A religious literacy programme will be rolled out to ensure that civil servants and diplomats are no longer ignorant of the dire threats facing Christians around the world.

Sir Desmond Swayne, a leading Conservative campaigner for religious liberty, said: “This is all part of global Britain… This is us now reaching out with our soft power, using our diplomacy to defend religious freedom.”

The new training package will also give Government staff a crash course in the importance of religion to billions of people – and it may make damaging diplomatic blunders less likely.

There was embarrassment in 2018 when Britain’s most senior diplomat had to apologise for calling one of the holiest Sikh sites a mosque.

Research by the campaigning charity Open Doors suggests the persecution of Christians is getting worse, with “an average of eight Christians” killed for their faith every day last year, and 23 were “raped or sexually harassed for faith-related reasons”. It found North Korea was the country with the worst record on persecution, followed by Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya and Pakistan.

Read it all.

How Christian persecution overseas is set to become UK priority
The issue has risen up the Government’s agenda and will be debated by MPs this week.https://t.co/d5O8fMn1xY

— APPG FoRB (@APPGFoRB) February 3, 2020

But then we had a significant number of Bishops coming out and criticising their own statement with a kind of passive-aggressive, pseudo-spiritual language that is actually very disingenuous. Oh yes, they don’t overtly reject the statement per se – it’s just the way it came out, the timing of it, the wording that was used – as though introducing a few swirly flower motifs in the margins, changing the font from ‘Times New Roman’ to ‘Comic Sans’, and sending the whole thing out in a gift-wrapped presentation box with a free Parker pen was all that was required to satisfy them.

But this doesn’t fool anyone, does it? We all know that what many, probably most, of these objecting Bishops really mean is, ‘We don’t support that statement.’ In other words, they disagree with their own church’s teaching (not to mention that of most other denominations also). And thus the scene was set for a reportedly somewhat ‘lively’ meeting of the College of Bishops last week.

Out of that came a second statement – about the first statement – in which the Archbishops of Canterbury and York apologised for any ‘hurt caused’. The words used were of such wonderfully ambiguous Anglican-speak that the Church of England media office apparently had to spend most of its time and energy making it clear to media outlets that, no, they were not retracting their original statement, and, no, nothing had changed. Except whatever it was that had. Or hadn’t. Or something.

I scarcely need to spell out what this does for the morale of many clergy on the ground. And heaven help our watching parishioners. So what are we to do? The New Testament would seem to recommend expelling those who contradict established church teaching on moral issues (1 Corinthians 5). But this somehow seems to have been supplanted in recent years by Justin Welby’s assertion that ‘we don’t chuck out those we disagree with’. It’s a lovely sentiment, redolent of the touchy-feely era in which we live. But I can’t really relate this to apostolic teaching on church discipline at all.

Read it all.

A polite request to C of E bishops: Please stop traumatising your clergy https://t.co/jwKusulRg4

— David Ayshford Baker (@Baker_David_A) February 3, 2020

George Steiner, a literary polymath and man of letters whose voluminous criticism often dealt with the paradox of literature’s moral power and its impotence in the face of an event like the Holocaust, died on Monday at his home in Cambridge, England. He was 90.

His death was confirmed by his son, Dr. David Steiner.

An essayist, fiction writer, teacher, scholar and literary critic — he succeeded Edmund Wilson as senior book reviewer for The New Yorker from 1966 until 1997 — Mr. Steiner both dazzled and dismayed his readers with the range and occasional obscurity of his literary references.

Essential to his views, as he avowed in “Grammars of Creation,” a book based on the Gifford Lectures he delivered at the University of Glasgow in 1990, “is my astonishment, naïve as it seems to people, that you can use human speech both to love, to build, to forgive, and also to torture, to hate, to destroy and to annihilate.”

Read it all.

George Steiner, the essayist, fiction writer, teacher, scholar and literary critic, has died at 90: https://t.co/HJXFxCYDim

— New York Times Books (@nytimesbooks) February 3, 2020

This is a story about the cruelest disease you have never heard of. It’s called frontotemporal dementia, or FTD. And given the devastating toll it takes on its victims and their families, it ought to be much better known than it is.

