The Christian Gospel, which is a word meaning, ‘good news' - is that the Creator of all things, God, so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that all who believe in Him should not perish but have life now and eternally.

To put it another way, God who is Just provides salvation.

And what that means in practice, is a worldview that trusts the faithfulness of God.

At the same time, Christians live in a God-created community, the Church - and that is the rub.

The Church, being full of human beings, is full of those who go wrong.

The Church often seeks to speak truth to power, but we must recognise as different bits of the Church, and, speaking as the Church of England, our own power as well as our immense failures and sins.

And therefore, we should welcome the challenge and scrutiny from the media that is part of living in a democratic society. Having spent a good deal of my life travelling in places that don't have those freedoms, I know which I prefer.

When I started this job just over 10 years ago, the media landscape, even that short period ago looked different. It has become faster, more complex, more driven by social media.

In an age of misinformation, distraction, and the competition of noise with truth, it is ever more difficult for journalists to do their job. The best account of that I've heard recently was a series of podcasts by Jeremy Bowen, that some people may have seen - they make long journeys go very quickly!

My approach to the media has developed over 10 years.

I take more risks, deliberately rather than accidentally.

I try to engage, and I recognise the vital importance of seeking to communicate well what the Church is doing and what we actually care about.

I tried to say yes to as many media outlets as possible, especially the local and the regional.

I know how successful they are because they are deeply embedded in the community.

I have a very strong memory of a visit to a particular diocese in the province of Canterbury and being asked - did I enjoy travelling on buses, and what I thought about the bus timetable in that particular town?

They were certainly embedded in the community.

And they do marvellous things, especially at the local level, being immensely stretched and having had an incredibly hard time in the last 10 years.

I actually quite enjoy interviews, believe it or not, although they make me very nervous.

I could sit on the sidelines, and I'm very tempted to do so very often, knowing that when anything is said in public by anyone, it will be analysed and instrumentalised.

One of the relatively few things I'm looking forward to in my eventual and long distant retirement is being able to read the paper without worrying about whether I'll see my own name in any context at all.

There are two aspects to any religious figure's involvement in the media.

First, you're reported on - for example, after making a speech on the Illegal Migration Bill.

Secondly, there is the context of engaging with the media proactively and giving interviews or engaging on social media.

There's a difference.

So if we start off by engaging with the media, why do it?

The greatest single reason is that Christian faith claims truth.

For Christians, truth is not a concept, it is a person - Jesus, not an idea.

When in John, Chapter 14:1-6, one of Jesus's disciples expostulates with him when he says, you know where I'm going, and the disciple says to Jesus, I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about.

And Jesus replies, I am, the Way, the Truth and the Life.

When Pilate, at his trial says what is Truth?

He's asking the wrong question.

He should ask who is Truth - and Truth is standing before him, beaten and bloodied, and looking anything but impressive.

When I was interviewed by Alastair Campbell several years ago, we talked about his famous phrase ‘We don't do God'.

And we talked about the fact that even if New Labour didn't do God, God still does us and, for that matter, New Labour.

God's faithfulness and providence is an embracing worldview that is not a private hobby but a universal principle, recognised or not.

Terry Pratchett, whose books I found enormously amusing, has a book called ‘Small gods' and the size of the god depends on how many worshippers they have.

Well, it's clever and amusing, but it's false.

God does not need worshippers; people and creation need God.

If we take the Illegal Migration Bill, for example, I find myself reminded of the passage in Matthew 25:31-46, which is about the Last Judgement.

It concerns two groups of people who unknowingly live in a way that either honours or fails to honour God's commands for our way of life in the world.

It echoes what's often called the Nazareth manifesto.

In Luke chapter 4:16-21, these two groups of people, the sheep and the goats they're called, they either feed the hungry or fail to do so, they nurse the sick, they visit the prisoner, and as we think about the Illegal Migration Bill, they welcome the stranger - or they fail to do so.

The second group lived as though it didn't matter.

The first group is welcomed by Christ to eternal life.

