Pour out thy Spirit upon all of thy sons and daughters, Almighty God, that like thy servant Elisabeth Cruciger our lips may praise thee, our lives may bless thee, and our worship may give thee glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Olympia Morata of Elisabeth Cruciger? https://t.co/w3sDOoT7ZR pic.twitter.com/TYJskJZQN9
— Margriet Gosker (@margrietgosker) May 5, 2017
All this implies a recognition that Jesus of Nazareth was no mere Jewish teacher who founded a Jewish sect, but rather the Saviour of the world who summons all nations of the world to His allegiance.
The Church, in other words, is fundamentally a missionary society, commissioned and committed to proclaim the Gospel of salvation to the whole world. Insofar as any inhabitants of the globe have not heard the Gospel, the Church should have a heavy conscience. Christ has sent us to herald forgiveness to all the nations, but we have not done so. role have failed to ‘fulfill His final commission. We have been disobedient to our Lord.
There is still time to make amends, however. As the world population explodes, the Church’s task might seem to be getting harder and the goal of world evangelization more remote. But as modern means of mass communication increase, and as the Church humbly seeks fresh spiritual power, the task once again appears possible. This spiritual power is, in fact, the fifth and last aspect of the Lord’s commission which Luke mentions. We are to proclaim the forgiveness of sins on the ground of Christ’s name and on condition of repentance to all the nations.
It’s the centenary of John Stott’s birth today, who founded @liccltd in 1982. Rowan Williams writes: “John Stott will certainly be remembered as one of the most significant Christian teachers of our time. … (1/5) pic.twitter.com/ngguU98UJy
— Paul Woolley ن (@PaulTWoolley) April 27, 2021
As the temperature hovered around freezing, hundreds of men trickled into a former slaughterhouse on a recent Friday. In the overflow crowd outside, scores more unfurled their prayer mats on the asphalt as the imam’s voice intoned through loudspeakers.
The old slaughterhouse has served as a temporary mosque for the past 21 years for many Muslims in Angers, a city in western France. Construction on a permanent home has stalled since last fall when the City Council unanimously rejected a proposal by Muslim leaders to hand ownership of their unfinished mosque to the government of Morocco in return for its completion. Local members, after donating more than $2.8 million, were tapped out.
Building a mosque in France is a tortuous endeavor at the best of times. Members tend to be poorer than other French people. Turning to foreign donors raises a host of concerns — both inside and outside Muslim communities — that are coming under intensifying scrutiny with President Emmanuel Macron’s new law against Islamism, which is expected to get final approval in the Senate in coming weeks.
Complicating matters for Muslims has been France’s principle of secularism, called laïcité, which established a firewall between state and church. While the government regards itself as strictly neutral before all faiths, the law effectively made the state the biggest landlord of Roman Catholic churches in France and the guardian of cultural Roman Catholicism.
The French government regards itself as strictly neutral before all faiths. But the financial implications of France's principle of laïcité tell a different story.
Our article with @onishinyt https://t.co/ZMnIYKyXGr
— Constant Méheut (@ConstantMeheut) March 31, 2021
More and more cities are embracing a doughnut-shaped economic model to help recover from the coronavirus crisis and reduce exposure to future shocks.
British economist and author of “Doughnut Economics” Kate Raworth believes it is simply a matter of time before the concept is adopted at a national level.
The Dutch capital of Amsterdam became the first city worldwide to formally implement doughnut economics in early April last year, choosing to launch the initiative at a time when the country had one of the world’s highest mortality rates from the coronavirus pandemic.
Amsterdam’s city government said at the time that it hoped to recover from the crisis and avoid future crises by embracing a city portrait of the doughnut theory.
As outlined in Raworth’s 2017 book, doughnut economics aims to “act as a compass for human progress,” turning last century’s degenerative economy into this century’s regenerative one.
“The compass is a doughnut, the kind with a hole in the middle. Ridiculous though that sounds, it is the only doughnut that actually turns out to be good for us,” Raworth told CNBC via telephone.
