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

“The Makin Review already made clear that information about Smyth’s abuse was reported to the police (on a number of occasions) and to ACSA. ACSA’s own review confirms today that they did receive this information from the Diocese of Ely in 2013. While they state that they have not found any evidence of abuse by Smyth within their churches, they do admit that the Diocese of Cape Town’s communication of the danger which Smyth posed between when they were informed of that danger (2013) and when he died (2018) fell short of what the circumstances demanded.

“This is sobering to read. I am glad both that ACSA rapidly commissioned their own review in response to the Makin Review, and that they are now transparent about its findings. We join them in penitence for the failings of our Churches and in redoubling our efforts to care for and listen to victims and survivors, and to take all necessary and possible steps to respond well to all allegations of abuse.”

Read it all.

The Panel of Inquiry into the Anglican Church of Southern Africa's handling of serial abuser John Smyth’s presence in South Africa has noted a disturbing delay in fully implementing measures evolved over decades to grapple with abuse within the church

https://t.co/mHIeJRMche

— Cape Times (@CapeTimesSA) February 4, 2025

We have no respect for a surgeon who goes in but does not cut deeply enough to cure nor a patient who backs out of an operation because it may hurt; yet people can go through their whole lives attending church, listening to searching exposures of human sin, without ever taking it to themselves, or meeting anyone with skill and concern enough to lay the challenge right in their own laps.

—Experiment of Faith (New York: Harper&Row, 1957), p.22 (emphasis mine)

In 1955, Newsweek named him one of the ten greatest preachers in the United States and a year later, January 20, 1956, he was named "Man of the Year in Religion" by the Pittsburgh Junior Chamber of Commerce. His successful leadership resulted in his being offered rectorships TK

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) January 31, 2022

In his own inimitable style, President Donald Trump has identified something he dislikes and approached it with a wrecking-ball. Deprived of American funding by an executive order, aid programmes around the world are on the brink of collapse. But for the intervention of a judge at the 11th hour on January 28th, large parts of America’s federal government might have suffered a similar fate.

However, when it comes to another kind of cutting—of rules, rather than spending—Mr Trump is part of a global trend. From Buenos Aires and Delhi to Brussels and London, politicians have pledged to slash the red tape that entangles the economy. Javier Milei has wielded a chainsaw against Argentine regulations. Narendra Modi’s advisers are quietly confronting India’s triplicate-loving babus. Rachel Reeves, Britain’s chancellor, plans to overhaul planning rules and expand London’s Heathrow Airport. Even Vietnam’s Communists have a plan to shrink the bureaucracy.

Done right, the anti-red-tape revolution could usher in greater freedom, faster economic growth, lower prices and new technology. For years excessive rules have choked housebuilding, investment and innovation. But Mr Trump risks giving deregulation a bad name. His impulse to start by demolishing essential functions of government before reinstating the ones he likes is a formula for human misery and economic harm. The question is how to make reform bold enough to count, but coherent enough to succeed.

Read it all.

Around the world, an anti-red-tape revolution is taking hold. Done right, it could kick-start economic growth. In the wrong hands, it risks giving deregulation a bad name https://t.co/pxJS1MAXDP pic.twitter.com/PhAZtAt7Nq

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) January 30, 2025

The Church of England should develop a strategy to encourage more working-class people into ministry, a private member’s motion is to argue at next month’s General Synod meeting.

Proposed by the Revd Alex Frost, a priest in Burnley who left school at 15 and worked full-time in the retail sector to fund his ministerial training (Comment, Podcast, 26 April 2024), the motion calls on the Ministry Development Board to produce a “national strategy for the encouragement, development and support of vocations, lay and ordained, of people from working-class backgrounds”.

In his paper accompanying the motion, Mr Frost says that working-class people often find it difficult to respond to a calling to ministry because of middle-class expectations and assumptions throughout the Church.

”The first concern should be whether a person is called by God to a given ministry,” he writes. “Whether they have tattoos or a strong regional accent should not be held against them.”

Read it all.

