What happened

President Donald Trump on Monday deleted from his social media account an apparently AI-generated image showing him dressed like Jesus and healing a man with orbs of light in his hands amid a panoply of religious and patriotic imagery. Following sharp condemnation, including from conservative Christian supporters, Trump told reporters he had posted the image but “thought it was me as a doctor,” and “only the fake news” would claim he was depicting himself as Jesus.

Who said what

The post’s removal was a “rare retreat” for Trump, who as a rule “does not apologize for doing and saying things that hurt or offend people,” The New York Times said. But the “image depicting himself as a Christ-like figure sparked outrage on the religious right,” angering a group that has “rallied behind Trump” through “two impeachments and three elections,” The Wall Street Journal said.

The image was “OUTRAGEOUS blasphemy,” and Trump needed to “ask for forgiveness from the American people and then from God,” Megan Basham, an evangelical Christian writer at The Daily Wire, said on X. Conservative Christian commentator Rod Dreher told the Journal that Trump is “radiating the spirit of Antichrist, no question.”

What next?

The “consternation over Trump’s social-media posts,” including his “pointed criticism of Pope Leo XIV,” could “turn into a political liability for Republicans,” the Journal said. Catholics “are America’s largest swing religious vote,” Axios said, “and Trump’s support among them was already sliding” before his posts.

When State Rep. James Talarico took the microphone to deliver his victory speech after winning Texas’ Democratic Senate primary this week, he noted that his Republican rivals would likely call him a “radical leftist” and “fake Christian.” Indeed, Talarico’s faith has become a major feature of the 36-year-old’s political work, which the former seminarian has described in unapologetically religious terms.

Faith is “central in my life” and the reason “why I’m in public service,” Talarico said in a recent interview with Time. Speaking about religion is a way to “tell the people that I seek to represent why I’m doing this.” With him narrowly defeating Rep. Jasmine Crockett for the party’s nomination to unseat Sen. John Cornyn in November, is his faith-first brand the start of a new electoral movement for Democrats?

What did the commentators say?

Among Talarico’s many “powerful qualities,” it’s his “unapologetic embrace” of Christianity that not only “sets him apart from other rising Democratic stars” but could “even help reshape American politics,” said MS Now. During his time in politics, he has gained a national reputation for “rooting his opposition to Christian nationalism in his own Christian faith” and defending religious freedoms “without casting religion as the enemy.”

Delivering his campaign stump speech in both red and blue districts with the “cadence of a sermon” and including a “more-than-occasional mention of Scripture,” Talarico is betting that his “religious foundation opens a door to that broader coalition of voters,” said The Texas Tribune. At the same time, Talarico’s progressive religiosity has elicited a “backlash” from Christian conservatives who see his faith as “incongruous with their own despite a shared vocabulary.” Conservative Christian Texans are already “familiar with the kinds of teachings” one might hear at Talarico’s Austin-area church, said Mother Jones. But many of these Texans would “rather dance with the Devil than a church-going Democrat,” according to research, to say nothing of a “seminarian who says ‘God is nonbinary.’”

“Strip away” the “polish and the TikTok virality” and voters will see that Talarico is offering the “same program that has been on offer from the mainline left since at least the 1960s,” said First Things. Talarico’s is a Christianity “evacuated of its doctrinal substance and refilled with the priorities of the Democratic National Committee.”

In turn, Talarico sees his role as a bulwark against the rising Christian extremism of the Trump era. There’s an “inconsistency I’m trying to call out,” he said on a recent episode of The New York Times’ “The Ezra Klein Show.” The MAGA movement is “using my tradition” and “speaking for me,” said Talarico. He has a “special moral responsibility to combat Christian nationalism.”

Talarico’s message of “compassionate progressive Christianity” that’s “wedded to a populist economic message” has attracted the “most attention” both locally and nationally as a “core feature of his campaign,” said Vox. But complicating his personal rise, and the ascendency of Talarico’s style of Christianity in Democratic politics more broadly, is the fact that while there may be a “resurgence of the religious left” taking place, it’s happening as the party’s coalition and its voters “get less religious overall.” Party leaders may see it as “imperative to tap into” religious energy and “make inroads with a religious electorate that the right has seized.” But ultimately their “share” of religious voters has “declined significantly.”

What next?

After Talarico secured his party’s Senate nomination this week, Republicans have begun “previewing the attacks they will wage against” the now-nominee, said the Tribune. This may entail “highlighting comments he has made” about God being nonbinary, arguing that the Bible “sanctions abortion” and stating that Christianity “merely ‘points to the truth’ along with other religions.” Still, if elected, Talarico would hardly be alone in helping mainstream liberal Christianity by joining sitting Sen. Rev. Raphael Warnock and divinity school graduate Sen. Chris Coons, both of whom have “urged Democrats to take religious engagement more seriously.”

Ultimately, votes for Talarico aren’t about “progressive versus moderate,” said Democratic strategist Joel Payne, per The Hill. Talarico’s ability to “link his faith to his politics successfully” shows he can “attract a larger coalition” and “tell the story of progressivism in a way that’s more palatable to a larger population.” But in Texas, where “white evangelicals make up around a quarter of Texas’ electorate and went almost 90% for Trump in 2024,” said the Tribune, the question boils down to whether or not that faith-based palatability is enough to propel Talarico into the Senate.

Around 1,000 people attended Tommy Robinson’s carol concert to “put the Christ back into Christmas” on Saturday. The Church of England has not reacted meekly, with several bishops expressing their concern at the Unite the Kingdom religious event. There’s “something especially offensive about appropriating this great Christian festival of light triumphing over darkness as a prop in a dim culture war”, said the Bishop of Manchester, writing in The Independent.

‘No one beyond redemption’

When Robinson “finally arrived on stage”, it was to chants of his name from an attendee “wearing a Union Jack hat” and “carrying a can of San Miguel in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other”, said Luke O’Reilly in The New Statesman. Others in attendance included a man “wearing a nun’s wimple and veil” over his tracksuit and another carrying “a large wooden cross with ‘Jesus Saves’ carved into it”.

Robinson “has been many things over the years“, and now the former “football hooligan is “a born-again Christian”. With British Christianity “stirring” again, “like a human bellwether, Robinson is blowing with the wind”. And yet Christians do “believe that anyone – no matter how badly behaved – can be saved”. After all, “the Bible is full of unsavoury characters”. Most famously, Paul was a merciless persecutor of Christians before he became one himself, and he, “like Robinson started preaching immediately” after his conversion.

It’s a “key tenet of the Christian faith that no one is beyond redemption”, said vicar and comedian Ravi Holy in The Guardian. “I don’t want to cast anyone into outer darkness, especially as a reformed prodigal myself.” But Jesus said that “true repentance should bear fruit”, and “the new Tommy doesn’t seem radically different from the old one”.

Spreading fear

“The far-right are now parking their tanks on the front lawn of the Church of England,” said the Bishop of Kirkstall, who also features in an official C of E social media video, released the day before Robinson’s carol service, emphasising that “Christmas belongs to all of us”.

This “resistance” by “leading lights in the Anglican church” shows “immense courage”, said Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in The i Paper. Robinson’s “motley patriots” were “once rightly marginalised” but now they seem to “dominate our country”. The Church is “breaking that sordid consensus”. The willingness of “the heart of the establishment” to take a stand “could be a turning point”.

The “whole point of coming to church” is to “sit alongside people you may not like, who hold very different, even (to you) repulsive, political views”, said vicar Giles Fraser on UnHerd. At Christmas, churches “resound with angels singing, ‘Fear not’. In contrast, Robinson spreads fear.” And “that is not the Christian message”. Robinson is welcome to come to church but he would “have to sit alongside people of different colours and languages, and immigrants”.

The Nigerian government has denied claims by a US senator that “mass murder” of Christians is taking place in the West African nation.

Writing on social media, Ted Cruz claimed that 50,000 Christians have been killed since 2009, with 2,000 schools and 18,000 churches destroyed by armed groups he called “Islamist”.

What has Ted Cruz claimed?

The Republican senator said there is “Christian mass murder” in the West African nation. Cruz, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has called for Nigeria to be designated a country of particular concern and one with “severe violations” of religious freedom.

These claims have been “amplified” by “celebrities and commentators”, said The Associated Press, and some have even claimed there is a “Christian genocide” in Nigeria.

Bill Maher, the US comedian and TV show host, said the Nigerian terror group Boko Haram has “killed over 100,000 [Christians] since 2009”, “burned 18,000 churches” and is “literally attempting to wipe out the Christian population of an entire country”. But it’s “unclear where Maher got his figures from”, said Al Jazeera.

Is there any truth to the claims?

Nigeria’s population of 220 million is split almost equally between Christians and Muslims. According to data from Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), there were 20,409 deaths from 11,862 attacks against civilians in Nigeria between January 2020 and September 2025.

Some 385 attacks were “targeted events against Christians … where Christian identity of the victim was a reported factor”, resulting in 317 deaths. But in the same period, there were 417 deaths recorded among Muslims in 196 attacks.

Ladd Serwat, ACLED’s senior Africa analyst, said that although religion has been a factor in the nation’s security crisis, Nigeria’s “large population and vast geographic differences” make it “impossible to speak of religious violence” as the motivation for all the violence.

Nigeria is, in fact, witnessing “mass killings, which are not targeted against a specific group”, said Olajumoke Ayandele, an assistant professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs.

Actually, said the AP news agency, there are “varying motives” for the violence in Nigeria. As well as “religiously motivated” attacks targeting both Christians and Muslims, there are “clashes between farmers and herders over dwindling resources, communal rivalries, secessionist groups and ethnic clashes”.

What does Nigeria say?

Nigeria’s government admits it has a security problem, but it denies Cruz’s claims. “Portraying Nigeria’s security challenges as a targeted campaign against a single religious group is a gross misrepresentation of reality,” said Mohammed Idris Malagi, Nigeria’s information minister.

He said the claim “oversimplifies a complex, multifaceted security environment and plays into the hands of terrorists and criminals who seek to divide Nigerians along religious or ethnic lines”.

Sunday Dare, a special adviser to President Bola Tinubu, said that Cruz and Maher “would do well to engage with the facts before amplifying falsehoods that embolden extremists and malign an entire nation”, said Daily Post.

The Christian Association of Nigeria said the killings in the country were not targeting Christians alone. It accused foreign groups of seeking to “exploit domestic crises”, said Al Jazeera.

With just over a year to go until the 2026 midterm elections, Democrats are looking for new ways to win over voters at the ballot box. One of their strategies is to push a faith-based agenda that’s often more associated with conservatives. This isn’t the first time the Democrats have used religion to their advantage (former President Barack Obama made large gains with religious voters in 2008). But as elections creep ever closer, Democrats are hoping an appeal to religion will help make the contest a referendum against the conservative movement.

How are the Democrats using religion?

The party is testing “whether church-going, Bible-quoting Democrats can connect with voters — and provide an early gauge of whether messages rooted in spirituality will appeal to the party’s base,” said CNN. This is especially noteworthy given the continuing demographic skews among the parties; Democrats are “increasingly secular, while growing shares of those who attend church regularly identify themselves as Republicans.”

These trends “come in part as a reaction to Republicans using religious messages to advance conservative positions on issues like gay rights and abortion," said CNN, but also “reveal deep divides within the Democratic Party over the role of religion in government.” Only 38% of Christians, including just 24% of Evangelicals, identify as Democrats, according to a February 2025 Pew Research Center poll (though the figures are higher among Jews, 66%, and Muslims, 53%).

The push to reverse these slumping trends and bring in more religious voters continues. While former President Joe Biden often touted his Catholic faith, the Democratic pivot toward religion is "signaling that he is no longer the exception to the rule," said The New York Times. Democrats now “see discussion of faith as a way to introduce themselves, explain their values and find common ground.”

Who are some Democratic candidates doing this?

Two notable names include Iowa politician Rob Sand and Texas state Rep. James Talarico, though Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, a pastor, is another high-profile figure. Both Sand and Talarico have tried to use their own faith to generate buzz about their campaigns.

Sand has been the Iowa state auditor since 2019 and is the “only Democrat elected to statewide office in Iowa,” said The Wall Street Journal. He is a candidate in Iowa’s 2026 gubernatorial election and has “mentioned his Lutheran faith” on “numerous occasions.” Despite his religious background, Sand “backs several positions traditionally supported by Democrats, including abortion rights.”

Iowa Republicans have cautioned their party that Sand’s candidacy should be taken seriously. “Churchgoer, gun-toter, state auditor, taxpayers’ watchdog. Sounds a little bit like us, right?” Bob Vander Plaats, a prominent Christian conservative in Iowa, said of Sand earlier this year, calling him a “very real opponent.”

A few states away is Talarico, who has served in the Texas House since 2018. He is a candidate in Texas’ 2026 Senate race and represents a “young, charismatic foe of Christian nationalism, who is himself studying to be a minister,” said Rolling Stone. Talarico is “far from an atheist — so when he speaks out against power-hungry Christians, he does so from his own religious convictions.”

“What you’re seeing is a perversion of Christianity,” Talarico told Rolling Stone. “You can call it Christian fascism or Christian nationalism. Essentially, it’s the worship of power.” Republican extremism is “gonna go down swinging. I just hope it doesn’t hurt too many people on its way down.”

More uncontacted people live in Brazil's Amazon rainforest than anywhere else in the world.

Consisting of about 100 isolated groups, they are aware of the outside world and some have limited trading relationships with neighbours – but most have chosen to live in voluntary isolation. And with good reason: contact has almost always been disastrous for them, from enslavement during the 19th-century rubber boom to more recent land grabs by illegal loggers and cattle ranchers.

But that isolation has been interrupted in unusual fashion, thanks to the efforts of US-backed Christian evangelical groups turning to technological innovations to circumvent the restrictions.

Hi-tech threat

Many missionary groups are active in the Amazon, said Survival International. "Some are comparatively benign or benevolent", and there are many cases of missionaries being "targeted and murdered for standing alongside Indigenous peoples and campaigning for their rights".

However, since 1987, Brazil has banned missionary groups from making contact with the rainforest's isolated Indigenous groups, to protect their culture and their health. Uncontacted people do not have immunity to diseases common elsewhere, and "it is not unusual for 50% of any one group to be wiped out within a year of first contact by diseases such as measles and influenza".

But a joint investigation by The Guardian and the Brazilian newspaper O Globo discovered that "solar-powered devices reciting biblical messages in Portuguese and Spanish" have appeared among members of the isolated and mostly uncontacted Korubo people in the Javari valley, near the Brazil-Peru border. The "yellow and grey mobile phone-sized unit", seen by The Guardian, "recites the Bible and inspirational talks by an American Baptist".

Government agents tasked with policing these regions say they have also spotted seaplanes and drones in the area. "Missionary activity now threatens 13 of the 29 isolated peoples that Brazil officially recognises as definitively confirmed," said The Guardian, citing the federal prosecutor's office.

'Destructive power'

One of the leading missionary organisations operating in the Javari territory is the New Tribes Mission of Brazil, an offshoot of the New Tribes Mission in the US. Established in 1942, it referred to uncontacted Indigenous people as "brown gold", also formerly the name of the organisation's newsletter. Renamed Ethnos360 in 2017, it has an annual budget of about $80 million (£59.5 million).

During the Covid pandemic, it was reported that New Tribes Mission missionaries had been using seaplanes and a helicopter to fly over and map out uncontacted settlements in the Javari reserve.

In 2020, Brazil's highest court prohibited missionaries from entering the reserve, which Indigenous representatives had warned could bring about a "genocide".

The then president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, a vocal vaccine sceptic, publicly sided with Christian evangelists. Earlier that year, he had appointed Ricardo Lopes Dias, a former evangelical missionary, to head the government's department for isolated and recently contacted tribes.

Although the order remains in effect, Nelly Marubo, head of the Javari valley regional coordination office, told The Guardian that missionaries "frequently" visit the group's base in Javari, "arriving directly by aircraft without passing government control posts".

Indigenous organisations and activists say it's crucial to reaffirm the non-contact policy. Technological outreach like audio Bibles might seem inoffensive curiosities, but Marubo said that the infiltration of outside religious and cultural beliefs has a "destructive power" for Indigenous groups. Exposure to "colonising" language and concepts "ends up cutting through the essence of the culture".

"If you're looking for your own personal Jesus this Easter", said Steve Rose in The Guardian, then "you've never had it so good," because Christian television content is enjoying its own resurrection.

With shows like "House of David", "The Chosen" and "Jesus Revolution" drawing high ratings, production houses and streaming platforms are taking advantage of the fact that "the copyright" on biblical intellectual property "expired 2,000 years ago".

Christian fervour

Jesus' "viewing figures", much like Christ himself, "have risen", said The Economist – "The Chosen" has been watched by around 280 million people worldwide.

Christian dramas have "proved profitable" because they're "relatively cheap and simple to make", they don't need big-name celebrities as Jesus "offers name recognition enough" and because they can tap into the 2.4 billion people who "identify as Christian".

Although some reviews of the shows have been a bit "unchristian", this critical negativity hasn't particularly dented their appeal because "in entertainment, as in history", some "persecution seems only to deepen Christian fervour".