🍩 More & more cities are embracing a doughnut-shaped economic model to help recover from the Covid crisis and avoid future shocks.
➡️ @KateRaworth believes it is a matter of time before the concept is adopted at a national level.
👇 Here's the story:https://t.co/r6zCqBQxnh
— Sam Meredith (@smeredith19) March 25, 2021
Almighty God, who willest to be glorified in thy saints, and didst raise up thy servant Gregory the Illuminator to be a light in the world, and to preach the Gospel to the people of Armenia: Shine, we pray thee, in our hearts, that we also in our generation may show forth thy praise, who hast called us out of darkness into thy marvelous light; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
September 30th is the feast of Saint Gregory the Illuminator, “Apostle of the Armenians”: Arsacid nobleman, father of Saints Vrtanes and Aristakes, adviser to King Saint Tiridates, first Bishop of Ashtishat, missionary to Caucasian Albania, and hymnographer—who died circa AD 331. pic.twitter.com/tuFqRHcHzX
— Tradical (@NoTrueScotist) September 30, 2020
Amandine Chéreau hurried from her cramped student apartment in suburban Paris to catch a train for an hourlong trip into the city. Her stomach rumbled with hunger, she said, as she headed for a student-run food bank near the Bastille, where she joined a snaking line with 500 young people waiting for handouts.
Ms. Chéreau, 19, a university student, ran out of savings in September after the pandemic ended the babysitting and restaurant jobs she had relied on. By October, she had resorted to eating one meal a day, and said she had lost 20 pounds.
“I have no money for food,” said Ms. Chéreau, whose father helps pay her tuition and rent, but couldn’t send more after he was laid off from his job of 20 years in August. “It’s frightening,” she added, as students around her reached for vegetables, pasta and milk. “And it’s all happening so fast.”
As the pandemic begins its second year, humanitarian organizations in Europe are warning of an alarming rise in food insecurity among young people, following a steady stream of campus closings, job cuts and layoffs in their families. A growing share are facing hunger and mounting financial and psychological strain, deepening disparities for the most vulnerable populations.
In France and across Europe, more students are facing food insecurity as the pandemic enters its second year. “I have no money for food,” one 19-year-old said. “It’s frightening. And it’s all happening so fast.”https://t.co/b7j6TYFgEd
— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 16, 2021
Most Gracious God, who hast bidden us to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly before thee; Teach us, like thy servants Vincent and Louise, to see and to serve Christ by feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, and caring for the sick; that we may know him to be the giver of all good things, through the same, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Today the Episcopal Church commemorates Vincent de Paul, Priest, 1660 and Louise de Marillac, Vowed Religious, 1660 https://t.co/FHXiOJCGff pic.twitter.com/Sy59qqpCfp
— The Anglican Church in St Petersburg (@anglicanspb) March 15, 2021
One of the largest backers of the initiative was the nationalist Swiss People’s Party, which applauded the outcome of the vote and called the new measure “A strong symbol in the fight against radical political Islam.”
“The burqa creates a barrier between the person wearing it and the environment and thus prevents integration into society,” Swiss People’s Party President Marco Chiesa said in a statement.
Some feminist groups and progressive Muslims reportedly were supporters of the initiative, arguing that full face coverings are oppressive to women.
Other groups felt the new restriction was Islamophobic and that women should not be told what to wear.
The Islamic Central Council of Switzerland said the results were “Islamophobically motivated.”
“Today’s decision is tearing open old wounds, expanding the principle of legal inequality and sending a clear signal of exclusion to the Muslim minority,” the group wrote.
Swiss voters backed a ban on niqabs and burqas worn by a handful of Muslim women in the country. https://t.co/GzUHH09Dfk
— NPR (@NPR) March 8, 2021
There’s auto news out of Sweden: Volvo Cars says that it will be fully electric by 2030. No more internal combustion, no more hybrids. It’s batteries or bust.
In making this commitment, Volvo is betting on a trend: that as EVs are becoming cheaper and new conventional cars are being priced higher, consumers’ math on electric-versus-internal combustion will soon come out in electrics’ favor.
