For fifty years, Latin America's big religious story was straightforward: Catholics were becoming Pentecostals. But recent data suggests things have changed. Catholicism continues to decline, but the recent beneficiary may not be Protestantism, but the religiously unaffiliated. 1/7

It seems only a few years ago that we were living at a time of optimism: of low inflation, low interest rates, and cheap travel, when the Internet was making the economy stronger and bringing people together. The mood has shifted as these material things have passed away. 1/3

If you think the idea of resurrection is absurd, you aren’t alone. It offends our scientific worldview, and even in the ancient world, the Sadducees—the smart, rationalist, high social class, scholars of Jesus’ Palestine—totally made fun of Him for believing in Resurrection. 1/7

One of the lessons I’ve learned from these recent years of gathering crisis is that too many of those dreams of progress, the ones that have started looking in trouble, thought they could change human nature, or flew entirely in the face of it. www.gerrylynch.co.uk/2025/07/27/p...

It was a privilege to review @dannydvincent.bsky.social's documentary for BBC World Service's Heart and Soul on those who escape North Korea and then become Christians as they rebuild their lives in the South.

The Church of England Newspaper (@churchnewspaper.bsky.social) has paused publication while it seeks a financial way forward: it had been supported by media entrepreneur Keith Young who died in February. Thoughts with staff at what must be an unsettling & upsetting time. mailchi.mp/012009fa66be...

We all like a summer evening drive... Corfe Castle, Dorset, 9 July 2025.

We expect the saints to be serious, humourless, and so holy halos float over them as they walk down the street. But the Bible records them as real people, with complex characters—and if Jesus truly is God made human, then God has a sharp sense of humour! www.gerrylynch.co.uk/2025/07/20/w...

In this week's Church Times radio review, I cover Sunday exploring if a blasphemy law is emerging by the back door; and a weird hypermasculine priest in Texas; and Heart and Soul visiting Syrian Alawites who have fled to Lebanon after sectarian mass murder. www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/202...

I remembered the time in a Church in Belfast I heard that bit about the Parthians and Medes being read in a strong Iranian accent, and so preached on the Church's surprising growth in Iran in recent decades, and martyrdom, and believing because of the works... www.gerrylynch.co.uk/2025/06/08/m...

My radio review this week is quite Radio 4 focused—Clare Balding's Ramblings as she takes on the Camino; Nick Sturdee on Ukraine's disputing Orthodox denominations on From Our Own Correspondent.

The Tankwa Karoo National Park as a summer afternoon turns to evening. #SouthAfrica

On Starmer’s migration speech—Denmark’s Social Democrats did this. It didn’t crash the economy but did crash the far-right People’s Party. There’s plenty of room for them to screw up the implementation, but this has already worked in a broadly comparable NW European country. 1/6

A week ago I'd never heard of Robert Prevost and a month ago I didn't know what a cardinal *actually* was, but in this thread I will with great authority explain why Pope Leo XIV is wonderful/awful/evil... (delete to fit clickbait target) 1/116

Chicago is ecumenically a very interesting place for a Pope to hail from: a stronghold of Catholicism, and also one of the greatest concentrations of Eastern Orthodox in the USA, and also, both in the Black community and among the White elite, large and significant Protestant churches. 1/3

I'm going up to church now for the Vigil at 8 pm. So it's time for the talking snake sermon again. It seems bonkers... until you realise what it's really about, which is the besetting 21st Century problem, humanity exceeding the limits our nature puts on us. www.gerrylynch.co.uk/2023/04/08/w...

Shadow in Seend... #Wiltshire

A sermon praising beauty, condemning bare materialism, explaining what nard is (a honeysuckle-like flower from the Himalayas) and asking the ladies of the parish if they'd like to sport a Sinead O'Connor-style buzzcut. www.gerrylynch.co.uk/2025/04/06/b...

Captured with a camera, not generated with AI...

Trump announces 10% reciprocal tariff for United Kingdom and 20% for EU.

Kyiv before the war.... Lavrska Street, 11 August 2017. © Gerry Lynch.

The era of broadcast television—and only broadcast television—was an incredible thing. Your audience is essentially the entire public; the entire public is gathered and shaped as one audience. “Mainstream,” whatever it might mean in the future, is unlikely ever to acquire that same cohesion again.