But it's not just Christians watching, noted Hanna Seariac in the Deseret News, because the content "treats faith as part of people's lives" rather than preaching about it. "Taking this tack" makes the shows and films "accessible to wider audiences".

Bingeable drama

In a space "somewhere between faith-based entertainment and completely secular entertainment", the producers have "diligently carved out" a place where they "portray people of faith" like they "portray everyone else".

The filmmakers are "seeking to retell the story of Christ" as a "bingeable long‑form drama", rather than "the usual earnest myth‑making", said Rose. They want "high production values, down-to-earth characters, historical context" and a "seven-season arc" that's willing to "embellish scripture".

"The Chosen" "feels more like a workplace comedy-drama", or "The West Wing" that's "set in Galilee", rather than "the direct evangelism" of Christian dramas of past decades, said Annie Aguiar in The New York Times, while "House of David" is "reminiscent of the courtly intrigue" of "glossy dramas like 'The Tudors'".

But there are still sensitivities, because creating a TV show "based on a religious text" presents a "different task" to "adapting a book series that is considered sacred only by its most avowed fans".

A "lasting religious revival in Hollywood is unlikely," Diane Winston, a professor at the University of Southern California who studies religion in media, told the broadsheet, because of the "cyclical nature of faith in entertainment".

But this sort of "outreach" could still be a "savvy financial move" for a "secular business looking to spiritual audiences". So, in the meantime, said The Economist, "let there be lights, camera, action!"

With its arid mountains, rocky coves and "cobalt-blue" seas, Patmos is "magnificent". It is also among the most "serene" of the Greek islands, said John Gimlette in The Guardian, thanks in part to its extraordinary history.

According to Christian tradition, Saint John wrote the Book of Revelation here, after he was exiled to the island by the Romans in AD95, and in the 11th century, a Byzantine emperor bequeathed the island to monks. Their influence is still felt today. The main town, Chora, has dozens of chapels, but no corner-shops, no airport and little in the way of nightlife.

For many of us visitors, Patmos is the Greece we love, with its "wonky" lanes, "biddable" cats, and hiking paths wreathed in the "lingering" scent of "oleander and herbs". The cave where St John is said to have heard the voice of God now contains a temple dedicated to him. And it is not the island's only impressive holy site. Down on Petra Bay, there's a rock for hermits, "rising up like a five-storey Swiss cheese, complete with cells and cisterns and 11th-century plumbing".

Still more majestic is the fortified Byzantine monastery that towers over Chora, commanding views of the sea in every direction, and of the Turkish coast 15 miles away. Inside, it's a "labyrinth" of tunnels and caverns, and "a repository of the Holy and the Strange", with treasures including the chains of St John, several skulls, a medieval flip-flop, and a jewelled crucifix donated by Catherine the Great.

Despite its ascetic air, Patmos is beloved of the "super rich", whose "fancy" boats gather in Skala (the island's only port) in "a great carnival of nautical bling". There are also upmarket places to stay for those without yachts (I can recommend the Onar Patmos, a sort of "four-star farmhouse" next to a beach), and if you feel like a change, it's easy to visit nearby islands.

Among these are Aspronisi, Arki, and Marathi, where fishermen with "gigantic moustaches" sit mending nets on the quayside "as if the last few centuries hadn't really happened".

When Band Aid recorded a single to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia, the supergroup famously sang: "Do they know it's Christmas time at all?"

But regardless of the much-critiqued lyrics, Ethiopia was one of the first countries in the world to adopt Christianity – before the UK. In 2019, a team of archaeologists in Ethiopia uncovered the oldest known Christian church in sub-Saharan Africa, near the modern-day border with Eritrea. They concluded it had been built in the fourth-century AD – around the time when Roman Emperor Constantine I legalised Christianity.

The discovery confirms that Christianity "arrived at an early date in an area nearly 3,000 miles from Rome", said the Smithsonian.

No Santa, no elves

Ethiopians follow the ancient Julian calendar, and like many other Orthodox Christians they celebrate Christmas on 7 January (or according to the Ge'ez Ethiopian calendar, the 29th day of Tahsas).

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church's celebration is known as Ganna, or Genna, and "celebrations last for weeks", said RoughGuides.

"Christianity is not new for Tigrayans, we are the first, no one is before us," one Ethiopian man who lives in Manchester told The Guardian. "But the way we celebrate Christmas is Orthodox," another added. "We don't celebrate Santa Claus and elves!"

A new outfit

Ganna is first and foremost a religious holiday; unlike in the West, Ethiopians do not typically exchange gifts. "Religious observances, feasting, and games are the focus of the season," said HowStuffWorks.

But one gift that children "eagerly await" is a new outfit to wear on Christmas Day, said World Vision. These are often shemmas – "a traditional dress made from thin white cotton with colourful embroidery and thread at the edges".

Ironically, when the Band Aid song was recorded during the 1983-85 famine, the nation was under a communist government that banned any religious festivals. So although Ethiopians very much knew it was Christmas when the song made waves around the world, they were not allowed to observe it.

Conservative Christians backed Donald Trump's presidential campaign solidly and vociferously; many even suggested that he had been chosen by God. Weeks before the vote, Franklin Graham, son of Billy and one of America's most famous preachers, prayed aloud for him to win the election at a Trump rally in North Carolina while supporters cried: "Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!".

The TV evangelist Hank Kunneman described the election as "a battle between good and evil", adding: "There's something on President Trump that the enemy fears: it's called the anointing." Another celebrity evangelist, Lance Wallnau, prophesied his victories, describing them as "part of God's plan to usher in a new era of Christian dominion around the world".

Trump, for his part, has embraced the role. Referring to his attempted assassination in July, he declared on election night: "Many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason, and that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness."

How important was their support?

Very. About 13% of Americans are white white evangelical Protestants, and they have been a crucial section of the Republican Party's political base since the 1960s (black evangelicals, by contrast, tend to support the Democrats). White conservative Christians in general tend strongly to lean Republican, and their support has recently become more pronounced as the demographics of the US have changed. (According to Robert P. Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute, polls suggest that the Republican Party is now "70% white and Christian", and the Democratic party is "only a quarter white and Christian".)

The strong backing given to Trump by white Christians was a bedrock of his recent victory. According to the official exit polls, 82% of white evangelicals backed Trump, along with 63% of white Catholics and similar numbers of white non-evangelical Protestants.

Isn't Trump an odd choice for religious voters?

As a divorcee, a philanderer and a convicted felon, perhaps he is. He's not a regular churchgoer, either, though in recent years he has identified himself as a "true believer" (and a "non-denominational Christian"). Politically, though, he has promised to champion Christianity. In his first term, he made good on his promise to appoint conservative Christians to the Supreme Court; this led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which had protected the right to abortion. He has also often played up fears of a cultural takeover by the Left that would undermine Christian values. "They want to tear down crosses where they can, and cover them up with social justice flags," he has said. He has pledged to tackle "anti-Christian bias", and "to bring back Christianity in this country".

What does he mean by that?

It has been taken as an endorsement of "Christian nationalism": a broad movement based on the belief that the United States is a country founded by and for Christians, and that Christianity is under attack in modern America.

Christian nationalists demand a bigger role for the religion in the government of the US (although the First Amendment prohibits the government from establishing a state religion). They see being a Christian as an essential part of being a "real American". Such beliefs have permeated large swathes of government across the US, from school boards to state legislatures.

How influential are such beliefs?

Recent surveys suggest that only about 10% of the population are committed Christian nationalists; according to Pew Research, a majority of Americans support the separation of Church and state, but think the US should be informed by Christian values. Critics worry that Christian nationalism nevertheless may form a threat to democracy, because its fusion of theology and right-wing politics has become so influential in the Maga movement: as America becomes less white and less Christian, a minority cling fiercely to the idea that it is a divinely ordained promised land for European Christians. There is evidence, for instance, that some 6 January rioters were inspired by Christian nationalism.

What will Trump do for conservative Christians?

He has promised to "bring back prayer" in schools (until recently prayer was deemed unconstitutional in some circumstances); and to create a federal task force to fight anti-Christian bias. He says he will affirm that God made only two genders, male and female. And he will give enhanced political access to conservative Christian leaders. "It will be directly into the Oval Office – and me," Trump told pastors in Georgia in early November.

He has, though, pushed back against some demands from the evangelical movement: he has distanced himself from the prospect of a federal ban on abortion, saying that he supports leaving the issue to individual states. Perhaps most significant, though, will be the appointments of conservative Christians to important roles.

Which appointments?

He has selected Mike Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist pastor, as ambassador to Israel. Huckabee, like many in the evangelical movement, believes the US has a divine mandate to protect Israel. "Without any apology, I believe those who bless Israel will be blessed, those who curse Israel will be cursed," he has said.

Pete Hegseth, Trump's pick for secretary of defence, is an avowedly militant Christian, who has the Crusader battle cry "Deus vult", meaning "God Wills It" tattooed on his bicep, and wants to create a network of Christian schools so as to provide the "recruits" for an army that will eventually launch an "educational insurgency" to take over the nation. Probably most influential, though, are the religious conservatives, such as Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, whom Trump has already appointed to the Supreme Court.

Who is proposing compensation?

The Church of England itself. The Church's interest in the issue dates back many years. In 2006, it apologised for the role that clergymen had played in the transatlantic slave trade. In 2019, the Audit and Risk Committee of the Church Commissioners (the body that administers its assets) raised questions about possible reputational damage arising from its past links to slavery, and commissioned a report by historians and forensic accountants.

This, published in 2023, found that the Church had received funds linked to African enslavement worth as much as £1bn in today's money. The Church Commissioners responded by setting aside £100m, about 10% of its total endowment, to "address past wrongs". An oversight committee was also appointed to examine how to spend the money. In March this year, it recommended that the Church raise up to £1bn for a new fund. The £100m set aside was "not enough", it said.

What were these 'past wrongs'?

The most significant is an investment scheme called Queen Anne's Bounty. It was set up in 1704, when certain ecclesiastical taxes that had previously been paid to the Crown were diverted to supplement the income of poor clergy. Funds received were invested in the South Sea Company, a government venture that had a monopoly on the trade of enslaved Africans to the Spanishheld colonies in the Americas. Between 1715 and 1739, the South Sea Company transported 34,000 enslaved people over the course of at least 96 transatlantic voyages; it also transported slaves from Caribbean islands to Spanish-held ports in mainland America. By 1739, when the South Sea Company stopped engaging in slave trading, the scheme had accumulated investments in it worth £204,000, or £443m in today's terms. Money from that fund flowed into a larger fund that is currently worth £10.3bn.

Were there other links to slavery?

Many. The fund also received cash and land donations from people with links to slave labour, including Edward Colston, the merchant and slave trader whose statue was toppled by Black Lives Matter protesters in Bristol in 2020. That same year, a database held by University College London found that 96 CofE clergymen had sought compensation paid to slave owners when the trade was abolished in the British empire in 1833. The Church received nearly £9,000, an estimated £900,000 in today's money, for the loss of slave labour on its Codrington Plantations in Barbados (these were owned by its missionary organisation, The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and slaves were branded across the chest with the word "Society"). The Bishop of Exeter and his business associates received even more in compensation.

How would the money be used?

The Church has not yet decided how to allocate the £100m it has so far committed to, but the bulk of the money is expected to be used to establish a new "social impact investment fund". This fund would give grants aimed at supporting black-led businesses and black entrepreneurs who find it harder to access capital. The Church said that the fund would enable grants to be made available for projects focused on "improving opportunities" for communities affected by the slave trade, and help pay for further research into the history of slavery. It would also be used to ensure that "best practice" can be shared with other organisations seeking to reconcile their historic links to slavery.

Are these plans controversial?

Very. The reparations movement has long attracted criticism in the US. A welter of objections have been raised, both practical and on grounds of principle: that everyone directly involved in slavery, both beneficiaries and victims, is long dead; that it is unfair to penalise people today for the wrongs of their ancestors; that loss and benefit are impossible to calculate at such historic distance; that in any case choosing people to compensate is an impossible task. In the specific case of the Church of England, it has been pointed out that, as well as profiting from the slave trade, the Church played a vital role in ending it. William Wilberforce was moved by his Anglican faith to lead the abolition movement. As Saint Paul put it in Galatians 3:28, "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

How does the Church of England defend these plans?

In his Easter sermon last year, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby defended the fund, which he described as not an expression of "wokery" or "postcolonial guilt", but of Christian values and Christian love. A recent report from the Church's Anti-Racism Taskforce stated that there was a clear theological case for the "reconciliation" and "redemption", and a practical one too. It noted that the CofE's "contested heritage is at odds with the Christian mission and the Church's desire to reach diverse nationalities"; more than half of the worldwide Anglican communion is now based in Africa. It does not use the term "reparations", because the scheme will not offer compensation to individuals.

What will happen next?

The Church welcomed the report by the Commissioners in March, but has not committed to raising the existing fund to £1bn, and the £100m fund promised a year ago is still not operational; channelling money to effect social change is not an easy task. And arguably it needs money to discharge its primary function; Church of England attendance has fallen by half in the past 40 years, and by a fifth since the start of the pandemic. "After decades of telling us there is no money to fund churches and ministers who keep the Church alive on the front line, suddenly they have found £100m behind the back of the sofa," complained Rev'd Marcus Walker of the group Save the Parish.

Barring some unforeseen seismic upheaval in America's political landscape, Donald Trump will likely secure a decisive primary victory and become the Republican nominee to face President Joe Biden in the November general election. Although poll after poll shows much of the nation deeply resigned and unenthusiastic about the prospect of a 2020 electoral rematch, one group of former President Trump's closest allies is not only excited about but actively planning for his potential return to the White House.

Under Trump's former Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought, the right-wing Center for Renewing America think tank has emerged at the forefront of a "conservative consortium preparing for a second Trump term," Politico said. Vought, in particular, has "embraced the idea that Christians are under assault" in the United States, and has "spoken of policies he might pursue in response." To that end, the CRA has worked to "elevate Christian nationalism as a focal point in a second Trump term" thanks in large part to Vought — considered a top contender for Trump's potential chief of staff — and his proximity to the once-and-possibly-future president.  

As Vought himself wrote in 2021, Christian nationalism is a "rather benign and useful description" for people who want to preserve "our country's Judeo-Christian heritage" and make policy decisions accordingly. Should Trump win a second term in office, will his administration help usher in an era of American theocracy? 

'A conduit for all sorts of bad actors'

Although a draft document of CRA priorities for a second Trump administration obtained by Politico does include a bullet point for "Christian nationalism," the document is "short on specifics," Vanity Fair said. Instead, it focuses on pushing Trump to "ignore undesirable funding allocations approved by Congress and invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office." Despite the lack of specifics, Vought and his allies — including fellow former Trump administration official William Wolfe — have "long used interpretations of Christian doctrine as the basis for hard-line stances against abortion, immigration, and same-sex marriage," The Daily Beast said. This past October, Wolfe told attendees at a "Jesus and Politics" conference that "now is the time to arms again, I think we are getting close." Two months later, Wolfe shared then deleted a post on X calling for ending no-fault divorces, reducing access to contraceptives, ending surrogacy, ending public school sex education, and several other policies designed to "restore the American family." Vought has said he is "proud" to work with Wolfe on "scoping out a sound Christian Nationalism."

While Trump himself represents a unique danger to American democracy, CRA's overt push for a Christian nationalist agenda is a reminder that the former president "also serves in an additional role as a conduit for all sorts of bad actors," Talking Points Memo said. Ultimately, a second Trump term could be more "potentially threatening, dangerous, and long-lived than any and all Trump transgressions to date."

'A rehashed version of standard social conservatism'

Politico's focus on the specter of "Christian nationalism" hovering over Trump's second term is an attempt to "fearmonger" about his election, The Washington Examiner said. That "socially conservative policy organizations want to enact socially conservative policies" is hardly worth reporting. The instances of CRA's purported Christian nationalism are really just "a rehashed version of standard social conservatism" but with more transparency about the belief that "the United States was founded as a Christian nation and should be governed by Christian morality."

The linkage between Christian nationalism and broader Trump-infused conservatism extends throughout Republican politics, former Christian nationalist Brad Onishi said to NPR this month. Highlighting the recent partnership between New Apostolic Reformation figure Lance Wallnau and Turning Points USA leader Charlie Kirk, Onishi called their union a "crossover" and a "joining in a way that promises, I think, to be quite potent."

In addition to leading the CRA, Vought also advises the Heritage Foundation's "Project 2025" initiative, which has "proposed a flurry of other objectives for a potential second term, including repealing policies that help LGBTQ+ people and single mothers, on the basis that these laws threaten Americans' fundamental liberties," The New Republic said. 

Judges have allowed criminals to use Christianity to escape deportation, according to a newspaper analysis.

"Murderers, sex offenders and drug dealers are among the migrants who have escaped deportation by claiming to have converted to Christianity," said The Times.

Controversy over such baptisms has intensified since it emerged that the Clapham chemical attack suspect, Afghan national Abdul Ezedi, was granted asylum in the UK on his third attempt after converting to Christianity.

A former priest has claimed the Church of England is complicit in a "conveyor belt" of "asylum baptisms". But Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, said there has been a "mischaracterisation" of the role of churches and faith groups in the asylum system.