But there’s more to Volvo’s position on EVs than just changing the powertrain. The carmaker says its pure electric models will only be available for sale online, and that its first fully electric car is now receiving over-the-air software updates. (Tesla has been doing this for years.) That first plan has implications for the built environment; the second, for emissions and the global climate.
Read it all (subscription).
Online sales and over-the-air updates could spell the end of car dealerships https://t.co/vgjKX8lqDY via @business
— North Street (@northassoc) March 4, 2021
According to the 2018 religious affiliation report of the CIS, 1.96% of the population in Spain identifies as protestant or evangelical. In the last 20 years, this group has multiplied eightfold, being the denomination with the highest percentage growth.
This figure is significant when compared with that of the majority religion, Roman Catholicism, which in the same period has gone from 83.7% to 64.8%, a loss of almost 20 percentage points.
Neverthless, the “confession” that has grown most is that of those who do not identify with religion, going from 10,25% to 28,6% in only 20 years (this percentage include atheists – those who do not believe in God, a 16,8%- and agnostics – those who do not know if there is a God or do not believe there is a way to know, a 11,2%).
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Read it all.
SPAIN: New official data show that evangelicals have multiplied eightfold in the last 20 years. The evangelical places of worship keep also growing, there are over 4,200 throughout Spain. https://t.co/GXCso9aHEr
— Evangelical Focus (@Evan_Focus) February 24, 2021
Stepping up its attacks on social science theories that it says threaten France, the French government announced this week that it would launch an investigation into academic research that it says feeds “Islamo-leftist’’ tendencies that “corrupt society.’’
News of the investigation immediately caused a fierce backlash among university presidents and scholars, deepening fears of a crackdown on academic freedom — especially on studies of race, gender, post-colonial studies and other fields that the French government says have been imported from American universities and contribute to undermining French society.
While President Emmanuel Macron and some of his top ministers have spoken out forcefully against what they see as a destabilizing influence from American campuses in recent months, the announcement marked the first time that the government has moved to take action.
It came as France’s lower house of Parliament passed a draft law against Islamism, an ideology it views as encouraging terrorist attacks, and as Mr. Macron tilts further to the right, anticipating nationalist challenges ahead of elections next year.
The French government has announced an investigation into social science research that it says feeds “Islamo-leftist’’ tendencies that “corrupt society,’’ broadening attacks on what it sees as destabilising American influences.
"Soft power", anyone?https://t.co/kSLK6gaVXr
— Ruchir Sharma (@ruchirsharma_1) February 19, 2021
WATCH: After sharing her story in a powerful Super Bowl ad, Jessica Long speaks with @LesterHoltNBC about her journey to becoming the second-most decorated Paralympian in U.S. history. https://t.co/Kng2IfvoJ1
— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) February 9, 2021
Do take the time to watch it.
Almighty and everlasting God, who didst send thy servant Anskar as an apostle to the people of Scandinavia, and dist enable him to lay a firm foundation for their conversion, though he did not see the results of his labors: Keep thy Church from discouragement in the day of small things, knowing that when thou hast begun a good work thou wilt bring it to a faithful conclusion; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Anskar, now known as the ‘Apostle of the North’, was a missionary, abbot, Bishop of Hamburg and Archbishop of Bremen. He founded schools and enabled slaves to be released. He's also the patron saint of Denmark. Find out more about him here – https://t.co/BfD1yrnJSM. pic.twitter.com/ayOYMoM25K
— Peterborough Cathedral (@pborocathedral) February 3, 2020
A range of European churches have also voiced their concerns, including the Evangelical Lutheran church in Denmark, the Lutheran World Federation, the Roman Catholic Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union, and the Conference of European Churches.
Innes said there was a worrying trend towards impinging on minority groups across Europe. “There is a wide sense of concern about this. I am genuinely concerned at what I detect to be a growth of an anti-liberal government legislation and freedom of religion threats in Europe as a whole.
