The Psalm, which starts: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures” (ESV) has been turned into countless songs and posters but it will now be portrayed as a garden space at the popular Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Flower Show 2020.

It’s a collaboration between The Bible Society and Sarah Eberle, an award-winning garden designer.

In a trailer for the Psalm 23 garden, she said: “I just felt it’s so relevant because reading through the psalm again, it’s like, wow, I know where that relates to – it’s where I come to be peaceful, where I come when I’m troubled and when I’m happy and it’s this place.

“The thing I’m hoping for at Chelsea is for the visitors to be stopped and for them to find some sort of emotional communication with the garden and to want to stay and feel the peace and the restoration.

“There’s always a personal view on any garden I design,” said Eberle. “I grew up around Dartmoor. Walking the lanes, I saw the way the light played in the ferns. It was incredible.

“The inspiration is about spirituality, that sense of wellbeing, of arriving at a special place and a sense of being able to breathe, to feel comforted, to feel a sense of belonging, if you like.”

The Bible Society are also encouraging people to read the psalm and learn more about it through the project. 

Hazel Southam, the…

Speaking at her installation at Canterbury Cathedral, she said: “Let us think what it might look like for us here in Kent, if the name of Jesus enabled us to be a unifying body. That instead of focusing on the things that separate us, we focussed on the things that we share in common.

“What if we were to recognise his presence as we seek to ensure that the resources we have been blessed with is not for amassing personal wealth but to be shared in such a way that our brothers and sisters in poverty is no longer in need?”

The Rt Revd Dr Rose Hudson-Wilkin was consecrated as Bishop of Dover at St Paul’s Cathedral on 19th November and installed by the Archbishop of Canterbury at Canterbury Cathedral on Saturday.

She said in her address: “God’s presence in our midst changes the kind of relationship we have with him and with each other. This is at the heart of the Good news message we are called on to share.

“We are deeply mistaken if the kind of relationship we seek with God is so personal and private that we exclude our brothers and sisters around us or indeed as we are in Kent, on the frontier if we exclude our brothers and sisters from another mother!

“If we are going to experience that oneness of purpose that Jesus prayed for then we will need to seek to be identified more with the name of Jesus. For too long we have been embarrassed to be associated with him. We…

Many church leaders opposed the legislation as they felt it did not protect religious people enough – with Catholics, Anglicans and the Greek Orthodox Church in Australia writing to Prime Minister Scott Morrison to say: “We take the view that it would be better to have no Religious Discrimination Act rather than a flawed one.”

Australian Christian Lobby and Christian Schools Australia also agreed that it would be better to hold off.

One of the criticisms is that the term ‘religious body’ is too narrow, excluding groups that primarily engage in commercial activities. 

The importance of being defined as a ‘religious body’, as a church or Christian school would be, is that it is then given special protection over the ability to hire and fire on the basis of religious belief.

For example, therefore a Christian campsite, shop or business would not have the same rights as a church over the character of people they employ in their Christian organisation.

Equality Australia says the new law will open the doors to discrimination against LGBTQ+ people.

PM Scott Morrison announced the delay on Saturday, saying: “We made a commitment to Australians to address this issue at the last election and we are keeping faith with that commitment in a calm and considered process. We’re about listening and getting this right.”

“I have yet to see any wholehearted or enthusiastic support…

The chain recently stopped funding The Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) after pressure over the belief that the charities opposed same-sex marriage. 

Ellie Goulding also recently threatened not to participate in a Christmas charity event unless The Salvation Army donated to the LGBTQ community, which they said that they did and the event continued. 

However, Chick-fil-A pulled out of both charities completely, with owners saying they had donated as long as they had agreed to and will now focus on education, homelessness and hunger.

The Chick-fil-A Foundation is reported to have donated $115K to the Salvation Army and $1.65M to the FCA in 2018.

Chick-fil-A opened its first branch in Reading on 10th October, however, it was revealed that the outlet would be temporary eight days later.

The opening in the Oracle shopping centre prompted criticism from LGBT groups due to comments made by the founder’s Christian son.

Now, the company is being criticised for funding the Southern Poverty Law Centre, a group that campaigns against hate groups such as white nationalists and Neo-Nazis but has also been accused of putting mainstream conservative organisations on its ‘hate map’ of groups in America. 

One of the groups on the hate map is the evangelical group Family Research Council, who had an attempted attack on their building in 2012 because of…

In a letter to The Times, representatives of the United Reform Church, Quakers in Britain, Church of Scotland, Baptist Union, Churches Together England and more, urged politicians to help poor countries deal with their climate crisis.

