The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have advised members of the clergy to suspend both the administration of the chalice and physical contact during the Peace, in light of the increase of coronavirus cases.

On Wednesday morning, 387 people in England had tested positive for Covid-19. The total number of cases in the UK was 456. So far, more than 27,000 people have been tested. Six people have died, all of whom are reported to have had significant underlying health conditions.

The previous advice from Church House left it to the priest’s discretion whether to suspend the administration of the chalice and offer communion in one kind only.

A letter to all clergy from the Archbishops on Tuesday, however, said that national suspension of the administration of the chalice and physical contact was “necessary” given the increased infection rate. This puts the Church of England guidance in line with that issued this week by the Church in Wales and Scottish Episcopal Church.

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Withhold chalice and minimise contact during worship, Archbishops tell clergy https://t.co/4vLBh9C8RS

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) March 11, 2020

Frustrated after a string of break-ups, Dwita Astari Pujiartati quit the casual romance circuit and turned to a growing trend among Indonesian singles — marriage without dating.

The 27-year-old professor exchanged resumes with prospective suitors — helped by a Muslim cleric-cum-matchmaker — until she was contacted by a long-lost acquaintance who also wanted to give contact-less dating a whirl.

There was no hand holding or kissing. The pair didn’t even meet in person for almost a year, chatting on the telephone instead.

“Once we felt ‘the click’, (my now husband) asked my parents if he could propose to me,” Pujiartati said.

The practice known as taaruf, or introduction, is derided by critics as old fashioned and more fitting to conservative Gulf nations like Saudi Arabia than relatively liberal Indonesia, the world’s biggest Muslim majority country.

But Pujiartati saw it as a way to ditch dating that went nowhere and be a devout Muslim at the same time by avoiding pre-marital touching and sex.

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Indonesian singles propose ‘marriage without dating’ https://t.co/01lEndH0ws

— The Straits Times (@STcom) March 11, 2020

Tim Viney, owner and managing director of Altlantic Geomatics, told MailOnline: ‘Across the country there are thousands of burial grounds, each with important assets, buildings and infrastructure.

‘These valuable assets, in particular memorials and gravestones, must be maintained, records kept of where they are, what they look like.

‘The estimated 35,000,000 burial records relating to the Church of England burial grounds are a huge resource yet they are currently difficult to access.

‘We are delighted to be working with the Church of England with whom we propose a systematic approach across the country to map their churchyards.

‘Integrating the map with images of the memorials and the historic records will protect the records but also make them accessible online.

‘We are in discussion with potential partners to source investment to facilitate a rapid deployment across the country.

‘This is certainly an exciting and challenging project”

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Church of England to launch a ‘Google Maps for graves’ w/i five years enabling family historians to search for burial records & locations in an online database –https://t.co/guWCqKDjsV #RealisticVirtualEarth #RealisticVirtualEarthForArchaeology #RealisticVirtualEarthForGenetics ~

— WorldUnivandSch (@WorldUnivAndSch) March 5, 2020

Downing Street today announced that the Revd Dr Andrew Emerton, Dean of St Mellitus College, has been appointed as the next Bishop of Sherwood in the Diocese of Southwell and Nottingham.

St Mellitus College is one of the largest of the Church of England’s theological training institutions with a growing reputation for pioneering approaches to training. Andy has been involved with St Mellitus since its earliest days, joining the staff team as Assistant Dean in 2008 and becoming Dean in 2015.

As Suffragan Bishop, Andy will work closely with the Diocesan Bishop, the Right Revd Paul Williams, in overseeing the mission and ministry of the Diocese of Southwell and Nottingham.

“It is a huge privilege to be called to serve as a bishop in the Diocese of Southwell and Nottingham,” said Andy. “It will be a delight to work with Bishop Paul and the clergy and lay leaders of the diocese to contribute to the vision for Growing Disciples and to help build confidence in the gospel of Jesus Christ across a diverse range of churches and local communities. I am excited and hopeful about this next stage of ministry.”