“This is not an isolated incident. I do think that we need to be alert to the encroachment on our freedom to practice our religions. Little by little, minority groups are being treated with increasing suspicion.
“For example, in Switzerland our clergy have been informed that they can’t work part time, they can only work full time, because there is a suspicion at what they might be doing in the other half of their time. In France, minority religious groups are required to have their accounts subject to a particularly invasive investigation and to re-register as religious associations every five years.
If this can even be debated in an enlightened country like Denmark, preachers should be worried. @Bishop_Europe https://t.co/1kv5inGP05
— Michael Sadgrove 🇪🇺 (@MichaelSadgrove) February 1, 2021
Percy Julian was one of the great scientists of the 20th century. In a chemistry career spanning four decades, he made many valuable discoveries, for which he was awarded dozens of patents, 18 honorary degrees, and membership to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences—only the second African American bestowed such an honor.
Yet Julian’s achievements as a trailblazer for Black chemists, while less well-known, are no less remarkable. Growing up when racial discrimination factored into every aspect of life for Blacks in America, from riding a bus to getting a job, Julian persevered to realize his dreams. And when he finally “arrived” as a successful chemist and businessman, he did not lose sight of the challenges that fellow Blacks still faced. He became a mentor to scores of young black chemists and, later in life, an inspiration for thousands as a civil-rights leader and speaker.
As the late Vernon Jarrett, one of the nation’s leading commentators on race relations, put it, “This man is Exhibit A of determination and never giving up. I think he’s a role model not only for blacks but for all races.”
Percy Julian… a brilliant scientist and civil rights trailblazer.
https://t.co/hWD2KnLrUo— Brad Rieger (@BradRieger) January 31, 2021
Holy God, we bless thee for the gift of thy monk and icon writer Andrei Rublev, who, inspired by the Holy Spirit, provided a window into heaven for generations to come, revealing the majesty and mystery of the holy and blessed Trinity; who livest and reignest through ages of ages. Amen.
Baptism of Christ, Andrei Rublev, 1405 pic.twitter.com/TRGt3BwCS6
— Elena (@omnialnchristo) January 13, 2021
Almighty God, who didst call Fabian to be a faithful pastor and servant of thy people, and to lay down his life in witness to thy Son: Grant that we, strengthened by his example and aided by his prayers, may in times of trial and persecution remain steadfast in faith and endurance, for the sake of him who laid down his life for us all, Jesus Christ our Savior; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
January 20 Saint Fabian Pope and Martyr; Saint Sebastian Martyr Fabian was a humble and respected farmer before election to Pope in 236 AD a dove landed on his head seen as a sign; Sebastian was a Roman Soldier; both martyred under Diocletian circa 250 AD pic.twitter.com/y5IEXpcSTC
— Cephas Zone (@CephasZone) January 20, 2021
Perhaps he learned that in those years he spent among the game’s lesser lights: one at Novara, three at Udinese, one at Sampdoria. By the summer of 2017, when he returned to Portugal — as the second-most-expensive signing in Sporting’s history — he had still not received a call-up to Portugal’s national team (though he had captained its under-21 side). His arrival was not heralded as a coup. “Most of the big teams had not seen much of him,” Martelinho said.
And yet, within just a few months, it was obvious what Portugal had been missing. “The Portuguese league is not as strong as England, Spain or Germany,” Martelinho said. “But it is maybe the fifth- or sixth-best league in Europe. It is not easy. Bruno made it look easy.”
His impact in England has been no less swift. It is not yet 12 full months since he arrived at Old Trafford, yet he has already been voted into one Premier League team of the season, and, with his team emerging as contenders to end a seven-year wait for a championship, he would rank among the leading candidates to win this campaign’s player of the year award.
And yet if his rise seems rapid, it is anything but. Fernandes has had to wait for this moment. Not through any fault of his own, but through a flaw in soccer’s structure, through its inability to look for talent in unexpected places. This was the player he always was, and always could be. It just took the game a while to notice, and all because he needed to take a bus, all those years ago.
