals, was among those to disagree with Professor Jay. In a report published the day before the Synod’s debate, he wrote: “When it comes to delivering effective safeguarding practice — practice that genuinely works and makes a difference — it is most effectively delivered from within, not imposed from without”….

Read it all.

In a House of Commons debate on Monday evening, MPs criticised the General Synod’s decision last month not to outsource all safeguarding functions immediately to an independent body https://t.co/phh7IAy7FJ

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) March 6, 2025

A review of Winchester Cathedral identified “significant failings in leadership and management”, the Bishop of Winchester, the Rt Revd Philip Mounstephen, said on Monday, when a summary of the review was published.

The Dean, the Very Revd Catherine Ogle, has announced that she will immediately hand over leadership of the cathedral, before her previously announced retirement on 1 May. The Vice-Dean, Canon Roly Riem, is to take charge of implementing the review’s recommendations, many of which, Dean Ogle said, were “already under way”.

In a statement, the Dean apologised on behalf of the Chapter to “everyone who has been hurt by the events of the last few months”. The Chapter, she said, had to accept “collective responsibility”, but, as its leader, she was stepping back.

Bishop Mounstephen said that “no one person is entirely to blame.” He also sought to emphasise that Winchester was not a “failing cathedral”, and that the reviewers had found “much to celebrate”.

Read it all.

It's difficult to understand exactly what happened at Winchester Cathedral, but review refers to failures of management & a “culture of secrecy, due to a misunderstanding of appropriate confidentiality and the aversion of key individuals to conflict”. https://t.co/E7rFLuvkoG

— Madeleine Davies (@MadsDavies) March 4, 2025

Global government borrowing is expected to reach a record $12.3tn this year, as a rise in defence and other spending by major economies and higher interest rates combine to push up debt levels.

The 3 per cent rise in sovereign bond issuance across 138 countries would take the total debt stock — which has been pushed higher by the global financial crisis, coronavirus pandemic and now the need for greater European defence spending — to a record $76.9tn, according to estimates by S&P Global Ratings.

Big economies’ focus on fiscal policy to “deal with crisis after crisis continues, and the outcome is you do have a much more indebted sovereign picture”, said Roberto Sifon-Arevalo, global head of sovereigns at S&P. This had been compounded, he added, by a rise in debt-servicing costs, as bond yields have moved substantially higher since the end of central banks’ bond-buying programmes.

Borrowing to fund higher spending “was fine and sustainable while you had the borrowing costs that you had before the pandemic, now it presents a much bigger problem”, Sifon-Arevalo said.

Read it all.

Also from the @FT:
“Global government borrowing is expected to reach a record $12.3tn this year, as a rise in defence and other spending by major economies and higher interest rates combine to push up debt levels.
The 3 per cent rise in sovereign bond issuance across 138… pic.twitter.com/y5ctXg3EcB

— Mohamed A. El-Erian (@elerianm) March 4, 2025

Sandra, a teenage girl who wears her curly brown hair tied back in braids, awaited the instant message on her mobile phone. The instructions were matter of fact: Wear makeup and a short skirt. If possible, don a crop top.

Like other girls in her neighborhood outside Medellín, Colombia, Sandra said she didn’t always have food for dinner, let alone trendy clothes and electronics. But a friend tipped her off to a sure-fire way to make money fast. This amiguita, she said, told her about the plentiful meals she could afford, the iPhone she uses, the motorcycle she’d soon be sitting astride. Sandra could enjoy this life too, her friend said. The cost? Her virginity. To a foreigner.

Sandra agreed. Her friend connected then-14-year-old Sandra and her younger sister Verónica (both of whose names Bloomberg changed to protect the siblings against reprisal), with a woman, who, on social media projected a youthful, fun-loving air. Known as la patrona, the woman posed in one photo in a white bikini, hand on hip, on a poolside lounge chair surrounded by palm trees.