The Church of England should develop a strategy to encourage more working-class people into ministry, a private member’s motion is to argue at next month’s General Synod meeting https://t.co/8ZAXzl6oaw pic.twitter.com/fPHH7yexqQ

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) January 28, 2025

The danger, though, is that at least for some of us, disillusionment can easily give way to cynicism. The cynicism of our moment comes in at least two forms. One is an opportunistic kind of cynicism. This is the kind that determines that no one is really sincere and that the whole world is divided into two simple categories: hucksters and marks. The opportunistic cynic decides, then, to learn how to be a huckster. Anyone who doesn’t is a sucker or a loser, in this view.

That makes things much easier for the opportunistic cynic because, among other things, it gives an immediate intellectual shortcut. One need not actually think about what’s true and what’s false, what’s real and what’s fake, what’s right and what’s wrong. All the opportunistic cynic has to think about is what works. Once the cynic knows who the “friends” and who the “enemies” are, he or she has the template needed to cheer on the right side and to denounce the wrong one.

The other kind of cynicism is instead despairing. If opportunistic cynicism is self-advancing, despairing cynicism is self-protecting. Once I stop expecting actual goodness or sincerity in other people or in institutions, I feel like I can’t be hurt anymore, or at least not hurt as much.

Read it all.

Cynicism protects us from some initial hurt, writes @drmoore.

But in the end, “it filters out not only the genuine danger and fakeness we rightly want to avoid—it filters out everything and everyone.”https://t.co/Rx4z2A8JJc

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) January 23, 2025

‘[Note the]….high honour our Lord places upon marriage. By his presence at the marriage feast, the Son of God said, ‘This is an honourable thing’ (Genesis 1:28; 2:18–25; Hebrews 13:4). One of the first steps toward moral decadence in any society is a low esteem for this ordinance of God. Where there is no sanctity of marriage, there is no regard for God or his law, no regard for moral decency, and no regard for human life. These things stand and fall together!

–Quoted by yours truly in last Sunday’s sermon from Don Fortner of Grace Baptist Church of Danville, KY, who pastored there for over 40 years and died in 2020

The only way for one of God’s elect to become unaccepted is for God to reject his own Son, for we are in him! Until God rejects Christ, he cannot, and will not, reject those who are in Christ. This is our blessed security! ‘He hath made us accepted in the beloved.’ Don Fortner. pic.twitter.com/GtkiuwyJB9

— The High Calvinist. (@SavedbygraceIII) May 23, 2024

Safeguarding dominates the agenda for the first three days of the upcoming General Synod session, a five-day meeting beginning on Monday 10 February. The business will “help with the journey of improvement that the Church of England is on”, the secretary-general, William Nye, told a press briefing on Thursday.

In response to the Wilkinson (News, 11 December 2023) and Jay (News, 21 February 2024) reports, detailed proposals for a new structural model of organisations to deliver and scrutinise safeguarding on behalf of the Church of England, published on Thursday, set out two possible models, which will be put to the vote.

The first would see safeguarding officers currently working in dioceses, cathedrals and the national Church transfer to work for a new organisation. The second would see diocesan and cathedral officers remain with their current employers but most national staff move to a new body. In both cases, safeguarding work would be scrutinised by a second external body.

A motion responding to the Makin report (News, 7 November 2024) comes as early as Monday afternoon, with a presentation and debate on the proposed new structures beginning mid-morning on Tuesday and continuing into the afternoon if needed. 

Read it all.

Safeguarding dominates the agenda for the first three days of the upcoming General Synod session. The business will “help with the journey of improvement that the Church of England is on”, the secretary-general, William Nye, told a press briefing today.https://t.co/bhm38pVuF4

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) January 23, 2025

Disciplinary action against individuals criticised in the Makin report is to be considered by a panel including a lawyer known for his work prosecuting Rochdale grooming gangs, it was announced on Thursday.

The lawyer Nazir Afzal will sit as one of the three decision-makers on a panel also comprising the Church of England’s National Director of Safeguarding, Alexander Kubeyinje, and a former Director of People at Croydon Council, Barbara Peacock.

Mr Afzal is also chair of the C of E’s National Safeguarding Panel (NSP), which offers independent scrutiny and guidance to the Church’s National Safeguarding Team, led by Mr Kubeyinje (News, 13 September).

