The next Suffragan Bishop of Grimsby, in Lincoln diocese, is to be the Ven. Jean Burgess, the Archdeacon of Bournemouth since 2023, Downing Street announced on Wednesday.

She succeeds Dr David Court, who retired in July, having served since 2014 (News, 14 February).

Archdeacon Burgess was born in Derby and became a Christian as a teenager through her parish church. She is a former nurse and holds a master’s degree in theology and pastoral studies from Nottingham University. She took the East Midlands Ministry training course, and was ordained priest in 2004.

She served her title at St George and St Mary, Gresley, and a second curacy at St Alkmund and St Werburgh, Derby, of which she became incumbent in 2013. She also served as Derby Diocesan Dean of Women’s Ministry, and in 2016, was appointed an honorary canon of Derby Cathedral.

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New Bishop of Grimsby announced https://t.co/hJOKLYdB1k I am pleased to hear of this appointment & look forward to working with Bishop-elect Jean in due course. May God bless her.

— Bishop Patrick (@BishopPMcKinney) December 10, 2025

The arid steppes of northeastern Syria stretch almost uninterrupted to the Iraqi border, the emptiness broken only by the occasional oil derrick, until the road comes to a sprawling prison camp.

A chain-link fence topped with barbed wire surrounds the vast compound, and supply trucks line the route for more than half a mile outside the camp’s gates. This is Al Hol detention camp, where most detainees are family members — wives, sisters, children — of fighters for the terrorist group Islamic State, or ISIS. More than 8,000 fighters themselves are in prisons nearby.

For years, ISIS ruled large parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq, brutally enforcing its strict interpretation of Islamic law. As Kurdish-led Syrian forces backed by the United States battled to reclaim that land, they detained thousands of ISIS fighters and tens of thousands of their relatives.

U.S. forces entrusted their Syrian Kurdish allies with guarding the ISIS detainees and families. But now, the Pentagon is drawing down its troops in Syria, and there are indications that U.S. officials want Syria’s new government to take responsibility for the prisons and detention camps.

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Islamic State Camps Pose a Dangerous Problem for Syria’s Leaders

The government faces a dilemma over what to do with civil-war-era prisons and detention camps that hold thousands of ISIS fighters and tens of thousands of their family members.https://t.co/T2y5KLVeaN

— Aaron Y. Zelin (@azelin) December 10, 2025

Pew Research Center polling finds that key measures of religiousness are holding steady in the United States, continuing a period of relative stability that began about five years ago.  

The shares of U.S. adults who identify with Christianity, with another religion, or with no religion have all remained fairly stable in the Center’s latest polling.

The percentages of Americans who say they pray every day, that religion is very important in their lives, and that they regularly attend religious services also have held fairly steady since 2020.

The recent stability is striking because it comes after a prolonged period of religious decline. For decades, measures of religious belonging, behaving and believing had been dropping nationwide.

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New Pew Research Report Reveals that #Religion in America is Steadyhttps://t.co/zv9qEaU1gJ pic.twitter.com/YWA0U5PHrK

— Catholic News World (@catholicnews1) December 10, 2025

“If Christianity be not altogether thoroughgoing eschatology, there remains in it no relationship whatever with Christ.”

–Karl Barth, Epistle to the Romans (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1933), p.314

Almighty God, source of justice beyond human knowledge: We offer thanks that thou didst inspire Karl Barth to resist tyranny and exalt thy saving grace, without which we cannot apprehend thy will. Teach us, like him, to live by faith, and even in chaotic and perilous times to perceive the light of thy eternal glory, Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who livest and reignest with thee and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, throughout all ages. Amen.

Karl Barth died this day in 1968:

"I was permitted to be the donkey that carried theology for part of the way." pic.twitter.com/NVxjGwzEup

— Lincoln Harvey (@LincolnHarvey) December 10, 2016

Thou who with thine own mouth hast avouched that at midnight, at an hour when we are not aware, the Bridegroom shall come: Grant that the cry, The Bridegroom cometh, may sound evermore in our ears, that so we be never unprepared to meet him, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

America’s public lands are places that offer quiet, healing, and connection. Whether it’s a sunrise over the Appalachian Mountains or the stillness of a remote desert canyon, these moments remind us of what service protects.

Photo by NPS pic.twitter.com/XHKliyUUGK

— US Department of the Interior (@Interior) December 9, 2025

“To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: ‘The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands.

“‘I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear evil men but have tested those who call themselves apostles but are not, and found them to be false; I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember then from what you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. Yet this you have, you hate the works of the Nicola′itans, which I also hate. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.’

–Revelation 2:1-7

Guten Morgen mit einer kleinen Winterimpression, heute aus den Niederlanden.#Advent pic.twitter.com/oNxkiM0QWH

— Thomas Stiegler (@StieglerThomas) December 10, 2025