The woman expeditiously gathered up the girls’ identity numbers and nude photos. She offered them an advance of 8.6 million pesos ($1,990) for jobs well done. The interchanges were carried out through Meta Platforms Inc.’s social media apps Facebook and Messenger, according to Sandra.

Recruitment and grooming of children are but the first in a multi-step process…

Read it all.

Sex trafficking in Colombia runs through a web of US apps like Facebook, Tinder and Airbnb https://t.co/0tD6KNvVJB

— Bloomberg (@business) March 3, 2025

McDermott in his opening address maintained that North American culture “didn’t make sex important enough” and instead saw it “reduced to a recreational exercise.”

The prolific author observed that it is de rigueur to say that sexual difference is a cultural distinction. But, male and female brains are differently wired even before environmental differences can occur.

“Why does God create so that tensions in marriage can make us into better people?” McDermott asked. “We’re being created for something else.” Marriage, he described, is a sign in the visible world of a future love and union that surpasses what we enjoy today.

“It is not good to live as though my sexuality makes no difference,” McDermott stated. “I must live in relation to the other.”

Read it all.

“The profound implication of having been made in God’s image affects every aspect of our lives,” @jadykoch explained in framing the To Be Human conference. “Our work and witness as Christians in the world upholding this truth is needed now more than ever.” https://t.co/FV1vaKYb7G

— Jeff Walton (@jeffreyhwalton) March 3, 2025

From there:

To my brothers and sisters in the Gafcon family,

The recommendations of the December 2024 Report of IASCUFO (the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order) will fail to bring about renewal in the Anglican Communion.

There is merit in the leadership of the Primates’ Council and the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) being handed over from the Archbishop of Canterbury to a rotating, international chair.

But their proposed restructure of the ‘Instruments of Communion’ fails to bring genuine renewal to our Anglican Church.

The IASCUFO recommendations weaken the foundations of our common doctrine by sanctifying the revisionist theologies of provinces and dioceses that have wandered from the truth.

They call on us to embrace the diverse theology of locally-authorised prayer books throughout the Anglican world, including those that have departed from the biblical doctrine of human sexuality expressed in our foundational 1662 Book of Common Prayer.

This only repeats and reaffirms the errors of successive Archbishops of Canterbury who failed to prevent the tearing of the fabric of the Anglican Communion by continuing to endorse those bishops and dioceses who had wandered from the truth.

To renew our Communion, we must submit to Holy Scripture.

The Bible is very clear: those who embrace immoral behaviour will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9), and if we will not trust the Bible’s teaching about sin, we cannot trust the Bible’s teaching about salvation.

Gafcon represents 85% of the world’s 85 million Anglicans, and we believe that the only ‘Instrument of Communion’ that ultimately matters is the word of God.

In two weeks’ time at our Gafcon G25 conference in Plano, Texas, we are gathering our senior leadership from around the world, along with some of our newest bishops, to consult together about how we will continue to lead the renewal of the Anglican Communion.

True unity can only be found in the faith once for all delivered to the saints, which alone can bring order to our beloved Anglican Communion, within which we steadfastly remain.

We give thanks for our brothers and sisters within the GSFA who desire that Anglicans everywhere would speak the truth in love, so that the people of all nations might believe in the Lord Jesus and be assured of their salvation.

The Most Rev’d Dr Laurent Mbanda
Chairman, Gafcon Primates Council
27th February 2025

The pandemic response wasn’t perfect. But the pandemic itself was real, and punishing. Above all, it revealed our vulnerability — biological, social and political. And in the aftermath of the emergency, Americans have largely looked away, choosing to see the experience less in terms of death and illness than in terms of social hysteria and even public health overreach. For many, the main lesson was that in the world of humans, as in the world of microbes, it’s dog-eat-dog out there.

