Bishop James Jones - 26/10/2026

Available for over a year

As a child the radio was always on at breakfast. The presenter told us that at 8 o’clock that morning a named criminal would be hanged. I felt a chill as the 8am pips beeped. Then in the news bulletin we heard that the said prisoner had been hanged. That scene from my childhood has always haunted me whenever the death penalty has been debated, as it is now with the failed execution of Christa Pike and the upcoming execution of Nidal Hasan. Although President Trump has overruled the War Secretary’s plan to live stream that execution, the fact that such a proposal has been on a Government’s agenda feels to me like we’re going backwards as a civilisation. I have the same feeling about the wars in Europe and the Middle East. Again as a child when watching films about the two World Wars I’ve comforted myself from their horrors by thinking, ‘That doesn’t happen anymore’. Well, as we know. It does! The weapons may have changed but the effects are just as brutal. Then on this programme when an AI expert was prophesying doom he was asked what he was going to do. His answer was ‘buy some land’. Presumably when all else fails he’ll be able to grow some food. And now with the latest IT failure we’re told to go back to carrying cash! It feels as if we’re at a unique point, caught in a bind between two conflicting forces. On the one hand science and technology are catapulting us forward into unknown territory, while on the other our values seem to be changing and in some respects drawing us back to a less civilised era. These conflicting forces find their echo in the ideas of Jesus who spoke about the future in terms of both progress and regression. He foresaw an end point to human history and looked forward to a time when there would be a renewal of all creation. Yet he also warned that the prelude to this regeneration of all things would be marked by famines and wars, even though he cautioned that no-one would ever be able to predict the moment when this would happen. He likened this period of turmoil to a woman giving birth. Hopefully and optimistically he suggested how the pains of labour would eventually be forgotten, as the joy of a new creation would seize our souls.