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This week, the Archbishop of Canterbury is visiting Israel/Palestine and meeting with Palestinian Christians there, who have made a plea for churches in the West to support them and campaign for peace in the region. For reasons I will explain below, I think this visit, like the earlier one by Rachel Treweek, Graham Usher, and … Continue Reading
It’s not uncommon in churches, when the time comes for the Bible reading, to see people reach not for a printed pew Bible, but for their phones, to read the Bible on a phone app. Since the pandemic, people have become even more nervous about picking up a printed Bible in church—despite the lack of … Continue Reading
The Government’s proposed ‘ban’ on smart phones raises some vital issues about how as Christians we think about technology. What is actually at issue here? There are questions of young people having access to unsuitable content, and what screen time does to their thinking. But there are also issues about power and influence on the … Continue Reading
Sir Paul Marshall, the owner of GB News, has apparently committed the unforgivable sin. Instead of seeking to save the planet from global warming, he has contributed money to the seemingly lesser cause of actually seeing people saved by coming to faith in Jesus. The co-owner of GB News, a British TV channel accused of … Continue Reading
The columns of our newspapers and our feeds on social media have been filled with the debate about the political issues raised by the tragic murder of Southampton student Henry Nowak. Nowak was stabbed five times by Vickrum Digwa in December 2025, and Digwa was convicted this week. The case has raised emotive issues—but before … Continue Reading
Angela Tilby, in her weekly column in the Church Times, has claimed that the Church of England is pastoral and not missional. But she can only do this by being highly selective from the ordinal, from the text of John 10, and from the Church’s own theology of mission. Angela Tilby is a retired Canon … Continue Reading
Who should read the Bible aloud in church as part of our services? Should the preacher do it, or someone else? Is it more important that it is done well, or that our readers are representative of the community? How are they perceived beyond the church, and does that matter? In an online discussion group … Continue Reading
This week, the Church of England released headline figures for church attendance in 2025. This is collated from the parish returns done in October each year, and Ken Eames and the statistics team in Church House do a great job. Before plunging into the numbers and offering some reflection, it is worth addressing the common … Continue Reading
Mike Starkey writes: During the 2018 Centennial of World War I, Donald Trump was scheduled to visit the Aisle-Marne American Cemetery in France. The relentless rain made helicopter travel to the Cemetery impossible, but aides informed the President he could be driven instead. Trump’s response, according to accounts from a senior Defence Department official, was that he didn’t want to visit the cemetery, as it was ‘filled with losers’.
On the same trip, Trump reportedly said the 1,800 US marines killed in the World War I Battle of Belleau Wood were ‘suckers’ for being killed. When reports of Trump’s dismissive language about dead American service personnel appeared in the Atlantic magazine, a media storm erupted. Trump denied the reports, but in 2023 his former Chief of Staff John Kelly confirmed that Trump had, in fact, used both slurs on the French trip.
What is beyond doubt is that the language of losers and winners has long been Trump’s characteristic benchmark for evaluating humanity, the trumpian equivalent of Jesus’s sheep and goats. In interviews, social media posts and rally speeches, loser has been his insult of choice.
Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has made a rather startling remark about Church bureaucracy. He was in a conversation at Unherd about evil and the demonic in culture—especially “the erosion of standards of truthfulness in public life and the normalisation of violence in word and deed”. And he was also worried about a church … Continue Reading
Andrew Goddard writes: There are multiple visions for the future of the Anglican Communion. One, being offered by Gafcon, is found in the Abuja Affirmation. Another is found in the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals (NCPs) developed by the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith, and Order (IASCUFO), which will be considered by the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) … Continue Reading
Ian Paul: theologian, author, speaker, academic consultant. Associate Senior Research Fellow, Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology; Associate Minister, St Nic's, Nottingham; Managing Editor, Grove Books; member of General Synod and Archbishops' Council. Mac user; chocoholic. Tweets at @psephizo
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