African religious leaders have heard that gender-based violence is increasingly becoming a weapon of war in the continent's trouble spots, with some saying sacred scriptures are being used to justify violence in general.

In today’s world of rapid change and widespread insecurity, many people look to the Bible to provide them with certainty, says Savi Hensman. But this is a misleading and dangerous way to approach the text - and life.

David Ford says that slavery is still very much alive, and that the systems and ideas that underpin it also challenge the church's deep collusion with racism - and its unwillingness to be grasped by the Gospel.

Christians cannot make sense of their scriptures apart from a listening community, Dr Rowan Williams has said. In a lecture on biblical interpretation he argues that both dogmatic and dismissive approaches are flawed.

Simon Barrow says that beyond the popular scriptural fantasising which feeds much religion on the internet, there are processes of scriptural reasoning which produce a dynamic, fruitful bond between the Bible to lived reality.

Giles Fraser reflects on John Newton’s painful conversion from uncritical theology