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We’re delighted that our Dean @andyemerton has been appointed as the next Bishop of Sherwood in @diocswellnott Join us as we pray for him and his family. Read the full announcement on our website here https://t.co/BwUnSe2DKk #smclife pic.twitter.com/gtl77MB21p

— St Mellitus College (@stmellitus) March 11, 2020

The interesting question isn’t why so many filmmakers rely on the resurrection trope, but what effect this has on viewers and what this trope says about American culture in the twenty-first century.

In the 1973 book The Denial of Death, anthropologist Ernest Becker argues that human beings across cultures find ways of rejecting the idea that death has the last word. Societies construct myths, develop cultural practices, and invest in collective pursuits to overcome the anxiety about the inevitability of death. Ancient Greek codes of honor, Chinese practices of ancestor-veneration, and the construction of pyramids and ziggurats in the ancient Near East and Mesoamerica are all, according to Becker, instances of the same human psychological impulse to use collective meaning-making to deny the meaninglessness of death.

On Becker’s theory, religious conceptions of reincarnation or the afterlife are not exceptions to a general acceptance of death. Rather, these religious beliefs are particularly clear, codified expressions of the near-universal human phenomenon of rejecting and repressing the finality of death. In the absence of religious convictions, human beings undertake “immortality projects” and construct socially shared “illusions” to meet their psychological needs. Ever since the decline of religion as the unifying structure of meaning in Western societies—Nietzsche’s famous “death of God”—film and other art forms have increasingly facilitated these shared illusions.

We don’t need to agree with Becker’s more sweeping claims to recognize that he’s right about the pervasiveness of the human tendency to deny the finality of death, whether consciously or not. Seen through this lens, the resurrection trope in popular film and television serves a social purpose. Even if many viewers of these films don’t actually believe that people come back to life, repeated exposure to resurrections and pseudo-resurrections functions as a sort of secular ritual of denying death.

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“Film Resurrections and the Denial of Death”

Columnist, Russell Johnson, explores the resurrection trope in American cinema and what it reveals about ushttps://t.co/D9GTQz9lwP@UChiDivinity#marveluniverse #DCUNIVERSE pic.twitter.com/jCjTRbCgPd

— Sightings: Religion in Public Life (@DivSightings) March 2, 2020

Against a backdrop of worldwide lockdowns and economic disruptions, South Carolina hospitals are preparing for a surge in coronavirus cases in the coming weeks.

Hospitals here are erecting tents to triage potentially ill patients; they’ve set up new telemedicine programs to reduce face-to-face visits to clinics. Behind the scenes, they’ve stockpiled supplies and worked on staffing strategies, officials told The Post and Courier this week.

“We’ll see a lot of cases,” said Michael Schmidt, a professor of immunology at the Medical University of South Carolina. “Some of our staff have been working day and night on this since January.”

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Hospitals in SC are erecting tents to triage potentially ill patients and have set up new telemedicine programs to reduce face-to-face visits to clinics.

Behind the scenes, they’ve stockpiled supplies and worked on staffing strategies.https://t.co/cXFCD2vv5p

— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) March 10, 2020

Watch the whole thing–it is very much worth your time.

This session focused on how autistic individuals have been excluded from full participation in our faith communities and why the church’s mission is hindered by that exclusion. It ended with a discussion of concrete steps a church can take to become more welcoming and supportive of those with autism.

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O Blessed Saviour, who art full of mercy and compassion, and wilt not cast out any that come to thee: Help us, we beseech thee, who are grievously vexed with the burden of our sins; and so increase in us the power of thy Holy Spirit that we may prevail against the enemy of our souls; for thy name’s sake.

Again he began to teach beside the sea. And a very large crowd gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea; and the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. And he taught them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it had not much soil, and immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil; and when the sun rose it was scorched, and since it had no root it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. And other seeds fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.” And he said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

And when he was alone, those who were about him with the twelve asked him concerning the parables. And he said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables; so that they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand; lest they should turn again, and be forgiven.” And he said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? The sower sows the word. And these are the ones along the path, where the word is sown; when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word which is sown in them. And these in like manner are the ones sown upon rocky ground, who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy; and they have no root in themselves, but endure for a while; then, when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. And others are the ones sown among thorns; they are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world, and the delight in riches, and the desire for other things, enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. But those that were sown upon the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.”

–Mark 4:1-20