The second group have to face the terrible consequences of living for their own interests, as though those in need did not matter.

Churches are active in this world and in its concerns because they see God being active in this world. And many of those people who call for our help are Christians.

Churches are over 2 billion strong in every country around the world, even the Anglican Communion spans about 80 or 85 million people across 165 countries. And the typical Anglican is a woman in her 30s in Sub Saharan Africa, likely living in an area of conflict or persecution who lives on less than $4 a day.

Anglicans live in the hills of Papua New Guinea or, they work in the streets of the City of London, or in the banks and the dealing rooms.

So when I talk about migration or about poverty, or conflict or trade or natural disaster, or climate change or social justice, it isn't a hobby or a way of filling the otherwise empty days.

When I talk about these things, I see in my mind's eye the people I know and love around the world.

The people I call brother and sister because we belong to the same family in Christ.

Being part of that changes everything. Religion isn't a bolt on to our lives.

It's not an app you can download into the human software.

It's the entire operating system.

It's the prism through which we see everything else.

And then this country may be becoming more secular or not, as the case may be.

The world as a whole is not, 80% of the world population is religious, and it's going up, not shrinking.

So when we talk about religion or religious people, we're not studying some endangered exotica under the microscope.

Of course, not all of that 80% are Christians, not even the majority.

And our relationship with other faiths is very important, as we saw at the Coronation.

We work closely with other faiths not just out of a deep sense of hospitality, which is arising from our understanding of the nature of God.

But also because other religious groups have a religious perspective that shapes how they see the world.

The Big Help Out, a volunteering initiative on the Monday after the Coronation, was endorsed by religious groups.

And you may have seen the images in the news: Muslims, Jews, Christians, Sikhs, and others of no faith and of other faiths got together.

It involved 7.2 million people in this country, well over 10% of the country.

It was a project started by the Together Coalition, which I chair, and on that day, Caroline and I served lunch together at a homeless charity.

Going back finally to what I said at the beginning, about 'good news'.

At the Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops from around the world, which happened for the first time in 14 years last summer in Canterbury, I joined journalists who were covering it at a reception.

During that gathering, I said, yes of course we know there are stories about deep disagreements over sexuality that they would want to report on, and rightly so; they're important issues, and they are a good story.

But please remember that, at that gathering, I said there are people from war-torn countries and nations suffering from famine and drought, people who have literally just fled oppression and brutality, and people who have come from refugee camps.

Bishops represent the most vulnerable people in the world.

At the Lambeth Conference we talked extensively; we spent two hours on sexuality in 10 days, on everything else, slavery and justice, suffering.

But we chose to love one another despite our differences.

Please, in your reporting, don't forget the millions of people and the incredible stories that the Christian church and even the Church of England represent. Because I think that is also good news for all its faults, both for journalists and Christians.

So now, as I finish, I'd like to turn the tables and ask a couple of questions of you.

How do you communicate the worldview of religious people, as well as the fact in a way that just doesn't put their religion in a part of their lives?

And, can you help me through your questions and your comments, understand better, how we can communicate with you?

• Archbishop Justin Welby is Archbishop of Canterbury
• Speech delivered at Religion Media Festival

Coastal ecosystems have been wiped out on a grand scale; key ocean currents may be faltering; mining firms are preparing to rip up the deep seafloor to harvest precious minerals, with unknown ecological costs. And let's not even talk about ocean pollution.

But there's good news, too, says Nancy Knowlton, a coral reef biologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. In fact, she says, many marine conservation efforts around the globe are seeing good results.

"There are a lot of successes out there, and most people don't know about them," Knowlton says.

It's important to share those successes, she adds, to avoid paralyzing feelings of hopelessness and to spread the knowledge of approaches that work.

That's why she and her allies began pushing the #oceanoptimism Twitter hashtag in 2014.

Organizations such as Conservation Optimism and the Cambridge Conservation Initiative have broadened her theme, helping to share conservation stories, findings, resolve and resources.