But the consequences and aftershocks were also more subtle and diffuse: it isn’t easy to live in isolation and in fear, often largely online and surrounded by exceptional illness and mortality, as we watched aspects of the world and our own lives we’d long taken for granted be withdrawn or torn apart. And it isn’t easy to get over all that, however eager we thought we were to “return to normal.” We lived through as many deaths as some of the worst-case scenarios predicted, and without an initial spasm of inspiring solidarity and miraculous biomedical intervention, it could have been worse. But when we came out the other side — 1.5 million fewer of us — we were, as a country, exhausted, resentful, deluded and distrustful. A huge amount of the world in which we now reside was formed in that crucible. I will write more about that next week.

Read it all.

The Covid Alarmists Were Closer to the Truth Than Anyone Else https://t.co/431zklvB2r

— judy gitlin (@heyjudenyc) February 26, 2025

Ten members of the clergy, including two bishops, could be subject to disciplinary proceedings in connection with the abuse perpetrated by John Smyth, if the President of the Tribunals permits the National Safeguarding Team (NST) to bring complaints under the Clergy Discipline Measure (CDM) out of time.

They include a former Bishop of Durham, the Rt Revd Paul Butler, and Lord Carey, a former Archbishop of Canterbury.

The announcement, made by the NST on Tuesday, concludes a four-stage process considering the actions of clergy named in the Makin review of Smyth’s abuse (News, 5 December 2024). The review culminated in recommendations by a panel; and these were reviewed by an independent barrister.

The Church House statement said that the panel had “considered the safeguarding policies and guidance which were in force at the relevant time, the facts of the particular case, the relevant legal considerations and whether there is sufficient evidence to justify proceedings”. The barrister had concurred with all of the panel’s decisions.

Read it all.

NEW: Ten members of the clergy, incl Lord Carey and Bishop Paul Butler, could be subject to disciplinary proceedings in connection with the abuse perpetrated by John Smyth. I've had a look at the ten, & context for bringing such complaints under the CDMhttps://t.co/6xdMFl6x9v

— Madeleine Davies (@MadsDavies) February 25, 2025

Paul’s understanding of sin as a community problem demands that, in the words of Esau McCaulley, we go “beyond naming.” McCaulley adds, “There has to be some vision of the righting of wrongs and the restoration of relationships. The call to be peacemakers is the call for the church to enter the messy world of politics and point toward a better way of being human.”

For this reason, Paul warns that we as individuals can become weapons of injustice, so even those individuals who are not actively participating in a particular sin can be guilty of passivity toward it. Notice Paul’s words in Romans 6: He does not say to simply refrain from sin but says that we must not allow sin to reign in our bodies or allow any part of ourselves to be controlled by sin (vv. 12–13). This implies a need for active resistance to sin, not just avoidance of it. For instance, Paul directly calls out Peter, who had been an early advocate of Gentile inclusion, for remaining silent on this issue (Gal. 2:11–14). Paul’s command for churches to be holy is not just a call not to sin but a call to oppose sin in their midst. To be passive to sins in our communities is to be used by the Enemy for injustice.

Another example is when Paul admonishes a man who slept with his stepmother. Paul calls out the Corinthian church and not just the individuals involved (1 Cor. 5:1­–2), making it the responsibility of the entire congregation to deal with the sinner in their midst.

In Galatians 6, Paul advises the church to gently restore fellow members in sin by leading them to repentance while cautioning them against being tempted in the process. He makes a profound statement: “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ” (v. 2). Likewise, in Romans 14 Paul argues that reconciliation requires certain rights and freedoms be laid down by all for the sake of some weaker brothers and sisters.

Read it all.

Scripture is full of examples of communities and institutions being held accountable for their sinfulness.

D. T. Everhart on systemic sin in the Bible:https://t.co/NkvfX6GqCf

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) February 21, 2025

“We want to show people what can be done in a small place,” said Priest-in-Charge, the Rev Kay Jones. “So, we started with the church environment being different.”

