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

ZENIT spoke with Father Tarcisio Giuseppe Stramare of the Congregation of Oblates of Saint Joseph, director of the Josephite Movement, about Tuesday’s feast of St. Joseph the Worker….

ZENIT: What does “Gospel of work” mean?

Father Stramare: “Gospel” is the Good News that refers to Jesus, the Savior of humanity. Well, despite the fact that in general we see Jesus as someone who teaches and does miracles, he was so identified with work that in his time he was regarded as “the son of the carpenter,” namely, an artisan himself. Among many possible activities, the Wisdom of God chose for Jesus manual work, entrusted the education of his Son not to the school of the learned but to a humble artisan, namely, St. Joseph.

Read it all.

"In order to assess the sanctity of Saint Joseph, it would be sufficient to know that he was elected by God in order to fulfill the duties of a father towards Jesus Christ." – St. Alphonsus pic.twitter.com/1bbR5kMrRC

— Memento Mori (@TempusFugit4016) March 19, 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

“We have a lot of data to go to a permanent Standard Time,” Burman said. “So hopefully (Daylight Saving) will, in the next few years, get eliminated.”

There are biological reasons the time change is harmful, said Dr. Jigme Sethi, physician-executive for Sleep Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina. The body has an internal clock that governs many functions and runs on a 24.2-hour cycle, the circadian rhythm of activity and rest. There is also a solar clock that pays attention to light and darkness and helps set the internal clock, Sethi said. When those are properly aligned, the body functions normally.

But with Daylight Saving, there is more darkness in the morning, when the body is trying to wake, and more daylight into the evening, when rest and then sleep should be coming on, Sethi said.

This can lead to immediate consequences. The number of fatal accidents increases by 6 percent the weekday after, and those accidents are more likely in the morning, according to a 2020 study. An analysis of criminal sentences handed down on the Monday after the time change found sleep-deprived judges gave out prison terms that were 5 percent longer than those on the preceding or following Mondays, one study found.

Medical errors also seem to rise soon after the time change, Sethi said.

But there are also long-term consequences, particularly for children, Burman said.

Read it all.

Daylight Saving Time is more diabolical than losing an hour of sleep, experts say https://t.co/m41qUbirkX

— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) March 7, 2025

“Confess your faults one to another” (Jas. 5:16). He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone. It may be that Christians, notwithstanding corporate worship, common prayer, and all their fellowship in service, may still be left to their loneliness. The final break-through to fellowship does not occur, because, though they have fellowship with one another as believers and devout people, they do not have fellowship as the undevout, as sinners. This pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everybody must conceal his sin from himself and the fellowship. We dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. so we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy. The fact is that we are sinners!

But it is the grace of the Gospel, which is so hard for the pious to understand, that it confronts us with the truth and says: You are a sinner, a great, desperate sinner; now come as the sinner that you are, to God who loves you. He wants you as you are; He does not want anything from you, a sacrifice, a work; He wants you alone. “My son, give me thine heart” (Prov. 23:26). God has come to you to save the sinner. Be glad! This message is liberation through truth. You can hide nothing from God. The mask you wear before men will do you no good before Him. He wants to see you as you are, He wants to be gracious to you. You do not have to on lying to yourself and your brothers, as if you were without sin; you can dare to be a sinner. Thank God for that; He loves the sinner but He hates sin.

–-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

"Remember that from dust you came and to dust you shall return." Today marks the beginning of #Lent2025 with #AshWednesday, a time for reflection, repentance, and renewal. May our faith in the Lord be strengthened as we pray and meditate on His word during this holy period. pic.twitter.com/DzY8Z7GCeQ

— Trinity College Nabbingo (@TRICONAOfficial) March 5, 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

Hearing from @DrGRMcDermott at St. Luke’s #Anglican Theology Conference speak on sexual difference and how we cannot know image of God without knowing both sexes. Our bodies and relationship point to deeper reality about union with God. pic.twitter.com/nVGL7H5FmE

— Jeff Walton (@jeffreyhwalton) February 27, 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

Science fiction has long been full of robots that look, move and even think like we do. In the real world humanoid forms have, until very recently, been a nonstarter. Hard to build, expensive, slow and lumbering, they have never made sense compared with the countless other varieties of purpose-built—and vastly more affordable—robots that have multiplied rapidly in the past decade. 