In marine conservation, "successful efforts typically are neither quick nor cheap and require trust and collaboration," Knowlton wrote in a 2020 Annual Review of Marine Science paper promoting ocean optimism. Focusing on success stories, she stressed, helps motivate people to work toward new successes.

Here are glimpses of a few bright spots in the pitched battle for the blue planet.

Some high-profile conservation efforts are already paying off

An international moratorium on commercial whale hunting that started in the 1980s has shown dramatic results, even though a few species are still hunted by several countries and indigenous groups.

While some whale populations remain very much in trouble — the North Atlantic right whale, for instance, is critically endangered — others are rebounding.

The population of humpback whales in the western South Atlantic, which had dropped to around 450 in the 1950s, now is estimated at around 25,000 — near the level scientists estimate existed before hunting began.

The International Whaling Commission estimates the global population of these whales now maybe around 120,000 animals. Blue, bowhead, fin and sei whale populations are also growing globally, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Sea turtles are another success story.

Most populations of turtles included in a recent survey were found to be growing, even though the animals must be protected on both land and sea.

In Florida, scientists estimate that the population of green turtle nests climbed from 62 in 1979 to 37,341 in 2015. And in Texas, Kemp's Ridley turtle nests rose from just 1 to 353 over roughly the same time period, Knowlton notes.

Many fisheries are reasonably well managed

In many areas, the ocean is dangerously overfished. But the world's most valuable fisheries, which make up roughly 34 percent of global captures, are relatively healthy in general, environmental economists Christopher Costello of the University of California at Santa Barbara and Daniel Ovando of the University of Washington in Seattle wrote in the 2019 Annual Review of Environment and Resources.

Hot debates continue about the status of many species that were massively overfished for decades.

But there is good evidence that sustainable management is now being achieved for some species in some regions.

According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, 34.2 percent of the world's marine fisheries are currently overfished, but harvests have held relatively steady for fisheries ranging from Alaska pollock to European sardines (pilchards) to Indian mackerel and yellowfin tuna.

On the high seas beyond national jurisdiction, fishing vessels largely operate without legal restrictions, and sometimes hundreds of vessels will target a given region and make huge hauls.

Such incidents may suggest that the unregulated high seas "would be a tremendous threat to sustainability of the world's fisheries," Costello and Ovando wrote.

"Somewhat incredibly, this does not appear to be the case."

Among the likely explanations: High seas fishing accounts for only 6 percent of global fish catch; pursuing highly mobile and unpredictable species such as tuna can be extremely expensive; and regional fisheries management organizations do watch over many catches in the high seas.

The high seas may come under better control through a United Nations treaty on marine biodiversity, which may be finalized next year after many years of meetings.

This would greatly broaden the international resources available for proper fisheries management anywhere on the ocean.

Moreover, technology is changing the game in fisheries enforcement, says Heather Koldewey, a senior technical advisor at the Zoological Society of London.

Organizations such as Global Fishing Watch and Ocean Mind track large fishing vessels via satellite imaging, making it easy to track suspicious activities such as clusters of vessels in a protected zone.

In 2019, for example, after Global Fishing Watch partnered with the US Coast Guard in the Pacific, the patrol tripled its number of fishing vessel boardings.

Also in 2019, Ocean Mind joined with Interpol and several nations and successfully tracked and seized an illegal fishing vessel in Indonesia.

There's also hope for an end to the large governmental subsidies given to high-seas fisheries that are ecologically unsustainable and also, by World Trade Organization assessment, don't make economic sense. Continue reading

Apology

If you've been told that God is some kind of punishing, capricious, angry bastard with a killer surveillance system, who is basically always disappointed with you for being a human being, then you have been lied to. The church has failed you.

We are so sorry…

This didn't connect with my experience of God in the Catholic church. I was a convert in 1982, when the church was teaching a God of Unconditional Love. It was all celebration.

Yet I know a few people my age, cradle Catholics, who can't accept a God who loves without conditions.

They want to believe in a punishing God who will cast evil-doers into hell. For them "the fear of God" is not about awe and wonder, but grim anxiety.

Where does this come from?