What did the commentators say?

People can apply for asylum in the UK based on religion if they have a well-founded fear of persecution in their home country because of their religious beliefs. How often this happens is unclear, because the Home Office does not collect data on the number of migrants who are granted asylum on the basis of religion.

According to Church of England guidance to clergy on the issue, priests supporting asylum applications must be ready to provide evidence of Christian faith, including church attendance, a baptism certificate and "records of changes in behaviour".

But the home secretary is investigating the issue after claims from a Weymouth Baptist church that 34 Muslim men living on board the Bibby Stockholm barge, which is moored off Portland in Dorset, were preparing for a Christian baptism. Another six have already been baptised, a church elder told the BBC.

Another Baptist church minister told the Mail on Sunday that he had baptised up to 500 asylum seekers in the sea, and that up to 60% of them disappeared after their Christian conversion.

Holding mass baptisms at sea during the winter was his way of testing his worshippers' faith, said Pastor Phylip Rees. He added: "If I suspected that someone wasn't genuine, I wouldn't baptise them." Baptist churches are not part of the Church of England.

Writing in The Telegraph, Suella Braverman said that, during her tenure as home secretary, she "became aware" of "churches around the country facilitating industrial-scale bogus asylum claims".

Asylum seekers just need to "attend Mass once a week for a few months, befriend the vicar, get your baptism date in the diary and, bingo, you’ll be signed off by a member of the clergy", she said.

Matthew Firth, a former priest, told the same paper that there was a "conveyor belt, a veritable industry of asylum baptisms". He said that about 20 asylum seekers had sought baptisms at his church in Darlington to support their applications, and that there were "probably" thousands of asylum baptisms in the Church of England.

The Times found that, in one case, a Bangladeshi man, who had served 12 years in prison for murdering his wife, successfully appealed against attempts to deport him. He argued that he was a Christian convert and that he would be at risk in his predominantly Muslim community in Bangladesh.

What next?

Paul Butler, the bishop of Durham, insisted Firth's claims were "some distance from reality", said The Guardian. In a statement, Butler said that Firth "does not offer any evidence", but that a "check of the parish records quickly reveals" that "a total of 15 people (13 adults, two infants) who may have been asylum seekers have been baptised over the past 10 years". Of those, seven were baptised by Firth himself.

Philip North, the bishop of Blackburn, told the BBC that the accusation of mass baptisms "sounds to me like a pretty barefaced attempt to outsource responsibility for a failing asylum system to the church".

Writing in The Telegraph, Guli Francis-Dehqani, the bishop of Chelmsford, said that although clergy "will occasionally, after careful assessment, provide statements of support to individuals seeking asylum", it was "wrong to think of this as some sort of magic ticket". She added that "the notion that a person may be fast-tracked through the asylum system, aided and abetted by the church, is simply inaccurate".

Home Secretary James Cleverly is thought to be considering changes to the appeal system that would make decisions involving Christian conversions "more robust", said The Times.

A source close to Cleverly told the paper that he is "looking at tribunals that are independent of the Home Office that, either with supporting testimony from a church, or worse even if the conversion is not believed to be authentic, are overturning Home Office decisions on conversion grounds".

The findings of Cleverly's investigation are expected to "form part of an internal review" that he commissioned in the wake of the Ezedi case, said the Daily Mail.

Every aspect of the Abdul Ezedi case is "shocking", said The Times. 

Ezedi, a migrant from Afghanistan, arrived in Britain illegally in a lorry in 2016. In 2018, he was given a suspended sentence at Newcastle Crown Court for sexual assault and exposure. He was then twice refused asylum, but on his third attempt, after an apparent conversion to Christianity, he was given permanent leave to remain.

Last week, Ezedi drove from Newcastle to Clapham, in London, to find a woman with whom he was acquainted. Witnesses allege that he threw a corrosive substance into her face; her injuries are said to be "life-changing". Bystanders who tried to intervene were also injured, as were the woman's two young daughters: he allegedly took one from a car, and twice smashed her onto the ground. Ezedi then fled and was last seen near Blackfriars, bearing facial injuries from the substance. Police have suggested that he may now be dead, but there are many questions that must still be answered: the Home Office must "explain why he remained in Britain after his conviction".

'The consequences of our human rights laws'

This should be a wake-up call, said Nick Timothy in The Daily Telegraph. "There is no better case study in the weakness of our criminal justice system, the absurdity of our immigration courts, the consequences of our human rights laws" – and the failure of our institutions to protect the public. Our asylum system is utterly broken, and it is exploited by people who despise our values.

In particular, the Church of England must take note, said Melanie Phillips in The Times. Fake conversions are now common among asylum seekers. They are used to "game the system": the courts are unwilling to deport Christians to nations where they may be persecuted, and a good word from a priest helps with the application. Nearly one in seven of the 300 migrants on the 'Bibby Stockholm' barge are now reportedly converting.

'Spurious political purposes'

Predictably, this horrific attack has been exploited for "spurious political purposes", said The Independent. Clearly, Ezedi's case has been terribly mishandled. But "most refugees, it hardly needs stating, are not violent offenders", bent on awful crimes. 

The notion that someone may be shepherded through the system by their church is "simply inaccurate", said the Rt Rev Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani in The Daily Telegraph. It is the role of the Home Office to assess and vet claims; the official guidance specifically states that evidence from "a senior church member is not determinative". Though clergy may support such claims, it is certainly no "magic ticket".

Nigeria's most prominent Christian televangelist physically and sexually abused dozens of his followers in crimes that spanned continents and went on for decades, a new investigation has alleged.

Temitope Balogun Joshua, known as TB Joshua, founded one of Nigeria's biggest churches, called the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN), in 1987. But according to BBC reporting, he committed sexual crimes against his followers "on a mass scale" until his death, aged 57, in 2021. 

Allegations against him include rape, sexual assault, forced abortions and violent assaults including being whipped and tied up with chains, as well as sleep deprivation and isolation.

The background

TB Joshua was regarded as "one of the most influential pastors in African history" before his sudden death in 2021, soon after the BBC and openDemocracy began investigating the church leader. 

Joshua's global television and social media operation was "among the most successful Christian networks in the world" with viewers across many continents, said the BBC. His church lives on despite his death, now being led by his widow Evelyn and "a new team of disciples". 

Joshua was well known for his so-called "miracles", many of which were documented on his Emmanuel TV network. The channel featured footage of people "allegedly healed from HIV/Aids, cancer and paralysis" among other ailments, said openDemocracy. 

OpenDemocracy first began looking into allegations of abuse by Joshua in 2021. It found that he "weaponised homophobic teachings to promote fake cures for what he called the 'demon' of homosexuality", leading to his TV channel – which at the time had around 5.6 million subscribers – being shut down by YouTube.

The latest

More than 25 of Joshua's former followers gave testimony as part of a two-year joint investigation.

The evidence gathered by the news organisations suggests that Joshua was "abusing and raping young women from around the world several times a week for nearly 20 years", said the BBC. 

Five of the people interviewed were British women, including Rae, who was 21 in 2002 when she abandoned her graphic design degree in Brighton to travel to Lagos, Nigeria.

Coming from a conservative Christian background, she said she turned to Joshua for help because she was gay and "didn't want to be", she told the broadcaster. She was soon recruited into the church and would spend the next 12 years as one of Joshua's so-called "disciples" inside his compound in Lagos. 

Rae told the BBC that she was sexually assaulted by Joshua and underwent further abuse by being subjected to isolation for two years. She said the abuse was so severe she attempted suicide several times.

"We all thought we were in heaven, but we were in hell, and in hell terrible things happen," she said. 

Another former disciple, Jessica Kaimu, from Namibia, recounted how she was first raped by Joshua at the age of 17. 

She was forced to undergo five abortions during her five years in the compound, in what she called "backdoor type medical treatments", which "could have killed" her and other disciples forced into the procedure.

Multiple former followers of the church alleged that disciples were subjected to forced abortions.

The reaction

The investigation, which has been turned into a three-part BBC documentary series, has been trending in Nigeria and Ghana on social media site X, where the revelations have provoked "mixed reactions", said Business Day. 

Some have defended the controversial pastor and alleged he had healed them from ailments. "I had a heart issue from Kenya and got healed when he prayed for me in 2014. Have you ever called me to testify what God did to me through him?" said one person on YouTube. 

Others, however, have expressed shock at the revelations and called for a "thorough investigation", said Africa News. 

One social media user described the documentary as a "roller coaster ride". They added: "First I was like why will they wait for him to die before they drop it knowing he can't defend himself? after the last episode, I'm just sitting here in tears. idk if it's anger, disappointment, disbelief or pain." 

The church has not responded to specific claims made by the BBC and openDemocracy, but in a statement said: "Making unfounded allegations against Prophet TB Joshua is not a new occurrence. None of the allegations was ever substantiated."

The Catholic Church is holding a significant meeting at the Vatican this week, which some observers believe could become the major work of Pope Francis's papacy.

The Synod may lay the groundwork for important changes for previously taboo subjects such as married priests and the blessing of gay unions.

Conservative Catholics, especially those in the United States, are watching the meeting "with dread and deep mistrust", said The Washington Post. The word "schism" is even being thrown about, the paper added.

The current phase of the multi-year closed-door assembly – which began in October 2021 – opens today and will run until the end of the month.

What did the papers say?

The meeting's name alone, the "Synod on Synodality", sounds "esoteric" and "mystifyingly meta for many of the rank-and-file faithful", said The New York Times (NYT), but essentially it is a "major workshop for church leaders and lay people on how to work together for the good of the church".

Francis himself has addressed the uncertainties around the meeting, saying in August that he was "well aware that speaking of a 'Synod on Synodality' may seem something abstruse, self-referential, excessively technical, and of little interest to the general public". But, he added, it "is something truly important for the church".

Despite the listening sessions that have been offered around the world and at every level of the Catholic Church, many conservatives feel that the process for the synod has been "stacked against them", the Washington Post said.

The process itself is potentially the most transformative change for the church, "putting into practice the pope's bottom-up view of a collegial and inclusive institution that upends the traditional hierarchy", said the NYT.

In April, Pope Francis also approved changes to the norms governing the Synod of Bishops, which paves the way for women to hold 54 of the 365 votes as the church maps out its plans for the future.

It is not only the process, but also the synod's agenda that has disturbed many conservatives, said The Guardian, "as the Vatican seeks to address some of the church's thorniest issues".

The agenda "calls for concrete steps to promote women to decision-making roles and the 'radical inclusion' of LGBTQ+ Catholics and others who have been marginalised by the church", the paper said. These discussion points have "rattled conservative factions".

Synods themselves are the product of the Second Vatican Council which ran from 1962 to 1965, and act as "an 'advisory' board of sorts to the Pope", explained Euronews. There have been 16 of them since the 1960s, but they have "often garnered accusations of not reflecting the reformative spirit of Vatican II", the news website said.

In response, Pope Francis has "attempted to reform the institution" in an attempt to "breathe new life into the Vatican".

What next?

The landmark three-week synod "may represent a watershed moment for the Catholic Church akin to the Second Vatican Council", said the Irish Times.

Some have also warned it could trigger a new schism. Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, a former leader of the church's doctrinal office who was replaced by Francis, has warned that the assembly could be used as a "hostile takeover".

Not everyone is confident that the meeting will bring about significant changes. Given the broad resistance to Pope Francis's ideas – including the moves to give women voting rights – Kathleen Gibbons Schuck of Women's Ordination Worldwide said she was not expecting the synod to bring about major shifts in the church. "There's an enormous history that we're looking to move to a different place," she told The Guardian.

"Do I really think there's going to be substantial change that comes out of this? Even though I'm typically an optimist, I don't," she said. "It's an incremental change. And I see signs of hope in that change."

Participants will reconvene in Rome in October 2024, after which the pope is expected to issue a document endorsing or rejecting its recommendations. That will come as "a defining moment" for the long-term legacy of Francis, said the Irish Times.

Delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention's annual conference voted overwhelmingly this week to confirm the expulsion of Saddleback Church in California, previously the second-largest Southern Baptist church, and Fern Creek Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, for having female pastors. After the results of Tuesday's votes were announced on Wednesday, the delegates enshrined the ban on female pastors in the denomination's constitution.

The SBC, America's largest Protestant denomination, changed its theological doctrine in 2000 to say "the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture," but Southern Baptist churches are independent and there was no consensus until recently that the ban on women pastors should be enforced.

The SBC executive committee voted to expel Saddleback, Fern Creek, and three other Southern Baptist churches with women as lead or senior pastors in February. Only Saddleback and Fern Creek appealed their defellowshipping. At the New Orleans convention on Tuesday, 88% of SBC delegates rejected Saddleback's appeal and 92% voted to expel Fern Creek. The delegates, or messengers, then went further and approved a constitutional amendment specifying that Southern Baptist churches must "affirm, appoint or employ only men as any kind of pastor or elder as qualified by Scripture."

That amendment, which the SBC leadership committee had opposed as unnecessary, "threatens to unleash a crisis for the denomination" if it is confirmed at next year's convention, The New York Times reported. The SBC credentials committee will now face pressure from the denomination's ascendent ultraconservative wing to investigate and expel the estimated 1,900 Southern Baptist churches that have female pastors.

Southern Baptists "must stand our ground and keep the door shut to feminism and liberalism," argued delegate Sarah Clatworthy, a church administrator from Texas. "We should leave no room for our daughters or granddaughters to have confusion on where the SBC stands" on the roles of men and women.

"If you think if every Baptist thinks like you, you're mistaken," Saddleback's founding pastor Rick Warren told the delegates before Tuesday's vote. "Saddleback disagrees with one word (of the Baptist Faith & Message 2000). That's 99.99999% in agreement. Isn't that close enough?" It was not. "The face of Southern Baptists does not look at all look like our annual meeting," he said at a news conference on Wednesday.

Exorcists may be inadvertently helping the Devil, according to a pastor. Dan Delzell said that “demon-bashers” could be “a useful weapon in Satan’s arsenal”, reported the Daily Star. The pastor, from the Redeemer Lutheran Church in Papillion, Nebraska, US, said that the Devil might be “unfazed” by the efforts of exorcists. “No-one gets into Heaven by being an exorcist, but only by repenting of your sins and trusting Jesus to wash you clean with the blood he lovingly shed for you on the cross,” he advised.

Rome ‘smelt of patchouli’

Archaeologists in Spain have recovered a Roman perfume from a rare quartz bottle sealed 2,000 years ago, reported The Times. The researchers from the University of Córdoba described it as having a “smell of patchouli”, a fragrant plant native to Asia. The remains of the perfume were found during an archaeological excavation in 2019 in a mausoleum uncovered during the construction of a swimming pool in the southern town of Carmona. “Rome smelled of patchouli,” they said.

Library book returned 96 years late

A book has been returned to a library in the US almost 100 years late, reported Sky News. The copy of “A History of the United States”, by the American historian Benson Lossing, was on loan from St Helena Public Library in California, with a return date of 21 February 1927. However, it was handed back last week, some 96 years overdue. The man who returned the book to the front desk offered no explanation before leaving. Fines were scrapped in 2019 but had they stood, he would have been due to pay $1,756.

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Nearly 1,500 years after it was first written, a “hidden chapter” of Biblical text has been found by researchers.

The study, which was published in the journal New Testament Studies, claims that the missing section constitutes one of the oldest translations of the Gospels.

Scientists used ultraviolet photography to find the chapter beneath three layers of text on a manuscript that had been housed in the Vatican Library for centuries, The Independent reported.

According to researchers, the hidden text is an interpretation of the Bible’s Matthew chapter 12, which was first transcribed as a part of the Old Syriac translations around 1,500 years ago.

Due to the shortage of parchment in ancient Palestine a few centuries later, the original translation of the Biblical New Testament was mostly erased when the parchment was reused. “This was a common practice because the paper made from animal skin was scarce and needed to be reused,” the Daily Mail said.

Those hoping for fresh spiritual insight from the hidden text may be disappointed, but the discovery does offer a “unique gateway” into the early translations of the Bible, said Grigory Kessel from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, who made the discovery.

The text also offers a glimpse into how translations can subtly change a text. For instance, the original Greek of Matthew chapter 12 verse 1 says: “At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath; and his disciples became hungry and began to pick the heads of grain and eat.” The Syriac translation, meanwhile, says, “...began to pick the heads of grain, rub them in their hands, and eat them.”

The other critical aspect of the discovery is that it demonstrates how new technology can improve our understanding of ancient writing, said Professor Claudia Rapp, director of the Institute for Medieval Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

“This discovery proves how productive and important the interplay between modern digital technologies and basic research can be when dealing with mediaeval manuscripts,” Rapp said.

The Southern Baptist Convention's executive committee expelled six churches from the largest U.S. Protestant Christian denomination, one over its handling of a sex abuse case and the other five for installing women as senior or lead pastors. The most prominent SBC member kicked out Tuesday was California's Saddleback Church, one of the largest Southern Baptist churches.

When Saddleback's founding pastor, Rick Warren, retired last August, he put a married couple, pastors Andy and Stacie Wood, in charge of the megachurch. With more than 23,000 members and 12 locations in Southern California, "Saddleback is a household name in American evangelical Christianity," The Nashville Tennessean reports. At the same time, being defellowshipped from the SBC won't overtly affect Saddleback members, The New York Times adds. "The church did not use the word Baptist in its name or foreground any connection to the denomination," and Warren "rarely attended denominational meetings."