The announcement from Church House on Thursday says that Mr Afzal’s work on the new panel “is separate [from] and independent” of his position with the NSP.

Read it all.

Disciplinary action against individuals criticised in the Makin report is to be considered by a panel including a lawyer known for his work prosecuting Rochdale grooming gangs, it was announced on Thursday https://t.co/qwJzYxSbsy

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) January 22, 2025

But our need for leaders to show us the way is also because, for humans, actions will always speak louder than words. Most of us have heard of the 7-38-55 rule, publicised by the psychologist Albert Mehrabian: that, in interpersonal communication, words account for just seven per cent of the impact made, vastly outweighed by the tone used (38 per cent) and the accompanying facial expressions and body language (55 per cent).

This makes intuitive sense to anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of a weaponised “I’m. Fine!” It’s also why, if you stand outside pointing up at a tower and say “Look at the ground,” everyone will look at the tower, because that is where you are directing your physical attention.

On Christmas Day, the Archbishop of York’s sermon called on the whole Church to “walk the talk” (News, 3 January) and translate its words into action: show me! So, how might contrition be shown? When Mary lavishes nard on the weary feet of Jesus, everyone is outraged. But they get the message, because what is needed to signal a change of heart is highly visible, extravagant contrition. And, today, this needs to come from the top — specifically, from the House of Bishops, whose collective silence has been deafening.

Read it all.

Why do few people believe that the Church of England’s leaders are truly sorry? Machiavelli helps to explain why, writes @evepoolehttps://t.co/pxacXxxdTu

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) January 17, 2025

While few modern proponents of doctor-assisted death would argue that sick people should “make way” when their lives become a draw on others’ resources, they don’t appear to believe this—inevitable—outcome should prevent the practice from being legalized. This troubling attitude goes against the U.K.’s historically Christian approach to dying people, including the belief that every person has intrinsic value, and every life ought to be equally cherished and protected.

Every single one of us has been or will be a “burden” on others. When we are young, we depend upon the care and provision of our parents. When we grow ill, or elderly, we require support from our family and friends. This is not a bad thing; to be human is to be dependent. When it comes to helping those with terminal illness, properly resourced palliative care is highly effective at mitigating suffering and ensures that every patient hears a loving message: “It’s good that you’re alive.”

U.K. politicians must ask themselves what kind of society they want to create: One where an individualistic “right to die” sees vulnerable and marginalized Britons confronted with the option of suicide and pressured to pursue it; or a society where suicide is never viewed as a fitting response to suffering, where every citizen is recognized to have intrinsic and equal value, safeguarded from harm, and offered compassionate, life-affirming support.

As the Canadian ethicist Ewan Goligher noted: “A nation’s laws are a teacher.” Legalizing assisted suicide teaches society to doubt human value and to see it as merely extrinsic and conditional. Prohibiting it reflects the true depth of human dignity.

Read it all.

It’s Good That You’re Alive https://t.co/n78pfTOVXG “As the Canadian ethicist Ewan Goligher noted: ‘A nation’s laws are a teacher.’ Legalizing assisted suicide teaches society to doubt human value and to see it as merely extrinsic and conditional”

— David Mulroney (@David_Mulroney) January 17, 2025

We need a radically different solution. The way forward that I propose for our consideration and debate is one of “Truth and Accountability”. Backed by a comprehensive and generous redress scheme, such a process would be modelled on approaches such as those of the Hillsborough Inquiry (News, 3 November 2017), the Anglican Church of Canada’s examination of abuse in its residential schools (News, 8 January 2016), and the experiences of post-apartheid South Africa.

The Church’s version would need to bring together those who have been so hurt with those whose mishandling of their concerns has done so much to traumatise and reabuse them. Its aim would be to enable a series of humane encounters where all the lies and extenuating circumstances of the past would be laid down in an environment designed to enable vulnerability and truth. The aim of such an approach would be to enable transparency and light, the establishment of facts, and an honouring of the stories and experiences of those who have been denied justice for so long.

The remit of this work would not be to investigate those suspected guilty of acts of poor ethical intent or that fall under the criminal law — that is the job of the disciplinary process and/or the police. Rather, it would be to hear, investigate, and explore actions of omission, deficient process, and the deliberate exercise of “learned helplessness” which have compounded the original abuse of survivors over time.