I'm told it was old church stuff, but I can't find it in the writings of the early Catholic mystics. As far back as the 3rd century Origen was describing a spirituality that fits well with Vatican II.

According to Origen there are three stages of spiritual growth: ethics, physics and enoptics. The first stage is about the seeking the virtues in active life. The second stage, physics, was about seeing God in all things and all things in God. Enoptics, the third stage was direct experience of God.

Similar teachings flowed through church history. Read St Augustine of Hippo, St Francis, Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, St Benedict, Teresa of Avila, Ignatius of Loyola, Frank Herbert.

Read modern mystics Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, Ronald Rohlheiser, Richard Rohr.

For all of these people of prayer, the shifting sands of human existence have been overwhelmed by divine love that is far beyond our images. We are made for this love.

So why are there people who want to believe in a small punishing God?

I don't know.

And I don't know how to connect with those who try to convince me that a small punishing God is the greater reality.

Given a chance to respond, here are some thoughts I'd like to share:

1. Of the three Abrahamic religions, Christianity is the only one that believes in "The Fall" and "Original Sin."
2. In Judaism the garden of Eden story is parable. Jewish teachers say that expulsion from the garden is our birth, the pure soul leaving God to come into incarnation.
3. The Jewish tradition is that all souls come from God and return to God.
4. There is no mention of hell in the Jewish Bible.
5. Jesus' parables mentioned Gehenna which was translated as Hell. Gehenna was actual, the rubbish dump in a valley outside Jerusalem, burning day and night. Bodies were thrown on it, and sometimes the living. It became the metaphor for the misery caused by selfish living.
6. The gospels remind us several times that Jesus spoke all things in parables. That is how we should read them.
7. Negative thinking may have a personal source. It could be difficult to believe in a God of unconditional love if we've known little of human love.
8. When we talk about the evil in the world we are usually talking about other people.
9. The people who cause suffering to others, are convinced they are absolutely right,
10. A divided faith is part of Origen's first stage of faith when we learn how to choose right from wrong in all decision making. This is a ‘head' journey.
11. When we grow into the experience of God in everything, and everything in God, we
12. let go of divided thoughts and images. We have a "heart" experience of God.
13. For me, human belief in hell, judgement and a small punishing God is, in effect, blasphemy.
14. I believe there is nothing outside the immensity of God's love for us.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.
• Image: Stuff

A small church pastor asked me that question recently. Not from cynicism or unkindness. It was out of genuine concern for a reality he saw.

To be honest, it's a reality we all see. The vast majority of unhealthy churches are small. That's unarguably true. What's not true is his concern that most small churches are unhealthy.

It's About Math, Not Health
There's a very clear explanation as to why there are so many more unhealthy small churches than unhealthy big churches.

90 percent of unhealthy churches are small because 90 percent of ALL churches are small.

It's that simple. Small churches outnumber megachurches by such massive amounts that there are more of every kind of small church than there are of the same kinds of megachurches.

Let's turn that inside-out to see the other side of the same truth.

Less than 1 percent of unhealthy churches are megachurches because less than 1 percent of ALL churches are megachurches.

There are 90 unhealthy small churches to every unhealthy megachurch because small churches outnumber megachurches by about 90 to 1. (The rest are medium to big churches.)

There's no evidence that small churches are more prone to ill-health than megachurches.

The abundance of unhealthy small churches compared to unhealthy megachurches is not a crisis, it's mathematically inevitable.

There's Good News In The Numbers
You're more likely to run into unhappy small church members than unhappy megachurch members - but you'll also run into more happy small church members than happy megachurch members. Why?

Healthy small churches greatly outnumber healthy megachurches. Not because small churches are inherently better, but because of the same 90-to-1 math.

So hang in there, small church pastors. Despite the abundance of unhealthy small churches, there's no need to worry that your church is more susceptible to ill-health just because it's small.

There are millions of healthy small churches throughout the world. Hopefully your church is one of them. Continue reading

• Karl Vaters is the author of the book, The Grasshopper Myth: Big Churches, Small Churches and the Small Thinking That Divides Us.