Viewing all items in Resource Category: Editorial

The Church of England welcomes the final SCIE (Social Care Institute for Excellence) overview report, published today, which details the learning from the 42 independent diocesan safeguarding audits and findings on improving responses to survivors of abuse. The report, received by the National Safeguarding Steering Group (NSSG), acknowledges that the Church’s failure to respond compassionately...

The peace of God to dwell with you, The peace of Christ to dwell with you, The peace of Spirit dwell with you, And peace dwell with your children too, From the day we have here to-day To the last day of your life’s way, Till come the day that ends your way. From Poems...

George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, was published 70 years ago, on 8th June 1949. It was set in the year 1984, where most of the world is a victim of government surveillance and propaganda, with individualism and independent thinking ruthlessly suppressed. Many of the novel’s invented phrases have passed into common usage in...

In the UK, USA and Canada, the third Sunday in June is Father’s Day.  It’s a good time for sons and daughters to take their father to his favourite restaurant, or to watch a favoured sport, or whatever else he enjoys doing. How will you celebrate it this year?  If your own father cannot be...

Hundreds of thousands of us will have a meal this summer courtesy of Colonel Sanders – his chicken is indeed finger lickin’ good.  But did you know that Colonel Sanders was named Harland Sanders, born in Indiana in 1890, and became a Christian When Harland was only five, his father died, so his mother ran...

Drivers using a pioneering app to gather information on modern slavery in hand car washes made more than 900 reports of potential cases over a five-month period, according to recent research. The Safe Car Wash app, which allows drivers to respond to a check list of key factors that may suggest modern slavery or labour...

June, of course is the month of the summer solstice, the month of the Sun.  Sol + stice come from two Latin words meaning ‘sun’ and ‘to stand still’.  As the days lengthen, the sun rises higher and higher until it seems to stand still in the sky.   The Summer Solstice results in the longest...

He had no home, The birds of the air had nests But He had nowhere to lay His head. He lived as a poor man Supported by friends, But fed the thousands with fish and bread.   He preached three years Persecuted by Pharisees Who thought He came to destroy the Law, But the people...

More than 250 people were killed following Easter service bomb attacks against churches in Sri Lanka. “The scale of the horror takes our breath away,” says Release International. “But terrorism can never overcome the central truth of the Gospel – Christ is risen. Please pray for our brothers and sisters in Sri Lanka and wherever...

Alban was the very first Christian martyr in Britain – or at least the first we know of. A ‘martyr’ is someone who has died for the faith – the word literally means ‘witness’. He was probably killed during the persecution under the emperor Diocletian in the early years of the fourth century, in the...

Civil weddings have increasingly outnumbered religious weddings every year since 1992. The most recent data (from 2016) has shown that for the first time, less than a quarter of all marriages were religious ceremonies. As one family law solicitor explained: “If individuals don’t go to church for most of their lives, they wonder whether it’s...

On June 22nd the Church remembers St Alban, who was put to death on that day in 250AD, on the site of the town in Hertfordshire that now bears his name and has a splendid cathedral which houses his shrine. Christianity was struggling to survive in third century Britain under Roman rule. In the middle...