"Southern Baptists hold to a complementarianism, a theological idea that teaches men and women have certain assigned roles," The Tennessean reports. Saddleback and the other four churches expelled Tuesday — Calvary Baptist Church in Jackson, Mississippi; Fern Creek Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky; New Faith Mission Ministry in Griffin, Georgia; and St. Timothy's Christian Baptist Church in Baltimore — were judged to be in violation of the SBC's stated belief that "while both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture."

Saddleback has been under scrutiny at the Southern Baptist Convention since it ordained three women as pastors in May 2021, and some Southern Baptists tried to get the church expelled at national meeting in 2021 and 2022. The SBC's executive committee agreed to the disfellowship proposal at the end of a two-day meeting in Nashville. Saddleback and the other four churches kicked out for having female pastors can appeal the decision at the SBC's annual gathering this summer in New Orleans.

The Church of England said Wednesday it will still not allow same-sex weddings in its churches, though it would start allowing blessings for those who have married in a civil ceremony.

In a statement, the church said it will issue an apology later this week for the "rejection, exclusion, and hostility" that LGBTQ+ individuals have faced. However, the statement added, "the formal teaching of the Church of England as set out in the canons and authorized liturgies — that [marriage] is between one man and one woman for life — would not change" under the new proposal.

"Same-sex couples would still not be able to get married in a Church of England church, but could have a service in which there would be prayers of dedication ... following a civil marriage or partnership," the church said.

The head of the Church of England, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, acknowledged that the move would seem "not nearly far enough" for some, though he hoped it would be seen as a decision for the common good.

Wednesday's decision followed five years of contentious debate with the Church of England, The Associated Press notes, and it is expected to be officially outlined in a report to the church's national assembly in February.

Same-sex marriage has been legal in England and Wales since 2013, but the Church of England has never changed its teachings.

Charlie Bell, an Anglican priest who lives in London with his partner, told BBC News he felt a "deep disappointment" with the decision.

"It leaves same-sex couples in a bit of a limbo and also as second-class citizens," Bell said. "We're still saying to gay couples that their relationships are less than relationships between people of opposite sexes."

Calls for an end to the Church of England’s role in parliament and schools have increased after census results revealed that England is no longer a majority Christian country.

Less than half the population of England and Wales – 27.5 million people – described themselves as Christian, 5.5 million fewer than the last census, in 2011, found the Office for National Statistics, adding to calls to “disestablish” the church.

“Secularists and others” now want disestablishment – an end to the Church of England’s position as an established church, said The Guardian.

But just how powerful is the Church of England in British society?

How many church schools are there?

There are 4,632 Church of England schools and 200 church schools in Wales, explained the Church of England’s website. This means that approximately one million children attend Church of England schools and around 15 million people alive today went to a Church of England school.

Many church schools are state-funded and this has caused tension because exemptions to the Equality Act allow state faith schools to “use religion to discriminate over which pupils they admit, who they employ and what they teach”, wrote Andrew Penman in the Mirror.

He added that he “had to pretend to be Anglican for several years” so his children could get into the local primary school, “where the Church of England monopolised half the places”.

Some have pointed to a wider influence the church has on education. The Observer’s Harriet Sherwood noted the legal requirement for every state school to hold an act of daily worship that is “broadly Christian in character”.

How does the Church influence politics?

Under current rules, 26 bishops are guaranteed seats in the House of Lords. The archbishops of Canterbury and York, the bishops of London, Durham and Winchester and 21 other bishops in order of seniority together form the “Lords Spiritual”, explained the UK Parliament website.

This clerical influence on law-making has provoked criticism. There are “only two countries in the world that automatically give places in their parliaments to clerics”, wrote Penman: “Iran, that bastion of religious brutality”, and the United Kingdom. Writing for Open Democracy, Scot Peterson claimed that the appointment procedure is “secretive and flawed”.

However, defending their presence in the Lords in an article for PoliticsHome, the bishop of Durham said that for “those who argue that religion should keep out of politics, as Christians we look to the example of Jesus Christ, who did not fail to challenge those in authority when the needs of those on the margins were ignored”.

The Church has other influences in Parliament. For instance, Anglican prayers are held at the start of parliamentary business each day and places in the chamber are reserved by putting down prayer cards.

What is the monarchy’s relationship with the Church?

The Church of England has friends in high places. For instance, the British monarch is considered the supreme governor of the Church and has the authority to approve the appointment of archbishops and other church leaders, said History.com.

King Charles took on the titles Defender of the Faith and supreme governor of the Church of England following the death of Queen Elizabeth II. However, he has said he will serve people “whatever may be your background and beliefs”.

Will the Church lose its powers?

The news that less than half of the population of England and Wales is Christian has led to renewed calls for the disestablishment of the Church of England. The census result “should be a wake-up call which prompts fresh reconsiderations of the role of religion in society”, Andrew Copson, chief executive of Humanists UK, told the Mirror.

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is a long-standing supporter of disestablishment. In 1999, he said “many people in this country think that it is wrong to have an established Church” because “we are a multicultural, multi-faith society” and therefore “no religion or Church should be given pre-eminence over others”.

Some within the Church have even called for change. Giles Fraser, an Anglican priest and media commentator, told The Observer he believes in disestablishment “not because it’s the right thing for the country, but because it’s the right thing for the church”.

He added that “we’ve been turned into flunkies of the establishment, seduced by pomp and circumstance. Disestablishment would require the C of E to reinvent itself.”

Christianity is on its way to minority status in the U.S., according to a recent study from Pew Research. But what if Christianity is already losing its religion?

A new biennial survey of U.S. Christian beliefs from Ligonier Ministries and LifeWay Research found a lot of heretical beliefs — notably Arianism, a 4th-century belief that Jesus was the son of God but not divine like him — even among evangelical Christians who otherwise take the Bible quite literally.

For example, 43 percent of evangelicals said Jesus was "not God" and 65 percent seemed to disagree with the doctrine of original sin. On hot-button social issues like abortion and sex outside of heterosexual marriage, however, evangelicals were nearly unanimous that they are sins. White American evangelicals are overwhelmingly Republican and live largely in the South. Has this most American of religions become less a religion and more a political culture?

Yes, evangelicalism is becoming a political club

White U.S. evangelicals were more politically heterogeneous until the 1980s, when they started flocking to the Republican Party, but "evangelicals' beliefs are often molded by political and cultural allegiances, not just biblical texts," Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a professor of history at Calvin University, writes in The Washington Post. And "over the past half-century, conservative evangelicals have reoriented their views to champion strong masculine protectors who fight for faith, family, and nation."

That largely explains why white evangelicals are among the loyalist supporters of former President Donald Trump, who does not share their professed morality or fealty to scripture, Kobes Du Mez writes. "Increasingly, those who identify as evangelical are aligning not primarily with a theological system but with a cultural and political identity."

With this new Ligonier survey, "Kobes Du Mez's argument that evangelicalism is a culture rather than a set of beliefs has never looked stronger," writes Jacob Huneycutt, a student of Baptist history at Baylor University. "This problem could be remedied, friends, if we actually catechized our kids. How many of these evangelicals grew up doing 'True Love Waits' campaigns and watching pro-life films but have never heard of the word 'catechism,' even still?"

Extramarital abstinence and opposing abortion are important, Huneycutt adds. "Jesus' divinity and original sin are more important, though. They are the foundations of our belief."

Evangelicals are religious but too focused on sexual purity

The term evangelical "has become so laced with politics that millions of Christians identify themselves as 'evangelicals' simply because they're Republican and they're Christian," David French writes at The Atlantic. "The word has become such a tribal signifier that, in many households, evangelical Christianity is little more than a God-and-country lifestyle brand." But the Ligonier/LifeWays survey winnows those cultural evangelicals out, and it turns out even American "theological evangelicals" have "a Jesus problem."

"A traditional, orthodox evangelical sexual ethic" is good, but "the core of the faith is not its moral codes but rather faith in the person of Jesus Christ," French writes. "When the church leads with its moral code — and elevates that moral code over even the most basic understandings of Jesus Christ himself — the effect isn't humility and hope; it's pride and division. When the church chooses a particular sin as its defining apostasy (why sex more than racism, or greed, or gluttony, or cruelty?), it perversely lowers the standards of holy living by narrowing the Christian moral vision," leaving "a weaker religion" populated by millions of Christians who, "in the quest for morality" have "lost sight of Jesus."

American culture is corrupting evangelicalism

The State of Theology survey "reveals that the overwhelming majority of U.S. evangelicals have accepted a view of human identity that aligns more with American society than the teaching of the Bible," Ligonier Ministries argues. "While positive trends are present, including evangelicals' views on abortion and sex outside of marriage, an inconsistent biblical ethic is also evident, with more evangelicals embracing a secular worldview in the areas of homosexuality and gender identity."

What's wrong with cultural evangelicalism?

Growing up evangelical, "I was taught that a cultural Christian was one of the worst things a person could be," Jenell Williams Paris, a sociology professor at Messiah College, writes at CBE International. "They were nominal and lukewarm," using "church as a social club," while we "committed Christians" were "born again, pursued a personal relationship with God, attended church, and did good works in the world."

Now, "I remain evangelical for cultural reasons, which I suppose makes me a cultural evangelical," Williams Paris writes. I'm still a "committed Christian," but "my evangelicalism is embedded in American culture," and "I'm glad American culture socialized me for gender equality, educational success, and a life that includes service in the public sphere."

"Being a cultural evangelical in this sense is not a weak attachment to tradition or to God," Williams Paris goes on, "but a recognition of how deeply we are shaped by culture, and how successful evangelicalism can be in molding individuals into a Christian way of life."

What's wrong with political evangelicalism?

White evangelical Christianity is actually undergoing a sort of schismatic split between one camp that favors Trump-style messaging, politics, and conspiracy theorizing, and those who follow the traditional evangelical path of avoiding politics as antithetical to biblical, University of Illinois Chicago sociologist Michael Emerson tells The New York Times.

"There's a great separation taking place," agrees Wade Lentz, "patriot" pastor of Beryl Baptist Church in Vilonia, Arkansas. "A lot of people are getting tired of going to church and hearing this message: 'Hey, it's a great day, every day is a great day, the sun is always shining.' There's this big disconnect between what's going on behind the pulpit in those churches and what's going on in the real world."

"This mindset that Christianity and politics, and the preacher and politics, need to be separate, that's a lie," Lentz tells the Times. "You cannot separate the two."

Evangelicals can't serve both God and mammon

"There's this line I hear from evangelical pastors these days — 'I get them for one hour a week and Fox gets them for 10 hours,'" New York Times reporter Ruth Graham recounts on The Daily, in a look at how one conservative Arkansas pastor was driven from his church because his congregants wanted Trumpist affirmation more than Christian transformation. "Now people might be getting an extra hour of exactly what they're hearing the rest of the week, and now it's from their pastor. So the person who is at the center of their religious life now is feeding them more of the politics and reinforcing their political beliefs."

Ed Stetzer, the executive director of Wheaton College's Billy Graham Center, offered a similar assessment to The Atlantic but said this is a "cultural convulsion" that cycles through American evangelicalism every few decades.

Evangelicals certainly haven't cornered the market on making self-righteous, cherry-picked claims about the Bible, but their support for "neo-pagan warlords like Donald Trump" and other Christian nationalists "has less to do with Christianity in any recognizable form than with the sanctification of entirely secular cultural passions with the unshakable faith owed only to God given to politicians," Ed Kilgore writes at New York magazine. "You can choose to follow your culture wars into partisan politics or even authoritarianism and insurrectionary violence, like the not-so-spiritual warriors of Jan. 6. But please, please, be honest about your motives and leave your savior and mine out of it."

"From one perspective, the Christian embrace of populist politics is understandable," Michael Gerson writes in The Washington Post. "The disorienting flux of American ethical norms and the condescension of progressive elites have incited a defensive reaction among many conservative religious people," and "anxious evangelicals have taken to voting for right-wing authoritarians who promise to fight their fights," including "the oddest of political messiahs — one whose deception, brutality, lawlessness, and bullying were rewarded with the presidency."

"In the present day, the frightening fervor of our politics makes it resemble, and sometimes supplant, the role of religion," Gerson adds. "Nowhere did Jesus demand political passivity from his followers," but "Christians seeking social influence should do so not by joining interest groups that fight for their narrow rights — and certainly not those animated by hatred, fear, phobias, vengeance, or violence. Rather, they should seek to be ambassadors of a kingdom of hope, mercy, justice, and grace. This is a high calling — and a test that most of us (myself included) are always finding new ways to fail."

Americans are mostly a Christian people. That might not always be the case.

A new report from the Pew Research Center says that Christians could someday soon no longer be a majority in this country. Instead, projections show that their numbers could decline to "between a little more than half (54 percent) and just above one-third (35 percent) of all Americans by 2070."

The study's authors are careful to say that this decline isn't inevitable — but the trend lines are fairly apparent. "With each generation, progressively fewer adults retain the Christian identity they were raised with," they write, "which in turn means fewer parents are raising their children in Christian households." Why is Christianity in decline? And what will it mean for America's future? Here's everything you need to know:

Is this report a surprise?

Not really. Report after report over the years has shown a decline in America's Christian population. Last year, Pew reported that 63 percent of Americans identify as Christians — down from 75 percent a decade earlier — and that the "religiously unaffiliated" had risen to become roughly 30 percent of the population. "In addition, the share of U.S. adults who say they pray on a daily basis has been trending downward, as has the share who say religion is 'very important' in their lives," Pew reported at the time.

What is going to happen going forward?

The new study's authors take those declining numbers and look ahead. They ask what would happen if Americans keep leaving their churches, and balance it against other trends in migration, births, and deaths to come up with four possible results. All four scenarios painted a picture of continued decline: Even under the most optimistic (and also unlikely) scenario — in which Americans stopped switching away from the religion — Christianity's share of the population would decline.

That's not entirely because Americans are becoming more secular, though. The numbers of people in non-Christian religions are expected to double their current representation, to roughly 12 or 13 percent of the population. That growth "is likely to hinge on the future of migration (rather than religious switching)," the authors write. When American Christians leave their churches, in other words, they don't often become Buddhists — instead, they join the growing ranks of the "nones."

Why are the numbers going down?

"The main reason is switching — Christians deciding they are not Christians anymore," Daniel Silliman writes for Christianity Today. Young people are the biggest switchers, with just 7 percent "disaffiliating" from the faith after they turn 30. Switching is both a big deal and a relatively recent phenomenon, Pew researcher Stephanie Kramer told the magazine. "It used to be that if you met someone on the street, and their father and mother were Christian, then they were Christian too," she said. "That's not always true anymore."

There may not be any single reason for the switching. One theory: America is a prosperous nation and as Americans "live longer lives with fewer worries about meeting basic needs, they have less need for religion to cope with insecurity," Pew reports. There's also the possibility that "an association of Christianity with conservative politics" has chased some people out of the church. Scandals, religious intermarriage, and other factors have also played a role.

How will this change our politics and culture?

The Pew report doesn't get into that. But it seems obvious that "such shifts would fuel political and social change, disrupting everything from family life to foreign policy," Kelsey Dallas writes for The Deseret News. Indeed, after the Jan. 6 insurrection, The Atlantic's Ronald Brownstein suggested the impacts were already showing up. There is a "deep fear" among Republicans that "they will be eclipsed by the demographic and cultural changes that have made white people — especially white Christians — a steadily shrinking share of the population," he wrote.

But there might be other, less-obvious changes to consider. "If Pew is right … then many of the faith-based institutions that play a central part in community life may be weakened or disappear," Bob Smietana, a writer for Religion News Service, said on Twitter. If faith-based food pantries, shelters, and disaster aid dry up, he said, "someone else is going to have to take their place — and that will not be easy."

So can American Christianity be, er, resurrected?

Pew's authors say that all their modeling could be blown up. New patterns "could emerge at any time," they write. But the list of events that they say could trigger a religious revival is frankly scary: "Armed conflicts, social movements, rising authoritarianism, natural disasters" could all prompt Americans to turn to religion — Christianity included — as consolation.

All that means it's fair to say that the new report has left some American Christians gloomy. "Revival could happen," Silliman writes for Christianity Today. "There's just nothing in the current data that indicates it will.

A recent New York Times headline proclaimed that "New York's Hottest Club is the Catholic Church." Written by Julia Yost, a senior editor at the conservative Christian intellectual journal First Things, the essay pointed readers' attention to the Manhattan neighborhood known as "Dimes Square," where a 2,000-year-old religion is supposedly the hip new trend. "Reactionary motifs are chic: Trump hats and 'tradwife' frocks, monarchist and anti-feminist sentiments. Perhaps the ultimate expression of this contrarian aesthetic is its embrace of Catholicism," Yost wrote.

Key figures include Honor Levy, who hosts the podcast "Wet Brain" and whose fiction has been published in The New Yorker. Levy "recently converted to Catholicism and lets you know when she has unconfessed mortal sins on her conscience," Yost writes. Another is Dasha Nekrasova, "a Catholic revert and actress with a recurring role on HBO's Succession, who co-hosts "the scene's most popular podcast, Red Scare."

