In 2015 there was Pope Francis’ papal encyclical Laudato Si and the Lambeth Declaration on climate change, not to mention only last month we saw for the first time the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Anglican Communion jointly warning of the urgency of environmental sustainability and its impact on the poor.

That impact was something I witnessed myself three years ago when travelling in a part of Northern Kenya where it hadn’t rained for 18 months. Seeing children waving empty plastic bottles at us, begging for water was one of the saddest things I have experienced. Every day the equivalent of 12 jumbo jets worth of people die because they do not have access to fresh water. This horror is only going to worsen without tackling the injustice of the climate crisis.

For me the challenge of the environmental emergency is captured in the Lord’s Prayer. We pray “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be your name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as in heaven.” If you look in the Book of Common Prayer you’ll notice it says “in earth, as it is in heaven.” Somewhere in the last hundred years or so “in earth as it is in heaven” has somehow changed to, “on earth as it is in heaven”. It was not an organized change by some church commission, it just happened.

We used to believe, and to know, that we lived in earth, that we were part of it, interdependent with it. And if we had a relationship with the earth it was to be its good stewards, living in it, and with it, and serving it. Then somewhere in the last couple of hundred years we moved to a position from living in the earth to living on the earth. And now I’m separate from the earth. The earth is mine, and I can do with it what I will. And from that, disaster upon disaster has flowed. We’ve been blind to the consequences of our actions, and we now live in a time where we must take action.

Read it all.

Here is @CottrellStephen on why people of faith need to be involved in action to tackle #climatechange and praying for a good outcome at #COP26https://t.co/czkQ7xBgGb

— Church of England Environment Programme (@CofEEnvironment) October 26, 2021

At least once a week, a team of President Biden’s top advisers meet on Zoom to address the nation’s supply chain crisis. They discuss ways to relieve backlogs at America’s ports, ramp up semiconductor production for struggling automakers and swell the ranks of truck drivers.

The conversations are aimed at one goal: taming accelerating price increases that are hurting the economic recovery, unsettling American consumers and denting Mr. Biden’s popularity.

An inflation surge is presenting a fresh challenge for Mr. Biden, who for months insisted that rising prices were a temporary hangover from the pandemic recession and would quickly recede. Instead, the president and his aides are now bracing for high inflation to persist into next year, with Americans continuing to see faster — and sustained — increases in prices for food, gasoline and other consumer goods than at any point this century.

That reality has complicated Mr. Biden’s push for sweeping legislation to boost workers, expand access to education and fight poverty and climate change. And it is dragging on the president’s approval ratings, which could threaten Democrats’ already tenuous hold on Congress in the 2022 midterm elections.

Read it all.

Obama WH economist ⁦@jasonfurman⁩: “The original sin was an oversized American Rescue Plan. It contributed to both higher output but also higher prices.” https://t.co/zO8SKQjuCW

— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) October 26, 2021

What would you be, you wide East Anglian sky / Without church towers to recognise you by?” Even when Sir John Betjeman spoke these lines during his 1974 BBC documentary A Passion for Churches, they struck an elegiac note. Traditional religious practice in the Church of England was already in significant decline. Half a century on, Anglicans find themselves at a historic crossroads – obliged by dire financial circumstance and sparse congregations to rethink what the church is for, and where it should be.

There are growing fears that at next month’s General Synod, measures will be taken to make it easier to close hundreds of parish churches, drastically reduce numbers of “vicars on the beat” and sell off assets to raise funds. Moving away from the traditional vision of providing for “the cure of souls” in every parish – with a Sunday service at the local church its focal point – the Anglican hierarchy envisions a future mixed ecology in which a variety of venues host groups of believers, some of which will be lay-led.

According to plans drawn up in Manchester diocese, for example, a gradually reduced number of stipendiary clergy would provide support and oversight over new “mission communities”, which would absorb existing parishes.

Read it all.

The Guardian view on the Church of England: the numbers are not adding up https://t.co/HVIviqnnei

— Simon Sarmiento (@simonsarmiento) October 26, 2021

Listen to it all there or there are other options here.

The concern that China might try to seize Taiwan is preoccupying American military planners and administration officials. Few of them think Taiwan’s military could hold the line.

Soldiers, strategists and government officials in Taiwan and the U.S. say the island’s military is riven with internal problems, many of which have built up over years of calm and economic prosperity and now are eating away at Taiwan’s ability to deter China.