Is religion not the refuge of the weak?
JL, Canada
Yes, JL, it is precisely that. Christianity in particular
Nick Cave, musician, Red Hand Files, January 2026
Machines can already do what we’d mistaken for thinking. The question is whether we’ll recover what we’d forgotten we’d lost, not thinking in the abstract, but thinking that builds. The philosopher-builder doesn’t just understand the world. She changes it, and lets the change test her understanding. We can keep producing answer machines. It’s easier, safer. But AI has made the cost visible. Every polished essay that arrives without a trace of struggle feels like an epitaph: Did anyone ever think here?
Brendan McCord, Financial Times, 24 January
The Christian hope is not of escaping work, but of work finally renewed, good again, as it was meant to be. No more fruitless toil. No more labour in vain. Only the joy of work without the curse. All labour will be fruitful, good, and restored
Callum Elwood, Assistant Curate of St Peter’s Barge, Canary Wharf, The Times, 24 January
Keeping relationships at the centre seems to me where sound theology and good business practice come together. Hold on to that and I believe big or little, global or local, the bodies we build can be both better and more beautiful
David Walker, Bishop of Manchester, Thought for the Day, Radio 4, 26 January
When we were on that journey, walking in the cold and on the road, finding these people we didn’t know helping us out and supporting us, without judging us based on what we look like — that is the true value of this society
Giel Malual, Sudanese man who walked the length of the UK with his friend John Kuei to raise money to open a school for displaced children in Sudan, quoted in The Guardian, 23 January
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