Those called to account would do so in the knowledge that admission of their omissions, misdeeds, and shortcomings would not result in their prosecution or defenestration, being sued, or cancelled. Rather, the aim would be to bring them face to face with a justice that would promote their learning, repentance, and change, enabling them to become the strongest voices for doing things differently next time.

Read it all.

"The way forward that I propose for our consideration and debate is one of 'Truth and Accountability''".https://t.co/qA0JWjDKzJ

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) January 15, 2025

Many of the world’s richest economies will need to at least double productivity growth to maintain historical improvements in living standards amid sharp falls in their birth rates.

A McKinsey report investigating the economic impact of declines in birth rates found that the UK, Germany, Japan and the US would all have to see productivity rise at double the pace seen over the past decade to maintain the same growth in living standards witnessed since the 1990s.

The consultancy’s report, published on Wednesday, showed that to match GDP per capita growth between 1997 and 2023, productivity growth in France and Italy would need to triple over the coming three decades. In Spain, it would need to rise fourfold between now and 2050.

The report highlights the stark impact of declining birth rates on the world’s most prosperous economies, leaving them vulnerable to a shrinking proportion of the population of working age.

Read it all.

"Many of the world’s richest economies will need to at least double productivity growth to maintain historical improvements in living standards amid sharp falls in their birth rates."

Falling Birth Rates Raise Prospect of Sharp Decline in Living Standards @FT pic.twitter.com/18gmETDuDS

— James Pethokoukis ️ (@JimPethokoukis) January 15, 2025

10. What statement about friendship can be more sublime, more true, more valuable than this: it has been proved that friendship must begin in Christ, continue with Christ, and be perfected by Christ. Come, now: propose what in your opinion should be the first question about friendship.

IVO. I think we should first discuss what friendship is, lest we appear to be painting on a void, not knowing what should guide and organize our talk.

11. AELRED. Is Cicero’s definition not an adequate beginningfor you? “Friendship is agreement in things human and divine, with good will and charity.”

12. IVO. If his definition suffices for you, it’s good enough for me.

–Aelred of Rievaulx Spiritual Friendship I.10-12 (Lawrence C. Braceland, tr., Marsha L. Dutton ed., Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2010), p.57

Today, the 12th January in 1167 is the date usually given for the death of Aelred of Rievaulx, it is also his feast day. He spent his youth at the court of King David of Scotland. While traveling in Yorkshire on royal business, he learned about the monks at the Cistercian pic.twitter.com/9n4sNUk8su

— HistoryandHeritageYorkshire (@GenealogyBeech) January 12, 2025

By stating that Jesus is “born of woman”—this Mary (as both St. Matthew and St. Luke attest)—St. Paul insists that Jesus is most emphatically human, the “firstborn of all creation. That this Mary is at the same time a virgin prevents the birth of Jesus from being reduced to what we know or can reproduce from our own experience.

Life that is unmistakably human life is before us here, a real baby from an actual mother’s womb; there is also miracle here, and mystery that cannot be brushed aside in our attempts to bring the operations of God, let alone our own lives, under our control.

The miracle of the virgin birth, maintained from the earliest times in the church and confessed in its creeds, is, in Karl Barth’s straightforward phrase, a “summons to reverence and worship….” Barth maintained that the one-sided views of those who questioned or denied that Jesus was “born of the virgin Mary” are “in the last resort to be understood only as coming from dread of reverence and only as invitation to comfortable encounter with an all too near or all too far-off God.”

–Eugene Peterson in God With Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas ed. Greg Pennoyer and Gregory Wolfe (Massachusettes, Paraclete Press, 2007), p., 5; quoted in the sermon posted below

Nativity high up in Norwich Cathedral, c1470 pic.twitter.com/wArIWKv8fn

— Rembrandt's Rm (@RembrandtsRoom) December 28, 2023

Referring to the prevalence of suicide and how “huge efforts” are being made “to try to prevent people feeling despair and feeling that they have no other choice but to take their own lives”, Archbishop Martin said, “I find a profound contradiction between that and the idea of assisting somebody to take their own life at any stage during their life.”