But are these hip urbanite converts sincere? Are they just role-playing? Or are they so many layers deep in irony that they themselves aren't sure?

Are the converts just posers?

Yost concedes that this trendy Catholicism "may be partly a pose" but insists that Dimes Square "is not the first social scene whose Catholicism was dismissed as insincere." If you think about it, they're not so different from Oscar Wilde and his fellow fin de siècle Decadents, many of whom crossed the Tiber.

In the realm of fashion, Catholic iconography and "trad" styles function as "reservoirs of the 'unproblematic exotic,'" Biz Sherbert wrote at i-D. Appropriating Indigenous spirituality is out, but the Church of Rome won't mind if you borrow its look. Sherbert suggests that the trend has some of its roots in the "deviant Catholic schoolgirl" style of the 1990s, but that this "reads more like a salvaging of innocence than an iconoclastic subversion of it." Of course, there's still plenty of subversion going on. Take, for example, the fashion label Praying — famous for its white string bikini that labels the goods "Father," "Son," and "Holy Spirit."

Niall Gooch, who converted to Catholicism in 2006, joked in UnHerd that he had never been "at the cutting edge of fashion" before. "We should probably not put too much stock in this supposed mini-revival," Gooch continued, noting that "full-blooded Catholicism is a demanding way of life, not merely a means of sticking up two fingers at a suffocating liberal consensus." Even so, Gooch remained cautiously optimistic. Christianity, he argued, offers a potent antidote for those "alienated from a society which manages to be at once both insistently libertine, and cruelly unforgiving."

The rise of the New Right

Yost's essay drew heavily on James Pogue's April profile of the "New Right." His far-ranging piece touched on an interconnected web of figures including Senate candidates Blake Masters and J.D. Vance, political theorist Curtis Yarvin, billionaire Peter Thiel, Trumpian film director Amanda Milius, and Compact founder Sohrab Ahmari.

Pogue observed that "New Right-ish" politics have become "quietly edgy and cool in new tech outposts like Miami and Austin, and in downtown Manhattan." In these hip enclaves, "signifiers like a demure cross necklace have become markers of a transgressive chic" and — as one of Pogue's friends told him — "casual sex is out." The New Right isn't exclusively Catholic, but Vance and Ahmari are both converts and Pogue writes that "[p]eople are converting to Catholicism" in the Manhattan New Right scene.

Just days after Pogue's profile dropped, New York Times opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg published a piece headlined "The Awful Advent of Reactionary Chic." Goldberg doesn't address the connection between the New Right and Catholicism, but she does suggest that the entire fad will come to a screeching halt next time the right takes power nationally. "Eventually, an avant-garde flirtation with reaction will collide with the brutish, philistine reality of conservative rule," she wrote.

Goldberg also argued that the reactionary chic scene "doesn't have a coherent worldview" and is united by nothing more than anti-wokeness and "a desire to épater le bourgeois."

There's no scene to be seen

In response to Yost's claim that Dimes Square's turn toward Rome signals "a culture-wide shift," The Washington Post's Taylor Lorenz tweeted, "No, it literally doesn't and, in fact, it's the exact opposite. This entire 'scene' is composed of maybe 2,000 people with *zero broader cultural relevance* and the media needs to stop falling for it."

Molly Olmstead argued in Slate that the Times was irresponsible to publish a piece treating reactionary Catholicism as a fun, innocuous trend. Traditionalist Catholicism, Olmstead writes, "attracts those who like to post winkingly about the Crusades" and who campaign "for the stripping of rights from women and queer people." At The Atlantic, Daniel Penneton wrote that, for right-wing Catholics, "rosary beads have been woven into a conspiratorial politics and absolutist gun culture." Both Olmstead and Penneton noted that these Catholic reactionaries are far outside the mainstream of the post-Vatican II American church.

Atheist Hemant Mehta of the explicitly non-religious publication OnlySky went further, attacking not just traditionalists in the church but the Catholic Church itself as an institution "where child sexual abuse has been a rampant problem for decades ... where abortion rights and the existence of transgender people are both denied, where same-sex marriage is considered immoral, where financial scandals never cease," and so on. "[T]raditional 'values,'" he wrote, "are out of date for good reason."

But what do actual Catholics have to say?

Some Catholics were also skeptical of the trend. Yost herself suggested that plenty of these fashionable Dimes Square Catholics are likely to fall away as the culture war heats up following the fall of Roe v. Wade (1973). "Real-world events will confront young urban Catholics with the full implications of Catholic doctrine, making it hard to view the rosary as a fashion statement. Over time, these developments will sort the converts from the LARPers," she wrote, using the acronym for "live-action role-playing."

Others were offended at the idea that their religion was being treated as a costume. Several commenters on Praying's Instagram page suggested that the label wouldn't get away with appropriating (and sexualizing) the symbolism of any other religion in this way — the classic Piss Christ vs. cartoons of Muhammad debate.

And speaking of Muhammad, Sarah Hagi wrote at Gawker that if the Dimes Square crowd really wanted to be subversive, they'd embrace Islam. "As much as I respect Catholicism, you can't pretend that Lent, 40 days where you decide to not eat chocolate or whatever because it's your vice, is not just a baby version of the 30 days a year I spend starving myself during Ramadan," she wrote. "Catholicism is for the weak. Call me when you're ready for Hajj."

The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, announced Friday that the Justice Department is conducting an investigation into the convention's handling of sex abuse cases, The New York Times and Washington Post reported.

"The SBC Executive Committee recently became aware that the Department of Justice has initiated an investigation into the Southern Baptist Convention, and that the investigation will include multiple SBC entities," a statement from 14 SBC leaders read. "Individually and collectively each SBC entity is resolved to fully and completely cooperate with the investigation."

This announcement comes after an internal report released in May revealed the widespread suppression of reports of sexual abuse within the SBC. The Post explained that the report led to "a recommendation to create a database to track sex abusers and a formal group to handle sex abuse accusations going forward."

The SBC has nearly 14 million members across more than 47,000 churches.

The Anglican Communion, the world's third-largest Christian body, has been bitterly divided for decades over the issue of same-sex marriage. Last week, the communion's leader may have provided Anglicans with a workable compromise. Here's everything you need to know:

What is the Anglican Communion?

The Anglican Communion is the world's third-largest Christian body after the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, comprising over 85 million members located mostly in England and its former colonies.

Anglicanism has its roots in the arrival of Christianity in Roman Britain and emerged as a separate Christian body when King Henry VIII broke with Rome in 1534. The Protestant reforms that began under Henry; continued under his son, Edward VI; and solidified under his daughter, Elizabeth I, turned Anglicanism into a distinct theological tradition, albeit one characterized by a series of compromises between Protestantism and Catholicism.

For centuries, the Church of England — along with subordinate bodies in Scotland and Ireland — was Anglicanism. That all changed as a result of the American Revolution, which resulted in the creation of the Episcopal Church (TEC), and the expansion of Britain's empire. Gradually, Anglican provinces that had once been ruled from the mother country became self-governing members of a global Anglican Communion.

Member provinces — each led by a "primate" who usually holds the title of archbishop — are distinguished by their continued ties to Canterbury, their use of the Book of Common Prayer, and their episcopal style of church government, in which bishops ordain and oversee priests. Today, a majority of Anglicans live in the Global South.

What is the Lambeth Conference?

The Lambeth Conference is a global gathering of Anglican bishops held every 10 years at Lambeth Palace, the traditional residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Although it lacks the coercive power of a Roman Catholic council, the Lambeth Conference can still be a big deal. Lambeth resolutions have preceded widespread change on a number of social issues.

A resolution adopted by the 1930 Lambeth Conference, for example, made the Anglican Communion the first major Christian body to approve the use of artificial contraceptives by married couples. The 1978 conference recognized "the autonomy" of each province "to make its own decision" about ordaining women. Prior to 1978, only Canada, New Zealand, and the U.S. had ordained female priests; today, women serve as priests in nearly every Anglican province, with only a few holdouts like Nigeria and Pakistan remaining.

This year's Lambeth Conference, which ran from July 26 through Aug. 8 and was attended by more than 650 bishops from 165 countries, was the first since 2008.

What happened at this year's Lambeth Conference?

Last week, as the gathering drew to a close, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who is first among equals in the communion, put forward a compromise on the divisive issue of same-sex marriage. Under his proposal, the Anglican Communion would retain its 1998 resolution defining homosexual relations as inherently sinful, but would not take action to punish provinces that deviated from that teaching.

"For the large majority of the Anglican Communion, the traditional understanding of marriage is something that is understood, accepted and without question, not only by Bishops but their entire Church, and the societies in which they live. For them, to question this teaching is unthinkable, and in many countries would make the church a victim of derision, contempt, and even attack," Welby said in the Aug. 2 speech.

"For a minority," he continued, "we can say almost the same. They have not arrived lightly at their ideas that traditional teaching needs to change. They are not careless about scripture. They do not reject Christ. But they have come to a different view on sexuality after long prayer, deep study, and reflection on understandings of human nature. For them, to question this different teaching is unthinkable, and in many countries is making the church a victim of derision, contempt, and even attack."

How'd that go over?

Welby's speech outlining the policy reportedly received a standing ovation from liberal and conservative bishops alike. "[B]y God's grace, this week we have disagreed without hatred," the archbishop said later in the week. The BBC noted that Welby's "focus appeared to be pragmatism" and that "a crisis seemed to have been averted."

Conservative writer Rod Dreher argued in 2018 that attempts at dialogue and coexistence between liberal and conservative factions in the same Christian body seldom last and "are almost always a strategic move by heterodox/liberal people to establish a beachhead from which to dislodge and defeat orthodoxy." The Episcopal Church, for example, originally allowed individual bishops to decide whether to allow same-sex weddings in their dioceses; by 2018, it was mandatory.

In addition to allowing the two perspectives on Christian sexual morality to coexist, Welby also took steps to further normalize the acceptance of same-sex marriage within Anglicanism: This year's Lambeth Conference was the first to invite married gay and lesbian bishops and their same-sex partners. But while Welby "may feel that he has made a significant compromise by saying national churches choosing to conduct same-sex marriages will not be sanctioned," added the BBC, "… here at home, even just by entertaining and reaffirming a position that allows gay people to be viewed unequally, as he did at this conference, he risks doing precisely what he says should be avoided."

Indeed, not everyone was pleased. British-Danish author, atheist, and former Great British Bake Off co-host Sandi Toksvig penned an open letter to Welby accusing the primate of endangering the lives of gay and trans people by not showing them the "love" that is "supposed to be at the core of what you do." Others likewise found Welby's attempt at a compromise out-of-touch: "It's no wonder that its churches are empty and those who are there have one foot in the grave," one letter-writer told The Guardian. "Young people are increasingly inclusive and tolerant of others."

Anglicanism may have "one foot in the grave" in Europe — where membership declined by more than 4 million between 1970 and 2015 — and in North America, where the number of Anglicans fell by nearly half despite strong population growth in the U.S. and Canada. But it's exploding in more traditional countries. Membership in Africa's Anglican churches spiked from less than 8 million to almost 57 million during the same period, growing significantly faster than the continent's overall population.

How has the Anglican Communion previously handled controversies over homosexuality?

At the 1998 Lambeth Conference, conservative bishops from Africa outvoted their liberal British and American colleagues to pass a resolution declaring that "homosexual practice" was "incompatible with Scripture" and advising against "the legitimizing or blessing of same-sex unions." In 2008, an attempt to revise that resolution failed; global Anglicanism's center of gravity had shifted to the developing world.

Nevertheless, liberal provinces persisted. In 2003, the Episcopal Church consecrated an openly partnered gay bishop and in 2015, altered its definition of marriage to include same-sex couples. The communion's primates responded by sanctioning TEC. For three years, the province's representatives were banned from representing the Anglican Communion "on ecumenical and interfaith bodies" and prohibited from voting "on any issues pertaining to doctrine or polity" while "participating in the internal bodies" of the communion.

Against the backdrop of these disputes, Welby — who became archbishop in 2013 — postponed the Lambeth Conference scheduled for 2018 until he could be sure he wouldn't face widespread boycotts. As it turns out, he faced some boycotts anyway. The primates of Nigeria and Uganda, which have the second- and third-largest number of baptized Anglicans after England itself, skipped Lambeth, as did the archbishop of Rwanda.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article mistakenly listed Rwanda (rather than Uganda) as the third most populous Anglican province. We regret the error.

The EU is threatening to add the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church to the ranks of Kremlin-linked military officers and tycoons sanctioned for supporting the Ukraine invasion.

Patriarch Kirill I has previously worked with Pope Francis to “bridge a 1,000-year-old schism” between Christian churches in the East and West, said The New York Times (NYT). But the Russian religious leader to “​​about 100 million faithful” has now “staked the fortunes” of his sect of Orthodox Christianity on a “mutually beneficial alliance” with Vladimir Putin.

Kirill is offering the Russian president “spiritual cover” for the war, while “his church – and possibly he himself – receives vast resources in return from the Kremlin”, the paper reported.

God’s representative

Kirill’s support for Putin predates the decision to invade the neighbouring eastern European country. The religious leader – born Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyayev – has described Putin’s rule as “a miracle of God”.

The Russian president, in turn, has claimed that the patriarch’s father, who worked as priest in Leningrad (now St Petersburg), “baptised him in secret in 1952”, The Los Angeles Times reported.

Kirill also has a long track record of intervening in Russian foreign relations. In 2008, while on a tour of Latin America, he met with Fidel Castro in Cuba and accepted the then communist leader’s thanks for being an ally in combating “American imperialism”.

Kirill also “heartily congratulated” Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko – a close ally of Putin – for winning the Belarusian presidency in 2010, despite widespread claims of vote manipulation.

But the patriarch has not seen eye-to-eye with the Kremlin on all issues. According to the Financial Times, Kirill was “keenly aware that Putin’s actions severely undermined his authority in Ukraine” following the 2014 annexation of Crimea.

The Russian Orthodox Church “refused to absorb Crimea’s parishes” in protest at the move, said the paper, and Kirill “boycotted a ceremony in the Kremlin” organised to “celebrate” the hostile takeover of the peninsula.

However, the current conflict in Ukraine has triggered no such concerns from the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. Instead, Kirill has “characterised the war as a just defence against liberal conspiracies”, the NYT said.

“All of our people today must wake up, understand that a special time has come on which the historical fate of our people may depend,” he said in an April sermon. In another sermon, Kirill told soldiers that “we have been raised throughout our history to love our fatherland, and we will be ready to protect it, as only Russians can defend their country”.

To his critics, the religious leader has come to represent another “apparatchik” who helps enable “the nationalist ideology at the heart of the Kremlin’s expansionist designs”, the paper reported. And “his role is so important” that EU officials are planning to take direct action against him.

Sanctioning the church

According to Reuters, the patriarch has been added to a “draft blacklist” that includes “hundreds of military officers and businessmen close to the Kremlin whom the EU accuses of supporting the war in Ukraine”. A diplomat told the news agency that the sanctions against Kirill would probably “entail an asset freeze and a travel ban”.

That he appeared alongside Putin at this year’s Victory Day in Moscow, on 9 May, will have heightened the EU’s awareness of Kirill’s role in selling the war at home. At a wreath-laying ceremony the day before, he had said that “we must all work to ensure that our Fatherland becomes strong and invincible”, the Church Times reported.

“The prosperous, comfortable situation in which we live today often contributes to relaxing a person’s will and a dependence on certain life conditions,” Kirill continued. “At such a time, our Church and armed forces must work especially together to instil in the people a sense of patriotism, loyalty to ideals and readiness to defend the Fatherland.”

His comments came after the Russian Orthodox Church scolded Pope Francis for telling Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera that the Church risked becoming “Putin’s alter boy”.

“Pope Francis chose an incorrect tone,” the Moscow Patriarchy said, warning that his intervention was “unlikely to contribute to the establishment of a constructive dialogue between the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches”.

Clash of civilisations

If Russia’s invasion has sometimes seemed to have the “intractable intensity of a religious war”, said columnist David Ignatius in The Washington Post, “that’s partly because it is entwined with one”.

Many in the West consider Putin to be “a secular, autocratic leader”. But the Russian president “is also an Orthodox believer, who wears the cross his mother secretly gave him as a baby in Soviet times”.

And Kirill has “been his ally in rallying the Russian people to invade and conquer a neighbouring Slavic country”, Ignatius continued. “To Putin and his patriarch, it seems, this is about reestablishing order among the rebellious faithful.”

Foreign Policy columnist Janine di Giovanni agreed that Putin’s “geopolitical ambitions are closely entwined with faith”. The endorsement of his religious ally is vital, because the invasion has been framed as a “holy war for Russia”.

Sanctioning Kirill would be an “extraordinary measure against a religious leader”, the NYT said. The “closest antecedent” may be “the sanctions the United States levelled against Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei”.

Taking similar measures against Kirill is “​​likely to be seen within Russia and its church as merely further evidence of hostility from the Godless West”, the paper added.

But to Kirill’s critics, the sanctions would represent an explicit acknowledgement that he has turned Russia’s state religion into a “corrupted spiritual branch of an authoritarian state”.

Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention released a landmark 288-page report Sunday that outlined two decades of "resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility" toward people who came forward with allegations of sexual abuse in the largest U.S. Protestant denomination. The report was compiled by Guidepost Solutions, an independent organization contracted by the SBC's executive committee.

The seven-month investigation that a few executive committee leaders and the SBC's law firm "largely controlled the EC's response to these reports of abuse," Guidepost said in its reports. "Almost always the internal focus was on protecting the SBC from legal liability and not on caring for survivors or creating any plan to prevent sexual abuse within SBC churches." This stonewalling re-traumatized people sexually abused by pastors and other church leaders, the report found.

The report singled out a handful of Southern Baptist leaders, notably August "Augie" Boto, a top member of the executive committee who kept a list of hundreds of abusers at Southern Baptist churches, including some active ministers, even while the executive committee told Southern Baptists a database of accused clergy would violate SBC policy.

In one of the report's most shocking revelations, Georgia pastor Johnny Hunt is credibly accused of sexually assaulting the wife of a fellow pastor during a 2010 Florida beach vacation, just a month after he finished his two-year term as SBC president. Hunt denied assaulting the woman to investigators and on Twitter, but the investigators deemed him not credible; he resigned from the SBC's North American Mission Board on May 13.

The Southern Baptists have wrestled with how to handle sexual abuse allegations in its churches for years before the Houston Chronicle documented hundreds of such cases in 2019.

"The depths of wickedness and inhumanity in this report are breathtaking," said Russell Moore, a top theologian who left the SBC over its mishandling of sexual abuse. "As dark a view as I had of the SBC executive committee, the investigation uncovers a reality far more evil and systemic than I imagined it could be."

Executive committee board chairman Rolland Slade and interim CEO Willie McLaurin called the report "the beginning of a season of listening, lamenting, and learning how to address sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention," adding that "there are no shortcuts" to fixing the problem. The report will be addressed at an executive committee meeting Tuesday and the annual SBC convention next month.

The United Methodist Church is about to become the divided Methodist church. The Council of Bishops finally conceded that a split is imminent. The liberal wing will remain in a predominantly U.S.-based successor denomination while conservatives remain in connection with the growing, mostly orthodox African church. Despite efforts to delay the inevitable, the latter body, the Global Methodist Church, officially came into existence over the weekend.

What is happening to what has heretofore been the third-largest denomination in the United States, after the Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention, is emblematic of mainline Protestantism in general. Once culturally dominant, its social, political, and theological witness was compromised by constant squabbling. Despite a slogan of "open hearts, open mind, open doors," the reality in many local churches was increasingly empty pews.

One side wanted to remain rooted in historic Christian teaching on issues of faith and morals, including sexuality, to which the world's largest churches mostly remained committed. The other wanted to move in the secular world's direction on these issues, first as a matter of attracting new members but eventually and increasingly out of a strong moral conviction that these teachings were exclusionary.

The United Methodist Church remained so for as long as it did because the denomination remained orthodox on paper but liberal in practice except in areas where its evangelical members were numerically prevalent. That compromise became untenable as liberals came to regard the official orthodoxy as unjust and conservatives could no longer tolerate the flouting of those teachings throughout vast swathes of the church.

For a time, it seemed possible a coalition of white Southerners and Black Africans would transform United Methodism from a center-left denomination with a strong evangelical subculture into a mildly center-right one with a robust liberal subculture, making it the first mainline Protestant church reclaimed by its more conservative members. But there was no democratically accountable executive authority through which to replicate their legislative and judicial progress, so the day-to-day running of church agencies was little changed.

Same-sex marriage hastened the divorce. But there's one thing both sides claim to agree on: It's time to stop arguing about sex and make disciples of Jesus Christ. May it be so.

A 12-year-old girl became a bishop for 45 minutes as part of a quirky tradition at Salisbury Cathedral. Chorister Isabel Moss donned the bishop’s cope, mitre and ring and carried the staff to lead a service at the cathedral on Sunday. She sat in the intricately carved Cathedra – or bishop’s throne – to deliver a sermon and lead the choir and congregation in prayer. The tradition dates back to medieval times.

Climber given plane crash jewels

A mountaineer has been given the jewels he found on a French glacier 50 years after plane crash. The collection of emeralds, rubies and sapphires, which has been buried for decades on a glacier off France’s Mont Blanc, has been shared between the climber who discovered them and local authorities, eight years after they were found. The local mayor said he was “very happy” with the move and praised the climber for his “integrity” in turning his find in to police.

Man hid giant model railway

A man who spent eight years building Britain’s biggest model railway kept his girlfriend in the dark about his epic 200ft project, fearing it might scare her away. Simon George, 53, told the BBC: “When I first met her she didn’t know I was building this. She knew I leased a mill with a huge basement but I kind of led her to believe I was a wine merchant because that sounded cooler than building a model railway.” He added that she was “shocked” when she discovered the truth.

To many, Shrove Tuesday is little more than a day on which to whip up – and tuck into – a big stack of pancakes. But while the focus on pancake creations is a modern phenomenon, Shrove Tuesday has for centuries been a day of particular significance in the Christian calendar.

It marks the final day before the start of Lent – a 40-day period defined by spiritual discipline and sacrifice, with many observers opting to give up certain luxuries from their lives for the duration.

So with Lent starting on Wednesday 2 March in 2022, we take a look at the significance of the observation – along with ten ideas for those looking to give up some of life’s cushy comforts.

What is Lent?

Lent – originally known in Latin as Quadragesima – is the name of the 40-day period leading up to Holy Thursday, the last Thursday before Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

Historically this period would allow for a 40-day fast – with Sundays excluded – in imitation of the so-called Temptation of Christ. This biblical narrative, which appears in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, tells that after being baptised by John the Baptist, Jesus fasted for 40 days and nights in the Judaean Desert, during which Satan tried to tempt him. Jesus is said to have rebuffed these attempts for the duration of the Temptation before returning to public life to begin years of travelling and teaching.

Encyclopaedia Britannica suggests that a period of preparation and fasting has been observed before the Easter festival since apostolic times, though the practice was not formalised until the First Council of Nicaea in AD325.

Furthermore, while fasting may still be undertaken by followers of more orthodox interpretations of the story of Lent, the 20th century marked the gradual relaxation of rules surrounding fasting during the 40-day period. Instead, Christians now often choose to give up specific pleasures such as sweets, alcohol or social media during Lent as a way to foster simplicity and self-control.

According to Christian charity Stewardship, Lent is regarded as “one of the most important times of year for many Christians around the world, particularly those within the Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox traditions”, adding that it is “held at a similar level of importance to Advent” – the build-up to Christmas.

However, while Advent is often associated with celebration and anticipation, Lent is considered a far more solemn observance, commemorating the sacrifices and suffering experienced by Jesus during the Temptation of Christ.

What are some common sacrifices made during Lent?

The Daily Express said that when Lent required a total fast, Shrove Tuesday became known as Pancake Day as it was an “easy way to use up eggs and butter before Lent began”.

But while such issues of practicality are less prevalent in modern observations of Lent, this year will once again see Christians “give up some of their favourite foods or vices this year, from chocolate and crisps to smoking and alcohol”.

And if you want to partake in this ancient practice of self-discipline and spiritual abstinence, here are ten ideas for things to give up for Lent in 2022:

Certain foods

The classic choice for Lenten sacrifice is certain foods, with observances ranging from giving specific items such as chocolate and crisps to broader abstentions such as forfeiting snacking between meals.

Alcohol

As seen during Dry January, people are increasingly looking for excuses to give up alcohol temporarily – or perhaps to kickstart a permanent abstention from alcoholic drinks.

Smoking

With the number of smokers in the UK plummeting year after year, the practice of giving up cigarettes for Lent is becoming less and less common. However, there are still people using the observance to kick the habit.

Coffee

Country Living suggested that your method of choice when giving up coffee for Lent “depends on your habit”, adding: “Someone might give up the stuff entirely if they sip on home-brewed coffee all day, others might give up the morning (or mid-afternoon) caffeine fix from their favourite shop.”

Eating out

Eating out at a restaurant can often seem like the most convenient choice for people with busy schedules, but Lent could be the perfect reason to not only brush up on your home cooking skills but also save significant amounts of money on food.

Digital devices

Often dubbed a “digital diet”, the practice of giving up some degree of digital device interaction is an extremely popular choice for observers of Lent. Writing in The Telegraph, Anna Hart said that undertaking a digital diet for Lent gave her “a clearer mind, boosted productivity, increased creativity, reduced stress and more productive days”.

Social media

A more specific version of the digital diet involves cutting social media use, which Catholic.org writer Marshall Connolly attests to being “hard – very hard”, but adds: “With less time listening to the noise of social media, I now find I have an easier time tuning in to God. I need less time to clear my mind before prayer, which is a great thing. I had no realisation that social media could be such pollution to the spiritual mind.”

Gossip

This one has even been given the green light by the Pope himself, who stated in 2019 that Lent is a good time to concentrate on fighting the urge to talk about others and instead trying to correct one’s own faults and defects. “We all know it usually is easier or more comfortable to notice and condemn the defects and sins of others rather than seeing our own with that kind of clarity,” Pope Francis said during the Angelus Address in Vatican City.

Complaining

A similar pick is to give up complaining, Aleteia.org said, noting that “endless complaining most likely makes you feel bummed out, and it’s not fun for your friends and family to listen to either”.

Sex

While abstention from sex is a key facet of more extreme elements of Catholic doctrine, with priests expected to stay celibate, more moderate followers may also look to use Lent to give up sexual activity temporarily.

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Rebecca Bodenheimer in CNN

on a misstep by a usually-woke awards show

How the Golden Globes missed the mark

“Many people presumably take the stance on the Golden Globes that Gervais took: It's just an awards show, and not even a well-respected one at that. But it's still considered to have an impact on Oscar nominations, and calling oneself a Golden Globe winner can help an actor command a higher rate. For a director, it might mean the difference between getting your next movie funded or not. So, inclusion isn't just an abstract concept - it matters.”

2. Michelle Goldberg in the New York Times

on death and destruction in the Middle East

The nightmare stage of Trump’s rule is here

“Unlike with North Korea, it’s difficult to imagine any photo op or exchange of love letters defusing the crisis the president has created. Most of this country has never accepted Trump, but over the past three years, many have gotten used to him, lulled into uneasy complacency by an establishment that has too often failed to treat him as a walking national emergency. Now the nightmare phase of the Trump presidency is here. The biggest surprise is that it took so long.”

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a weekly round-up of the best articles and columns from the UK and abroad, try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

3. Hamid Dabashi in Al Jazeera

on revisiting Christianity in 2020

Decolonising Jesus Christ

“The figure of Jesus Christ has come to represent many different visions and served various functions throughout time and across geography. As we mark the 2020th anniversary of his birth, amid global turmoil, tension and uncertainty, perhaps the multiplicity of meanings he has embodied should have us rethink dominant narratives among Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and other believers worldwide.”

4. Jane Dalton in The Independent

on plant-based piety

Vegans have won this court case – but they're losing hearts and minds

“To me, being a dietary vegan is pretty ethical already. But resorting to the law to enforce one’s rights is hardly the best way to promote support for one’s views. The perception of vegans as shouty turns many people off veganism; nobody likes to think something is being foisted on them, or that they’re being judged. Indeed, many people react badly to it.”

5. Kapil Komireddi in the New Statesman

on the Modification of India

Is India still a democracy?

“In 2019, many well-heeled media personalities in Delhi and Mumbai were appalled when India was ranked 140 in the World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders. That the world’s largest democracy was ranked so low was, to them, proof of an international conspiracy to discredit Modi. Many now loudly denounce the aggressive coverage of the prime minister as a left-wing conspiracy against India, from foreign publications that once swooned over Modi. What such fulminations don’t account for is all that is happening around them in India: the silencing of critics, the hacking apart of intrepid reporters and the quashing of dissent. The democratic content of the republic is being hollowed out, but the people believing themselves to be the guardians of democracy are concerned most of all with image. India, you see, has become Modified.”

Christianity may be on the decline worldwide but worshippers in the US are flocking to a groundbreaking service called Beyonce Mass. Combining progressive theology and pop music, the Mass is a celebration of God… and of former Destiny’s Child star Beyonce Knowles-Carter.

So exactly what is it?

Launched in San Francisco last year, Beyonce Mass is a Christian “womanist worship service that uses the music and personal life of Beyonce as a tool to foster an empowering conversation about black women”, according to the organisers’ website.

The Mass is making its debut in New York this week, with a Wednesday service at the First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn and a Thursday event at St James Presbyterian in Harlem.

The service features black women singers, dancers and officiants along with a sermon, scripture readings and the Lord’s Supper.

And it uses Beyonce’s story and songs, from Formation to Flaws and All, to frame religious narratives - and those of black women - through a Christian lens.

“I haven’t been involved in the church for years, but stepping back into that space felt amazing,” Lydia Middleton, dean of Black Student Affairs at the Claremont Colleges in Los Angeles, told the The New York Times (NYT).

“It felt warm and inviting, and I left feeling healed. By the end of the service, people were weeping, people were joyous, people were hugging each other.”

How did it start?

Beyonce Mass grew out of a chapel service led by Reverand Yolanda Norton, chair of Black Church Studies at San Francisco Theological Seminary, where she taught a class called “Beyonce and the Hebrew Bible”.

The course examined female-centric interpretations of the Bible and how black female identity is represented in scripture, with a focus on how Beyonce’s “personal life, career trajectory, music and public persona reflects aspects of black women’s stories”.

The first major Beyonce Mass was in April 2018, when “900 people turned out for a midweek evening church service that typically draws 50 participants at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco”, reports the NYT.

Why Beyonce?

Norton says that having Beyonce serve as the inspiration for the Mass was a personal choice as well as a scholarly one.

“As her life evolves, my life evolves,” said the 37-year-old cleric. “I can hear Beyonce songs, or Destiny’s Child songs, and know what stage of life I was in.”

The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) reports that during a Beyonce Mass service last year, Norton told the congregation: “I’ve been asked time and time again, ‘Why Beyonce?’

“I believe she reminds us that you have to do your thing your way, you don’t do it on demand, you don’t do it for your oppressor, you don’t sing when they want you to sing... you sing when God calls you to sing.”

The concept has been applauded by Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, dean of the Episcopal Divinity School at New York City’s Union Theological Seminary, where Norton is currently a scholar in residence.

Douglas said: “Black artists have always been central to the struggle for black freedom…Beyonce is a part of this legacy. There is this natural correspondence between the kinds of things she does in her music and the black church.”

But the service isn’t about worshipping Beyonce, Norton cautions.

“Absolutely not, and I’m a card-carrying member of the BeyHive,” she said.

“People think we’re worshipping Beyonce, none of that is true. This is a way to have different kinds of conversation.”

An evangelical church called the Jesus Army is facing renewed police interest as former members come forward with fresh allegations of historical sex offences and other abuse.

According to the BBC, hundreds of past recruits to the Jesus Army - also known as the Jesus Fellowship Church - are seeking damages for alleged abuse inside the Baptist sect, which was set up in the late 1960s.

An investigation by the broadcaster has found that a total of 43 people who were active in the church have been linked to reports of historic sexual and physical abuse, including rapes, bullying, brainwashing, forced labour, financial bondage and “barbaric beatings”.

Most of the claims relate to incidents in the 1980s and 1990s.

Launched by former Baptist Noel Stanton in the manse of a small chapel in Northamptonshire in 1969, the Jesus Army followed a “strict set of rules which banned toys, sugar, sweets, TV and all the trappings of a normal childhood”, according to The Sun.

One particularly “sinister creed” issued by the church - or cult, as it has been described - instructed elders to “beat Adam [sin] out of a child by the age of seven”, the newspaper reports.

At its peak, in the early 2000s, the evangelical group is believed to have had more than 2,500 members living in communes in Northamptonshire and various other areas of the country.

The sect claimed to be helping homeless and vulnerable people, who were offered the promise of “new creation” through an intense regime of work and worship.

“All of their income was given to a common purse and everything was shared - from underwear to parenting,” says the BBC.

Members also allege the church decreed that children could be disciplined by any adult, and that many were separated from their parents by the age of 12 or 13.

In the wake of assault claims in 2013, the Jesus Army initiated what it called a disclosure exercise in which alleged victims were encouraged to talk to the church’s “safeguarding department”, which then passed the information to the police.

Since the disclosures began, five offenders have been convicted of historic child sexual offences.

In May, as the allegations continued to mount, members voted to revoke the church’s constitution and dissolve the institution entirely.

According to Christian news site Premier, the church “blamed a badly damaged reputation, declining membership and a slowdown in giving for the closure”.

But a statement posted on the church’s website also acknowledged and apologised for what it termed “faults and failures”.

“We are deeply sorry for, and appalled by the abuse that has taken place within Jesus Fellowship Church and the New Creation Christian Community (NCCC) and offer our heartfelt sympathy and unreserved apology to all those affected,” the statement said.

A spokesperson for the church has announced that a formal redress scheme is being developed “to provide money and counselling” to “those who had suffered poor treatment in the past”.