I’ve been intrigued for a while by why it took Bruno Fernandes so long to make it big in an era of industrial-scale talent recognition.
It turns out he’s not a late bloomer, it’s that sometimes football doesn’t see talent if it’s in the wrong place. https://t.co/9Bewr7L8Zz
— Rory Smith (@RorySmith) January 15, 2021
On December 22, 1849, a group of political radicals were taken from their prison cells in Petersburg’s Peter and Paul Fortress, where they had been interrogated for eight months. Led to the Semenovsky Square, they heard a sentence of death by firing squad. They were given long white peasant blouses and nightcaps—their funeral shrouds—and offered last rites. The first three prisoners were seized by the arms and tied to the stake. One prisoner refused a blindfold and stared defiantly into the guns trained on them. At the last possible moment, the guns were lowered as a courier galloped up with an imperial decree reducing death sentences to imprisonment in a Siberian prison camp followed by service as a private in the army. The last-minute rescue was in fact planned in advance as part of the punishment, an aspect of social life that Russians understand especially well.
Accounts affirm: of the young men who endured this terrible ordeal, one had his hair turn white; a second went mad and never recovered his sanity; a third, whose two-hundredth birthday we celebrate in 2021, went on to write Crime and Punishment.
The mock-execution and the years in Siberian prison—thinly fictionalized in his novel Notes from the House of the Dead (1860)—changed Dostoevsky forever. His naive, hopeful romanticism disappeared. His religious faith deepened. The sadism of both prisoners and guards taught him that the sunny view of human nature presumed by utilitarianism, liberalism, and socialism were preposterous. Real human beings differed fundamentally from what these philosophies presumed.
People do not live by bread—or, what philosophers called the maximalization of “advantage”—alone. All utopian ideologies presuppose that human nature is fundamentally good and simple: evil and apparent complexity result from a corrupt social order. Eliminate want and you eliminate crime. For many intellectuals, science itself had proven these contentions and indicated the way to the best of all possible worlds. Dostoevsky rejected all these ideas as pernicious nonsense. “It is clear and intelligible to the point of obviousness,” he wrote in a review of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, “that evil lies deeper in human beings than our social-physicians suppose; that no social structure will eliminate evil; that the human soul will remain as it always has been . . . and, finally, that the laws of the human soul are still so little known, so obscure to science, so undefined, and so mysterious, that there are not and cannot be either physicians or final judges” except God Himself.
Read it all (emphasis mine).
His naive, hopeful romanticism disappeared. His religious faith deepened. https://t.co/6ka4j3frZO
— The New Criterion (@newcriterion) January 14, 2021
O Lord our God, who didst raise up thy servant Hilary to be a champion of the catholic faith: Keep us steadfast in that true faith which we professed at our baptism, that we may rejoice in having thee for our Father, and may abide in thy Son, in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit; thou who livest and reignest for ever and ever.
St. Hilary of Poitiershttps://t.co/usnYkpHyrp pic.twitter.com/OKHMP2hcus
— Herald Malaysia (@heraldmalaysia) January 13, 2021
Britain and the EU were last night finalising a historic post-Brexit deal that will define their future trading relationship, reducing the risk of the UK crashing chaotically out of the European single market on January 1.
Boris Johnson, UK prime minister, is expected to confirm the deal early on Christmas Eve after a flurry of last-minute talks in Brussels, bringing an end to nine months of tense negotiations.
EU and UK officials worked through Wednesday night to finalise the legal text, which will preserve tariff-free trade in goods between the EU and UK as well as protect co-operation in other areas such as security.
People briefed on the talks said that the ongoing work included fine-tuning the details of agreements struck on Wednesday on EU fishing rights in UK waters. But officials on both sides said the terms of the post-Brexit relationship were essentially settled.
Britain and EU poised to announce Christmas Eve Brexit deal https://t.co/fmBNRZkZ7m
— Financial Times (@FT) December 24, 2020
The Spanish Parliament has approved the first euthanasia law in the country on 17 December.