FTD is the number one form of dementia in Americans under the age of 60. What causes it is unclear, but it attacks the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain, which control personality and speech, and it’s always fatal. It is not Alzheimer’s disease, which degrades the part of the brain responsible for memory.

With FTD, people either display such bizarre behavior that their loved ones can hardly recognize them, or they lose the ability to recognize themselves. As we first reported in May, that’s what happened to Tracey Lind one day a few years ago as she was standing in a public restroom.

Read it all.

Frontotemporal dementia: Devastating, prevalent and little understood https://t.co/FSS7YndwyB pic.twitter.com/oHXxCcxJz5

— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 6, 2019

You can listen directly there and download the mp3 there.

Presentation of the Lord
Ambrogio Lorenzetti,
c. 1342
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence pic.twitter.com/QlKtLC4bqW

— Amigo de Frodo (@bpdflores) February 2, 2019

Simeon’s remarks are set within a hymn known as the Nunc Dimittis, from the Latin of the hymn’s opening phrase. The prophecy itself is a statement of mature faith. Simeon can die in peace as you have promised and be taken by God, his Sovereign Lord (despota or Master), because my eyes have seen your salvation. There is a significant equation in this remark. To see Jesus is to see God’s salvation. They are inseparable. There is joy, even in the face of death, when one has seen the source of life. Simeon’s job as a sentinel for Messiah is done. The Lord can take him home. Simeon pictures a faithful servant who is at home in God’s purpose and plan, even when his time is up.

–Darrell L. Bock, Luke (The IVP New Testament Commentary Series) [Downer’s Grove, Illinois: IVP, 1994], quoted in part in the morning sermon

The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple
by James Tissot, 1894

Anna The Prophetess, Preaching at the Temple pic.twitter.com/LTdt8wfG3p

— Kalina Boulter (@KalinaBoulter) December 30, 2017

Patrick Mahomes needed just the waning minutes of Super Bowl 54 to end a whole lot of frustration.

A championship 50 years in the making for the Kansas City Chiefs.

A two-decade wait for an NFL title for coach Andy Reid.

All it took was falling behind by double digits in the postseason, again. Then Mahomes found his mojo. The 24-year-old quarterback who was selected Super Bowl MVP, led the Chiefs to 21 straight points in the final 6:13 for a 31-20 victory Sunday over the San Francisco 49ers.

“We never lost faith,” Mahomes said. “That’s the biggest thing. Everybody on this team, no one had their head down. We believed in each other. That’s what we preached all year long.”

Read it all.

The Chiefs have won their first Super Bowl since 1969 🏆 #SBLIV pic.twitter.com/f0lVBmdsPX

— NFL on ESPN (@ESPNNFL) February 3, 2020

Holy God, who didst inspire the Dorchester chaplains to be models of steadfast sacrificial love in a tragic and terrifying time: Help us to follow their example, that their courageous ministry may inspire chaplains and all who serve, to recognize thy presence in the midst of peril; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who livest and reignest with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

#OTD 1961: The Four Chaplains Comm. Medal awarded to family of those who went down with USAT Dorchester Feb. 1943. https://t.co/lsZmluxDXx pic.twitter.com/mO5NK5Fe5u

— National Museum USAF (@AFmuseum) January 18, 2017

Into Thy hands, O Lord, we commend ourselves and I all who are dear to us this day. Be with us in our going out and in our coming in. Strengthen us for the work which Thou hast given us to do. And grant that, filled with Thy Holy Spirit, we may walk worthy of our high calling, and cheerfully accomplish those things that Thou wouldest have done; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Frederick B. Macnutt, The prayer manual for private devotions or public use on divers occasions: Compiled from all sources ancient, medieval, and modern (A.R. Mowbray, 1951)

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old received divine approval. By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear. By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he received approval as righteous, God bearing witness by accepting his gifts; he died, but through his faith he is still speaking. By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death; and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was attested as having pleased God. And without faith it is impossible to please him. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

–Hebrews 11:1-6