“Repsol has shown the net zero 2050 ambition we need,” said Edward Mason, head of responsible investments at the Church of England, which has been buying shares in oil and gas companies so it can push them to make stronger climate commitments.

“Equinor is doing some great stuff, particularly on (Scope 1 and 2 emissions), but I’m not sure a pledge to halve carbon intensity by 2050 does it any more,” he said on Twitter.

Equinor, which has been building a renewables business mainly focused on offshore wind, will also achieve its renewable investment target sooner than planned, its chief financial officer told Reuters on Thursday.

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.@Equinor commits to including Scope 3 emissions in its #GHG reduction targets. If met with clear actions and investment choices, commitments like these can help deliver #netzero emissions by 2050. #EUGreenDeal

See: https://t.co/pMRXa9yji8

— WS EU Energy (@WS_EUEnergy) February 7, 2020

Labour MP Ben Bradshaw today told the House of Commons that “serious questions” will be asked about the Church of England’s established status if it stands by its position on opposite-sex civil partnerships.

In the Commons on Thursday, Mr Bradshaw grilled Andrew Selous, the Second Church Estates Commissioner, on the guidance….

“It is bad enough that the Church still treats its LGBT+ members as second-class Christians, but to say to the child of a heterosexual couple in a civil partnership that they should not exist because their parents should not have had or be having sex is so hurtful,” he said.

“Will he tell the bishops that unless this nonsense stops serious questions will be asked in this place about the legitimacy of the established status of the Church of England?”

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Ben Bradshaw MP warns Church of England its established status is at threat over civil partnerships stance https://t.co/6GiuyAlRcM

— Christian Today (@ChristianToday) February 6, 2020

This weekend director Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” is up for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It is the seventh feature film to be made from Alcott’s book and perhaps the most distinctive. Unfortunately, the latest film leaves out an important theme from the original text: faith.

The previous six movies hewed more or less to Alcott’s strictly chronological narrative structure, which follows the four March sisters—Jo, Meg, Beth and Amy—from their teen years to their late 20s. Ms. Gerwig’s film instead offers a deconstructed version. The events in Alcott’s book are presented as flashbacks in a deliberately scrambled order that reflects not chronology but the thematic aims of Ms. Gerwig, who also wrote the screenplay.

By violating Alcott’s narrative structure Ms. Gerwig also undermines the writer’s framing of the story as a tale of moral growth in a world at odds with living a Christian life. In particular, Alcott tied her story through explicit references to “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” John Bunyan’s entertaining and hugely successful 17th-century allegory of the journey of a man named Christian—and later, his wife and sons—through the travails of this world to the Celestial City. Bearing the burdens of their sins, they encounter such colorful characters as Mr. Worldly Wiseman and Giant Despair, and pass through such traps for the soul as Vanity Fair, the Slough of Despond, and the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Well into the 20th century “Pilgrim’s Progress” was, after the Bible, the most-read book in many Anglophone Protestant households.

In Alcott’s “Little Women” each of the March girls has besetting sins that she must overcome through constant striving.

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Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women” leaves out an important theme from the original text: faith, writes Charlotte Allen https://t.co/7V8USd5kCl

— Adam O’Neal (@AdamWSJ) February 7, 2020

Americans’ views on their personal financial situation have been climbing since 2018 and are now at or near record highs in Gallup’s trends. Nearly six in 10 Americans (59%) now say they are better off financially than they were a year ago, up from 50% last year.

These data come from Gallup’s annual Mood of the Nation survey, conducted Jan. 2-15. The survey was completed after months of historically low levels of unemployment and as the Dow Jones Industrial Average neared the 30,000 mark for the first time.

The current 59% of Americans who say they are better off financially than they were a year ago is essentially tied for the all-time high of 58% in January 1999. That was recorded during the dot-com boom, with conditions similar to the current state of the economy — a stock market rocketing to then-record highs and unemployment at multidecade lows — though GDP growth was higher at that time.

From 1998 to 2000, at least half of Americans rated their financial situation better than that of a year ago. However, in most surveys from 2001 to 2018, the percentage saying their personal finances were better off than the previous year was under 50% — with a low of 23% in May 2009, during the Great Recession.

