The West and China could “miscalculate our way into nuclear war”, the UK’s national security adviser warned on Wednesday night.

Sir Stephen Lovegrove said Britain had “clear concerns” that Beijing was expanding and modernising its nuclear arsenal, adding that China’s “disdain” for arms control agreements was a “daunting prospect”.

In a hardening of the UK position, Sir Stephen warned that the world may no longer have the Cold War safeguards that prevented nuclear war with the USSR and raised the prospect of an “uncontrolled conflict” between China and the West.

He said the world was entering a “dangerous new age of proliferation”, with threats from genetic weapons, space-based systems and lasers.

“We should be honest – strategic stability is at risk,” Sir Stephen said in a speech at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “We need to start thinking about the new security order.”

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🔴 The West and China could “miscalculate our way into nuclear war” with China, the UK’s national security adviser warned on Wednesday night https://t.co/wVNlUiPKfD

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) July 27, 2022

The event was postponed from 2020 because of the Covid 19 pandemic and takes place against a backdrop of global uncertainty – including the climate emergency, war and poverty.

Taking as their theme “God’s Church for God’s World”, the bishops will spend time praying and studying the Bible together (focussing on the book of 1 Peter) as well as discussing major challenges faced by their global communities – ranging from climate change and scientific progress to Christian Unity and inter-faith relations.

In a letter to delegates the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, described the conference as a “historic occasion” and spoke of Jesus’ call for his followers to be united.

He wrote: “Two years ago, we could hardly have believed the course of world events that was about to unfold with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This, along with the ongoing challenges like the climate emergency, war and conflict in many countries and the huge inequalities of our world, continue to have a deep: impact on us all.

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IP: I really enjoyed this book—your crisp and clear style, extremely well researched and informed, and with some nice touches of dry humour. But as you say, you are not the first person to make this argument. You make particular note of Colin Buchanan’s Cut the Connection—but I am not sure he persuaded many people. Why will the case you make do better?

JC: Thank you. There’s no knowing whether it will do any better at all (there’s a short summary here). And Buchanan was a bishop whereas I’m a mere lay academic. But you yourself well understand how important it is to keep making arguments you are convinced are true and good for the Church even when you change few minds! Buchanan’s book appeared in 1994 and is still eminently worth reading, but let me note two ways I think mine goes beyond it.

One of my core arguments is also central to Cut the Connection, namely that even the surviving remnants of Establishment amount to distracting curtailments on the spiritual autonomy of the Church. I echo Buchanan’s call for the Church to become more aware of its remaining captivity to improper constitutional ties to the state. But I couple that with a wider argument from political theology for a religiously impartial state, and I derive both from a New Testament theology of ‘church and state’, spelled out in detail in Chapter 2 (‘A Theology of Disestablishment’). Buchanan’s book does not purport to offer any extended theological arguments, so I think mine complements his in this regard. I hope Anglicans can still be persuaded by theological arguments, or at least provoked to try to rebut them theologically and not only pragmatically. There certainly are pro-Establishment theologians who could give these core arguments a good going over, and I hope they will.

The other way in which I think my book goes beyond Buchanan’s is that I devote two chapters (5 and 6) to disputing the three arguments most frequently wheeled out in defence of Establishment. The first is the ‘concession to secularism’ argument (picked up below). The second is the ‘anti-neutrality’ argument: that disestablishment would only usher in some less desirable, privileged public worldview, such as secular liberalism. I argue that one can maintain a religiously impartial state without necessarily allowing any other worldview to rush in to fill the supposed vacuum.

The third is that disestablishment would amount to an abandonment of the Church’s historic ‘national mission’. This comes in two parts. The first warns of a retreat from the Church’s pastoral openness to all comers, and a (further) lapse into ‘congregationalism’ and ‘sectarianism’. I deconstruct these loaded, polemical and frankly partisan terms and show that disestablishment need not feed either of them (or, if it does, it’s no business of state law to prevent that). Disestablishment would not prevent the Church from remaining as pastorally open to all comers as it wished, but only secure elements of its spiritual autonomy that current arrangements compromise.

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Cannot recommend reading Jonathan Chaplin enough. He’s like a Tim Keller & NT Wright all wrapped up in one – he teaches at Cambridge- one of the best conversations ever had on God, church & the moment we find ourselves in – his clarity of thought is brilliant pic.twitter.com/FFUyaXCsJo

— Bob Roberts Jr. ن (@bobrobertsjr) July 10, 2022

America’s small businesses can’t catch a break.