Inside the building, a legacy provided for LED lighting and thermal boards, helping the church lower its carbon emissions, as well as providing a warm space for the community. “It’s not freezing anymore,” said Kay. “We can have warm-space activities. People like being here.”

And people are connecting with it. An open day to launch the potting shed brought 17 adults and 27 children together. “It was hard to get rid of them at the end,” Kay joked. “It is changing things for small numbers of people,” she added.

“What I’m seeing is people wanting to be part of what we do,” she said. “People are trying different foods grown in the garden, learning how – and what – to recycle in the church’s recycling bins, and crucially, learning where food comes from, helping to reduce their food bills.”

Read it all.

"We want to show people what can be done in a small place."

A church in one of the country’s most deprived areas is bringing people together and helping them with their wellbeing – thanks to the launch of a series of environmental projects.

Read more at https://t.co/Joa7q8MizC.

— The Church of England (@churchofengland) February 21, 2025

Every few weeks, it seems, another AI achievement sets the world abuzz. It speaks! It paints! It digests a whole book and spits out a 10-
minute podcast! 

This is generative AI, the large computing models that dazzle and worry us with their humanlike output. We’ve become accustomed to hearing about AI, but have we considered what it really offers us? Most simply: a promise of ease and justice. 

With the proper application of AI, its enthusiasts tell us, we won’t have to work so hard. Our economy will be more equitable, our laws and their enforcement closer to impartial, the slow and faulty human element bypassed altogether. We will achieve a painless and mechanistic fairness. 

Here, rather than dwell on any individual technological feat, I want to examine those two tempting offers. Long before generative AI became a reality, these temptations were offered elsewhere: by science fiction villains and by the Devil when he came to Jesus in the wilderness. 

Read it all.

“If we follow in Jesus’ steps—if we live slowly, do good things however inefficiently, and share the extravagant grace we’ve been given—the temptations of AI, like all false promises, will grow dim and unconvincing,” writes @jeff_bilbro.https://t.co/B2EDLsbPEo

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) February 17, 2025

What Ilyich faces in the final moment is grace. He is graced with the realization that he needs to offer care. Knowing that the real is compassion is not his accomplishment but is the gift of his son’s presence. We, who would so quickly assist him out of this life, would do so because we can bear with neither grace nor compassion. They ask too much of us for another. 

Because death is not taken from him by “assistance” that offers no real help, Ilyich is graced with realization that death is no more. “Instead of death there was light.” He sees this light and realizes that “death is over . . . there is no more death.” Ilyich’s realization echoes Revelation 21:4 that “death will be no more.” Only a culture that can see death and care for those who are dying can be a culture open to the One who bore all our burdens. Christ’s dying offers us abundant life even in our deaths if we are willing to face them. In his Good Death, death itself dies. Euthanasia denies us a good death because it is the denial of care, the denial of facing death authentically, and the denial of the goodness of life. It is thus the denial of the Author of Life—or of any possible spiritual breakthrough at all.

Each fall for many more years, my students and I will read a novella about a dying, loveless lawyer from Tsarist Russia. We will ask what the real life is and wonder if we are living it. We will consider what love and care look like and whether we live in a culture in which we bear each other’s burdens. To bear those burdens is to face our deaths together. The direction of our culture is increasingly toward “death pods” where we will die alone, because we, like Ivan, have refused to really live together. Resisting such a culture of solitary and uncared for assisted dying will take legislation, but it will also require that we spend some time with Ilyich and try to recover the goodness of a good life and of a good death. Someday I will face death. Someday my students will face it as well. Will we do so in a world detached from reality or attached to it? A culture that dispatches the burdensome or bears their burdens? A culture that offers care or that offers death? The euthanasia of Ilyich would have made impossible his eu thanatos. Our society’s growing practice of euthanasia may well prove to be the denial not only of our good deaths but also of the only real thing, a good life.

Read it all.