“As a rich nation which has benefited from ‘cheap’ fossil fuel energy, the UK should support poorer countries in their responses to the climate crisis,” they said.

“As well as finance and technology to aid a global transition to zero carbon, this support must include funding and debt relief for countries hit by climate-related disasters.

“The UN has found that climate disasters now occur at the rate of one a week. There is no international agreement on how finance should be provided for countries suffering loss and damage, and the burden continues to fall on poorer countries that have done little to cause the crisis, plunging them deeper into poverty.”

The leaders asked that the issue be addressed at the COP25 UN climate talks starting next week in Madrid.

“All people are equal in the sight of God – and this truth must be reflected in our actions. The UN talks must include and listen to communities in the global south, for whom climate issues are matters of life and death,” they added.

The letter ended: “Whatever the election outcome, the next government has a moral duty to address these issues of global…

Ven Jo Kelly-Moore, Archdeacon of Canterbury joined Rt Rev Simon Burton-Jones, Bishop of Tonbridge at an event in  Chatham this week to support to the White Ribbon campaign.

White Ribbon UK was founded in 2005 and is part of the global movement to end male violence against women.

On Monday, alongside partners in the Diocese of Rochester, Canterbury Diocese officially signed up to promote the cause and raise awareness of the issue.

Every week in the UK, two women are killed by their partners or ex-partners and 7 out of 8 victims of domestic violence are women. Also, more than half of the women in the UK have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace.

Ven Kelly-Moore said: “It is vital that we give this campaign the full weight of our support.

“Getting people talking, getting people to take responsibility for themselves and for their peers is such a positive way to tackle this problem that affects so many lives.

“I was moved by those I spoke to at the event in Chatham; their bravery, their hope and their determination to stop this happening to others. We need to reach out and be part of that conversation; in our families, in our congregations and be aware of the strength it takes to take that first step and have that first chat.”

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Com Church in the town of Dunstable has created an online hub called Christmas Town where businesses, organisations and churches can advertise their Christmas event on the church’s website.

Pastor of Com Church, Julian Richards, told Premier: “The world has a festival that has Christ’s name in it, the Church should be at the front.

“So we created this hub on our church website that everybody goes through. We started promoting it in our town and the council put all their events on it.

“It started to gather momentum and other people wanted to put events on it. So we created a place where people could just post their event, what their school is doing, what and what the college is doing, different people around that have got festivals…”

Pastor Richards told Premier it’s important for the church to the centre of the community, especially during the festive season.

“When it’s Christmas and Christ’s name is there, we should be at the forefront of the celebration. And I think how the world does Christmas at the moment so materialistically and with a very selfish approach to Christmas, it’s right that the Church takes its rightful place. If people see the Church doing its job and being the head of the community at Christmas time, I think it speaks volumes.”

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Rev Nunn said around the time of the attack he was returning to Southwark Cathedral after leading a retreat. He said it’s hard to come to terms with the fact there has been another terror attack on the community.

“As I walked along Clink Street it felt as though time had suddenly shifted and I was back two and a half years ago as I was faced again with people literally running away from the direction of the Cathedral. I, of course, went against the tide and got into the Cathedral just as a lock-down was being put in place,” he said.

“People who had come to the Friends’ Christmas Market, visitors to the Cathedral as well as our wonderful staff and volunteers were all locked down. A visiting organist began playing some gentle and calming music. I led prayers with all those there, seeking to reassure them without really knowing what was happening.

“The news filtered through and as it did the police decided we were better evacuating the building. So we evacuated the place and left the cathedral behind as a cordon was thrown up around it, once again.”

The London Bridge attacker was a convicted terrorist released half-way through a 16-year prison sentence for a plot to bomb the London Stock Exchange.

Usman Khan, 28, killed a man and a woman in the knife rampage on Friday afternoon and injured three other people, who are being treated in hospital.

He was…

The study looked at 461 parents of psychology students at Singidunum University in Belgrade, Serbia.

The research, published in Journal of Biosocial Science, revealed the more religious the parents were, the more children they wanted to have, and the more they ended up having.

Dr Janko Mededovic, the scientist who led the study, said he wanted to add to 15 years of past research in finding the link to the “evolution of religiousness”.  

It’s thought that religion is continuing in society because it’s being passed down from generations of families.

Dr Mededovic said: “If individuals with higher religiosity have elevated reproductive success, then natural selection could actively propagate [genetic variations] that contribute to the expression of religious affiliation.

“In this case it could be reasonably assumed that religiousness does have an adaptive function in contemporary humans.”

The study’s findings echo statistics from the 2016 census of almost 4 million women in 32 countries, which revealed those who had a religious belief were less likely to not have any children.

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