Bishops condemn ‘blight’ of racism after East Ham attack
THE Bishop of Bradwell, the Rt Revd Adam Atkinson, and the Bishop of Barking, the Rt Revd Lynne Cullens, have condemned an attack last week against a practising Anglican of Asian heritage and his colleague in East Ham. The Bishops said in a joint statement that “a man who worships and faithfully serves in one of our parishes in South Essex was the victim of a brutal racist attack by a group of masked young men at East Ham Station.” They continued: “Our thoughts and prayers are with both men as they recover from this horrific ordeal. Racism is a blight on the communities we serve and we are appalled by and condemn all forms of hatred and discrimination.”
Children forcibly removed, say refugee charities
THERE is a “growing pattern of unaccompanied children being wrongly identified as adults”, new research by the Jesuit Refugee Service UK (JRS UK) and Humans for Rights Network (HFRN) suggests. These children are being detained in immigration removal centres and, in some cases, forcibly removed to France under the UK-France “one-in-one-out” agreement, the charities say. A briefing from the charities this week outlines failures in screening, safeguarding, and access to legal support, resulting in the subjection of children to prolonged detention in conditions described as “prison-like”. Since the UK-France scheme began last August, NGOs have identified at least 141 age-disputed young people in detention, although children are explicitly excluded from the scheme and subject to strict legal limits on detention. The BBC reported last week that an AI age-estimation tool for detecting adult migrants posing as children would be deployed at UK borders next year.
Bible translators notch up 800th language
WYCLIFFE BIBLE TRANSLATORS have translated the Bible into 800 languages, reaching about 6.2 billion people — an “amazing milestone in the history of Bible translation” — the charity says. This is double the number since 1998. A press release said that it “took over 1900 years to translate the Bible into 400 languages . . . just 28 years for next 400 to have the Bible in their languages”. The executive director of Wycliffe, James Poole, said: “Communities are receiving the Bible far sooner than would have seemed possible only a generation ago. . . As churches engage with the scriptures in their own languages, they are better equipped for evangelism, discipleship, and ministry.”
C of E backs £64.6m nature-recovery fund
THE Church of England’s Social Impact Investment Programme has backed the UK’s largest ever nature-as-infrastructure investment fund, which is to use public and private capital to restore landscapes across England. The Big Nature Impact Fund, managed by Finance Earth, last week raised £64.6 million, exceeding its initial target of £50 million, with a final goal of £90-£120 million. The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs contributed £30 million to the fund, and its Minister Mary Creagh described the fund as a “whole-economy approach to nature recovery”.