Resisting the march of euthanasia will require numerous approaches. I hope this reflection on the good death of Ivan Ilyich contributes in some small way. https://t.co/wOO6VTKdnF

— Terence Sweeney (@TerenceJSweeney) February 19, 2025

Bell then comments:

‘Such a vision of unity is surely what must lie at the heart of any theological vision for the Anglican Communion. The gift of unity, intertwined with truth and holiness, empowered and initiated through and by love, flowing from its Trinitarian source, and finding its visibility not only in our structures and institutions but in our relationships and lives of Christian service, witness mission. Unity as gift and imperative sits above our disagreements requiring us not to contort ourselves into pseudo- agreement, but instead to recognise that metaphysical unity precedes our disagreements and will be revealed in different visible ways as we journey on together.’ (p.191)

What conservative Anglicans would want to say in response to these paragraphs is that Archbishop Rowan is right to say that the unity that all true Christians possess is the ‘pure gift’ of  ‘being summoned and drawn into the same place before the Father’s throne.’ However, they would want to add that this pure gift also includes a summons to ‘bear much fruit’ (John 15:8) or in other words to begin to live a new life enabled by the Holy Spirit which fulfils God’s intentions for his human creatures. In addition they would want to say that according to the witness of Scripture, and the uniform tradition of the Christian Church based on Scripture, living this new life involves living as the men and women God created us to be and observing a strict sexual ethic involving sexual faithfulness within (heterosexual) marriage and sexual abstinence outside it.  

Because they would want to say this, they would also want to say that unity is broken not only when Christians are not ‘able to see in each other the same kind of conviction of being called by authoritative voice into a place where none of us has an automatic right to stand,’ but also when they are not able to see in each other a recognition of God’s call to bear fruit in the ways just described. They would also add that this is what is currently the case in the Anglican Communion and in the Church of England.

In response to Bell’s comments conservative Anglicans  would agree that unity is both a gift and an imperative and would also agree that it is ‘revealed in different visible ways.’ However, they would say that these ways have to include Christians living as the men and women God created them to be and observing the Christian sexual ethic as outlined above.

Read it all.

We may subjectively dislike what God has said, but true Christian humility lies in accepting what God has said and acting upon it anyway' Martin Davie https://t.co/EUCULJ0Bk1 #anglican #marriage #theology #sexualethics #anthropology #scripture #religion #uk pic.twitter.com/WyjgnobT0k

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) February 10, 2023

The Anglican Church in Uganda has adopted a series of strategic measures to safeguard its vast tracts of land that are under threat from encroachers.

The church’s initiatives involve venturing into coffee farming to transform unused land into productive agricultural spaces, registering mass tracts of untitled church land, issuing spiritual warnings and pursuing legal action against land grabbers.

The church said the initiatives will safeguard property and contribute to economic growth and social stability — ensuring that church land remains a valuable resource for future generations.

For nearly four decades under President Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Movement government, land grabbing has remained a significant challenge, not only for the other sections of society but also for the church. This issue has led to the displacement of thousands of impoverished Ugandans and even the demolition of churches. In 2020, a renowned land grabber demolished 40-year-old St. Peters Church in Ndeeba, in Kampala, sparking outrage among Christians.

Read it all.

The Anglican Church in Uganda has adopted a series of strategic measures to safeguard its vast tracts of land: transforming unused land into productive agricultural spaces, mass registration of untitled church land, spiritual warnings and legal action.https://t.co/OWkv1YpB5H

— Religion Unplugged (@ReligionMag) February 13, 2025

Writing in First Things (“Against Christian Civilization,” January 2025), Paul Kingsnorth proclaims an essential truth: the Christian faith must not be instrumentalized, and must not be made into a mere tool used in the defense of any earthly social order. The temptation to this misuse of the faith is particularly powerful, Kingsnorth observes, in times of apparent social decline—such as the present. He is to be commended for exposing some recent manifestations of the error of mere “civilizational Christianity” and for reminding us that Christians must hold their faith as true and good, and not simply as useful.  