But a survivors’ group has raised concerns about the level of compensation being proposed and is now preparing a group legal action.

In this series, The Week looks at the ideas and innovations that permanently changed the way we see the world.

Christianity in 60 seconds

Christianity is based on the beliefs and teachings laid out in the Bible, “regarding the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ”, according to History.com.

The first part, the Old Testament, describes the creation of the world and the history of the Israelites. The first five books, which include the 10 Commandments, are the central scripture of Judaism, known as the Torah.

The New Testament recounts the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, who many Christians believe to be the son of God. The first four books, known as the Gospels, tell the story of his birth to the Virgin Mary, his life, and his death by crucifixion.

The latter portion of the New Testament details the efforts of Jesus’s apostles – notably Paul – to spread his message, and ends with an apocalyptic book of prophecy, called Revelation.

Most Christians fall under one of three main Churches: Roman Catholic, Protestant and Eastern Orthodox. These differ in rituals, religious practices and interpretations of the Bible, but share a belief in an all-knowing, all-loving God, who sent Jesus Christ to enlighten and redeem humanity.

How did it develop?

Initially seen as a sect within Judaism, Christianity spread to gentile (non-Jewish) communities after Jesus’s death, emerging as a separate faith.

In the late first century, alarmed by the rise of the new movement, Emperor Nero launched a brutal crackdown, arresting, torturing and executing Christians in Rome. But although life was dangerous for early converts, “the spread of Christianity was made a lot easier by the efficiency of the Roman Empire”, said the US Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).

By AD313, when Constantine became the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, the Gospel had already reached imperial provinces in Europe, Asia Minor and North Africa.

The now-Christian Roman Empire collapsed in the fifth century, and Western and Eastern Christians began to drift apart. In 1054, “a complex mix of religious disagreements and political conflicts” gave rise to the so-called Great Schism, said National Geographic. Christianity split into two “major branches”: Roman Catholic in the West, and Orthodox in the East, each with their own liturgy, rituals and leader (the Pope in the West, the Patriarch in the East).

The second major schism in Christian history occurred in the 16th century in northern Europe, when Protestantism emerged “as a reaction to medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices”, explained Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The Protestants’ complaints against the Church were summarised in German theologian Martin Luther’s Ninety-five Theses, which he is said to have nailed to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg in 1517.

A key demand was the recognition of the individual’s personal relationship with God, and a reduced role for priests, rites and rituals, which they saw as getting in the way of true faith.

After a series of European wars in the 1500s and 1600s - a period known as the Reformation - Protestantism spread across Europe and has evolved to include denominations as diverse as Anglicans, Baptists, Methodists, Quakers and Amish.

And as European powers began colonising large swathes of Africa and the New World, they brought Christianity with them. In 2011, the Washington DC-based Pew Research Center estimated that Europeans only accounted for only one in four Christians globally, while the share of the Christian population in sub-Saharan Africa had increased to 63%, and in the Asia-Pacific region to 7%. “Christianity today – unlike a century ago – is truly a global faith,” it said.

Europe’s Christian population is also expected to drop substantially by 2050, as other religious groups grow in numbers “due to a combination of higher fertility, younger populations and net gains via migration and religious switching”, the Center said in 2015.

In the 2021 census, the proportion of people in England and Wales who described themselves as Christian fell below 50% for the first time.

Professor Alec Ryrie, of the University of Durham’s theology and religion department, told the i news site that “there’s every reason to think the fall in 2031 will be even sharper”, as the traditional English identity had been “rapidly softening since the 1960s”. “It may be that Christianity will no longer be a dominant or a default identity, but a religion of outsiders and of the marginalised,” he said.

How did it change the world?

“Many historians regard the spread and adoption of Christianity throughout the world as one of the most successful spiritual missions in human history,” says History.com.

With nearly 2.4 billion adherents, it is the world’s most widely practised religion, has influenced countless leaders and has acted as a major factor in “legitimating social systems and values”, both for good and bad, said Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Throughout history, the Bible has been used to justify racism, misogyny and other forms of prejudice, and at its worst, the Church has actively acted “in collusion with tribalistic nationalisms (e.g., the ‘German Christians” and Nazism’)”, the encyclopaedia notes.

However, “when the Christian community has held to its teachings.. it has opposed such social systems and values.”

“In a sense, the impact of religion outside the faith has been more significant than the spreading of the faith itself,” British broadcaster and peer Melvyn Bragg told The Daily Telegraph in 2011. He argued that the King James Bible was “crucial” in bringing about everything from Western democracy to the civil rights movement.

For many commentators, the impact of the religion is best summed up by US theologian H. Richard Niebuhr in his 1951 book, “Christ and Culture”: “The many-sided debate about the relations of Christianity and civilisation… is as confused as it is many-sided.”

The Home Office has been criticised after rejecting an asylum seeker’s application by citing biblical verses to argue that Christianity is violence-filled religion.

The Iranian national, who claimed asylum in 2016, was told the bloodthirsty passages in the Bible were “inconsistent” with his claim to have converted to Christianity after discovering it was a “peaceful” faith.

Human rights groups claim that converts to Christianity face persecution in Iran, with hundreds targeted and arrested by the Islamic Republic because of their faith.

But in a letter rejecting the unnamed man’s application for asylum, a Home Office official quoted five violent passages from the Bible, “including sections from the Book of Leviticus and the Book of Revelations”, says the Daily Mirror.

The letter says that Revelations - the final book of the Bible - is “filled with imagery of revenge, destruction, death and violence”, and goes on to cite six excerpts.

“These examples are inconsistent with your claim that you converted to Christianity after discovering it is a peaceful religion, as opposed to Islam which contains rage and revenge,” the official writes.

Caseworker Nathan Stevens posted the letter on Twitter, writing: “I’ve seen a lot over the years, but even I was genuinely shocked to read this unbelievably offensive diatribe being used to justify a refusal of asylum.”

He added: “Whatever your views on faith, how can a government official arbitrarily pick bits out of a holy book and then use them to trash someone’s heartfelt reason for coming to a personal decision to follow another faith?”

When contacted by The Independent, the Home Office said that the letter was “not in accordance” with its policy approach to claims based on religious persecution, and that it was working to improve the training provided to decision makers on religious conversion.

Legal expert Conor James McKinney, deputy editor of immigration news and advice website Free Movement, told the newspaper that the case highlights the Home Office’s tendency to “come up with any reason they can to refuse asylum”.

“You can see from the text of the letter that the writer is trying to pick holes in the asylum seeker’s account of their conversion to Christianity and using the Bible verses as a tool to do that,” he said.

“The Home Office is notorious for coming up with any reason they can to refuse asylum and this looks like a particularly creative example, but not necessarily a systemic outbreak of anti-Christian sentiment in the department.”

Sarah Teather, UK director of the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS), said the letter was a “particularly outrageous example of the reckless and facetious approach of the Home Office to determining life-and-death asylum cases”.

Churches are no longer legally required to hold a service every Sunday following a vote by the General Synod to end a law that dates back to 1603.

Some vicars have become responsible for up to 20 churches in their area due to the decline in clergy numbers. Vicars in rural parts of the country say they are unable to abide by the law and are left with little choice but to break it. Growing numbers of parishes have taken to holding a single combined Sunday worship where previously each church would have held separate service.

Although no vicar has been punished for breaking the canon, the changes mean that they are no longer breaking the law. The Bishop of Willesden, the Rt Rev Pete Broadbent, a longstanding proponent of the change, told the Daily Telegraph it “clears the way for people to be honest.”

He said that though the Sunday service “is a centuries old tradition” it has become unsustainable in some areas. “What we have been saying is that this canon does not work, it is out of date and we are operating differently in the countryside now.”

The law, which previously required that morning and evening prayer be “said or sung audibly in every parish church every Sunday”, has been amended to “in at least one church” in every group.

Similarly, where the law previously required Holy Communion to be celebrated “in every parish church”, it can now be held “in at least one church in each benefice”.

According to data from the Church of England, the numbers of multi-parish benefices - groups of churches looked after by one priest - has risen from 17% in 1960 to 71% by 2011.

The Church is also increasingly featuring self supporting priests with weekday jobs such as doctors, writers, teachers, plumbers or farmers.

One in three Christians in Asia faced persecution last year, with threat levels rising in the world’s two most populous countries, a new study has found.

Global monitoring body Open Doors said its annual World Watch List, which ranks the 50 countries where Christians face the most extreme persecution, showed an increase of hostility in Asia over the past five years, with nearly 140 million people targeted there because of their faith in 2018.

It described the continent as the “new hotbed of persecution”, which it defines as “any hostility experienced as a result of one’s Christian faith”. This can include hostile attitudes, words and actions towards Christians, said the organisation.

While North Korea tops this year’s list for the 18th time in a row, Open Doors estimates around half of the 100 million Chinese Christians will experience some form of repression this year. It comes amid a growing crackdown on religious worship from Beijing, which has led to 100s of unofficial churches shuttered, increased surveillance of congregations and the banning of Christmas in some cities.

Henrietta Blyth, the chief executive of Open Doors UK and Ireland, told The Guardian the levels of persecution in China are “the worst it’s been in more than a decade”, adding that “alarmingly, some church leaders are saying it’s the worst since the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976”.

China is expected to have the world’s largest Christian population by 2030.

The Vatican has come under intense pressure, after appearing to ignore reports of growing Christian persecution in China, to sign a provisional deal with Beijing last year aimed at softening long-standing diplomatic tensions between the nominally communist state and the Catholic Church.

India, the world’s largest democracy, entered the World Watch List top ten for the first time, driven by the rise of Hindu ultra-nationalism that has led to a spike in anti-Christian sentiment.

The South China Morning Post reports that Myanmar, home to more than four million Christians, “went up six places due to Buddhist-led sectarian repression, and Laos rose one spot but increased on the persecution scale by four points out of 100”.

Indonesia, which suffered a triple bombing of churches in May, jumped eight places, with the report citing intolerance linked to the upcoming election.

Outside the continent, in Nigeria, at least 3,700 Christians were killed for their faith, almost double the number of a year ago, “with villages completely abandoned by Christians forced to flee, as their armed attackers then moved in to settle with impunity”, reports Christian news site Premier.

Other African countries where Christians face extreme persecution at the hands of radical Islamic militias include Libya, Somalia and Egypt, where the Coptic Church has been repeatedly targeted by terrorist attacks.

Militant atheism, radical Islamism and nationalism are three basic motives for Christian persecution, says Nina Shea, the director of US think tank the Centre for Religious Freedom.

Asia, in her words, is exhibiting all three.

“There are different reasons for it in each country. It’s baffling that they have all come at once,” she said.

Last month UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt ordered an independent, global review of the persecution of Christians of all nationalities.

The Foreign Office said the review, led by the Bishop of Truro Reverend Philip Mounstephen, would “consider some tough questions and offer ambitious policy recommendations”.

The BBC says the intervention came “after an outcry over the treatment of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who faced death threats after being acquitted of blasphemy in Pakistan”.

Bibi spent eight years on death row until her conviction was reversed by Pakistan's Supreme Court last year.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan has sparked outrage in the Muslim-majority nation by overturning a death sentence handed down to a Christian woman convicted of blasphemy.

Farm worker and mother-of-five Asia Bibi, 47, was sentenced to hanging in 2010 after being accused of insulting the Prophet Mohammed.

The allegations stem back to a row the previous June when three Muslim co-workers refused to drink from a container of water fetched by Bibi. The group of women claimed the bowl was “unclean” because it had been used by a member of the Christian minority, who make up less than 2% of the Pakistani population. When the women demanded that Bibi convert to Islam, she refused and allegedly insulted the prophet three times.

“She was later beaten up at her home, during which her accusers say she confessed to blasphemy,” reports the BBC.

Insulting Islam’s prophet is punishable by death under Pakistani law, and “blasphemy accusations stir such emotions they are almost impossible to defend against”, notes ABC News.

Bibi has always maintained her innocence, but has spent most of the past eight years in solitary confinement on death row.

However, today a three-member Supreme Court panel ruled that her conviction was based on flimsy evidence and that the prosecution had “categorically failed to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt”.

Chief Justice Saqib Nisar said: “Her conviction is set aside and she is to be relieved forthwith if not required in other charges.”

Justice Asif Khosa added: “It is ironical that in the Arabic language the appellant’s name Asia means ‘sinful’, but in the circumstances of the present case she appears to be a person, in the words of Shakespeare’s King Lear, ‘more sinned against than sinning’.”

Twitter users also noted the use of a religious passage from the Koran in the court’s statement, known as a “Hadith”.

The Supreme Court was “praised for its bravery in the face of threats of violence and protest from the country’s Islamist groups”, says The Guardian. Widespread clashes are already being reported between religious extremists and supporters of Bibi in the wake of the ruling.

Omar Waraich, deputy South Asia director for Amnesty International, described the verdict as a “landmark decision”.

“The message must go out that the blasphemy laws will no longer be used to persecute the country’s most vulnerable minorities,” he said, adding on Twitter that “justice has prevailed”.

But those who have spoken out in support of Bibi have made themselves targets of Islamists in Pakistan, according to the nation’s English-language newspaper Dawn. “In 2011, former Punjab governor Salman Taseer, who spoke out in support of Bibi, was gunned down in broad daylight in Islamabad,” the paper notes.

Islamic party Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP) is calling for the recently elected government of Prime Minister Imran Khan to be ousted over the ruling, Sky News reports.

Pakistan’s legal framework has also been heavily weighted against Bibi. She appealed at the Lahore High Court in 2014, but the death sentence was upheld, even though the court acknowledged “possible violations of the right of a fair trial, particularly the right to an adequate defence”, says Dawn.

Meanwhile, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) has stated that Pakistan’s mandatory death sentence for blasphemy “constitutes a violation of the right to life and the right not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment”, and is a “flagrant violation of Pakistan’s international human rights obligations”.

Large crowds gathered outside the court in Islamabad on Wednesday demanding that the execution be carried out. Bibi has been offered asylum by several countries and is expected to leave Pakistan indefinitely.

Pope Francis may be willing to to visit North Korea after receiving an invitation from Kim Jong Un, the Vatican has announced.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in, a Catholic, relayed the invite from his North Korean counterpart during a private audience at the Vatican on Thursday, says The Guardian.

ABC News reports that upon being told a more formal invitation would follow, the Pope responded: “If the invitation comes, I will surely respond to it, and I can possibly go.”

Hours later, the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, told reporters: “The Pope expressed his willingness. We have to wait for it [the invitation] to be formalised.”

Such a visit would be the first by any pope to the totalitarian state. However, it appears that certain conditions would have to be met before Kim’s invitation could be accepted.

Asked about these possible conditions, Parolin added: “This will come later, once we start thinking in earnest about the possibility of making this trip, then we will have to think about conditions in which the trip can take place.”

The North Korean regime is infamous for its human rights abuses and is “one of the worst in the world for persecuting Christians”, says The Guardian.

There is no reliable information available on how many citizens of the reclusive state, which strongly discourages all religious practice, follow the Catholic faith.

But it is estimated that at least 50,000 Christians are currently being held in prisons, labour camps, re-education camps, and detention centres in North Korea, according to US-based advocacy group Open Doors.

Analysts are already warning of the potential effects if the pontiff does accept an invitation to visit.

Former US National Security Council official Michael Green, who now works for the Washington DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, told CNN that “to physically travel to North Korea and meet with Kim, I fear, would legitimise a leader who is the greatest enemy to religious freedom on the face of the Earth”.

However, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said that the Pope’s comments implied that he had “effectively accepted an invitation to visit” North Korea already, and that Seoul hopes the religious leader “could help expedite the process to bring peace to the divided peninsula”.

Hong Young-pyo, the ruling Democratic Party’s floor leader, told a meeting of senior party members that a papal visit would add “momentum to induce the North toward the path to denuclearisation”.

Ukraine has secured approval from the global head of Orthodox Christianity to create its own Church independent of Russia’s patriarchate, in a politically charged move that has sparked anger in Moscow.

Constantinople’s Patriarch Bartholomew, the Istanbul-based spiritual leader of the world’s 260 million Orthodox Christians, confirmed in a statement on Thursday that the Church will “proceed to the granting of autocephaly [independence] to the Church of Ukraine”.

The move has met with fierce opposition within the Russian Church, leaving the two nations “dangerously close to a religious war”, says Bloomberg’s Sergei Chapnin.

So what is it all about?

Why does Ukraine want its own Church?

Orthodox Christianity was formally adopted in the Slavic region in 988 by Vladimir the Great, whose empire encompassed much of modern-day Ukraine and western Russia. Since the 17th century, the churches of both countries, along with Belarus, have been linked together under a centralised Moscow-based leadership.

Following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, “most Orthodox believers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus remained united under one spiritual leader, the Patriarch of Moscow”, says Bloomberg’s Chapnin.

However, there were calls for the Ukrainian Church to be given independence, with the Church’s former leader Patriarch Filaret leading the drive, though the campaign was weakened drastically by his excommunication in 1997.

In more recent years, tensions between Ukraine and Russia have reached critical levels following Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014.

As a result, “recognition of a Ukrainian Church that is not under Moscow’s jurisdiction” has once again become an increasingly fraught issue, and one that has been picked up by leaders in Kiev including President Petro Poroshenko, says Associated Press.

