Churches provide health care worth £8.4 billion to the NHS
The National Churches Trust has produced a report pointing out that churches provide health care which would otherwise cost the NHS £8.4 billion to deliver. “The House of Good Health” lists services such as youth groups, food banks, drug and alcohol addiction, and support for mental health counselling, But the report warns that this provision of care is at risk because of the number of churches at risk of closure. The Trust says church buildings are dangerously underfunded, with many in the most deprived areas falling into disrepair and facing closure. Around 3,500 have closed in recent years. The report is the subject of our briefing this week tomorrow, Weds 16 October at 1200. Details: [email protected]
Jewish community in Wales incensed at Plaid Cymru’s call for a boycott of Israel
Representatives of the Jewish community in Wales have expressed anger following Plaid Cymru’s call for a boycott of Israel on Yom Kippur — the holiest day in the Jewish calendar — and just a few days after the anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attack. Members of the Welsh National Party backed a motion which branded Israel an “apartheid state”, guilty of “genocide, ethnic cleansing and war crimes”, during its autumn conference at the weekend. The Jewish Chronicle quotes the South Wales Jewish Representative Council (SWJRC) saying it was “deeply disturbed” by the vote and has accused Plaid Cymru of “pandering to extreme positions”, alienating the Jewish community and undermining “the pursuit of genuine peace and understanding”. In a statement issued in both Welsh and English yesterday, Laurence Kahn, the chair of the SWJRC, criticised Plaid for drawing a “false equivalence” between Israel and Hamas, by accusing the former of genocide. “Despite Plaid Cymru’s accusations of genocide, it was Hamas — not Israel — that deliberately targeted civilians on and after October 7,” said Kahn. “This false equivalency is not only unjust but dangerously misleading. In an interview with the BBC at the weekend, party leader Rhun ap Iorwerth hinted at a difference of opinion on the matter, declining to confirm whether he personally endorsed the motion.
Nottingham University warns students Chaucer needs a trigger warning because he mentions Christianity
The headline in the Telegraph proclaims, “Britain is afraid of its Christian heritage” and calls for attempts by academics “to untether students from their history must be resisted”. The article refers to the controversy surrounding the English Literature department at Nottingham University, which has decreed that Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales deserves a trigger warning. A Freedom of Information request made by the Mail on Sunday revealed the warning is placed on a module entitled Chaucer and his Contemporaries. It warns of ‘incidences of violence, mental illness and expressions of Christian faith’ in the works of Chaucer and fellow medieval writers William Langland, John Gower, and Thomas Hoccleve. This has incurred the wrath of the evangelical advocacy group Christian Concern whose chief executive Andrea Williams says ‘Trigger warnings for Christian themes in literature are demeaning to the Christian faith and stifle the academic progress of our students. To censure expressions of the Christian faith is to erase our literary heritage.” Writing in the Telegraph, Catherine Pepinster says this is part of a growing trend “…to infantilise students. A 2022 study revealed that more than 1,000 trigger warnings had been applied to texts used by different undergraduate courses in the UK, with some books even struck from syllabuses, because students might find them distressing.” A University spokesman says “The University of Nottingham champions diversity, and its student body is made up of people of all faiths and none. This content notice does not assume that all our students come from a Christian background, but even those students who are practising Christians will find aspects of the late-medieval worldview they will encounter in Chaucer and others alienating and strange”.
Pope’s envoy travels to Russia for peace talks
Cardinal Matteo Zuppi is in Moscow to meet with Russian authorities as part of the peace mission entrusted to him by the Pope. In May 2023, Pope Francis asked Zuppi to serve as a papal envoy to “initiate paths of peace” between Russia and Ukraine. According to the Vatican the cardinal’s trip is to “evaluate further efforts to promote family reunification of Ukrainian children and the exchange of prisoners, with a view to achieving the much-hoped-for peace.” The visit comes days after Pope Francis met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a 35-minute private audience at the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace on Friday — their third such meeting since the start of the Ukraine war.
Cardinal Hume Centre says child homelessness in London is at record levels
The Tablet reports on claims by a leading anti-poverty charity that the number of children in London facing homelessness is now at “record levels”. The Chief Executive of the Cardinal Hume Centre (CHC), George O’Neill, says more than 85,000 of London’s children are now living in insecure and temporary accommodation. He said he was grateful for the centre’s support from the Lord Mayor of Westminster, Councillor Robert Rigby. O’Neill made the remarks last at a reception held at Westminster City Hall, London to celebrate the work of the CHC which “supports families and young people facing poverty and homelessness by helping them to thrive”.
Wooden Cross memorial to Shackleton on display in Dundee
BBC Scotland News features a poignant memorial to the explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton – a wooden cross, which is now on display in Dundee, after a journey of more than 7,000 miles from the South Atlantic. Shackleton died in 1922 in South Georgia during his final expedition. The Hope Cross was built by crew members who could not attend his funeral. It is now on long-term loan from the South Georgia museum. The 3m (9.84ft) memorial is on display beside RRS Discovery, the ship which first took Shackleton to Antarctica in 1901. Its unveiling coincides with the release of a new documentary on Shackleton’s doomed Endurance expedition and the 2022 hunt for the sunken vessel. The wooden cross stood for almost 100 years at King Edward Point in South Georgia, before it was replaced with a replica in 2018 to preserve the original memorial from the elements. Dundee Heritage Trust heritage manager Sophie Hinde said: “The Quest crew members had to leave Ernest behind when he passed away to continue on the rest of the expedition. There were thoughts that his body would be taken to England for a funeral, but it was actually buried on South Georgia and the crew put up the cross because they wanted him to be memorialized.” The Hope Cross was taken on a three-month journey on the RRS David Attenborough from Grytviken to Harwich, before being briefly stored at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge. Ms Hinde said: “Then we went down in a van and collected it, so it’s been quite a journey. “It was actually in a very good condition.”
Church at centre of ‘weird’ right wing town in northern California
In the run-up to the US election the Guardian puts the spotlight on Shasta county, in northern California with a population of 180,000 people and which has emerged as a centre for the election denial movement and a hotbed for far-right politics. Shasta residents voted out an anti-establishment leader in favour of a business owner and political newcomer who attends the popular yet controversial Bethel church, which is a cornerstone of the local economy, said Doni Chamberlain, a longtime local journalist and chronicler of the area. Shasta’s extreme political landscape has forced residents to choose between a toxic right-wing movement and a church that also has deeply conservative and extreme beliefs, she said. Bethel leaders once said that God wanted Donald Trump to have a second term and have claimed that Joe Biden won the 2020 election by “fraud”. Church members have also become major players in local government and people travel to Bethel’s School of Supernatural Ministry from around the world to attend the vocational program. Students have been known to approach people in the city, particularly those in casts or with walkers, to offer prayers for healing. The focus on “supernatural power” is fundamental to the church, which in 2019 asked members to pray for the resurrection of a two-year-old girl. “This is the bind we’re in,” Ms Chamberlain said. “Shasta county is in this weird extremist sandwich where we have the right-wing pushing for guns and splitting the state. And there is the other extreme side of the sandwich that is Bethel church. Then the middle where people are trying to figure out how to survive in this place.”