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The latest @GallupNews poll is stunning. 74% of Americans feel they will be better off next year, just 12% say worse off. Most optimistic number since poll started in 1977. Includes 76% of Independents and 60% of Democrats.https://t.co/Elo73uMmkl pic.twitter.com/1bSSl87775

— Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) February 6, 2020

Australia’s most senior Anglican, Melbourne Archbishop Dr Philip Freier, referred that decision to the church’s internal appellate tribunal in September.

The tribunal was asked to consider whether the regulation was consistent under the church’s national constitution and valid under canon law.

The tribunal then called for submissions on the matter.

A second referral – to be considered concurrently – asked the tribunal to decide more generally if blessing services other than for heterosexual unions should be allowed.

In her address to the Wangaratta synod in August, which forms part of the diocese’s submissions to the tribunal, Reverend Dorothy Lee argued the blessing of same-sex Christian couples “seems a small thing to ask”.

“There are no theological grounds for refusing to bless civil unions,” Rev Lee said.

“On the contrary, faithful and loving Christian couples, whatever their sexual orientation, gender, race or class, should be able to ask for and receive the church’s blessing.”

However, of the 33 other submissions to the tribunal, just four support blessing same-sex marriages.

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Survivors of clerical abuse welcomed amendments to next week’s General Synod motion on safeguarding, in a letter to members that laments that the Church has made “no progress at all” in caring for victims and survivors. It was ruled on Wednesday, however, that the amendments were out of order and could not be moved.

“We need you to acknowledge that you do not have the competence or the right to clear up your own mess,” the ten survivors write. “We need independent people we can go to to report abuse and find support; people who are not part of the Church, and don’t wear the same uniform that our abusers wore. We need you to use your power as a Synod to establish a properly funded scheme for support, compensation and redress for victims of church abuse.”

The existing motion, to be debated on Wednesday morning, endorses the Archbishops’ Council’s response to the five recommendations made by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) in May (News, 9 May 2019).

“Is that all?” the survivors ask. “We believe that you should go much further. . . The motion before you is anodyne, but the amendments we have seen seem to have some teeth.”

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“We need you to acknowledge that you do not have the competence or the right to clear up your own mess,” the ten survivors writehttps://t.co/f1XD7VJpFa

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) February 6, 2020

In this new decade of “cultural, digital and spiritual disruption,” the evangelical Christian polling firm Barna Group is relaunching its State of the Church survey report after a gap of 10 years of its public release, and using new technology to help churches personalize the insights, beginning with the 2020 report, the group announced.

The upcoming State of the Church 2020 survey “will be the most in-depth and comprehensive study in Barna’s 35-year history,” Barna said in a statement.

Barna President David Kinnaman said the relaunch is being done “in a way we’ve never done it before.”

The project will combine updated research and “a brand-new technology,” Barna said, adding that it has tracked State of the Church survey data on an annual basis for 35 years, but the public release of the survey was discontinued in 2010. “The new research will analyze previous tracked research as well as the new 2020 survey findings.”

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At the end of last year, the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo hosted the so-called ExpoCristiana, a commercial event which offers concerts of Christian music, samples of evangelical publishers and even virtual simulations of episodes of the Bible. One of the most striking products was the one offered by the artificial intelligence company Kuzzma under the slogan “Change the way you manage your church”. The company presented a facial recognition service especially aimed at churches. On the first day of ExpoCristiana, Marcelo Scharan, executive director of Kuzzma, gave a conference entitled Personalization, data and churches.

“Data such as gender, age, attendance, arrival time, likely reasons for being late, and many others are analyzed and presented in reports. We can even define if someone needs a pastoral visit”, Scharan said. According to the Kuzzma website, facial recognition works from a high-resolution panoramic camera installed in the churches, that identifies both personal data and the attendance to the worship service. Then, with all that data, they make reports of each person, which include statistics on their behavior and even warnings if there is any abnormal activity. The Brazilian company Igreja Mobile was also selling the facial recognition service at the fair.

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O thou who in the days of thy humiliation didst command the winds and waves, and they obeyed thee: Do thou so dwell within us, that we may be safe from all dangers, and steadfast in all temptations; and evermore keep us in thy peace, for thy holy name’s sake.

Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you forgotten the exhortation which addresses you as sons?

“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
nor lose courage when you are punished by him.
For the Lord disciplines him whom he loves,
and chastises every son whom he receives.”

It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers to discipline us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time at their pleasure, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

–Hebrews 12:3-11