He noted that fears and concerns regarding the introduction of assisted suicide were voiced to some extent during the lead up period to the Westminster vote.

“In Ireland we need a very careful reflection on this.” He expressed disappointment that the Dáil “seemed to be rushing to adopt what we [the Irish bishops] believe was a flawed report of the Oireachtas Committee just before it broke up for the election.”

“It gave me some consolation to see that none of the parties appeared to be making the introduction of assisted dying in Ireland a manifesto issue and therefore I feel that none of the parties have actually a mandate now to proceed on this issue.”

“I really do feel that our concerns about the slippery slope, how this issue invariably gets expanded and increased as time goes on, which we see from other countries, is something we should reflect long and hard about.”

Read it all.

Archbishop ‘very disappointed’ over assisted dying vote https://t.co/2kBwTtpM9A

— Eamon Martin (@ArchbishopEamon) December 23, 2024

Why? A believer myself, I’ve spent weeks talking to my fellow faithful and to clergy at all levels, trying to find the answer. St Paul distilled Christianity down to three things: faith, hope and love. In my many discussions, I found plenty of the first, although little agreement about what it was placed in; not much of the second; and the third, well, it was in short supply.

I came away thinking that, for the CofE, this really might be the end of days. The first horseman of this coming apocalypse is the ugliest: the church’s hideous record of abuse.

We’re talking about the case of John Smyth, an evangelical Christian whose sadistic sexual beatings brutalised more than 100 young men over four decades. It was the Makin report into the case that forced Welby to resign when it revealed that he had known Smyth for decades and had failed to report the case to police when he was made aware of allegations in 2013.

Read it all (registration or subscription).

Scandals, schism and decay: is the Church of England doomed?

Justin Welby and others have left in disgrace and the gaps between factions are widening. Stephen Bleach meets vicars across the country to see if the institution can be saved https://t.co/jjTE0Fuk5s

— The Times and The Sunday Times (@thetimes) December 22, 2024

THE Bishop’s Council of the diocese of Truro has written an open letter calling for “real change” to safeguarding.

In a letter sent to churches and schools in the diocese, and published online on Wednesday, the council — which includes the Acting Bishop of Truro, the Rt Revd Hugh Nelson — endorse the Bishop of Newcastle, Dr Helen-Ann Hartley, describing her recent action as “prophetic”.

“Over the last three weeks the safeguarding failures of the Church of England have been laid bare yet again. We are hearing clearly from survivors and victims of abuse in this diocese and beyond that the national church response is causing intense pain,” the letter begins.

The signatories, which along with Bishop Nelson comprise the Archdeacons of Bodmin and Cornwall, the Dean of Truro, and the chairs of the diocesan board of finance, House of Laity, and House of Clergy — say that it they “join our voice to Bishop Helen-Ann Hartley’s prophetic call for us to be a different sort of church.

Read it all.

Diocese of Truro calls for ‘real change’ to safeguarding https://t.co/hGdCpo6Sa3

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) December 20, 2024

Other churches across South Carolina were left feeling stuck after the decision. One Midlands church was also in the midst of the “discernment” process, and even had a majority committed to leaving, when the decision came down and “pulled the rug out from underneath us,” according to one church member who asked to remain anonymous because she didn’t want to be identified as speaking out against the conference.

She said the church had almost slept through the 2023 exodus, which didn’t affect their church community, but became more aware once the 2024 general conference approved the ordination of openly gay clergy and allowed the celebration of same-sex marriage.

“There are basically a lot of people in churches who don’t understand what goes on in their denomination, and we got caught with our head in the sand,” she said. “We didn’t realize what was going on, and trusted leadership to make us aware of the friction had been growing for years. … We were kind of sheltered.” While the conference marriage vote was the catalyst, she said her fellow worshipers had become become weary of and disillusioned with the United Methodist hierarchy.

Read it all.

