An Anglican pastor was among 50 people killed in separate attacks in the troubled eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Local officials and monitor groups said on June 1 that the attacks on May 31 night were the worst seen in at least four years in the troubled Tchabi and Boga regions in North Kivu and Ituri provinces, bordering Uganda.

The army blamed the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamist armed group, for raiding villages.

Albert Basegu, head of a civil rights group in Boga, told Reuters that he came to know about the attack there by the sound of cries at a neighboring house.

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An Anglican pastor among 50 people killed in separate attacks in the troubled eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Read more… https://t.co/G47eHJU2C3 #Congo #UnitedStates

— UCA News (@UCANews) June 2, 2021

In keeping with A Call to Human Dignity, the Council of the General Synod of The Anglican Church of Canada expressed a commitment to ensuring that those who hold positions of trust or power in the church do not take advantage of, or abuse, that trust or power. It is with this commitment in mind that I share with you the difficult decision made today by Archbishop Lynne McNaughton to inhibit Bishop Lincoln McKoen from his duties as diocesan bishop of the Territory of the People, effective immediately.

Read it all and there is a letter to the diocese about the matter here.

Touch played a significant role in Jesus ’ ministry too. That he let a woman kiss his feet shocked the Pharisees, but he defended her actions as an appropriate response to forgiveness. Later, Jesus even invited Thomas to touch his wounds. Jesus’ example shows that our bodies are part of how we’re meant to commune with God and each other. How then do Christians balance love’s call to extend safety and welcome?

At Christ Church East Bay in Berkeley, Calif., the Rev. Jonathan St. Clair told me in an email that they encourage vaccinated singles to sit with families or other solo attendees. Ms. Kaiser hopes to do something similar with some of the other widows at her church. Reality SF, a church in San Francisco, took this one step further: Leading up to Easter, it urged the majority-single congregation to form Holy Week pods.

Longer-term use of pods could help singles feel more included in their churches. For most Christian singles I have interviewed, commitment in relationships proved elusive outside marriage; only Catholic priests consistently reported a sense of commitment within a community. Why should so few Christian singles find that?

Singles have the same needs as married people; we simply have different ways to meet them. By giving singles a committed group with which to sit, hug and maybe even eat, pods could help us participate more equally in God’s family.

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The @CDCgov recommends socially distanced church services, but what does that mean for singles? In this piece for @WSJ, I draw on some of my #globalsinglenessproject research to describe how churches can address that challenge. (In print June 4.) https://t.co/ouRmzvchjq

— Anna Broadway (@annabroadway) June 3, 2021

Plaintiff Episcopal Church in South Carolina is embroiled in litigation…It filed this action against its own insurer—the Church Insurance Company of Vermont—after discovering that the company had reimbursed its adversaries’ defense costs. The district court dismissed the complaint for lack of standing. We agree with that assessment and affirm.”

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“When you have experienced the power of the sea and storms at night it makes you open to something beyond the secular world.

“It is not difficult to have faith-based conversations”.

Describing his own faith, Lee explains, “When I am outside on a ship or a boat at night, I look at the night sky and I don’t have any doubts at all. It confirms my faith. I can see God in the stars; I can see His power and His love.”

It is at those times, Lee says, that he remembered the verses from Psalm 107: ‘Some went down to the sea in ships, doing business on the great waters; they saw the deeds of the Lord, his wondrous works in the deep.’

Lee is currently on placement at Oldhams Church in Bolton, completing his studies at St. Mellitus College and will be ordained as Deacon in July.

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“When you have experienced the power of the sea and storms at night it makes you open to something beyond the secular world.”

After a 22-year career at sea, Captain Lee Higson is training as an Ordinand with @DioManchester.https://t.co/jiplwex6xk

— The Church of England (@churchofengland) June 1, 2021

Cells normally only use 20 building blocks, called amino acids, to build all their proteins, but now, scientists can introduce “unnatural amino acids” for use in protein construction, which have the same basic backbone as all amino acids, but novel side chains. In this way, the team prompted their modified microbes to build macrocycles — a class of molecules used in various drugs, including antibiotics — with unnatural amino acids incorporated in their structures. In the future, the same system could potentially be adapted to make plastic-like materials, without the need for crude oil, Robertson said.

“This was unthinkable ten years ago,” said Abhishek Chatterjee, an associate professor of chemistry at Boston College, who was not involved in the study. Assuming the method can be adopted easily by other labs, it could be used for a wide range of purposes, from drug development to the production of never-before-seen materials, he said.

“You can actually create a class of polymers that are completely unheard of,” Chatterjee said. “When this [technology] becomes really efficient and all the kinks are ironed out, it could become an engine for developing new classes of biomaterials,” which could be used in medical devices that get implanted in the human body, for example, he said.

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The genetic code of microbes have been re-engineered by researchers in Cambridge to create a synthetic cell with capabilities unlike anything in nature, opening up the possibility of new materials for everything from plastics to antibiotics https://t.co/Qfq8EsgPvp

— Financial Times (@FinancialTimes) June 3, 2021

Lord of all truth and peace, who didst raise up thy bishop John to be servant of the servants of God and bestowed on him wisdom to call for the work of renewing your Church: Grant that, following his example, we may reach out to other Christians to clasp them with the love of your Son, and labor throughout the nations of the world to kindle a desire for justice and peace; through Jesus Christ, who is alive and reignest with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Today the Church remembers St #JohnXXIII on the day he opened the #VaticanCouncilii. Here is his statue at the #OESSH Grand Magisterium pic.twitter.com/EB08Adjyyz

— Gran Magistero OESSH (@GM_oessh) October 11, 2016

O Lord God Almighty, eternal, immortal, invisible, the mysteries of whose being are unsearchable: Accept, we beseech thee, our praises for the revelation which thou hast made of thyself, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, three persons, and one God; and mercifully grant that ever holding fast this faith we may magnify thy glorious name; who livest and reignest, one God, world without end.

Sunrise over the ruins of Rome pic.twitter.com/gJaOpk1Efk

— Michael Sidofsky (@therealmindzeye) June 3, 2021

Then the priest shall take the basket from your hand, and set it down before the altar of the LORD your God. “And you shall make response before the LORD your God, ‘A wandering Aramean was my father; and he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number; and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous. And the Egyptians treated us harshly, and afflicted us, and laid upon us hard bondage. Then we cried to the LORD the God of our fathers, and the LORD heard our voice, and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression; and the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror, with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

–Deuteronomy 26:4-9

Happy Friday, Good morning all… pic.twitter.com/pLQTP7M13N

— Jax (@Flickjax) June 4, 2021