The rule, promoted by the Social Democrat government party, PSOE, received 198 votes in favour, 138 against and 2 abstentions. Spain becomes the fourth country in Europe and the sixth worldwide to legalise euthanasia, after the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Canada and New Zealand.
The law was approvedafter several attempts in which the Parliament voted against it. The government coalition of PSOE and leftist party Unidas Podemos, along with the deputies of liberal party Ciudadanos, leftist party Más País, Catalonian parties ERC, CUP and Junts per Catalunya, Basque parties PNV and EH Bildu, and Galician party BNG, all voted in favour.
The conservative parties PP and UPN and far-right Vox voted against it. Vox has announced that they will file an appeal of unconstitutionality against the text.
The law, which has yet to be approved by the Senate, although it is expected to do so, could come into force in the first months of 2021.
SPAIN: The Parliament passes the law with a majority of 198 votes, Dozens were protesting outside. Spain becomes the fourth European country and the sixth in the world to approve euthanasia. https://t.co/7P9nr2wP9Z
— Evangelical Focus (@Evan_Focus) December 18, 2020
It was clear from the start that a cyber attack by suspected Russian hackers aimed at several U.S. government agencies was going to be bad. One clue: National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien cut short a trip overseas early this week to rush back to Washington to help manage the crisis.
But on Thursday, the reality of just how sprawling — and potentially damaging — the breach might be came into sharper focus. It started with a bulletin from the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA, warning that the hackers were sophisticated, patient and well-resourced, representing a “grave risk” to federal, state and local governments as well as critical infrastructure and the private sector. It didn’t take long to see how accurate the agency’s assessment was.
Bloomberg News reported that at least three state governments were hacked. That was followed by reports of other breaches: the city network in Austin, Texas, and the U.S. nuclear weapons agency. Late in the day software giant Microsoft Corp. said its systems were exposed.
Excerpt:
… effect of Thursday’s revelations was confirmation that no single person or agency — including the highest reaches of the U.S. government — is certain of exactly what the hackers had infiltrated, let alone the full extent of what was taken.https://t.co/vm8C7Ay8i2— Rhiannon Fionn-Bowman (@RhiFionn) December 18, 2020
Germany’s biggest air-ambulance operator has ordered two electric air taxis to evaluate their potential in a pioneering role speeding doctors to patients.
ADAC Luftrettung, part of the country’s leading motoring association, will begin testing the 18-rotor Volocopter GmbH aircraft from 2023 after the simulation of 26,000 emergency responses in two cities indicated that it could fulfill a rapid-transport role currently performed by a costlier helicopter fleet.
The joint announcement Tuesday provides further evidence of the commercial potential of vertical takeoff air taxis, coming less than a week after Singapore said it plans to launch the world’s first such service.
Germany’s biggest air-ambulance operator orders two electric air taxis to evaluate their potential in a pioneering role speeding doctors to patients https://t.co/QME5XipfWw
— Bloomberg (@business) December 15, 2020
For Dr Sahin and Dr Tureci — whose insistence that the technology they have helped develop could herald a medical revolution was once dismissed as “science fiction” — the successful coronavirus vaccine has provided as much vindication as relief.
The couple, who between them have authored hundreds of academic papers, filed hundreds of patents, founded two non-profit organisations and two billion-euro businesses, faced scepticism from much of the medical establishment right up until this year.
The groundwork that led to their breakthrough was laid over several decades, in which the two softly-spoken researchers were forced to move out of the comfort zone of their labs and to become entrepreneurs, educators and evangelists.
After meeting as trainee doctors on a blood cancer ward in south-west Germany in the early 1990s, the couple discovered that they shared similar backgrounds — both sets of parents had migrated from Turkey in search of economic opportunity. They also realised that their core interest was not in purely academic science, but in applied science.
“First and foremost, we are physicians,” says Dr Tureci, who ran the duo’s first company, Ganymed, and is chief medical officer at BioNTech.
FT People of the Year: BioNTech’s Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci https://t.co/hucJp6X9de
— FT Health (@fthealth) December 16, 2020
When Russian hackers first slipped their digital Trojan horses into federal government computer systems, probably sometime in the spring, they sat dormant for days, doing nothing but hiding. Then the malicious code sprang into action and began communicating with the outside world.
