For every person and every family the coronavirus pandemic has brought different challenges, heartaches, sorrows, frustrations and worries. So many people have lost loved ones or suffered long term health problems. Millions will soon be unemployed and the gross inequalities in our society have been more exposed than ever.

How long must this go on for? When will it all end? We wait anxiously for the vaccines to be rolled out. We will wait for some signs of economic recovery in the years ahead. We wait for better times. We look back to life as it was back in February, when we shopped, went out with friends, enjoyed a holiday, felt secure in our job. ‘By the waters of Babylon, we wept when we remembered Zion’, cried the people of Israel in exile.

The fact that the more frequently you attend church, the more likely you were to support a president who energizes white supremacists and hate groups.

The dividing line of race is old as our democracy, and as enduring as evidence from the presidential election. After four years of watching President Donald Trump demonize Muslims, enact cruel policies that target migrants, refuse to clearly condemn white supremacists, and disparage the Black Lives Matter movement, white Christians stuck with Trump in large numbers.

Race and ethnicity continue to eclipse religion as a driver of voting patterns. According to preliminary data from AP Votecast, more than half of white Catholics (57%) voted for Trump, compared to 67% of Latino Catholics who supported Biden.

There is some positive emerging news. Trump's national support among white Catholics declined from the 60% who supported him in 2016. Biden's ability to cut into Trump's appeal with white Catholics in key states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin played an important role in flipping those battlegrounds back to blue after Hillary Clinton lost all three states in 2016.

And there is data that points to white Catholics grappling with systemic racism more than in the past. While seven in 10 white evangelicals say that the police killing of African American men are isolated incidents rather than part of a pattern, the proportion of white Catholics who agree with that dropped 13 percentage points — from 71% in 2015 to 56% in 2020, according to Public Religion Research Institute, or PRRI.

hree years ago, the General Synod of the Church of England set up yet another process of consultation and debate about sex and relationships under the title of ‘Living in Love and Faith’, with the stated intention ‘that the resources make connections with the questions, faith stories, views and experiences of people who span a range of ages, ethnicities, theological convictions, sexualities and genders’. Now the report, which is actually a book running to 468 pages, plus digital resources and a course book, has been published and commended to the parishes of the Church of England for study, reflection and a way forward. So what do we make of this latest resource and the reactions to it?

‘Living in Love and Faith’ should be seen as the Church of England addressing its own people – churchgoers across the parishes of England. The book chronicles the many Church reports on sex, marriage and relationships over the years and the archbishops once again see their vision as keeping the church in graceful union despite and cutting through the disagreements. Those of us who hold a more progressive faith can at least be heartened by the way in which Living in Love and Faith tries openly and honestly to outline in some detail the contexts of societal, scientific and cultural influences. Part Two asks us to pay attention to ‘what is going on’. For churchgoers seeking to make sense of these matters in the context of faith, Part Four seeks to look at different ways in which we handle biblical texts and how we assess the Bible’s authority. Similarly how do we evaluate the church, the surrounding culture, our experiences and conscience?

Living in Love and Faith asks 585 questions, more than one a page. In the sections entitled ‘Encounters’, true life stories are told without comment. Different perspectives on all these sensitive issues are handled with clarity and respect. There are many pages of useful factual information , gleaned from secular sources such as British Attitude Surveys, government departments, alongside numerous church reports and commissions. All in all, the book is clear about the disagreements over matters of sex and relationships, both from a very conservative viewpoint right through to progressive folk like myself and many PCN members. The book inevitably reflects the broadness of the Church of England and its range of views over these matters.

SOME Evangelicals in the Church of England are contemplating “alternative solutions”, including new provincial arrangements, if the outcome of the Living in Love and Faith process (News, 13 November) leads to changes in doctrine or practice on sexuality.

In a video, The Beautiful Story, produced by the Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC) and posted on Sunday, the Bishop of Blackburn, the Rt Revd Julian Henderson, who is the CEEC’s President, says: “I’m not sure there are many of us in the Church of England who want to leave the Church of England. Staying in is, I’m sure, the hope and the aspiration of most of us. But, as and when the Church gets to the point where it changes its teaching and its liturgy and its practice in these areas, is going to be a moment for people to have to reconsider their allegiance to the Church.

“At the moment, I want to be in the Church of England, I want to fight for the traditional teaching of the Church on these matters. But the time may come when it’s going to be essential for those who hold to scriptural teaching on marriage and same-sex relationships to say ‘We cannot operate under this particular system and support this kind of doctrine and practice within the life of our Church.’ And that may then lead to having to look for alternative solutions.”

We want to thank IICSA for its report on the Catholic Church. We welcome its findings, highlighting the Church’s gross failings to protect children and others from abuse.

We are grateful that the Inquiry has exposed the Church’s treatment of victims and survivors when it comes to reparation and care, showing how the Church perpetuates an adversarial culture in their dealings with us.

In 2020, Covid-19 has left many communities more vulnerable than ever to human rights abuses, since many Israeli and international peace activists who would usually provide protection during the harvest are unable to be present.

“If elected I will serve with the interested of parishes always in mind….” So said my election address for the Church of England’s General Synod in 1999. Now, as I approach my final few months on General Synod, having served on it for two very different Dioceses I have come to the conclusion that the gap between Synodical Structures and Pastoral Parishes is wider still. The central structures have come up with a plethora of initiatives, such as Renewal and Reform, Simplification, Mission Shaped Church, Strategic funding for Resourcing and Planting new church communities, Estates Ministry, Everyday Faith. However, questions need to be asked about how these fine sounding initiatives actually connect with existing neighbourhood schemes of care, advocacy and support? What is more, it often seems to be forgotten that parishes run on shoestring budgets, unlike the eye watering budgets behind these national projects! The relevance of such initiatives to parishes is questionable and so the gap remains. A gap brought sharply into focus by the response of the Institutional Church to Covid-19.

I resigned from my Bishop’s Council this week.

The decision has been a long time coming – I’ve felt I’ve been hitting my head against a brick wall over our failure to prioritise the poor and disadvantaged, especially given we are such a rich diocese, for years. In fact, I’ve been banging the drum since I got onto Council five years ago. Interestingly, even though we constantly rated serving the poor in our diocese as a “the top priority” during our discussions, it rarely seemed to make the cut into any paperwork . In virtually every meeting I can remember I have had to remind those in authority of the commitments we had agreed as a Council.

For many of us, this time of year brings that back-to-school feeling, no matter how old we are.

While this year has been difficult for children, teachers and parents, we have seen many heroes come together to look after our young people: from Marcus Rashford’s free school meals campaign to Norwich Diocese’s “Filling the Gap” project, which provided 128 families with a staggering 26,082 meals over six weeks.