That’s changing. As global demand for new kinds of robots has shot up, mass manufacturing and falling costs for components are making them cheaper to produce. Just as important, new kinds of AI—some close kin to the kind that has upended the priorities of tech companies and governments since the debut of ChatGPT—are animating robot bodies in ways that simply weren’t possible even a few years ago.

While purpose-built robots continue to proliferate, be they wheeled conveyances or dog-shaped machines carrying guns, the advantages of a body plan like ours are beginning to carve out a niche for humanoid robots. The world, after all, is built for things that look and move like we do. It’s full of stairs, gangways, shelves at shoulder height and sightlines at eye level, so hewing to the humanoid form makes it easier to slot robots into existing roles. Then there are the more subtle advantages of the human form—we can pick up heavy loads by cantilevering them over bent legs. By contrast, a robot with wheels and arms would have to have a much wider and heavier base to keep from tipping over.

More than a dozen startups worldwide are now offering humanoid robots….

Read it all.

Humanoid Robots Finally Get Real Jobs https://t.co/VIHt9364Il #myfcsi #robots #ai pic.twitter.com/0h3YUWx4jF

— William Bender, FCSI (@WmBender) February 27, 2025

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back 
                           Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack 
                           From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
                           If I lacked any thing.

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
                           Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
                           I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
                           Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
                           Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
                           My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
                           So I did sit and eat.

Today, the calendar in Common Worship (CofE) commemorates the Welsh-born English poet, orator and priest, George Herbert (1593-1633) with a Lesser Festival. #GeorgeHerbert pic.twitter.com/FnyhernyJY

— Mark Coughlan (@mjc0ughl4n) February 27, 2025

Churches such as Holy Trinity, Brompton (HTB), are better at connecting with younger generations on social media. I would much rather repost HTB’s beautifully curated content, with thought-provoking questions and soothing low-fi beats, than the C of E’s reels about Anglican history or what has been going on as the Synod sits. Recent content has highlighted the goings-on in the House of Laity, which, I think, most of my friends would assume was a new reality-TV show.

Before even getting into debates over the place of liturgy or the finer details of Anglican theology, this is a generation who still struggle with the concept of “sin” and “salvation”. The rhetoric that they remember from religious-studies lessons at school (for many, the only time when they have encountered Christianity) is that of judgement and wrath. In conversations with my friends, church has become synonymous with guilt. It is not seen as a place of community or inclusion, but of ostracism and hypocrisy. As a generation who have come of age during a pandemic and a crippling cost-of-living crisis, we are all too acquainted with the reality of a fallen world. What Gen Z are looking for is a Church that will offer them leaders with integrity and a better plan for the world.

Looking to the Gospels, both Jesus’s leadership and the hope that he offers the world seem very far from the reality of organised Christianity which my generation see in the media. The Church’s reputation in the media is so important because Gen Z church attendance is staggeringly low. They are not sitting in churches or opening the Bible: they are opening Instagram and having their views formed by the snippets of news which they see on their feeds.

Read it all.

Gen Z are open to faith — but not to the Church of England

When it comes to connecting with younger people, the Church has a communication problem, argues Abigail Kinghttps://t.co/Jj0uukXrGQ

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) February 23, 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

Christian doctors practice on the frontlines of tensions over gender dysphoria and transition. CT agreed not to use the name of one—call him Dr. J—because he doesn’t want protesters filling his northeastern US waiting room. What’s key: Dr. J resists a busy doctor’s pressure to rush through an appointment. Instead, he begins with mundane but essential questions about the patient’s social and familial history.

