At a shelter in Cambodia, 16-year-old girl points to the scar where she tried to slit her wrist with a broken plate.

Two years before, she left her province when offered a job as a cleaning lady in South Korea. Instead, she was sold into marriage in Beijing, where her new husband kept her locked up and demanded she give him a child.

“It was like hell,” she tells CT through a translator. “I just wanted to die.”

When she got pregnant soon after, the teen bride escaped at her first doctor’s appointment and contacted her friends 2,000 miles away, who called a hotline to arrange her rescue and repatriation. She and her 11-month-old daughter live in a home operated by Agape International Missions (AIM), among dorm-style bunk beds with about 50 other girls.

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It is important to counter extremist ideas including those that are fascist, Stalinist or racist but we all know that Prevent’s real job is to tackle Islamist radicalism. Ideologies should not be banned or outlawed but they should be countered effectively, especially when they lead to criminality or terrorism.

The main terrorism that we face today is related to Islam. And the problem behind Islamist terrorism is the difficulty of certain forms of Islam in compromising with modernity, and the failure of many Muslims to come to terms with being a minority in a world that largely regards religious belief and piety as a purely private matter.

But many Muslim leaders seem surprised when questions about terrorism are put to them. These terrorists are killers and Islam bans killing therefore, they reason, the terrorists cannot be Muslims. But that is to duck the problem.

If Muslims do not tackle the issue of how terrorism arises out of the Muslim community and is fed by certain crucial theological ideas, then the ideology will never be effectively challenged. There is a sort of collective brushing under the carpet in the Muslim community that is deeply unhelpful to all of us.

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The Scottish Episcopal Church reaches a landmark moment this week as its General Synod prepares to vote on whether to allow clergy to conduct marriages for same-sex couples in church.

While welcoming same-sex marriage may be the “easier” option, the Church will face challenges whatever the result, the Primus, the Most Revd David Chillingworth, has warned.

“If the vote is approved, we face all the challenges of operating the guidelines which we have drawn up to manage the diversity [of views on marriage],” he said on Monday. “If the vote doesn’t go through, there will be deep distress on the side of those who have been strong advocates of the change.”

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Stanford physics and education professor Carl Wieman won a Nobel Prize for his innovative, break-through work in quantum mechanics. Wieman has since levered the prestige and power of that prize to call attention to the need to transform undergraduate teaching, especially science education.

Wieman’s message, as we’ve reported here and here, is bold: Too many undergraduate programs fail to focus on teaching effectiveness or even bother to try to measure it. As he sees it, undergraduate Higher Ed still worships at the old false idol called the Big Lecture and doesn’t seem to want to ask whether it’s working.

His solution: Systemically improve teaching through methods that have become known as active learning.

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In addition to its implementation of the decisions on same-sex marriage, on which not all of the SEC is in favour, it is likely that there will be knock-on effects in its relationship with the Anglican Communion. As we noted in our post Communiqué from the Primates, the meeting of Anglican Primates on 11-15 January 2016 discussed inter alia the change to the doctrine of marriage by The Episcopal Church in the United Stated (TEC) and recommended [paragraphs 7 and 8 of Addendum A]:

“It is our unanimous desire to walk together. However given the seriousness of these matters we formally acknowledge this distance by requiring that for a period of three years The Episcopal Church no longer represent us on ecumenical and interfaith bodies, should not be appointed or elected to an internal standing committee and that while participating in the internal bodies of the Anglican Communion, they will not take part in decision making on any issues pertaining to doctrine or polity.

We have asked the Archbishop of Canterbury to appoint a Task Group to maintain conversation among ourselves with the intention of restoration of relationship, the rebuilding of mutual trust, healing the legacy of hurt, recognising the extent of our commonality and exploring our deep differences, ensuring they are held between us in the love and grace of Christ”.

The Anglican Church of Canada, which has allowed some clergy members to perform same-sex marriages but has not adopted a policy for the entire province, escaped sanctions. However, the primates’ resolution fell short of the demands of conservative primates to evict the Americans and the Canadians from the Communion. It seems likely that Archbishop Welby will be under pressure to apply sanctions similar to those on the TEC to the Scottish Episcopal Church.

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A monument commemorating the life of a leading anti-slavery campaigner has been unveiled in a dedication ceremony in Dorset.
Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, an MP for Weymouth in the 1800s, was a driving force behind the abolition of slavery.
There are already memorials to him in London, Jamaica and Sierra Leone.
The £90,000 monument, carved by Weymouth College stonemasonry students, is the result of seven years of work by the Thomas Fowell Buxton Society.

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A Taste of New York from FilmSpektakel on Vimeo.

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Pete Wilcox took another step towards his installation as the Bishop of Sheffield at a special service held by the Archbishop of York on the evening of 5 June.

The service included representatives from the Diocese of Sheffield who saw the legal process of the ‘confirmation of election’ of the ‘Bishop-elect’. Following this, the Very Revd Wilcox is now legally the Bishop of Sheffield and has spiritual jurisdiction over the Diocese. It was also the moment when he took his oaths of allegiance and canonical obedience.

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O Holy Spirit of God, Lord and Giver of life: Come into our hearts, we beseech thee; that enlightened by thy clear shining, and warmed by thine unselfish love, our souls may be revived to the worship of God, and our lives be dedicated anew to the service of our fellows: for Jesus Christ’s sake.

An H. C. Cooksey #Prayer for the Day 'enlightened by thy clear shining, +warmed by thine unselfish love' https://t.co/xAL6u3B0YR #pentecost pic.twitter.com/nuIQpBrWKb

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) June 7, 2017

Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, he answered them, “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, ‘Lo, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.”

And he said to the disciples, “The days are coming when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and you will not see it. And they will say to you, ‘Lo, there!’ or ‘Lo, here!’ Do not go, do not follow them. For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of man be in his day. But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. As it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of man. They ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise as it was in the days of Lot—they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built, but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom fire and sulphur rained from heaven and destroyed them all— so will it be on the day when the Son of man is revealed. On that day, let him who is on the housetop, with his goods in the house, not come down to take them away; and likewise let him who is in the field not turn back. Remember Lot’s wife. Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it. I tell you, in that night there will be two in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. There will be two women grinding together; one will be taken and the other left.” And they said to him, “Where, Lord?” He said to them, “Where the body is, there the eagles will be gathered together.”

–Luke 17:20-37