Dear Friends,

Today we celebrate Racial Justice Sunday, the theme being ‘In the image and likeness of God.’ Again, like last year, we are asked to reflect upon the importance of everyone recognising themselves, their race, their culture and their history in the life of the Church. Racial Justice really is everyone’s business.

Not really a justice and peace issue, but worthy of a mention anyway, is the anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s accession to the throne. I felt a little bit ashamed last weekend. As it was my Mum’s Anniversary and prayers were being offered, I went to a Catholic Mass and a Church of England Service. At the latter they gave congratulations and offered prayers for Her Majesty the Queen in acknowledgement of her seventy years on the throne. This is something that in our church we didn’t mention, and indeed hadn’t remembered (and what makes it worse is that I produce our church’s newsletter).  Whether you are a royalist or not, sitting in a job and being in the public eye for all that time is an amazing achievement. Throughout all of the ups and downs, the Queen has steadfastly stuck to her religious principles, and indeed usually mentions them in her Christmas broadcast. Despite the various family issues, most of which have been aired in public, she has remained a constant presence, and yet at times I am sure she wanted to just give up and go home! Thank you, your Majesty, for the hard work that you have put into reigning this country for the past seventy years.

There are a lot of issues in this e-bulletin, although many of them all stem from the same major issue – the climate. Refugees/Migrants, Modern Slavery, the decline of species, environmental problems, the energy crisis – they are pretty much all under one umbrella. If we could just address the climate, especially the effect that it has in the Global South, then many other problems could also be helped. We all talked about COP26, but don’t forget the Biodiversity Conference, COP15, coming up in China this year, and also COP27 in Egypt in November….all is not yet lost, surely?

A reminder to everyone to get their bookings in early for the NJPN Conference in July. The price goes up after the 20th May.

I look forward to communicating with you all in around two weekends time. If you have anything in the meantime that you want mentioned, please do not hesitate to email it to me: – ebulletin@justice-and-peace.org.uk.

God bless
Sharon (Editor)