He’ll say, “Talk to me about what’s happened. What brought you to this place in life?” When patients express dissatisfaction with their status as men or women, Dr. J doesn’t suggest transitioning. Instead, he asks questions: “Who lives at home? How are your relationships? What do you do for a living? Have you experienced past abuse?”

Dr. J said it’s “about loving patients well, caring for them well, seeing them with God’s eyes.” Good questions help patients open up about their reasons for detaching from their male or female identity. They can form a bridge to help patients move beyond seeing medical transition as the answer to past trauma.

Dr. J. lives out what the Christian Medical & Dental Associations (CMDA) call “winsome advocacy.” CMDA senior vice president Jeff Barrows calls for encouraging “meaningful dialogue” that could lead to changed opinions. Dr. J offers medical and scriptural arguments: He explains to patients requesting gender transition hormones that up to 85 percent of youth experiencing gender dysphoria later move beyond it and also encourages them to consider God’s design for their lives.

Read it all.

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

Imagine being able to speed up evolution – hypothetically – to learn which genes might have a harmful or beneficial effect on human health. Imagine, further, being able to rapidly generate new genetic sequences that could help cure disease or solve environmental challenges. Now, scientists have developed a generative AI tool that can predict the form and function of proteins coded in the DNA of all domains of life, identify molecules that could be useful for bioengineering and medicine, and allow labs to run dozens of other standard experiments with a virtual query – in minutes or hours instead of years (or millennia).

The open-source, all-access tool, known as Evo 2, was developed by a multi-institutional team co-led by Stanford’s Brian Hie, an assistant professor of chemical engineering and a faculty fellow in Stanford Data Science. Evo 2 was trained on a dataset that includes all known living species, including humans, plants, bacteria, amoebas, and even a few extinct species. Stanford Report talked to Hie about Evo 2’s advanced capabilities, why the scientific world is so eager to get its hands on this new tool, and how Evo 2 could reshape the biological sciences.

Read it all.

Just now: @arcinstitute and @nvidia release Evo 2, the largest AI model for biology. It is fully open-source.

Evo 2 can predict which mutations in a gene are likely to be pathogenic, or even design entire eukaryotic genomes.

We covered it in @AsimovPress! Check it out pic.twitter.com/hBJkrtNVr0

— Niko McCarty (@NikoMcCarty) February 19, 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

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

Nigel Richards is the reigning world champion of Scrabble in Spanish. Just don’t ask him to order a coffee in Madrid. The 57-year-old New Zealander doesn’t speak a lick of Spanish. 

During the deciding match in November’s Spanish World Scrabble Championship in Granada, Spain, Richards racked up triple-word scores with ENRUGASE (“to wrinkle up”) and ENHOTOS (an archaic word for “familiarity”), before clinching victory with TRINIDAD and SABURROSA (an obscure word that describes the coated residue of the tongue). 

Not that Richards knew the meaning of any of those words. 

One Spanish TV broadcaster called his win the “ultimate humiliation.” The global Scrabble community wasn’t so surprised. Richards had done this before—in French. 

Read it all.

How good is Scrabble’s GOAT? He wins in languages he can’t speak. “He memorizes words as soon as he reads them once…For him, all words are equal in his memory, and he doesn’t need to know their meaning." https://t.co/BzfRLNqVCH via @WSJ @natasha_dangoor

— Gráinne McCarthy (@grainnemcc) February 10, 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

While it’s true that traditional monasticism is declining in many historic Christian traditions, new monasticism—the contemporary reappropriation of monastic wisdom—is still very much alive. More than that, the movement is gaining a new and growing following among the next generation and is meeting universal human needs that are felt more now than ever.