What's your furthest north, south, east, west, up & down on dry land? North: Gullfoss 🇮🇸 64°19' South: Cape Agulhas 🇿🇦 34°50' East: Simatai 🇨🇳 117°17' West: Qualicum Beach 🇨🇦 124°26' Highest: Lisiu Mafika Pass 🇱🇸 3090m 🔼 sea level Lowest: Dead Sea shore. It was 437m 🔽 back then; the bit I was on is in 🇵🇸.

Our next Devizes Deanery Choral Evensong will take place St Mary the Virgin, Bishops Cannings at 6 pm on Sunday 30 March. For those who would like to sing, please feel free to turn up to the rehearsal on the day – the rehearsal will start promptly at 4.15 pm. 1/3

Primrose morning, Great Cheverell churchyard. #Wiltshire

Jonathan Brash, Labour MP for Hartlepool

If I’m being honest, I didn’t much like today’s readings when I sat down to prepare my sermon. I’m not sure that I enjoy them any the more now. But real religion, which actually sheds light on the human condition, is more than uplifting spiritual Prozac. www.gerrylynch.co.uk/2025/03/23/t...

St Thomas's in Salisbury today—a 21st Century font in a 15th Century building with a 16th Century painting of the last judgement.

For Saint Patrick's Day: 1. Saul Church, built to mark the 1500th anniversary of Patrick's arrival. 2. A fine stained glass depiction of Patrick. 3. A memorial to the Irish Guards. Their regimental badge bears St. Patrick's saltire. 4. The traditional flag of Saint Patrick.

Another one for St Patrick's Day—the High Cross at Clones, Co. Monaghan, 27 March 2009.

Hail glorious Saint Patrick, dear saint of our isle On us thy poor children bestow a sweet smile And now thou art high in the mansions above On Erin's green valleys look down in thy love

The natural beauties of the springtime raise our spirits and fill us with joy. But why should we find them beautiful? It makes no sense that we find the flowers beautiful unless, of course, our lives have deeper meaning and we are more than biological robots www.gerrylynch.co.uk/2025/03/16/n...

Mount Kenya, Africa's second highest at a whopping 5,199 metres above sea level, shot from the outskirts of Timau in Meru County.

The Church became so consumed building God’s Kingdom on Earth that it stopped talking about Heaven. It started to hope that laws, treaties and international co-operation could bring the dark side of the human soul under control, and psychiatry might even cure it. www.gerrylynch.co.uk/2025/03/09/f...

Afternoon light, Meru County, Kenya, 11 January 2025.

We’re now in a geopolitical wilderness. The post-Cold War order has collapsed, something clear since Russia’s 2022 Ukraine invasion and now accelerating. Our 21st Century assumptions about how the world works stand revealed as illusions. 1/9

I have no idea which version of what's happening in Latakia and Tartus to believe, but it's clearly Not Good.🙏🙏🙏 for Syria. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I'm sure if Democrats start heckling all Trump's speeches, this will stop him being President. I bet it will also be whizzbang at showing people who voted for Trump despite being, you know, not TOTALLY convinced by him that they got it wrong.

There isn't any way to change the fact that Trump is President; but here are eight things I think are being missed about what he means politically, and how to flourish personally while he’s in power. 1/9

Wes Streeting is ripping up the New Labour model of service delivery, where government departments acted as oversight bodies at one remove from the quangos that actually made decisions. This is a good thing. But yet another example of the 1990s thoughtworld falling apart.

Evening Light, Meru County, Kenya, 11 January 2025.

Approaching sunset, approaching the equinox - Little Horton, Wiltshire.

Perhaps the Church has focused too narrowly on justice—a wonderful thing I would hardly argue against, but few of us would want to receive of an entirely fair share of divine justice. Mercy transcends justice. When we are merciful we touch God’s nature. www.gerrylynch.co.uk/2025/03/05/m...

One think that Grok is genuinely brilliant at is creating alt-text for visually impaired people to describe images on your website.

I'm running a training course on social media for parishes and clergy on the afternoon of 15 May. Organised through @sarumcollege.bsky.social but it will be delivered on Zoom. More details here: www.sarum.ac.uk/short-course...

Mad photography skills from Jurgen L on Flickr who took this amazing shot of Funningur Church in the Faroe Islands www.flickr.com/photos/19541...

The tiny village of Stert (pop. 175) has just one street—this lane with no name. Just before I took this photo this afternoon, I saw a Comma butterfly fluttering some metres ahead of me, my first butterfly of 2025...

From Rod Dreher today. Liberals, leftists, establishment conservatives alike still haven't processed that Trumpites consciously see themselves as revolutionaries up against a two-year time limit—and underestimate how much can change forever in two years of revolution from above.