At that moment — when the Russian malware began sending transmissions from federal servers to command-and-control computers operated by the hackers — an opportunity for detection arose, much as human spies behind enemy lines are particularly vulnerable when they radio home to report what they’ve found.
Why then, when computer networks at the State Department and other federal agencies started signaling to Russian servers, did nobody in the U.S. government notice that something odd was afoot?
The answer is part Russian skill, part federal government blind spot.
The U.S. government spent billions on a system for detecting hacks. The Russians outsmarted it. https://t.co/wIwZzTuowZ
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) December 16, 2020
Archbishop Foley Beach, Chairman of the Gafcon Primates Council, who will provide primatial oversight to ANiE said: “Anglicans in Europe need a network that is faithful to the Bible, focused on reaching the lost, and distinctly Anglican. Over ten years ago, when Gafcon enabled Anglicans in North America to come together for the good of the Gospel, I was one of them.
“Now, I am honoured to serve as the Chairman of the Gafcon Primates Council and provide for others what was provided for me: a spiritual home within Anglicanism and a base for mission.
“Please join me in prayer and support for the Anglican Network in Europe as they seek to proclaim Christ faithfully to the nations.”
ANiE will be " a home for those congregations that find themselves unable to continue part of the formal structures of their national churches", says Bishop Andy Lines. https://t.co/06coXxsoXJ
— Christian Today (@ChristianToday) December 10, 2020
The French army has been given the go-ahead to develop bionic soldiers resistant to pain and stress and endowed with extra brain power thanks to microchip implants.
The approval came from the ethical committee of the armed forces ministry, which said in a report that France needed to keep up with countries that were already working to produce super-soldiers.
The committee gave details of some lines of research, including pills to keep troops awake for long periods and surgery to improve hearing. Other areas in the “field of study” involve implants which release anti-stress substances or “improve cerebral capacity”.
Read it all (requires subscription).
Bourne ultimatum: France given green light for bionic soldiers- https://t.co/kmWY8YTLWY
— Tam Hussein (@tamhussein) December 9, 2020
Devout Catholics have often chafed under laïcité. But having either lived through or studied the Dreyfus era, they understood laïcité’s historic logic. Today’s young Muslims have no such folk memory. And history has moved on. In 1905, mass movements—socialism above all—were ready to provide antireligious muscle for the state. Today they are weaker, and they face a different religion, one that does not feature “turn the other cheek” among its precepts.
Nor does Islam have any hierarchy through which the state’s commands can efficiently resonate. When Combes told the church to close thousands of schools, bishops obliged. Laïcité requires such institutional interlocutors. Where France once tore down Catholic institutions, it must now build up Muslim ones. The CFCM is one example. As part of his antifundamentalist push, Mr. Macron has called for more Arabic instruction in schools.
The French leaders who invented laïcité knew the church. They were often lapsed Catholics themselves. Now when they sing the praises of an “Islam of the Enlightenment,” one wonders whether this is a realistic prospect or a figment of their ideological imaginations. Muslims may prefer the real Islam they have studied and lived to the licensed, accredited Islam of “Republican values” that Mr. Macron is proposing.
Every Western country has a version of this problem. All our treasured “values” were formulated for a society more uniform and more orderly than today’s. Why do we assume these values will survive diversity? Why does France assume that a system devised to subordinate its historic religion can serve just as well to mediate between its more recent secularism and a (rising) foreign religion? For a long time laïcité has rested less on its own logic than on the forbearance of its citizens. Under conditions of globalization, mass migration and the ethnic and religious recomposition of that citizenry, such forbearance can no longer be assumed.
"Every Western country has a version of this problem. All our treasured 'values' were formulated for a society more uniform and more orderly than today’s. Why do we assume these values will survive diversity?" https://t.co/KRzVvYIeVx
— Fredric U. Dicker (@fud31) December 4, 2020