In our global digital age, many Christians are rediscovering the importance of community, the value of rhythms and routines amid chaotic circumstances, and the need for deeper commitment to spiritual formation. Over the past five years alone, the pandemic, incidents of racial injustice, and the church abuse crisis have led to a wake-up call. We are realizing that it may be worth sacrificing modern comforts and conveniences to live out our highest ideals and potential as God’s people and that we may need to look back in order to go forward.

Some believers have been sensitive to these needs for a long time—people who consider themselves “new monastics” (like me), who are fascinated by the desert elders’ courage to relocate to abandoned places. We are intrigued by the idea of living in a close community and making serious commitments to fundamental values. We wonder if establishing communal rules for life might tame the wild horse of late modern culture and help us better order our lives around the gospel.

Today, this reappropriation is taking the form of devotional apps like Lectio 365, introductory virtual classes on contemplative prayer, repurposed convents in Europe, and prayer spaces in alleyways and financial districts. It looks like Christian university campus houses establishing their own rules of life or communal discipleship programs, and small “colleges” of Christian students attending larger universities. It is happening through globally dispersed organizations like OMS, which takes prospective members through stages of preparation and vow-taking in a digital initiation process modeled after traditional religious orders.

Read it all.

Independent safeguarding was once unthinkable, but today few observers think the Synod can afford to vote down the proposals. Given the revelations of the past few months, it would be approaching institutional suicide for the Church to reject the opportunity to rebuild trust and demonstrate its determination to stop abusers and keep vulnerable people safe.

But in the desperate rush to be seen to be doing something to stop the relentlessly critical headlines, few have considered what independence will not fix. The same people who investigated Perumbalath and concluded there was no evidence he was a safeguarding risk will still constitute the safeguarding team; they will just work for a different employer. Safeguarding cases will still be based on the often-conflicting accounts of the only two people in the room at the time of the alleged incident. There will still be cases that cannot be resolved in the way survivors and their increasingly vocal advocates would like. Who will listen to and support dissatisfied and wounded survivors, if not the Church? And what happens when the independent safeguarding authority clears someone the CofE hierarchy believes to be guilty?

Safeguarding independence will not be an end the Church’s state of permacrisis. In fact, the Synod vote will probably create as many new problems as it solves old ones. The weary vicars wondering when they can stop bracing for the next scandal cannot relax yet.

Read it all.

"If the Church of England was not in crisis before, it certainly is now."

Tim Wyatt: There is no solution to the Church of England permacrisis https://t.co/T7bXLQP72Y

— The New Statesman (@NewStatesman) February 6, 2025

Edgar met Rita on LinkedIn. He worked for a Canadian software company, she was from Singapore and was with a large consultancy. They were just friends, but they chatted online all the time. One day Rita offered to teach him how to trade crypto. With her help, he made good money. So he raised his stake. However, after Edgar tried to cash out, it became clear that the crypto-trading site was a fake and that he had lost $78,000. Rita, it turned out, was a trafficked Filipina held prisoner in a compound in Myanmar.

In their different ways, Edgar and Rita were both victims of “pig-butchering”, the most lucrative scam in a global industry that steals over $500bn a year from victims all around the world. In “Scam Inc”, our eight-part podcast, The Economist investigates the crime, the criminals and the untold suffering they cause. “Scam Inc” is about the most significant change in transnational organised crime in decades.

Pig-butchering, or sha zhu pan, is Chinese criminal slang. First the scammers build a sty, with fake social-media profiles. Then they pick the pig, by identifying a target; raise the pig, by spending weeks or months building trust; cut the pig, by tempting them to invest; and butcher the pig by squeezing “every last drop of juice” from them, their family and friends.

The industry is growing fast….

Read it all.

Online scamming is a vast, sophisticated and fast-growing global enterprise that compares in size and scope to the illegal drug industry. Except that in many ways it is worse. As our investigation finds, nobody is safe from Scam Inc https://t.co/MMKm0TeOIW pic.twitter.com/QIUMvOCjDW

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) February 6, 2025