Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams will honour Liverpool's achievement in taking on the mantle of European City of Culture by making a two-day pastoral visit to the Diocese and people of the area later in January.

An MP will this week seek to bring an end to Britain's controversial blasphemy laws - as a broad cross-section of believers, humanists and civil rights campaigners continue to argue that they are unnecessary, repressive and outdated.

In a message that will be shown on BBC2 at 20.30 GMT this evening and again on BBC1 at noon on New Year's Day, Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams warms Britain that a throwaway society risks creating throwaway people.

The Christmas message is that God in Jesus commits to transforming human ordinariness, not to fantasies about a super-hero figure or military conquerer, the President of the Methodist Conference has said in his seasonal message.

In spite of its many weals and woes, life has meaning and purpose expressed through our experience of love and creativity. That is the message of Christmas to humanity, Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams says.

While Rowan Williams rightly criticises Richard Dawkins for unfeasibly reducing religion to a pre-scientific explanatory system now superseded by science, says Ricahrd Skinner, he seems to have misunderstood Dawkins on evolution and survival strategies.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has attended a confidential meeting of the Clergy Consultation - an ongoing support group for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and intersex clergy and their partners.

Dr Rowan Williams has found himself at the centre of a row, following remarks to a Muslim magazine, after a Sunday newspaper construed it as an all-out attack on the US and neocon hard-liner John Bolton attacked him on the BBC.

Replying to questions on a BBC TV programme today, Lord Carey of Clifton, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, has publicly agreed with the Christian think-tank Ekklesia that it is time for Britain's archaic blasphemy law to be abolished.