Kingsnorth also, however, makes a much more far-reaching argument about the relationship of Christianity to civilization. Here he mixes his key truth with some serious errors which call for correction. Most of his mistakes arise from a persistent spirit of exaggeration and a failure to make the distinctions necessary to do justice to the issues with which he grapples.     

“Our work,” Kingsnorth announces, “is not to ‘defend the west.’ That’s idol worship. Our work is repentance, which means transformation.” Of course, any serious Christian will agree that a sinner’s personal repentance is more important than his defense of any worldly civilization. It does not follow, however, that a call to defend the West is a manifestation of idol worship. Christians may legitimately defend some earthly arrangements—and in some cases may have a duty to defend them—on the understanding that they are good and worth preserving and without mistaking them for the supreme good. A Christian citizen who wishes to preserve the civilization to which he belongs is no more guilty of idolatry than a Christian father who wishes to protect his family from worldly ruin.

Read it all.

In Defense of Christian Civilization https://t.co/zdtfA2WiEd

— Public Discourse (@PublicDiscourse) February 13, 2025

The Church of England’s governing body has rejected a fully independent safeguarding model to deal with abuse cases.

Synod members instead adopted an alternative proposal described as a “way forward in the short term” ahead of a move to full independence in the future.

But child safety expert Prof Alexis Jay – who had called for a fully independent model – described the decision as “deeply disappointing” and “devastating for victims and survivors”.

The vote comes after a turbulent period for the Church, which has seen the resignation of former Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby over his handling of an abuse case and criticism of Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell’s links to another.

Read it all.

This is disappointing, short-sighted, and very concerning. Fully independent oversight of safeguarding is essential.

BBC News – Church of England rejects fully independent safeguardinghttps://t.co/2IzYb8sKYN

— Prof Michael Green FCCT (@Michael_S_Green) February 11, 2025

The six Central Members of the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC) — those elected by General Synod — are “unanimous in their disquiet” over how proposals on changes to Standing Orders, to be debated on Thursday, were developed.

A background paper confirms that the proposals, which include ending the secret ballot and giving an extra vote to the chair in the case of deadlock, came from the House of Bishops in the wake of the CNC’s failure to appoint in Carlisle and Ely.

Moving a take-note debate on the CNC report on Tuesday, squeezed into the agenda on a day dominated by safeguarding, the Archbishop of York said: “We have to accept that from time to time a nomination isn’t made.

“But at the same time, I recognise from the many conversations and communications I have had that, when this happens, especially when it happens twice, confidence in the CNC process is affected, which has caused shock and dismay inside and outside the Church.”

Read it all.

The six Central Members of the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC) — those elected by General Synod — are “unanimous in their disquiet” over how proposals on changes to Standing Orders, to be debated on Thursday, were developed https://t.co/ZbR0CEqVYt

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) February 12, 2025

“Detaching the Church of England’s safeguarding staff from their current employers will almost inevitably create additional barriers to communication and cooperation, harming service delivery. Given that ‘service delivery’ in this context involves protecting children and vulnerable adults, any barriers whatsoever could have the most serious consequences,” the letter says.

“There is no doubt that transferring staff from 85 current employers to one yet-to-be-created employer will be destabilising, expensive, and likely to take far longer than expected,” the letter argues. “No other equivalent organisation in the UK employs its safeguarding staff in a separate body.”

It continues: “The disruption to recruitment and retention of staff, to existing relationships, and to morale would be considerable. Moreover, new structures bring new problems: a large national organisation is at least as likely to multiply layers of management as it is to improve frontline service delivery.”

Read it all.

Safeguarding professionals across the Church of England have urged the General Synod’s members not to back a proposal to outsource their work to a new national body https://t.co/aXrKJSuLfH

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) February 5, 2025