An educational institution in southern Africa is hosting a major theological consultation on HIV prevention called by the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance (EAA), based in Geneva. Participants are expected from across the globe.

The UK wing of the global social investment initiative Oikocredit has teamed up with the Livesimply campaign to promote a shared vision for social justice. Oikocredit provides vital loans to creative but impoverished communities.

Senior Baptist theologians have joined other church figures and civil rights groups in calling for an end to the existing blasphemy laws in Britain, which are now seen by a wide cross-section of the public as an unjust anachronism.

A South African church-backed group that helps former combatants involved in violence during the apartheid era to play a peaceful role says its life skills programme is needed helping a country undermined by violent crime.

Anger can be an ally as well as an avoidance, an ignition for firm truth telling rather than an evocation of loathing, says Gene Stoltzfus. By maturing through occasional bouts of anger, we can learn that hatred is not the base for a workable society.

Turkey's Catholic community wants to mark the 2000th anniversary of the birth of St Paul by improving the status of the country's Christian minorities, as well as reopening a church at the apostle's birthplace in Tarsus.

Anabaptism, a dissenting Christian tradition associated with the world's historic peace churches, provides a specific way of understanding what it means to follow Jesus, a leading presenter at a major Mennonite consultation has declared.

The Christian think tank Ekklesia has renewed its call for the repeal of the UK's archaic blasphemy laws. An amendment to abolish the offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel has been tabled by Evan Harris MP to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, and the issue is drawing support from people of all faiths and none.

A marriage registrar has vowed to make a legal challenge to the acceptance of civil partnership ceremonies, claiming that she objects to them on religious grounds and should therefore be exempt from having to perform them.