After two years of shutdowns and restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic, they’re straining to keep up with price increases without losing customers to larger competitors. They are struggling to keep positions filled as competition for workers remains at a fever pitch. And just at the moment that many business owners begin to recover and shore up their depleted savings, they’re worried that the Federal Reserve’s medicine for inflation will bring fresh hardship: higher borrowing costs and timid consumers.

Surveys show that small-business sentiment has taken a markedly pessimistic turn in recent months — even more so than that of professional forecasters and of corporate executives.

In June, the National Federation of Independent Business measured its lowest reading ever for economic expectations. The nonprofit Small Business Majority, in a survey in mid-July, found that nearly one in three small businesses couldn’t survive for more than three months without additional capital or a change in business conditions. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Small Business Index for the second quarter showed that inflation had skyrocketed to the top of owners’ concerns. Seventy-five percent of participants in Goldman Sachs’s small-business coaching program reported that higher costs had impaired their finances.

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New from me: Small businesses got help to weather the pandemic, but keep taking hit after hit — from high prices to rising interest rates — and no more help is on the horizon. https://t.co/i8jxDb4H49

— Lydia DePillis (@lydiadepillis) July 26, 2022

Bishop Tim Thornton, Chair of the…Lambeth Calls Subgroup, said:

“We have listened carefully and prayerfully to what bishops and many others have said in response to the draft Calls, especially that on Human Dignity. Archbishop Justin has invited the bishops of the Anglican Communion to come together as a family to listen, pray and discern – sometimes across deeply-held differences.

It is our prayer that these Calls can offer a basis for those conversations – and that all of our discussions will be marked by the grace and love of Jesus Christ.

Please continue to pray for us that we may continue to listen, walk and witness together.”

Please click here to view the Lambeth Calls document.

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So how large is the Anglican Communion? The official figures for 1997 claim 63 million. A Sunday Times survey, however, claimed that only 23 million actually attend church on a given Sunday. The most embarrassing statistic is that while England claims 26 million baptized members, only a million attend church. Archbishop Robin Eames of Ireland explained that this gap “simply reflects the reality that not every baptised member is in church on Sunday every week.” Huh? Denials like this are part of the problem.

It is hard to see that the Decade of Evangelism, approved at Lambeth 1988, has had any impact in the West. But then the Decade of Evangelism was the Third World’s baby to begin with. (To be sure, the idea of calling the 90’s a Decade of Evangelism came from Bishop Alden Hathaway and was presented to the Episcopal Church in 1988.) But one gets the sense that many Western bishops humored their Third World comrades by voting for it. After all, who can oppose evangelism, especially if one is free to identify it with one’s own pet projects?

I have just seen the Report of the mission section “Called to Live and Proclaim the Good News.” It is not bad overall, it has some helpful analysis of the missionary setting of the churches. Still, there is something missing, the urgency, the boldness, the sacrificial spirit that is called for by the Risen Lord. The problem is not in the plans but in the will to evangelise.

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"Trinity and the Renewal Movement" by the Rev. Dr. Stephen Noll, from our Spring/Summer issue of Seed & Harvest magazine. https://t.co/k4fgmWVtY0#TrinitySchoolforMinistry #SeedandHarvest pic.twitter.com/SswxxwVbRf

— Trinity School for Ministry (@TS4Ministry) June 11, 2020

O Lord our God, we thank thee for instilling in the heart of thy servant William Reed Huntington a fervent love for thy Church and its mission in the world; and we pray that, with unflagging faith in thy promises, we may make known to all peoples thy blessed gift of eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Pach Brothers Studio, William Reed Huntington, c. 1900 https://t.co/1zHsyD8HYN #npg #pachbrothersstudio pic.twitter.com/zqBATtcbTP

— SI: National Portrait Gallery (Bot) (@si_npg) December 21, 2021

Almighty God, who hast set thy law of love ever before us: Grant us thy grace that we may never harbour any resentment or ill-feeling in our hearts, but seek at all times the way of reconciliation and peace, according to the teaching of thy Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

What do we seek,
how do we strive..
what is waiting..
aside from a new sunrise 🌞#wednesdaythought #motivation#natureconnection #ThePhotoHour #sunrise #StormHour #jefinuist #OuterHebrides #Scotland pic.twitter.com/S2RhMicI8I

— DaliMach (@frenchscotjeff) July 27, 2022

In the first book, O The-oph′ilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commandment through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. To them he presented himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days, and speaking of the kingdom of God. And while staying with them he charged them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me, for John baptized with water, but before many days you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samar′ia and to the end of the earth.” And when he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away; and when they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James. All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.

–Acts 1:1-14

Summer sunrise over the Holy City! #chswx pic.twitter.com/74vfZQ42Gx

— JoeyLive5 (@JoeySovine) July 27, 2022