SC Methodist churches thought they had time to decide to stay or go. The door slammed shut https://t.co/ckTJSDMQHE

— The State Newspaper (@thestate) December 18, 2024

I have already, on a previous occasion, spoken at some length on the subject of Work and Vocation. What I urged then was a thoroughgoing revolution in our whole attitude to work. I asked that it should be looked upon, not as a necessary drudgery to be undergone for the purpose of making money, but as a way of life in which the nature of man should find its proper exercise and delight and so fulfill itself to the glory of God. That it should, in fact, be thought of as a creative activity undertaken for the love of the work itself; and that man, made in God’s image, should make things, as God makes them, for the sake of doing well a thing that is well worth doing.

It may well seem to you – as it does to some of my acquaintances – that I have a sort of obsession about this business of the right attitude to work. But I do insist upon it, because it seems to me that what becomes of civilization after this war is going to depend enormously on our being able to effect this revolution in our ideas about work. Unless we do change our whole way of thought about work, I do not think we shall ever escape from the appalling squirrel cage of economic confusion in which we have been madly turning for the last three centuries or so, the cage in which we landed ourselves by acquiescing in a social system based upon Envy and Avarice.

A society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded on trash and waste, and such a society is a house built upon sand….

Read it all.

All that was left of the garage was a heap of charred & smouldering beams. In the driving seat of the burnt-out car were the remains of a body. Listen to our vintage collection of crime and detection stories featuring Lord Peter Wimsey by Dorothy L. Sayers, who died #OTD 1957. pic.twitter.com/JYRS8NdIQJ

— Friends of WHLibrary (@FoWHLNW6) December 17, 2024

God wants us to understand the depth and breadth of our transgressions against him and come face to face with the utter lostness of our plight. He wants us to own our sad and sorry situation, understanding that our sin offends him and that his wrath is upon us. That without Jesus we are held captive by the Enemy. 

I know what it’s like to be held captive by a sad and sorry situation. Decades ago, when a reckless dive left me paralyzed at the age of 17, my world went dark. My despair seemed like a bottomless pit. I was lost to life as I once knew it—riding horses, playing sports, and hiking through the beauty of God’s creation. But now? I felt enslaved by a life sentence of quadriplegia.   

Lying in the rehabilitation hospital after my injury, I wanted to end my life. Unable to do even that, I determined to end my life spiritually. I told my mother to shut the door and close the drapes. I wanted to shut out the light—shut out the whole world. I was lost. 

Only when we appreciate the fact that we are lost can we fully celebrate being found. Perhaps that’s why James says, “Grieve, mourn, and wail” over your sin and God “will lift you up” (4:9,10). 

Read it all.

Advent calls us out of our despair, writes Joni Eareckson Tada.

Sitting in the dark helps us truly appreciate the light.https://t.co/sZstQnGIQ9

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) December 12, 2024

The Church of England is facing “one of the biggest existential crises . . . since the Reformation”, in the wake of the Makin Review into abuse perpetrated by John Smyth, the Bishop of Rochester, Dr Jonathan Gibbs, said on Tuesday.

Speaking after voting in favour of a diocesan synod motion that expressed no confidence in the Archbishops’ Council’s oversight of safeguarding (News, 10 December), he suggested that the lack of a national, pastoral response to the strength of emotion elicited by the report had been a “significant omission”.

“In many people’s views, and I think I would share it, this is one of the biggest existential crises that the Church of England has faced since the Reformation,” he said. “For that reason, I think there is a real need for what I would call a pastoral response, acknowledging that hurt and pain, particularly of victims and survivors, but that so many people are feeling.”

This was happening at a diocesan and local level, he said, but required a national response, too. “I think we are going through a period of collective trauma over this, above all for victims and survivors but also for the whole Church, and I think it’s a shame that there hasn’t been that broader response from the Archbishops’ Council.”

Read it all.

The Church of England is facing “one of the biggest existential crises . . . since the Reformation”, in the wake of the Makin Review into abuse perpetrated by John Smyth, the Bishop of Rochester, Dr Jonathan Gibbs, said on Tuesday https://t.co/NEXbzaYMoz

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) December 11, 2024

Christians are not alone in valuing life; many Jews, Muslims, and other people of goodwill also affirm the intrinsic goodness of human life. But there is a distinctly Christian conviction at work here, and it is bedrock to our faith: Every human being, from conception to death, is created by God, loved by him, and stands under his protection. 