“The creation of a local Ukrainian Church has been one of Poroshenko’s main slogans going into the 2019 presidential election,” says Volodymyr Fesenko, an analyst at Ukraine’s Penta think tank.

But most agree that other forces are also behind the push for religious autonomy.

Ukraine has accused the Russian Orthodox Church of “allowing itself to be used as a tool of the Kremlin to justify Russian expansionism and support of separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine”, Reuters reports. The demand for an independent Church is seen as a means of “asserting [Ukraine’s] territorial independence”, adds The Atlantic.

Why did Patriarch Bartholomew agree to the split?

Although the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople is considered the Mother Church of Orthodox Christianity, in terms of size it is “dwarfed by the Russian Orthodox Church” and its 100 million adherents, says The Wall Street Journal.

This disparity has created something of a power struggle. In 2016, Russian Patriarch Kirill “skipped a summit of Orthodox leaders that would have been the first in a millennium” and a “signature achievement” for Patriarch Bartholomew.

According to the US newspaper, this week’s decision by Bartholomew is a “striking assertion of his status as the foremost Orthodox leader, a position that Moscow has sought to challenge in recent years with its size, wealth and political clout”.

The Kyiv Post reports that Filaret is no longer excommunicated and will be the head of the new Church.

What is Russia’s response?

“For Russia, the crisis is geopolitical as well as spiritual,” says Bloomberg’s Chapnin. “The stakes are so high that in order to protest Ukraine’s religious autonomy, Russia may respond harshly enough to trigger a deep schism in the Christian world.”

Russian Patriarch Kirill said last month that his church would break ties with the Istanbul-based patriarchate if it recognises an independent Ukrainian Church. Such a separation would “catastrophically undermine the unity of global Orthodoxy”, he added.

The threat was echoed by Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of external affairs for the Russian Church. “We the Russian Church will not recognise this autocephaly, of course, and we will have no other choice but to sever ties with Constantinople,” he said.

The question of whether the new Ukrainian Church will take over the Moscow Patriarchate’s property in the country is another contentious issue, which may result in “confrontation and violent protests”, says the Kyiv Post.

Addressing the possibility of violence, Filaret said: “Moscow wants a conflict, and we - Ukrainians - don’t want it.”

The release and return of a number of Christian women taken as slaves by Islamic State in Iraq has prompted questions about those still being held.

In August 2014, Isis militants swept through a cluster of Christian towns near Mosul, taking control and forcing thousands to flee.

Among the towns was Qaraqosh, which was Iraq's largest Christian town with a population of 50,000. Once in command, the militants took many of the Christian women into captivity and sold them as slaves across the caliphate.

Qaraqosh remained under Isis control until 2016 but now, little by little, some residents who were forced to flee “have been returning to recover what belongings remain, to assess the damage to their property, and to attend church services and holidays”, says The Atlantic.

Reports suggest almost 26,000 Christians have now returned to their homes in the town but so far, of the 45 women taken from Qaraqosh, only seven have returned.

Though much is known of the plight of the Yazidis, “much less is known about the Christian women kidnapped by Isis”, says The Sunday Times.

“There are fewer of them - dozens rather than thousands - but the impact on their ancient society has been enormous”.

What happened to the women?

For two and a half years, Rana, a woman captured in Qaraqosh, was enslaved by Isis and sold to ever more abusive “owners” for up to £19,000. “As the militants consolidated their power over large swathes of Syria and Iraq, she fed their children, cleaned their houses and endured their brutal violence,” says the Sunday Times.

“I wanted to escape but there was no way to run away or leave,” Rana told the paper. “All the streets were full of mines. The family said, ‘If you go outside that door we will kill you.’”

Another recently freed Christian woman, Rita Habib, said that all her captors were men, married with children and subjected her to rape and abuse, forcing her to clean their houses.

“They did evil things to us. They beat us and raped us,” she told Kurdistan 24.

“The worst of all was girls aged nine who were raped. Girls would be sold for $4,000 to $15,000.”

How were they rescued?

Last year, as Isis retreated in the face of an onslaught from international forces, The Times reports Rana and Habib were rescued and returned home.

Rana and Habib were two of a number of women who were rescued by men posing as jihadists as part of the Iraqi Christian group Shlama Foundation, which paid £20,000 to bring each woman back.

“If anyone had found out the unnamed men were posing as jihadists to help the women get out they would’ve been killed,” says the Daily Mirror.

As of tomorrow, police stations, courts and government offices in the German state of Bavaria will be legally required to display a Christian-style cross, under new legislation aimed at preserving “Bavarian identity”.

The law, introduced by state premier Markus Soder, a member of the conservative CSU party, has proved controversial. Althogh opinion polls show that a majority of Bavarians support the proposal, critics have accused the state government of pandering to the far-right and undermining the principles of secular government.

Soder and his supporters say the cross “is not a sign of religion”, but instead a symbol of Bavaria’s heritage.

Christian Moser, mayor of the Bavarian town of Deggendorf, echoed Söder’s sentiment. “This is about culture, not religion,” he told The New York Times, adding that separation of church and state remained a “given”.

In 2011, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that displaying a cross in a public building was “passive” act, and not necessarily a violation of religious freedom.

Many commentators have observed that the push for the law reflects a growing hostility to Germany’s Muslim population, recently swelled by the arrival of migrants and asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa.

Church attendance may be declining in Germany as in the rest of western Europe, “but religious symbols are making a powerful comeback as part of the simmering culture wars”, says The New York Times.

The latest evidence of a rising tide of Islamophobia can be found in a Pew Research study released on Tuesday which found that a third of Germans would not accept a Muslim into their family.

Resistance was most pronounced among Catholic Germans, more than half of whom said they would not accept a Muslim family member, compared to 16% of Protestants. Bavaria is one of two German states where the majority of residents identify as Catholic.

Perhaps surprisingly, however, much of the resistance to Bavaria’s mandatory cross law “has come from Catholic organisations and the church itself”, Deutsche Welle reports.

Hans Bauernfeind, the dean of the pastoral office at St Stephen's Cathedral in Passau, accused politicians of attempting to strip the crucifix of its inherent Christian meaning to serve their own agenda.

“The cross has its own message,” he told Deutsche Welle. “That should not be used for other purposes, be they political, social or cultural.”

Today, Christians around the world mark Ascension Day. Despite being a public holiday in more than a dozen countries (although, sadly, not the UK), the festival has a relatively low profile outside the church. So what’s it all about?

What is Ascension Day?

For 40 days after his resurrection on Easter Sunday, the Bible says that Jesus travelled and preached with his apostles, preparing them for his departure from Earth.

Ascension Day marks the moment Jesus literally ascended into heaven before his disciples, at the village of Bethany, near Jerusalem.

Acts provides the longest account of Christ’s farewell to his disciples, bidding them to preach the word of God and assuring them of his eventual return for the Second Coming, the day of judgement in which the virtuous will be saved and the wrongdoers condemned.

“After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight,” the book says.

“They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. ‘Men of Galilee,’ they said, ‘why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven’.”

When is Ascension Day?

Ascension Day is celebrated across all branches of Christianity on the sixth Thursday after Easter, exactly 40 days after Easter Sunday.

However, because the Eastern Orthodox Church uses the older Julian calendar rather than the modern Gregorian calendar to calculate the date, Orthodox Christians will celebrate Ascension Day a week later than their Catholic and Protestant counterparts.

How is it observed?

Ascension Day is not a major event in most Protestant parishes, but in the Catholic Church the Feast of the Ascension is one of the Holy Days of Obligation, meaning that believers are obliged to attend Mass.

For this reason, some Catholic dioceses now mark Ascension Day on the Sunday after its traditional Thursday date, to enable more parishioners to attend services.

“Like other Holy Days of Obligation, Catholics are encouraged to spend the day in prayer and contemplation,” says Thought Co.

Historically, the day was marked with a procession with torches and banners. The tradition persists “in some sections of Germany and central Europe”, says Catholic Culture, where, “preceded by candles and cross, the faithful walk with prayer and song through fields and pastures, and the priest blesses each lot of ground”.

Nine days after Ascension Day, Christians around the world celebrate Pentecost, which marks the descent of the Holy Spirit on a gathering of early Christians, giving them the sudden ability to speak many languages and thus enabling them to preach to peoples of many nations.

Therefore, church readings for the period from Ascension Day to Pentecost focus on dedication to spreading Christ’s word and hope for eternal salvation at the Second Coming.

In Germany, Ascension Thursday coincides with Father’s Day, or Men’s Day, which dates back to the 18th century as a way to celebrate Jesus returning to the Holy Father.

“Traditionally men would be placed in a cart or carriage and brought to the town or village square, and the proud father who had sired the most children received a prize from the mayor, often a big piece of ham,” says Der Spiegel.

Colourful parades, commemorating the walking of the apostles, became common by the 19th century but the day evolved. And “by the 20th century it had reached its current incarnation: The Day of Drink”, says the German news magazine.

Today is Maundy Thursday, a key date in the Christian calendar and celebrated by believers across the world.

Often overshadowed by the significance of Easter Sunday and Good Friday, Maundy Thursday is the fifth day of Holy Week, and - like Easter - is usually observed at different times by the Western and Orthodox churches.

But what does the day stand for and how do Christians across the world commemorate it?

What is the historical significance?

In Christian tradition, Maundy Thursday, which always falls on the Thursday before Easter Sunday, is a commemoration of the Last Supper of Jesus Christ with the apostles in Jerusalem before he was betrayed by Judas Iscariot.

The word Maundy comes from the Latin mandatum, meaning command, used in the ceremony of the washing of the feet.

According to St John’s gospel, before the Last Supper Jesus washed his followers’ feet to show his humility, saying: “A new commandment I give unto you: that you love one another as I have loved you.”

The day also goes by other names in certain parts of the world, including Holy Thursday, Covenant Thursday, Great and Holy Thursday, and Thursday of Mysteries.

How is it celebrated?

Until 1689, the reigning monarch would wash worshippers’ feet in a symbolic ceremony at Westminster Abbey, while food and clothing would also be handed out to the poor, The Sun writes.

Nowadays, feet washing remains a tradition only in the Catholic and Armenian Apostolic Churches, though masses are also held on the day by many Anglican churches. The Eastern Orthodox Church also marks the day with Vespers prayers and the Liturgy of Saint Basil the Great.

In countries which were formerly parts of the Spanish and Danish empires, Maundy Thursday is a public holiday.

What role does the Queen play?

Queen Elizabeth II will observe Maundy Thursday by taking part in the distribution of alms at Leicester Cathedral with the Duke of Edinburgh, a tradition that dates all the way back to the Middle Ages.

All of the recipients of the “Maundy Money” will be senior citizens who have served the church and the local community.

Maundy money is made up of coins that have been specially minted for the occasion – they are legal tender and are highly collectable, the Sun adds.

Billy Graham, one of the world's most famous Christian evangelists, has died at the age of 99.

Known as “America’s pastor”, Graham was a “key figure in the revival of the US evangelical Christian movement”, says ABC News.

Several presidents, including Lyndon Johnson, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, relied closely on his spiritual counsel, according to CNN.

Graham took what was known as his “Billy Graham Crusades” around the world, preaching to a total of more than 210 million people in 185 countries and territories. A million people are estimated to have attended a single event in Seoul in the 1970s.

Graham, who long suffered from cancer, pneumonia and other ailments, died at his home in Montreat, North Carolina, according to a spokesperson for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

President Donald Trump tweeted a tribute to Graham, calling him “a very special man”.

Graham was an active support of the US civil rights movement in the 1950s, preaching to racially integrated congregations, the BBC reports.

He successfully avoided the scandals that dogged some contemporary televangelists through the decades, although “his fiery delivery became more measured with advancing years and controversy surrounding the techniques of mass evangelism.”

Christmas may not be here just yet, but we are already well into the Advent season.

To the millions of children launching out of beds with a spring in their step every morning to open their advent calendars, the season probably means little more than chocolate.

But from a liturgical standpoint, the significance of Advent is wide-reaching, and it remains one of the most important observances of the Christian calendar.

Advent, according to Christian information website Got Questions, “is observed with various traditions and rituals by Catholics and other liturgical groups such as Lutherans, Anglicans, and Methodists”, and “in recent years, Advent celebrations of one type or another have been added to many evangelical services as well”.

The season of Advent lasts for four Sundays during the build-up to Christmas, so this means it usually begins on the Sunday that falls between 27 November and 3 December. In 2018, Advent began on Sunday 2 December.

So what is Advent, and how is it celebrated in Christian communities?

What is Advent?

The Advent period is a time of preparation and anticipation for the birth of Jesus Christ. Its name derives from the Latin “adventus”, meaning coming.

Although it falls at the end of the year, Advent is the first season in the Western Christian liturgical calendar. Its precise origins unknown, but the season was being observed by European Christians by the 5th century.

In its earliest form, Advent was not seen as a run-up to Christmas Day but to the Feast of the Epiphany, which falls on 6 January and marks the visit of the Three Kings to the baby Jesus, writes Father William Saunders for the Catholic Education Resource Center.

Epiphany was historically a time when converts were baptised “so the Advent preparation was very similar to Lent with an emphasis on prayer and fasting”.

“It was not until the Middle Ages that the Advent season was explicitly linked to Christ’s first coming at Christmas,” says US theology lecturer and Episcopal priest Justin Holcomb.

When does Advent start and end?

The Advent season begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas. Depending on the year, this can fall anywhere between 27 November and 3 December. The final week of the season begins on the Sunday before Christmas Day.

This year is a late Advent - the season begins on 3 December, meaning the last Sunday falls on 24 December.

How is it observed?

Modern Advent traditions are less austere than the fasting and penance of early Christians.

The most familiar feature of the Advent season are Advent candles - unsurprising given that December is the darkest time of year in the northern hemisphere. There are four candles in total, with each one lit on successive Sundays.

Advent wreaths bedecked in candles first appeared in UK churches in the 19th century as an import from northern Europe, says the Church of England, and they are now a common adornment.

The colour purple is associated with the Advent season, along with blue in some denominations, so clergy will typically don purple vestments for services, while the altar and lectern are draped with purple cloth.

Nativity scenes depicting the newborn Jesus surrounded by Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and Three Kings and various barnyard animals are also a common sight at this time of year.

Some cultures put their own unique spin on the practice - none more so than Catalonia, where nativity scenes often feature a character known as El Caganer (The Crapper), a peasant in the act of emptying his bowels.

At some point in the Advent season, it is now common for churches and Christian schools to hold a Christingle service.

Christingles are made by tying a red ribbon around an orange and then inserting a candle into the fruit - the orange represents the world, the candle stands for Jesus and the ribbon represents the blood of his sacrifice for the world.

The candle is usually surrounded by four cocktail sticks holding sweets or raisins, representing the four seasons and the produce of the earth.

Christingles have been a feature of the German Moravian church since the 18th century, and were popularised in the UK by The Children’s Society charity in the 1970s.

Prayers and readings during church services at this time of year encourage both a re-appreciation of Christ’s first coming at the Nativity and meditation on his anticipated second coming.

In fact, many popular Christmas carols reflect this connection. Hark, the Herald Angels Sing explains that Jesus was “born to raise the sons of earth / Born to give them second birth”, while O Come, O Come Emmanuel longs for the saviour’s return on Judgment Day.

Protestants and Catholics came together at London’s Westminster Abbey today to remember the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby presented a joint declaration described as “a sign of healing after 500 years of division”.

Anniversary celebrations promoting unity also took place across the US and Europe, including in Luther’s homeland of Germany, where 31 October is known as “Reformation Day”.

Here’s what you should know about the historical date.

The history of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses

On 31 October 1517, German monk Martin Luther (1483-1546) nailed his 95 Theses, attacking papal abuses and the sale of indulgences, to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. (Or at least, that’s the popular version of events. Some modern scholars argue it’s more likely that he simply distributed the Theses.) The work formed the foundation for Protestant Christianity, ignited the Protestant Reformation and divided the Christian world.

“Luther had come to believe that Christians are saved through faith and not through their own efforts,” the BBC says.

Between 1519 and 1520, Luther developed his idea in a series of pamphlets - On Christian Liberty, On the Freedom of a Christian Man, To the Christian Nobility and On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church. His work spread quickly through Europe, thanks to the printing press.

Indulgences

The changes ended the sale of “indulgences” - payments to the church that were to reduce punishment for sins after death - which were at the top of Luther’s grievances. These funds had been used to pay for the building of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, says The Guardian.

Impact on language

The Reformation led to the translation of the Bible into languages other than Latin, Time magazine says, allowing people to engage with scripture for the first time.

“More generally, the Reformation contributed to the expansion of literacy, with people no longer needing to rely on priests to read and interpret the Bible,” the magazine adds.

Where did the term Protestant come from?

The term arose from a “letter of protestation” jointly issued by a number of German rulers in 1529 that argued against the Church’s condemnation of Luther as a heretic, according to the Anglican Journal.

What did today's event commemorate?

The service at Westminster Abbey celebrated the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification - a major document agreed by the Lutheran and Catholic churches in 1999. It resolves the most contentious issue between them, dating back to the Reformation: how does someone go to Heaven?