The claim that innocent human life is inviolable is not primarily a claim about us humans, then, but about our Creator. To murder (or torture or enslave, as the church father Gregory of Nyssa saw as early as the fourth century) is to trespass without authority, to assert rights where one has none. It is to unsay God’s “very good” spoken over a fellow creature, to reject and despise a man or woman whom the Lord has brought into being and for whom Christ died. Inviolability is the upshot of our creation in the divine image. 

Unlike many topics in theology and ethics, this is not an issue on which the church has ever been ambiguous. There were no early church councils to debate the taking of innocent life. It didn’t take centuries of conflict to adjudicate. On the contrary, Christians were known from the start for their adamant rejection of pagan disrespect for those unwanted by their families or deemed socially useless—the unborn and newborn, disabled and elderly. 

Read it all.

Why do Christians oppose euthanasia?

Brad East’s answer:https://t.co/cviFstiPVB

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) December 11, 2024

The “atmosphere of blame and guilt” that has followed publication of the Makin Review is creating a culture of fear that encourages cover-up, the Bishop of Blackburn, the Rt Revd Philip North, warned this week.

He spoke of “real fear in the local church” among clergy and parish safeguarding officers (PSOs), who needed reassurance about their practice, and of the importance of creating a “no-blame atmosphere, where we are asking not who but why, where we are all looking to improve in an atmosphere where we won’t be hung out to dry.

“I regret this atmosphere of blame and guilt that has followed Makin and is being stirred up by all sorts of people including some of my colleagues, because it creates a culture of fear, and and a culture of fear encourages cover-up,” he said on Tuesday. “Whereas, for good safeguarding, you need a no-blame culture.

Read it all.

Clergy are scared of a culture of guilt and blame, says Bishop of Blackburn https://t.co/hKcPNAe9Dg

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) December 7, 2024

As a supporter of assisted suicide, Lord Sumption’s argument is commendably honest. He recognises that the Leadbeater bill creates a new kind of society. Although it sprinkles us all with the same fairy dust of autonomy, our new-found entitlement does not land on us all equally. Rather, because of pre-existing social inequalities, it creates two distinct groups. In one, we find “strong-minded, articulate individuals.”

They have a high sense of self-worth and good support networks. To them, assisted suicide represents an idealised form of dying on their own terms. It is an empowering possibility for a future dark day, an option (perhaps that such a person will never actually use) rather than an obligation. In the other group, Lord Sumption writes, we find “the genuinely vulnerable”. For many reasons (illness, old age, hard life circumstances) people in this group often feel dictated to by life. They cannot hold prime ministers to personal account, and are not of much interest to the media. In many cases, their support networks are threadbare.

Lord Sumption admits that such people have good reason to fear the Pandora’s Box opened by Leadbeater’s bill. For them, in time, it will be less an empowering hypothetical option for a future day and more a dark cloud that will hang over every day, a silent obligation to be resisted rather than a liberating insurance plan. Although he supports assisted suicide, it is for the sake of the vulnerable that he is unable to “rejoice” in the first wave of an incoming tide.

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Excellent piece!

“When elevated to life’s highest value, autonomy is an uncompromising and rapacious master. Given time, the strength of its logic bursts through our arbitrary restrictions on it.” –@DrJamesEglinton https://t.co/BbAOKmEeWl

— Keith Plummer (@XianMind) December 7, 2024

After the publication of the Makin review, “and in view of the process now being undertaken by the National Safeguarding Team”, Bishop Snow had “requested that John steps back from ministry whilst this work is conducted, which John [Woolmer] has voluntarily agreed to do”. His PTO would be reviewed again, “once the National Safeguarding Team and the Diocesan Safeguarding Team have concluded their work”.

Writing on social media last week, one Smyth survivor, Graham, wrote: “I cannot speak for all victims, but John Woolmer is one of the good guys. He wrote to victims in 2017, a heart-rending mea culpa. We forgave him immediately. . . Victims do not want ‘revenge’, we want full disclosure, and honest, credible, apology. Woolmer is a good man.”

In 2021, the Archbishop of Canterbury said: “I have made it clear that the National Safeguarding Team will investigate every clergy person or others within their scope of whom they have been informed who knew and failed to disclose the abuse” (News, 21 May 2021). This commitment was also made to survivors, with the Archbishop saying that a list held up by one survivor would act as the basis for investigations.

The Makin review records that “this is not what then happened,” and that victims felt that a promise had been broken. “The investigations being undertaken were in order to establish whether an ordained person was presenting a current safeguarding risk.”

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A former Bishop of Durham, the Rt Revd Paul Butler, is among the clergy who have been asked to “step back” from ministry while safeguarding reviews prompted by the Makin review are conducted, it was confirmed this week https://t.co/EVtJUfLlns

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) November 28, 2024

Bishop Mullally, who is the C of E’s lead bishop for health care and a former Chief Nursing Officer for England, said: “The Church of England believes that the compassionate response at the end of life lies in the provision of high quality palliative care services to all who need them.

“Today’s vote still leaves the question of how this could be implemented in an overstretched and under-funded NHS, social care, and legal system. Safeguarding the most vulnerable must be at the heart of the coming parliamentary process; today’s vote is not the end of the debate.”

The Archbishop of York was reported in the Guardian as saying: “I regret this decision. It changes the relationship between the state and its citizens, between doctors and their patients, and within families between children and their terminally ill relatives. Once begun it will be hard to undo and control.”

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Church figures have expressed concern after the first steps towards making assisted dying legal in England and Wales were taken on Friday. https://t.co/O4jCF3HaEI

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) December 2, 2024

MPs have backed proposals to legalise assisted dying in England and Wales in a historic vote which paves the way for a change in the law.

In the first Commons vote on the issue in nearly a decade, MPs supported a bill which would allow terminally ill adults expected to die within six months to seek help to end their own life by 330 to 275, a majority of 55.

It followed an emotional debate in the chamber, where MPs from both sides shared personal stories which had informed their decisions.

The bill will now face many more months of debate and scrutiny by MPs and peers, who could choose to amend it, with the approval of both Houses of Parliament required before it becomes law.

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MPs back proposals to legalise assisted dying https://t.co/fPRg05cakA

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) November 29, 2024

Some time ago, I found myself sitting at a dinner opposite a Labour peer. We chatted over various things as the evening proceeded. Just before we were getting up to leave a new topic came up. “I am a convinced campaigner for assisted dying,” she said. “As a bishop, I suspect you’re not. Why don’t you think we should do it?” Put on the spot, struggling to know what to say, and knowing I probably had one line to deliver as we stood up to leave, I said something like this: “Life is a gift from God. It’s not up to us to decide when it ends.” She looked across at me with a pitying look and walked away, clearly unconvinced.

I’ve often wondered what I should have said. Lord Falconer suggests that only secular people like him are ‘objective’ and religious people like me or Shabana Mahmood are biased and therefore our views are to be discounted. The idea that his secular perspective is not colouring his views, but that our religious ones are, or that he is not imposing his beliefs on others whereas we are, is of course, as Isabel Hardman has argued, philosophical nonsense.

Our religious beliefs shape our views, as his secular views shape his. The question is which perspective gives us a better, healthier and more coherent way of living together. I spoke recently to a key figure in the Church of England’s response to Assisted Dying who told me in no uncertain terms that religious arguments simply don’t wash in this debate. We have to use pragmatic and political ones that appeal to a wide audience. And so, the main arguments we have heard from church leaders and others against assisted suicide refer to the slippery slope argument: that legislation will inevitably in time become looser to include more candidates; care for the vulnerable, such as the elderly or the disabled who will feel pressurised into taking their own life, or, as the Health Secretary Wes Streeting has argued, the fact that palliative care is not yet robust enough in our health system to enable a proper choice.

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My thoughts on why religion matters in the assisted dying debate https://t.co/SJBK4fUI3B

— Graham Tomlin (@gtomlin) November 27, 2024

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is hell.

–C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1960), pp. 138-139

22 November 1963: Author and academic Clive Staples (“CS”) Lewis died. (aged 64). He’s best known for his works of fiction, especially The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Space Trilogy. pic.twitter.com/oR0QlTIZwd

— Frank McDonough (@FXMC1957) November 22, 2024